12/28/12 Year In Weather Photos

Several very big weather stories happened this year from wildfires in California to Hurricane Sandy along the northeast coast, to bad ice storms in Switzerland. Below are the 10 best weather pictures (in my opinion) of this year.

10. Harveyville, Kansas: an EF2 tornado rips through this town on February 29th

9. Schwedt, Germany: Ice forms in unusual shapes around trees at a national park on February 15th.

8. Point Pleasant Beach, NJ: sand overflows a home thanks to Hurricane Sandy. The storm whipped up record high tide levels in Sandy Hook, N.J. and on the Delaware River in Philadelphia, which broke the previous records from another Superstorm back in March 1993.

7. Oahu, Hawaii: The hailstone pictured below measured 4.25" in length, about the same as a softball.

Thunderstorms hit the island with numerous hailstones of 2-3" diameter and larger on March 9. This not only broke the old record hail size, it shattered it (the previous record was 1”, about the size of a quarter).  While rain is common in Hawaii, and hurricanes make occasional appearances, thunderstorms occur only about 20-30 days each year on the islands.

6. Morse Reservoir, Indiana: Severe drought ravaged much of the country including the Midwest and southeast.

5. Henryville, Indiana: On March 3 dozens of people were killed by a tornado in this sleepy town.  A total of 69 tornadoes happened during this severe outbreak, two of which were EF4s (wind speeds of mph). However, just a few days later, a separate system brought snow accumulations of 1 to 3 inches to the tornado-damaged towns of Henryville and also West Liberty, Kentucky.

4. New Orleans: Here are pictures I took of The Crescent City Connection (also known as the Greater New Orleans Bridge) before Isaac hit, and during landfall in September. What was unusual abuot this storms is that after moving along at a fairly good pace while it was over water in the Gulf of Mexico, Isaac slowed to a snail’s pace once inland. It moved a total of only 145miles in 24 hours which caused the massive flooding to inland towns in Louisiana.  

3. Hoboken, NJ: taxis basically floating in flood waters from Hurricane Sandy on October 30. Almost two weeks after Sandy made landfall, 150,000 customers were still without power in New York and New Jersey. 

2. Union Beach, NJ: the Princess Cottage Inn had half of it taken by Hurricane Sandy. Out of only 1000 homes in this sleepy town, over 200 of them were deemed uninhabitable. Sandy's tropical storm-force winds extended 943 miles across at its widest point while moving up the East Coast, the largest purely tropical storm wind field since such records have been kept since 1988, according to Weather Underground's Dr. Jeff Masters.

1. Versoix, Switzerland: a massive ice storm almost crippled the city near Lake Geneva on February 5, 2012.Geneva resident and photographer Jean-Pierre Scherrer commented on how bad the weather conditions actually were, “After a conjunction of intense cold (-8 to -12 degrees Centigrade), plus very strong winds, blowing at over 70 mph, the waves got so harsh that they passed over the dikes and the droplets immediately froze everything they touched!”

 Sources: weather.com, NASA, NOAA, Getty Images

12/22/12 "Invisible" Turbulence "Found"

Have you ever been on a flight on a clear, blue day, and suddenly you experience turbulence? Many wonder why this happens since there is no cloud cover in sight to cause that bounce in the air. Well, now scientists have found the “invisible” culprit behind that turbulent air; gravity waves.

The phenomenon was explained more in detail at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. "Just like waves on the ocean, as they approach a beach, they can amplify and break. Gravity waves in the atmosphere can amplify and break, and we're finding now that's a major contributor to turbulence in the atmosphere that affects aircraft."

Gravity waves form when air travels up and down in the atmosphere, and hits something. For example, when clouds rise in the lower levels of the atmosphere air mixes freely, but eventually bumps into the more stable air in the upper atmosphere levels (typically 25,000ft. or higher), which forms ripples in the process. These ripples, or gravity waves, can travel up to 180 miles before finally coming to a stop.

"They're waves running around in the atmosphere all the time," explains Robert Sharman, a meteorologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), who conducted the study.

Prior to this, scientists and pilots believed that airplanes moving up and down in the jet stream caused the turbulence. What they found instead was that gravity waves "break" on the surfaces of planes, just like ocean waves breaking on the beach or a large boat.

