First High Risk of 2013

The first High Risk for 2013 was issued today, and it stretched from eastern Iowa to northwestern Ohio.  That puts a total of 12 million people in the risk area for severe weather such as straigh-line wind damage and tornadoes.

The bullseye of this high risk is right over Chicago. In fact, this is the first high risk tat has been issued for Chicago since May 30, 2004, and only the third since 2000. The Storm Prediction Center issues these categories on a daily basis based off of the current/forecasted weather, and they have three categories: Slight, Moderate,and High. High risks are extremely rare, and are only issued prior to large outbreaks of severe weather.

So what do the different risk levels mean? Below is what the SPC uses to define their outlook categories:

 

Slight, moderate, and high risks represent progressively larger threat for organized severe storm episodes. These risks and their graphical labels (Slight, Moderate, High) are based directly on the numerical probabilities of severe weather that we provide with every outlook. The probability values represent the chance of severe weather within about 25 miles of a point, which is about the size of a major metropolitan area. Though severe storms tend to receive a large amount of media coverage, severe weather is uncommon at any one location. Your chance of getting a tornado on any random day are very small, climatologically speaking. Put in that context, even a 10% chance of a tornado within 25 miles of a point means a much bigger threat than usual, and should be taken seriously. Think of how often tornadoes normally happen close to you on any given day, and those small-looking probabilities start to seem large by comparison!

For a complete list of all the Risk Outlooks, Tornado Watches (formerly called “tornado forecasts”), you can use this link here.

This is a link to all of the times the SPC has issued a High Risk Day, use this link here. Notice that the only month that has never had a High Risk issued was September. Also, the last time a High Risk was never issued once during the year was back in 2000.

Sources: SPC, NOAA, NWS-Chicago

2013 Behind The Hurricane Name

Even though hurricane season technically started last Saturday, the tropics are just now starting to get going. Tropical Storm Andrea was just named late this afternoon. Every year I have always pulled up the list of the hurricane names for the Atlantic Ocean, and tried to determine what strength they will be and where they might hit based off of the names alone. There is nothing scientific about this process. Simply some fun.

Atlantic Names:

Andrea—this would be cheating if I answered this one, because it has already formed.
Barry--makes me think of Barry Manilow. Smooth and gentle. This one will be a Category 1.
Chantal--I worked with a Chantal, and she was the nicest lady ever. This will be a tropical storm
Dorian--this to be the first Cat 5 of the season, but will downgrade to Cat 2 when it hits Florida
Erin--this one sounds sweet and innocent, but will end up as a Category 4.
Fernand--the Bull? Just like in the book, he will be huge in size, but gentle. Only tropical storm.
Gabrielle--Gabrielle in ’89 killed 9 people, despite never making landfall. This one will be Cat 3
Humberto--this one will hit Cuba and fall apart. Category 2.
Ingrid--sounds exotic, but it will do damage. Category 3.
Jerry--Seinfeld. This one will be funny. It will have a crazy track, but not do much damage. Cat 1
Karen--Typhoon Karen did massive damage to Phillipines ('60) and Guam ('62). This year Cat 3
Lorenzo--I feel this one will be large, but will get lost and stay out in Atlantic Ocean only.
Melissa--I know too many Melissa’s. This is a no win forecast for this one :)
Nestor--this name just confuses me, so the storm will too. Erratic path, but benign. Category 1.
Olga--I think this will be the last named storm of season, and it goes out with a bang, Cat 4.
Pablo--we won't get this far down the list, but if we did, tropical storm.
Rebekah--we won’t get this far down the list, but if we did, Cat 2
Sebastien--crab from Little Mermaid anyone? Very tiny, but a fighter. Small sized Category 3.
Tanya--we won’t get this far down the list, but if we did, Cat 1
Van--I picture this to be big, like a real van, but not do much. Tropical storm.
Wendy--all I think about is the Wendy’s girl with red pigtails. Too sweet: tropical storm at best.

