severe weather
gregladen | January 26, 2015About 20 million people are currently under a blizzard warning, and double that under a winter weather advisory, for a storm moving into the Northeast today and tomorrow, with snow falling though Wednesday. Thousands of flights have been cancelled. Wind will be at tropical storm force, and occasionally, hurricane force, and coastal flooding is expected to be epic. The total amounts of snowfall will be over a foot for a very large area, and well over that here and there, though this is very difficult to predict.
This is a strong low pressure system that will gather significant energy from a…
gregladen | December 5, 2014The outer reaches of Typhoon Hagupit are already affecting the target region in the Philippines. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the areas most under the gun, but the potential for serious problems covers a very large area. The storm has gone through quite a few changes over the last couple of days, but is probably strengthening somewhat right now. No matter what happens, it is going to hit the Philippines as a very serious storm.
Jeff Masters has an update here.
This is the same area that was hit with Typhoon Haiyan last year. Haiyan was a bigger storm. But, Haiyan was also…
gregladen | October 17, 2014There has not been much hurricane activity in the Atlantic for a while now, so unsurprisingly the reporting is starting to slip again. This post goes out to all you reporters at CNN and Reuters and Yahoo and everywhere else. Imma give you an example of what you are doing wrong, then I'll send you to a place to learn up on it.
A recent report noted that "hurricane force winds are now bearing down on Bermuda, and the storm is expected to arrive within hours" meaning the eye would arrive within hours (paraphrased). This is not what is happening. When there is a hurricane arriving at your…
gregladen | August 14, 2014A new paper advances our understanding of the link between anthropogenic global warming and the apparent uptick in severe weather events we’ve been experiencing. Let’s have a look at the phenomenon and the new research.
Climate Change: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.
It is mostly bad. Sometimes it is ugly. I was looking at crop reports from the USDA and noticed an interesting phenomenon in Minnesota, that is repeated across much of the US this year: Fewer acres are in crops but among those acres that are planted there is a high expected per-acre yield. The higher yield will make up for the…
gregladen | July 1, 2014The Hurricane may (or may not) directly strike the Outer Banks.) I've updated the title of the post to update concern that Hurricane Arthur has a much increased chance of directly striking coastal regions in North Carolina. Scroll down to the most recent update below to find out more. I'm adding updates to a single post rather than writing new posts because I'm almost out of paper for blog posts. No, not really, it does not work that way. I'm doing this as an experiment in keeping things organized, especially handy-dandy images of the process unfolding.
The previously mentioned tropical…
gregladen | June 25, 2014We are breaking all sorts of records here in Minnesota this June, and not the records for drought (or, for once, cold). It has been raining and storming a lot, and not just in one place as happens now and then. The rains have been widespread and intensive. The flood levels of most rivers are not breaking records because those are set in the earlier Spring snow-melt driven flooding, but this time of year all the creeks, kills, and rivers should be receding not rising.
The situation is so interesting and important that our local public TV political weekly put the weather on top of the show…
gregladen | June 18, 2014I woke up this morning to find about a dozen reports on my iPad Damage app indicating trees down and hail damage in many communities from Mankato to Edina, south of the Twin Cities. More of the same. We have been having severe weather for about a month now, or a bit less. One day in late May, Julia and I were taking pictures of people driving too fast through the lake that formed in front of our house form a major downpour. Early in that storm we witnessed a ground strike not too far away. A short while after that an ambulance came screaming by our house, coming from the direction of the…
gregladen | June 5, 2014I made a movie you might enjoy. There may be something else out there like this, probably better than this one, but it is still cool. I downloaded all the PDF files from the US Drought Monitor archives, using the version of the connected US that has only the year, month, and day on the graphic. Then I slapped them in iMovie and sped the animation up by 800% over the default 1 sec. per pic. I do not have today's rather horrifying image on it, which I've placed above.
Here's the movie:
gregladen | May 27, 2014Excessive warmth attributable to global warming and a stalled weather system, also attributable to global warming, have caused a weather system in over southeast China to dump rain since May 12th. A million people are in the impacted area, ahlf of them have had to move or have been rescued, and the 2-6 inches of daily rain continues. 25,000 homes have been destroyed.
This area has recieved huge investments over the last few decades, since a huge 1998 storm killed thousands and caused 26 billion dollars in damage. They now fear that the present flooding will be as bad.
Here's some video (…
gregladen | May 26, 2014Usually when I make a sentence like that it is about my wife, Amanda. But this time we're talking about Hurricane Amanda, the first hurricane of the Eastern Pacific hurricane season.
Amanda reached maximum winds of 155 mph on or about 8:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time on Sunday morning. That make Amanda the strongest Eastern Pacific May Hurricane on record. There are usually very few hurricanes in the Eastern Pacific in May, and the few that occur happen late in the months. Here's the historical distribution of Eastern Pacific hurricanes, form 1966-1996:
Amanda is the earliest on record…
gregladen | April 23, 2014I have a little "science by spreadsheet" project for you, concerning the relationship between El Niño and Atlantic hurricanes.