Mountains, such as the Rockies, often form gravity waves on their own as air flows over the mountains and then overshoots as it reaches the other side. Thankfully the gravity waves don't span a large height in the atmosphere, so it's pretty easy for airplanes to avoid them by either climbing over them, or going beneath them.

Sources: NBC, LiveScience, NOAA

12/18/12 Cyclone Evan Hits Fiji

Fiji is usually what you picture when you are dreaming of beautiful beaches, warm, sunny weather, and a laid-back lifestyle. However, for the last few days, it has looked more like a warzone. Cyclone Evan is the strongest storm to hit Fiji in 20 years pummeled the islands over the last few days, basically annihilating everything in its path. As a category 4 storm, it packed sustained wind speeds up to 125mph, with gusts up to 170mph. Thankfully, no deaths have been reported in Fiji, but the storm did take five lives in Samoa, with up to 10 people still missing, just 3 days before it moved into the archipelago of Fiji.

Fiji is made up of 332 small islands, and has a population of just under 850,000 (just slightly more than Indianapolis' population).

On Viti Levu, the western part of the main island of Fiji, Cyclone Evan hit the area hard, making it look like a "war zone", the Fiji Times reported. This has led to numerous families being evacuated from their homes due to unsafe building structures.

Days of heavy rain have caused rivers to swell, which has flooded several roads and bridges. Strong winds have also blown down power lines, and torn roofs off of buildings, officials reported.

More than 8,000 people sought shelter in 137 evacuation centres, the Ministry of Information said.
Neighboring countries, Australia and New Zealand, have offered support to Fiji with both supplies as well as rescue personnel.

Sources: BBC News, Fiji Ministry of Information, Fiji Government Online Portal, U.S. Census Bureau, Reuters, NBC News

12/12/12 Mt. Everest From Space

The crazy weather and health risks prevent most people from even thinking about climbing Mt. Everest.  The few who have climbed the great peak find that while the 29,035-foot Everest definitely stands out, it does not look nearly as tall or impressive from 250 miles above the planet.

Yuri Malenchenko, a Russian cosmonaut, took the very rare photo (above) last month. So why is it so difficult to get a picture of Mt. Everest? U.S. astronaut and former Space Station resident Ron Garan, who tried many times to get a good shot explains,

"The answer is quite simple, all the photos we take from space are taken in the crew's own personal time. No time is allotted in our work day normally for Earth pictures. So if we want to capture a specific point on the ground we have to first know exactly when we will fly over that spot, second be available to grab a camera and get to a window, and third have the weather and proper sun angles to get a great shot. Over the course of my six months in space I was never able to get all three of those to align for Mt. Everest."

Pictures looking up at Mt. Everest are also hard to take, because even if you were able to make the trek to just below the peak, the weather is almost always brutal up there, and can prevent a good picture from being taken.  Mt. Everest often creates its own weather, so regardless of what the forecast might be around the mountain, it could be entirely different near the top.

12/07/12 Deadly London Smog Anniversary

60 years ago this month, the worst smog to ever hit London killed an estimated 12,000 people.  It was a deadly combination of typical London fog and heavy coal combustion.

For the several weeks leading up to the event, London had been experiencing very cold temperatures. Because of this, people were using their coal burning furnaces and stoves more frequently in order to stay warm. Add that to a large area of high pressure over the system creating wind-free conditions, to coal created a thick layer of smoke that combined with some dense fog to create a thick layer of smog over the city. It lasted from Friday, December 5^th all the way to Tuesday, December 9^th before finally clearing out when the weather changed.

Not only did this cause a major disruption on travel due to zero visibilities, the smog penetrated indoor areas such as schools, businesses, and homes, and that is what made the biggest impact on health. It was not an immediate concern though. In fact, it was in the 2 weeks that followed that an estimated 4,000 people died, and over 100,000 became quite sick. A few years later that number of 4,000 was upped to 12,000 when it was later determined that other respiratory deaths were caused by the smog (such as asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis, tuberculosis, and heart failure. It is important to note that while London experienced heavy smog in the past, no other event had caused quite the impact as this one.

It is considered the worst air pollution event of the history of the United Kingdom, and caused several changes of practice and regulations, including the Clean Air Act 1956.

Sources: Disclose TV, Encyclopedia of Earth, EPA, University of Edinburgh