Hurricane Ivan     courtesy: NOAA

Where Are All the Tornadoes?

So far this month, we have a preliminary tornado count of only 14. According to Dr. Greg Forbes, meteorologist at The Weather Channel, that number should be around 96. That’s the number we normally see for the first ten days of May (when looking at data for the last 10 years). 

 It’s not just May either. When you look back to March and April, those months were also way below normal. April 2013 only had 73 tornadoes, but we average 234. Prior to that, in March of 2013, we had a near record low month! The average for March is 98, and we only had 17, making it the 5^th lowest count for March on record!

There is even better news…..according to Harold Brooks, a research meteorologist from the National Severe Storms Laboratory, from May 2012 through April 2013 there were only 7 tornado deaths in the U.S., which is the fewest number of fatalities in a 12 month period since September 1899-August 1900 when there were only 5 fatalities. 

In Iowa specifically, they are close to breaking the longest stretch in history without a reported tornado: 354 days. That’s right; the last time a tornado was reported in Iowa was back on May 24^th, 2012. The record is 355 days, which means tomorrow they would tie it, and Wednesday they would break the record. The current record of 355 days was set between May 5, 1955 and April 26^th, 1956. The thing you have to note here is that back in 1955-1956, tornadoes were not as widely reported as they are now. There may have actually been one during that stretch, but if it happened in a field, or did not cause damage, it may not have been reported. That is much different now, so for the record to possibly be broken in this day of technology, it’s very impressive. 

With just 2 tornadoes in May 2013 through today (both rated EF0 in FL). The first 6 days in May of this year only had 2 tornadoes, which makes it the fourth-quietest for those days since 1950. And note, those 2 tornadoes were in Florida, and only received an EF0 rating, the lowest on the scale.

Number   Year

  0           1970

  0           1962

  1           1952

  2           **2013 **

  2           2011

  3           1951

  5           1986

  5           1966

  7           1957

Sources: NSSL, The Weather Channel, NOAA, Associated Press, SPC, Iowa Environmental Mesonet, Twitter

First American Tornado Chaser

When you hear “Ben Franklin” you likely think of a politician, an author, inventor, and a scientist, just to name a few. Even though Franklin technically had no background or education in weather, he made many advancements in the field of meteorology, including determining the general directions in which storms travel, how temperature affects electric conductivity, how volcanic eruptions affect climate, weather pertaining to oceanography, and we all know about his infamous “discovery of electricity” when he flew a kite into a lightning storm.

While trying to see an eclipse, Franklin realized, accidentally, that in North America large storms tended to move from southwest to northeast. The reason this was a shocker, and that nobody else in the colonies seemed to notice, was because in Europe this isn’t always the case. Many storms can actually come from the Northwest.

One of Franklins lesser known titles was “tornado-chaser”. It all started after a series of waterspouts in Italy back in 1749. Waterspouts are not uncommon there, but one in particular did something that the others had not done before…it came onshore.

Many of the residents of this badly damaged Italian coastal town became paranoid, thinking this was the end of the world, and that surely the apocalypse was near. In order to calm fears, the Pope ordered a very well-known natural philosopher, Father Ruder Boscovich, to investigate, and print his results in a book. In his book were details of the trail of ruin, interviews with survivors and eyewitnesses, and also extensive research in the Vatican Library on similar meteorological events.

Franklin began receiving copies of Father Boscovich’s book. Many colleagues started asking Franklin what his thoughts were, so he started his own investigation. Never having personally seen one himself, he researched travelers’ tales, historical documents, and the diaries of officers and sailors on ships who had witnessed them firsthand. As he read through all these papers, he quickly realized that the common theory that waterspouts were made out of water, not air, could not possibly be true. The sheer weight of the water would not allow for a force to either raise or sustain such a large body of it in midair. But the big question remained....if it wasn’t water, why did it look like it was? After more research, Franklin came to the conclusion that it only appeared to be made of water because of fog that was condensing around the waterspout.

After all of this came to light, Franklin’s biggest “discovery” was that if the waterspout truly was made out of air rather than water, then the long-held belief that waterspouts only remained over water was false. In theory, if all they are made of is air, then they should be just as likely to happen over land as they would be to happen over water. Finding the evidence to prove this however, wasn’t quite as easy.

He found the best piece of information through a published piece out of the Yorkshire countryside in England. It described in detail what it looked like, and described the minor damage to village rooftops. What caused them? Why did some last longer than others? Could they occur anywhere, or just certain parts of the world? These are the questions that plagued Franklin for quite some time.

Sensing Franklin’s frustration, a colleague, Colonel Tasker invited Franklin and his son William to stay with him at his home in the countryside of Maryland. On their way was a dusty, winding road winding, and all of a sudden someone noticed a tight little column of air: a newly forming “tornado”. I put that word in quotes because back then they were not called tornadoes. They were referred to as landspouts or whirlwinds most frequently.

Franklin wrote in his research that it resembled a sugar-loaf funnel, with an odd, irregular bob and swerve like a spinning top. It swayed across the hillside and began to come right at them. At that point everyone but Franklin started to head backwards away from the funnel. Franklin later said he couldn’t help himself; he just had to get closer. Just as he began to chase the funnel it turned and changed course into the woods. Franklin decided to follow it further into the woods, but noticed the wind was getting louder. As he got closer he noticed the funnel was picking up everything in sight: leaves, branches, etc. He also noted that the whirlwind was bending and snapping trees as though they were mere twigs. At this point Franklin decided he best stay put for his own safety. Moments later the funnel just dissolved into nothing as it moved into an old tobacco field.

While he never officially used the word “tornado” in any of his research, he certainly was the first real “tornado chaser”.

Sources: NWS, Daily Beast, PBS, Britanica (first photo), Weatherwise Magazine (second photo--the first known photo of a tornado)

Lunar Dust Predicts Flooding?

After major cities like Atlanta, Nashville, and Dallas just to name a few, have experienced major flooding events in the last few years, forecasters are looking for anything that may provide better flood notice. Thanks to NASA, meteorologists may get just that.

John Lane, a Kennedy Space Center physicist, has spent much of his career trying to preserve the historic lunar landing sites, but stumbled on something very interesting. Apparently measuring lunar dust is no different than measuring rain.



courtesy: NASA

Lane used a laser to measure exactly how much lunar dust a rocket ship would displace as it landed on the surface. (This is key for NASA because the Apollo landing sites are considered sacred, so future moon landings would have to be precise as to prevent any damage to the historical sites.)

That same laser also has the ability to detect tiny particles, smaller than most raindrops. That is key, because if forecasters can see how large or small the raindrops are within a cloud, they can better predict rainfall rates. If the rates are high, then the chances of flooding are also high.

Lane does not have a degree in meteorology, nor does he even have any meteorology experience, but that didn’t stop him from realizing the connection to flood forecasting.



courtesy: NASA

Robert Molleda, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Miami, Florida is very excited about the possibilities of using the lasers to make more accurate computer model forecasting.

"If you can accurately determine the size of a raindrop, you can find the relationship between the amount of rain and rainfall rates [considering current weather radar has a hard time estimating the size of raindrops]," Molleda said.



courtesy: National Geographic

The best part..... putting these lasers into widespread usage is not expensive because the lasers cost less than $100.

Sources: Sun Sentinel, NWS, NASA, National Geographic

New Weather Satellite Coming!

The University of California at Berkeley has been given a $200 million grant by NASA to build a satellite. This new satellite will be made to determine how Earth’s weather affects extreme “space weather” (the weather at the edge of our atmosphere and the edge of space). Why would that be important? Just about everything we use in our daily lives anymore involves a cell phone, GPS, satellite communication, or radio communications. Well, some space weather can actually disrupt those satellites (GPS, cell phones, etc.) and radio communications.

The new satellite will be called the Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON), and UC Berkeley will be responsible for the design, construction, and operations of the project. Since this can’t be done overnight, the launch is not expected to occur until some time in 2017. Once launched, it will be sent to orbit around 345 miles above the Earth’s surface in the ionosphere. Why the ionosphere specifically? There are many layers of the atmosphere, and one of the highest levels is the ionosphere, ranging from around 50 miles to 370 miles in altitude. It can encompass parts of the mesosphere, thermosphere, and even the exosphere, but it is not the same exact thing as those. What makes the ionosphere unique is that it is ionized by the sun radiation to create constantly moving streams of charged particles. The ionosphere is basically a container of electrons and electrically charged molecules surrounding the Earth. Those charged molecules are what can disrupt GPS, cell phone service, radio communications, etc.

But ICON won’t just be studying weather in space, but it will also be trying to see how that weather affects our weather here on Earth too, and vice versa.

“Ten years ago, we had no idea that the ionosphere was affected and structured by storms in the lower atmosphere,” said the project’s principal investigator, Thomas Immel, a senior fellow at the Space Sciences Laboratory. “We proposed ICON in response to this new realization.”

The below image shows a bright red wall of plasma, not to be confused with the aurora lights, which are lower in altitude, where Earth and the ionosphere meet. Despite the fact that it looks computer rendered, this is actually a real picture taken by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station.

UC Berkeley will use ICON to try to make a connection between storms that occur near Earth’s surface and space-weather storms, which may allow for better prediction of space weather events. Not only does this help with our communications satellites, but it also could help with the safety of commercial airliners, which today cannot rely solely on GPS satellites to fly and land because sometimes the satellites can send distorted signals thanks to charged-particle storms in the ionosphere.

“We know that the solar wind plays a big role in the ionosphere, but most of the time the sun is relatively quiet, and our space environment still varies quite a bit,” he said. “We think that variability is coming from weather on our own planet, which can be very powerful.”

Sources: NASA, UC-Berkeley, Stanford

Sandy Retired From Storm Names

We all remember the images that came out of "Superstorm Sandy" last year. They were incredible, even unbelieveable at times.

Sandy caused at least 150 fatalities, with over 70 of them being in the Northeast alone. That is the highest number of fatalities from a tropical storm to happen outside of the southeastern states since Hurricane Agnes over 40 years ago. Sandy was the costliest storm system, only behind Hurricane Katrina, with an estimated $50 billion in damages.

Because of these statistics, the name Sandy will be retired from the list of Atlantic Ocean list. The National Hurricane Center has been using that list since 1954. The names are on cycles, and get re-used every six years, which means a new name, Sara, will replace the Sandy's slot in 2018.

Properties that lacked the protection of robust sand dunes. Courtesy: NASA

The surprise??? Isaac will not be retired. Despite the fact that the storm ravaged Louisiana on the anniversary of Katrina with over $2 billion in damages, 34 fatalities, and caused millions of power outages, the World Metoeorological Organization (the committee who makes these decisions), decided it wasn't enough to retire the name.

Hurricane Katrina from space

So why retire the names in the first place? If I said to you that my parents survived Hurricane Katrina, do you think about the storm that annihilated the Gulf Coast in 2005, or the storm that hit Cuba and the Bahamas back in 1981? Exactly. Nobody remembers the Katrina from 1981, but everyone remembers the one from 2005. When a storm name becomes tied to a very large, memorable event, a decision is made to retire it, so there is no confusion recalling events. other big names to be retired are Hugo, Andrew, Opal, Ivan, Wilma, and Irene to name a few. Note: Allison is the only name on the retired list that never made it to hurricane status. During its entire life, Allison was only a tropical storm with maximum winds of 60mph. Most of the damage from Allison did not come from the wind, but rather the rain. Allison's track made a complete 360, causing Houston to take a double dose of heavy downpours.

 

Sources: NOAA, NCSU, The Times, Scientific American, NHC