Post Your Weird Weather Here

[Big_Gay_Ed]

This new thread is for AO forum members to any and all reports of strange, anamalous or otherwise weird weather as they please. :)

[Big_Gay_Ed]

Here's an example: :)

1, 2, 3,... Look Out for Hurricane Ingrid!

Okay, she's not supposed to be called a Hurricane but a Cyclone since she's threatening the northeast Australia coast. Although tropical cyclones that hit Australia from the Pacific ocean used to be called willy-willy's.

Here it is from the UC News Desk.

186 MPH Cyclone Aims at Australia (http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=4458)

It's been another year of extremely wacky weather, probably due to global warming. Now Cyclone Ingrid, with winds of 186 miles per hour, is heading towards the city of Brisbane, Australia. This is the most powerful storm to hit Australia since 1918. Residents are boarding up their windows and taking cover, but many roofs and trees are likely to lost. Despite the best precautions, there will also most certainly be a human death toll as well. Want to know the difference between a cyclone, typhoon and hurricane? Read on.

This storm is even more powerful than Cyclone Vance, which struck the Queensland coast with 180 MPH winds in October of 2004. It also comes strikingly early in the cyclone season. In fact, the Pacific area has been generating so many cyclones and typhoons over the past 12 months that one season has melted into the next with essentially no period of calm in the region.

Also in October of 2004, Cyclone John struck a relatively unpopulated area of Australia, coming ashore with winds of 185 miles per hour, which forecasters at the time considered almost beyond belief. The most powerful cyclone ever recorded was probably Geralda, which came ashore in Madagascar in 1994 with wind gusts of 217 MPH, and sustained winds of 197 MPH.

Tropical storms that arise in the Indian Ocean are called cyclones. In the Pacific they are called typhoons, in the Atlantic, hurricanes.

More here (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050308/sc_afp/australiaweather_050308171235) and here (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050308/photos_sc_afp/050308171235_2vkc0uig_photo0).

[foot_soldier]

How about wind-chill readings ranging from minus-14 to minus-34 degrees in the New England states on March 9? Does that qualify?

[jayreynolds]

It's been another year of extremely wacky weather, probably due to global warming. Now Cyclone Ingrid, with winds of 186 miles per hour, is heading towards the city of Brisbane, Australia. This is the most powerful storm to hit Australia since 1918.

What caused the powerful storm in 1918, the armistice?

[jayreynolds]

How about wind-chill readings ranging from minus-14 to minus-34 degrees in the New England states on March 9? Does that qualify?

How soon we forget.
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/arch/cases/930312/home.rxml

Long forgotten?
http://www.historyofredding.com/HRblizzard1888.htm

[Big_Gay_Ed]

How about wind-chill readings ranging from minus-14 to minus-34 degrees in the New England states on March 9? Does that qualify?
Yes, it does! Brr-r-r-r-r-rh!

[Big_Gay_Ed]

What caused the powerful storm in 1918, the armistice?
Believe it or not, they had global warming back then, too. A stretch of it from 1888 to 1940 almost as rapid as the present batch of global warming, in fact. And Rachel Carson, in her book The Sea Around Us, said that at the end of that warming period, birds were settling on Greenland that had never been there before. :)

The Blizzard of 1888. Last gasp of the Little Ice Age. And historic weird weather, too, I might add. :)

[jayreynolds]

[COLOR=Blue]Believe it or not, they had global warming back then, too. A stretch of it from 1888 to 1940 almost as rapid as the present batch of global warming, in fact. :)

Interesting choice of dates. What happened then?

[Big_Gay_Ed]

A lot of coal was burnt. Then came the great depression which cut back on emissions and a decade later cooling began again.

That's why scientists said in the 70s we were heading into a new ice age.

[Winestone]

How soon we forget.
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/arch/cases/930312/home.rxml

Long forgotten?
http://www.historyofredding.com/HRblizzard1888.htm


OMG, that's a horror story!

[Boomer Chick]

See maps, pics, and other links at:

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050321_crazy_weather.html

:p

Crazy Weather: Northwest Drought Tied to Southwest Floods
By Bjorn Carey

posted: 21 March 2005
06:27 am ET



It's been a crazy winter out West. A flip-flop in storm patterns has caused the typically moist Pacific Northwest to go dry while making "flood watch" a common phrase in the Southwest.

Scientists aren't surprised it happened, but the severity of the shift caught them off guard.

Winter storms pick up moisture as they travel across the Pacific Ocean, and they typically dump much of that moisture on places like Portland and Seattle, making Southern California and Arizona good places to putter around golf courses and lounge by pools.




This season, however, many storms have been deflected south by climate variations in the Eastern Pacific, including warmer water and persistent areas of high atmospheric pressure.

By the numbers

The February numbers mimic a pattern that goes back to December and has continued into March:

Seattle received 1.2 inches of precipitation in February -- 29 percent of the average for the month.
Los Angeles endured more than 11 inches of February rain, three times normal.
Phoenix got 3 inches of precipitation last month -- nearly 400 percent of normal.
In Phoenix, a river that's been dry since 1999 has run bank-to-bank on several occasions this winter as officials released water from lakes swollen from the second wettest winter in the city since the 1940’s.

Rain-induced mudslides have become common this winter in Southern California.

What's up?

"The Eastern Tropical Pacific warmed and gave us El Nino-like conditions," explained Greg McCabe, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). "When we have warm Eastern Tropical Pacific temperatures, the Northwest is dry."

In El Nino years, easterly tropical trade winds in the Pacific Ocean weaken and the waters along the Eastern Pacific Ocean become warmer. This warmer ocean water supplies both moisture and energy for huge thunderstorms, which feed moisture and wind energy into the upper atmosphere. Some of this moisture eventually dumps on the West Coast, creating severe winter storms.