The chance of an El Niño event happening this year seems to go up every few days, with most, perhaps all, climate models suggesting that El Niño will form this Summer or Fall. Climate experts tell us that there are typically fewer hurricanes in the Atlantic during El Niño years. So, I was interested to see how many fewer. Also, there appears to be a different kind of El Niño that happens sometimes, perhaps more often these days as an effect of global warming,…
gregladen | April 4, 2014April 27th, I'll be giving a talk hosted by Minnesota Atheists at the Maplewood Library, 3025 Southlawn Dr, Maplewood, Minnesota. Details are here.
Details:
You may attend any part of the meeting you wish, here's the schedule:
1:00-1:15 p.m. – Social Time
1:15-1:45 p.m. – Business Meeting
1:45-2:00 p.m. – Break
2:00-3:30 p.m. – Talk by Greg Laden
4:00-whenever – Dinner at Pizza Ranch (1845 County Road D East, Maplewood MN)
This will be a talk about climate change focusing on current and challenging research questions that everyone needs to know about, as well as the relationship between…
gregladen | April 3, 2014The 538 comment system appears to not be working, probably because of my current highly suspicious location, so I figured I'd put my comment here (since I spent a whole minute writing it):
"Long-range forecast models have come to a consensus recently that a minor to moderate El Niño pattern may develop six to nine months from now.
That just isn't true. Forecasts suggest a 50-50 chance of El Nino, but this is hard to predict. There is no consensus that an El Nino will develop among forecasters who are always super cautious about this prediction and there is only a 50-50 chance.
Also, I see…
gregladen | March 1, 2014The following is also found HERE on the White House web site. I provide it here without comment because it speaks for itself. But if you want more, check out "Global warming action: good or bad for the poor?" by John Abraham, and "Keeping The Carbon In The Ground Elsewhere: Developing Nations" by me.
Drought and Global Climate Change: An Analysis of Statements by Roger Pielke Jr
John P. Holdren, 28 February 2014
Introduction
In the question and answer period following my February 25 testimony on the Administration’s Climate Action Plan before the Oversight Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate’…
gregladen | February 25, 2014I first interviewed Dr. Alun Hubbard on the edge of the Watson River in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland last summer. His vivid language and lucid storytelling made that video on of the most popular in the Yale Series. (see below)
Both Dr. Hubbard, and my Dark Snow Project cohort, Sara Penrhyn Jones, live in the tiny village of Aberystwyth, on the coast of Wales, and teach at the local university. I skyped with Alun a week or so ago in the midst of the storms hammering the area. Shortly after that he wrote me to explain that his roof had just blown off in hurricane force winds....
Read the rest HERE…
gregladen | February 13, 2014Links to sites/commentary/lists for extreme weather events.
Articles or blog posts listing events
Top 10 Global Weather Events of 2011
2012 Extreme Weather Sets Records, Fits Climate Change Forecasts
2012 Infographic on severe weather events
Heat, Flood, Cold in 2012
Weather extremes: freak conditions from around the globe for 2013
2013’s Most Terrifying Weather Disasters
2013 NOAA report on Billion Dollar Disasters (overview) and the report as a PDF file is here
Timelines, official lists, maps, etc.
State of the Climate: Extreme Events
Severe weather information centre
NOAA list of daily…
gregladen | February 13, 2014For the first time in weeks we are experiencing warm weather in central Minnesota (it is now 21 degrees F) with a bit of snow off and on. But elsewhere there are interesting things happening. First, in far northern California and the Pacific Northwest there will be rain. A LOT of rain. That's great because it will help a little with the drought. But, it will also probably cause some severe flooding.
Also, everywhere on the east coast from Atlanta up to New England is experiencing some kind of bad.
Snomageddonapocalypse. On fire.
A friend of mine in the Raleigh-Durham area told me…
gregladen | February 4, 2014The drought in California is really bad. Bad enough that people are struggling to describe it.
People often equate California with other countries because it is so big and important. "If California was a country, it would be the Nth largest country that does XYZ." It will be interesting to see how this trope works out should the drought continue (and by continue, I mean worsen, because a drought that continues is a worsening drought). "If California was a country, it would have an Arab Spring Uprising." "If California was a country, it would require food aid from the UN." "If…
gregladen | January 29, 2014From Paul Douglas at WeatherNation:
Published on Jan 28, 2014
WeatherNationTV Chief Meteorologist Paul Douglas looks at the devastating winter storm impacting much of the Southeast. Multiple accidents have been caused by the treacherous conditions. Schools are closed through Wednesday across the affected areas. Multiple states have declared States of Emergency, including Georgia and Alabama. Stay safe!
gregladen | January 19, 2014Published on Jan 17, 2014
Meteorologist Paul Douglas looks at the most expensive weather disasters of 2013. Internationally we saw an all-time high for billion dollar weather events.
While we're on the topic of weather: