5/28/12 Wild Holiday Weather

Many cities broke records highs this Memorial Day Weekend including Nashville, Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, and many more. In fact, the Indy 500 had the hottest race temperature ever at 91°, but it was one degree shy of the Indianapolis daily record. The race track reached temperatures up to 130° at it's highest.

The other big story for the holiday weekend was Tropical Storm Beryl. A total of 4" of rain fell in only 4 hours at Luraville, FL this morning. Most other coastal locations picked up between 3-6" of rain total. Some areas farther inland in Georgia and the Carolinas will receive up to 8 inches when the storm finally moves out later this week. Beryl packed enough of a punch to bring down numerous trees and power lines around Neptune, Beach, Florida, as seen in the picture below.

Trees and power lines were also down in parts of Flagler Beach, Florida and Camden county, Georgia. There were also reports of a tornado touchdown in Port Saint Lucie, Florida where several homes were damaged. One of those such downed trees decided to fall into Donald Arbo's house in St. Simons Island in Georgia (seen below).

On the opposite spectrum, parts of Montana and Wyoming saw snowfall. Below is a picture of Lewiston, Montana this morning. It was 32°F with snow falling.

Sources:  Associated Press, Weather Channel, The Indy Channel, CMJ Digital, James Spann

5/22/12 Joplin Anniversary

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of the Joplin, Missouri EF5 tornado. A total of 161 people were killed in that storm, and hundreds were left homeless. Hundreds of residents, volunteers, politicians, and members of the media gathered together across the disaster zone, mixing somber remembrances with loyal and unwavering dedications to rebuild the crippled city. Later, those very same people joined up for a 4-mile "Walk of Unity" through some of the city's hardest-hit neighborhoods.

"It's been a roller-coaster type year. Extremely high highs and lots of low lows." said Debbie Fort, the principal of Irving Elementary School, which was destroyed by the tornado. "It's important that we take a moment to reflect and remember," she said. "But it's a new chapter in our lives. This really signifies our future, the future of Joplin."

A total of five city parks were either badly damaged or destroyed from the tornado, and FEMA provided nearly $1 million to restore them, but not everything has gone back to it's original state. Below are three pictures taken on May 25, 2011 (top photo), July 20, 2011 (middle photo), and May 7, 2012 (bottom photo). These images show the gradual progress the town has made in the last year.

"It is so fitting to begin this day, this anniversary, by reflecting on our faith as dawn breaks over a renewed Joplin," Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon said at a sunrise service at Freeman Hospital to honor all who sprang into action after the storm struck. "Scripture tells us that the path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day."

The Joplin tornado has been looked at over and over again by meteorologists and researchers to try to get a better understanding about how these beasts work. Below is a picture of a 3D rendering done by the National Weather Service, to be able to figure out and comprehend the inner workings of that particular storm.

Sources: NOAA, NWS, AP, Charlie Riedel, Houston Chronicle, ABC News

5/21/12 Active Tropical Season?

For the first time since recording these types of things, both the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific Basins have produced named tropical storms before their seasons officially began. Combine that with how warm the start of 2012 has been, many people are worried that this year's hurricane season will be a very active one.

In Florida alone, the first four months of this year have been the hottest on record since 1895, and many other states in the southeast have had similar weather records. We all know that warmer ocean temperatures helps to spawn tropical systems, and all those record warm temperatures in the southeast have caused the water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico to warm to unseasonable levels, but do they have as much of an impact on deeper Atlantic Ocean water? Brian LaMarre, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, says it really doesn't.

"Warm temperatures in the winter really have no correlation with hurricane frequency in the summertime," LaMarre said. "It doesn't really play a significant role on hurricane forecasting because what we do look at is the overall, large-scale weather pattern."

The keyword there is Frequency. Just like with thunderstorms and tornadoes, all it takes it one bad one. Take for example the years 1970, 1983, and 1992. All three of those years had relatively low numbers of named tropical storms or hurricanes, but all had one storm that did a lot of damage. In 1970, there were only 7 named storms, but one of them was Hurricane Celia, which killed 28 people and caused over $930 million (not adjusted for inflation) in damage. In 1983 there were only 4 named storms, one of which was Alicia which killed 21 people, and caused over $2.5 billion in damage, mainly in Texas. In 1992 there were only 5 named storms, but we all remember Hurricane Andrew which was one of the most devastating hurricanes to ever hit southern Florida. That storm alone caused 65 fatalities with over $26 billion in damage.

So just remember...."Even if we're forecasting a below-normal season, one storm can have a serious impact," LaMarre emphasized.

Sources: WFLA, National Hurricane Center, Tampa Bay Online, NOAA

5/19/12 Tropical Storm Alberto

Tropical Storm Alberto was named today just before 5pm EDT. This is the first tropical system to be named in the Atlantic for the 2012 season. If you recall, Tropical Storm Aletta was named just about a week ago, and formed just about a day before Eastern Pacific Hurricane season began. Alberto shares that same tidbit as Aletta. Atlantic Hurricane season doesn't officially begin until June 1st, so this storm also formed before the season officially begins. Why is this important? This is the first time that a tropical storm has formed before the official start of the hurricane seasons in both the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific Basins. Even more....Alberto is the earliest-forming tropical storm in the Atlantic Basin since Ana back in 2003.

Alberto will enhance some storm development in places like Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Florida, but is not expected to make a major impact on those areas. A front is expected to push through Mon-Tuesday of this week in those areas, so despite the fact that Alberto will start to push westward towards the South Carolina coast, the front will push Alberto off to the north and east and out towards the northern Atlantic starting early Tuesday.

Sources: NOAA, National Hurricane Center

5/15/12 Volcanoes Disturbing Hurricanes?

With the start of Eastern Pacific hurricane season tomorrow, and Atlantic hurricane season beginning June 1st, the National Hurricane Center is already off to a quick start with a new storm brewing in the Pacific that may become Tropical Storm Aletta in the next 24 hours.

One thing scientists are noticing is that when there is a volcanic eruption like that of El Chichón in Mexico in 1982, and Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, the following years had both hurricane frequency and intensity levels cut in half. With all the gases and particles that the volcanoes release into the atmosphere. Those gases and particles both reflect some light and also absorb radiation, which essentially prevents the Earth's surface from warming as much as it normally would. For example, in the year following Mt. Pinatubo's eruption, global temperatures were about 1°F (0.5°C) cooler, compared with the few years prior. Not only do the volcanoes affect surface temperatures, but also temperatures in the higher levels of the atmosphere as well. By absorbing the radiation given off by the eruption, the developmental stages of hurricanes are affected because volcanic aerosols warm the stratosphere as well.

So how does that affect hurricanes? Hurricanes form by taking the warm temperatures on the ocean surface and lifting it into the cooler layers of the atmosphere. However, if the surface temperatures have cooled, and the upper atmosphere has warmed thanks to the discharged volcanic particles/gases, then hurricane formation will likely never get initiated.

So does this mean we hope for an eruption to kill off hurricane chances? Not entirely. Just because the volcano may hinder hurricane development, doesn't mean it will prevent any storms from forming altogether.

"If there were a very strong volcanic eruption, it is possible the storm season to follow may be repressed," said Robert Korty, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University. "Of course, even seasons that produce few storms can still be dangerous." For example, he went on to explain how overall the 1992 Atlantic hurricane season was an unusually quiet one with only six significant hurricanes. However, one of these was Hurricane Andrew, which prior to Hurricane Katrina, was the most destructive storm in U.S. history.

Sources: Mother Nature Network, National Hurricane Center, Our Amazing Planet, NOAA

5/2/12 Helpful New Tornado Data?

Scientists from the VORTEX2 group which chases storms to be able to study and understand them better may have uncovered a new key for trying to determine which storms produce tornadoes before they actually formed. This new key piece of evidence is actually linked to something that isn't normally associated with tornadoes.....light rain. Normally supercells, the ones capable of producing tornadoes, are filled with very heavy rainfall and ice. However, as seen in the image below, taken from the VORTEX2 data, there is a ribbon-like area of light rain and small raindrops inside the thunderstorm supercell that spawned the tornado.

This was not originally noticed while the event was happening, but rather, after the fact when scientists were going back over the data. For now, the scientists have decided to call the area a “low reflectivity ribbon,” or LRR, due to the fact that it reflects back much less radar energy than the rainier parts of the storm. This LRR, however, only shows up in specific close-up views that are captured by the more sophisticated radars used in VORTEX2. The earlier field research done in VOTEX1 did not have such sophisticated radar technology.


“We don’t know why it forms or whether it is important in tornado genesis,” said Josh Wurman, head of the research center. “It is probably present in lots of supercells, but, frankly, we won’t know until we look some more. We’re publishing our initial imagery of this newly discovered phenomenon in the hope that scientists will start pondering why it forms and whether it is important.” Wurman says the question is: “Does this affect tornadoes, or is it like a rainbow, scientifically cool but with no effect on the weather?”

At this point, only time will tell. Wurman says no one has come up with a hypothesis to explain the LRR or whether it affects tornado formation just yet.

It is key for these researchers to keep investigating it because a lot of times there are hidden things inside these storms that can tell us things, but you just have to know what to look for, and what it means. Just like hook echoes and debris balls on radar. At first no one knew what they meant, but now meteorologists specifically look for those as tell tale signs of a tornado or funnel cloud.

Sources: Washington Post, NOAA, ABC News