Similar correlations between flood and drought have been observed on a global scale, between the Amazon and Congo rain forests.



Meteorologists had been predicting dry conditions in the Pacific Northwest and wet weather for the Southwest since early in the year. What surprised them was just how dry, and how wet, it got.
"I don’t think we expected it to be this extreme," said Douglas LeComte, a meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "I mean, Los Angeles has gotten twice as much rainfall as Portland."

In addition to being very dry, the storms that did hit the Pacific Northwest behaved abnormally. "The storms were warm – instead of having snow we got rain," LeComte told LiveScience.

More bad news

Snow is a natural water reservoir – it sits in the mountains during the wet winter months, then melts in spring and summer. Many communities rely on the spring melt to replenish reservoirs. This year’s snowpack in the Northwest is the lowest in more than 20 years of record keeping.

"That spring snowpack is like money in the bank," said LeComte. "It accounts for 50-80 percent of the Western water reservoir. Even if you get a lot of rain it won’t reverse the damage."

Because the Pacific Northwest is about to enter its dry season now, LeComte says there is little chance of making up the water deficit and expects the drought to continue at least until next fall.


The U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook, released last week by NOAA, shows persisting drought in the Pacific Northwest through June. In the Southwest, by contrast, conditions are expected to continue lessening the effect of a decade-long drought.

Dry conditions create an elevated risk for forest fires in the Northwest this summer. And the news isn't all rosy in the Southwest. Fire danger is lower now, but the risk will rise again once the weather patterns return to normal, officials say. Plant life that will flourish with the extra water this season will die and dry up after the next dry spell, creating more dry wood than normal, setting the stage for forest-clearing blazes.

A study earlier this year found that the current Northwest drought is practically nothing compared to prolonged dry spells in the past. In fact throughout the West, historical droughts dwarf any that have occurred in modern times, according to a NOAA report released last year.

Meteorologists and drought specialists are working to create better techniques for predicting and preparing for droughts. But they're mindful of the one constant when it comes to weather:

"Drought prediction is pretty tough because conditions change so quickly," McCabe said.

[Boomer Chick]

Well, animals are adapting to the weird and changing climate, too!

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2005/2005-03-22-09.asp#anchor4

Yellowstone Wolves Help Scavengers Survive Climate Warming

BERKELEY, California, March 22, 2005 (ENS) - Once nearly extinct, Yellowstone National Park's gray wolves have returned to play a critical role in easing the effects of climate change on food availability, new research from the University of California, Berkeley shows. Reintroduced in 1995, there are now 31 gray wolves at Yellowstone.

When winters are severe, more elk die, providing needed food for the wide range of scavengers in the area, including bears, coyotes, eagles and ravens, the researchers said.

Shorter, warmer winters brought on by global warming increase the survival rate of elk, causing a food shortage for the scavengers at a time when other resources are scarce.

But wolves kill the elk regardless of the winter's severity, the study found, and the wolves share their leftovers, buffering the impact of climate change.

By contrast, other predators, including grizzly bears and mountain lions, will either guard or hide their kills from scavengers.

"When wolves are around, you no longer get this boom-bust cycle in carrion availability," said the study's lead author, Chris Wilmers, who conducted his work as a Ph.D. student in ecosystem sciences at UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources. "Wolves provide a steady supply of carrion for the scavengers throughout the winter, whether it is mild or severe."

The new study, which appears in the April 2005 issue of the online journal "Public Library of Science Biology," builds upon earlier research led by Wilmers.

"Ravens have adopted a foraging strategy by following the wolves when they are on a hunt," said Wilmers. "When wolves chase down their prey through wide open spaces over long distances, it's as good as a dinner bell. Ravens and other scavengers know that a meal is coming."

The study adds a new twist to the wolves' ability to provide food for other animals. It highlights both the effects of global warming on Yellowstone's ecosystem and the importance of the wolf in helping animals cope with the climate change.

"Few studies have really looked at the impact of global warming on a whole food chain," said Wayne Getz, UC Berkeley professor of environmental science, policy and management and co-author of the study. "We're finding that ecosystems that have lost a keystone predator may exhibit less resilience to the impact of climate change. Because wolves ameliorate the effect of weather, the scavenger community will be better able to adapt to changing conditions.

:shock:

[Big_Gay_Ed]

Weird Weather Impacts Skiing (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47368-2005Mar18.html)

Freaky weather has turned spring ski season on its head. One result: "East Coast skiers have some very good options in their own back yard this spring," says Susan Graham Staples, editor of the guidebook Ski Snowboard. Here's the scoop:

[In the Mid-Atlantic States], some resorts that usually worry about crabgrass by now are celebrating March snows. Liberty Mountain in Pennsylvania, for example, is reporting the " best late-season snow conditions we've seen in years." In West Virginia, Snowshoe is using six feet of new snow this month as a reason to extend its season. :D

New England and parts of Upstate New York "have been clobbered with snow" in recent weeks, making for much better than usual spring ski conditions, says Staples. :D

Northern California, including Tahoe, still has a snow base of up to 177 inches. Conditions in Utah are also "awesome," Staples says, mentioning in particular Snowbird, which has the highest altitude of any Utah resort. Resorts in Colorado plan to stay open until the first or second week of April. :D

Rain in parts of the Pacific Northwest has melted away the snow on many slopes in Washington and Oregon. Likewise, conditions in British Columbia, Alberta and Idaho are not as good as usual. Some resorts in Montana have already closed. :-(