Weather News

Storms And Droughts Get More Intense

From NOAA:
Elaine Meinel Supkis

I grew up in the dry/flood climate of Southern Arizona. Either it pours or it is dry as a bone. Global warming simply extends this to more places. Oklahoma just had, in a few hours, the equivelent of the record for June, in rain: 18 inches! And this, without any hurricanes which happen to lurk in the Atlantic, patiently preparing for their curtain cues.

From CNN:

Torrential storms flooded parts of central Texas early Wednesday, stranding people on roofs, in trees and in vehicles, with wind-blown rain falling so hard that some helicopter rescue attempts had to be abandoned.

The worst flooding was in Williamson, Lampasas and Burnet counties in the Texas Hill Country northwest of Austin.

"We got hard facts of 18-plus inches of rain in a couple of those places since midnight," Austin-Travis County emergency medical services spokesman Warren Hassinger said just after 7 a.m.

The record for MONTHLY rain in Oklahoma is 18"! This singular storm comes on the heels of several major storms so it is easily double this today. I looked it up. I used to think a 4" rain was big. But since then, I was nearly killed in a 7" rain storm. The tiny stream on Plank Road, the steep, winding road into Berlin that runs past my own mountain, suddenly surged into a fair-sized river during that storm. My husband was driving us home from pumping out the basement of his parent's home. Suddenly, the water was rushing about the top of our tires as we began to lose control of the car. Behind us was a wall of water and my husband drove very fast to get ahead of it. We were the last car to make it through.

The Sheriffs closed the road and the road was washed away.

I live high above floods but I drive over many rivers and streams to get around, this is the nature of mountains. I do worry about the climate going into flood/drought mode! I live in the 'temperate zone' and we shoudl get the same amount of moisture every month, about 4"+ a month. A month with no rain is a disaster in any month. Too much is bad, of course. We had so many inches of snow last winter, I broke the big snow plow trying to extricate my neighbors from the deep snow! I pushed up snow banks that were more than 12' high.

Barns collapsed all over the region. My larger livestock couldn't poke their heads out of the barn. I had to crawl up onto the roofs of the animal houses to shovel off the deep snow!

Now, with these storms hammering the center of the Grain Belt, we haven't heard the really bad news. What with everyone growing corn for the ethanol gold rush, now we will see all that rot in the fields: corn hates floods when it is ripening! And hail, wind and heavy rain smashes the stalks down. Modern corn makes heavy ears which are vulnerable to winds and rains.

From the BBC:

Residents hit by flash floods that struck North Yorkshire are beginning a massive clean-up operation. Villages were cut off, roads washed away and nine people were reported missing during a night of heavy storms.

Two RAF helicopters were scrambled to rescue the missing people when they were tracked down in the market town of Helmsley, which was worst hit.

The flooding followed a weekend of high temperatures across the UK which left four people dead from drowning.

Europe has seen some spectacular storms this last 20 years including the rare tornadoes. These latest storms to hit England didn't flood because of a long rainfall, it was as if a tap were turned on and whoosh went the water. People would like to imagine there is no global warming but this is exactly what it is all about: floods and droughts.

The ultimate engine of global warming is the sun. Mother Nature always has the last say in all supreme matters. This is what 'gods' means: we puny humans can't stay their hands, we can only cope with what they throw at us. And the Sun is a major deity here. One of the biggest local ones. Of course, the Great Attractor, that lurking huge black hole we see far away will eventually eat us up and squish us to nothingness but until then, the sun is our chief.

The sun is now going to start an unusually active cycle and this means we will have really interesting hurricanes and typhoons. The melting of Greenland will greatly accelerate. My father thinks the sun will shut down its engine and rest like it did from 1500-1800 AD. I don't know. It got pretty chilly during that spell.

But then, if any volcano decides to do the caldera hysteria and blow up which happens regularily, we will get a nuclear winter lasting for many years. If it is Yellow Stone that blows up, it could put us all in a freezer. In the news is the genetic scientists hoping to resurrect mammoths. Well, if that happens, it would be a good project, no?

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Proto-tornado In Berlin, New York Today

Elaine Meinel Supkis

A series of very violent lightning storms with potential for tornadoes are still passing over my farm on this little mountain in Berlin, New York. Right next door to me, a tornado began to form and instead of running and hiding, I decided to take pictures instead. I knew it would miss me because it was travelling due east and I was about 1/2 a mile to the north.

These sorts of storms form when a cold front shoves into moisture flowing out of an ocean, for example. And this wild weather we have had the last two days were caused by tropical storm Barry. He bore down on us and doused us with lots of rain as well as winds. But now the wind is shifting from blowing out of the south to blowing out of the west. And this causes tornadoes.

I was outside frying some hamburgers. It was sunny when I started but this monster thunderstorm plunged us into darkness. I stupidly stood outside, watching it come when I saw torn clouds of thick river-steam caused by the sudden drop in temperatures, began to rise rapidly out of the hollows due southwest from my mountainside.

Picture of this afternoon's weather systems in the Northeast USA from Intellicast.com.

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I yelled and ran into the house to get my camera and for the next 3 minutes, took a number of pictures as I watched this tornado begin forming.

There was so little wind before this all began, I was playing cards outside. Now the winds began to buffet me harder and harder. The winds were rising, not sideways. My hair flew all over the place and I had to hold it down so it wouldn't get into the pictures. When one is near a tornado, the winds are sucked into the sky.

Here is a picture I took straight overhead. It was very dark now and the clouds to the south were nearly black but overhead, the lower clouds were sunlit as they swirled directly above! And we can see a glimpse of the rising tower of broiling clouds of this growing storm.

Because we are in very hilly lands here with the roots of mountains that once rose higher than the Himalayans about 700 million years ago, the tornado couldn't last very long and it dissipated quickly. But we do get them here!

More than 10 years ago, one formed in the valley below and roared due south. It took out a garage, trees in the cemetary and a dog house.

We then had one pass right over our house several years ago. On TV, they were tracking that one with a red arrow and then the weatherman said, 'The tornado is heading for Greenhollow Road!'---Which happens to be our road! And then he said it was going up the side of our mountain and the red arrow pointed straight at our house.

We had the horses in the basement with us along with the dogs and cats. Sparky tried to climb the stairs to the kitchen. When it hit, it went pitch black and it sounded like the classic tornado: a frieght trains upstairs. Doors were torn off hinges on the south side of the house and a chimney was yanked off the roof but otherwise, we survived.

This goes back to some interesting observations: why are tornadoes forming in the mountains? I see proto-tornadoes and thought nothing of this until several touched down in Berlin in the last 15 years! In one tornado which happened exactly where today's tried to form, a farmer and his wife were milking the cows and a calf was lifted into the hayloft and part of the roof was removed.

And this is the feature of tornadoes: not merely wind, they are rising winds and watching the winds rise out of the deep valleys and shoot up into the storm was an amazing sight indeed.

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Mega-Cyclone Aiming Towards Oman

CSUN world atlas.
Elaine Meinel Supkis

Like two years ago, cyclones are forming very rapidly when they get going. Wilma, for example, wandered in to the Gulf of Mexico and in less than two hours, broke all records going from a Catagory 1 to a high Catagory 5 hurricane. In Australia, this happened too. A seemingly innoculous storm suddenly shot up in speed and caused devastation. Andrew did this too. It went from a 1 to a 5 while offshore of Florida. It completely destroyed everything in its path. This cyclone heading towards Oman and Iran will flood much of the region. And the 45 foot waves are stopping oil ships. And messing up our Navy that is parked over there.

From Accuweather:

Gonu dominates the flow of weather throughout South Asia at this time. This is, as of 1200 hours GMT, a full-blown Category-5 storm wielding highest sustained winds of 140-knots/260 kph (based upon the JTWC advisory). At that time, the eye of Gonu was 350 miles, or 560 kms, southeast of Sur, Oman. Movement is northwestwards at 10 knots, or more than 18 kph. Can it get stronger? I do not see how, but I did not foresee anything like what is has already become.

This Accuweather site has the best satellite photos of this storm as well as good information.

Super cyclonic storm Gonu is forecast to strike Oman at about 18:00 GMT on 5 June. Data supplied by the US Navy and Air Force Joint Typhoon Warning Center suggest that the point of landfall will be near 22.1 N, 60.7 E. Gonu is expected to bring 1-minute maximum sustained winds to the region of around 231 km/h (143 mph). Wind gusts in the area may be considerably higher.

According to the Saffir-Simpson damage scale the potential property damage and flooding from a storm of Gonu's strength (category 4) at landfall includes:

Storm surge generally 4.0-5.5 metres (13-18 feet) above normal.
Curtainwall failures with some complete roof structure failures on small residences.
Shrubs, trees, and all signs are blown down.
Complete destruction of mobile homes.
Extensive damage to doors and windows.
Low-lying escape routes may be cut by rising water 3-5 hours before arrival of the centre of the storm.
Major damage to lower floors of structures near the shore.
Terrain lower than 3 metres (10 feet) above sea level may be flooded requiring massive evacuation of residential areas as far inland as 10 km (6 miles).

We just had a tropical storm blow over our mountain here. It didn't become a hurricane but is was still very strong, we were hit by some serious wind gusts that took down branches and upset the chickens. The hummingbirds flew into our covered deck for shelter. We only got a little over an inch of rain. But this looks like a stormy summer ahead for all of us.

From Bloomberg:

Tropical Cyclone Gonu weakened slightly into a Category Four storm with winds of 249 kilometers per hour (155 miles per hour) as it headed across the Arabian Sea toward the Gulf of Oman, the U.S. Navy said.

The center of the storm, where winds are gusting to as fast as 304 kilometers per hour, was 502 kilometers southeast of Muscat at 4 a.m. Oman time today, the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center said on its Web site. Gonu was 640 kilometers southwest of Karachi at 5 a.m. Pakistan time.

The cyclone is heading northwest at 15 kilometers per hour on a path Navy forecasters expect will take it across the Gulf of Oman, an important shipping lane for oil supplies from the Gulf. Oman's government ordered evacuations, Agence France-Presse reported, as oil traded near a two-week high over concerns about disruptions to supplies.

The Catagory 5 typhoon that clipped Australia hit their oil pumping regions. Seems Mother Nature has a thing about playing nine pins with oil rigs! This storm will affect the world's economic underpinnings which is always energy (and food!). I would strongly suggest the USA and Europe be super-nice to Iran if they get hit by this mega-storm. Instead of being hostile and nasty, we could reach out and help them. Might come in very useful later. Very useful.

Indeed, this storm will dump lots of water on Afghanistan and the watersheds that feed into Pakistan and we will see a lot of misery out of that! And I do hope the West uses this opportunity to be nicer and not nastier. Seriously. Times like these require great leaders who can think ahead and see the utility of reaching out instead of screaming like crazy...rats.

I doubt our government will do anything sane.

So I hope the people of Iran and Oman as well as Pakistan and the mountain tribes be spared the rage of Mother Nature and may this mega storm weaken further before it hits. I will be praying this for my own self this summer...I suspect we might all be praying for mercy.

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