October 24, 2011 Another Hurricane in the Atlantic

Tropical storm Rina is now being classified as a hurricane making it the sixth hurricane to hit the Atlantic this year.  The storm grew faster than expected, building off of Honduras and Nicaragua and is predicted to hit Mexico's Yucitan Peninsula, which is one of Mexico's top tourism places and is known for its many beach resorts, in the next few days.  The storm wasn't seen as to be too threatening as winds were at 45 mph but an hour later winds reached 75 mph and are gaining speed.  By tomorrow now, the hurricane is figured to reach a category 3 with winds in excess of 110 mph.  The storm is to hit the Cayman Islands next and is expected to bring at least 2 inches of rain and also is going to hit other nearby areas with heavy amounts of rain, which many of these places have already been devastated with rain, so slope failure could be a problem in some places.  Rina is predicted to hit Mexico's coast on Thursday, but the predictions hope that it will die down enough to hopefully not bring too much destruction.

Southern Farms Devastated by Drought and Flooding Oct. 18 2011

The south has been severely devastated this whole year when it comes to having disasters.  They have experienced the worst droughts in decades and some of the worst flooding as well in a long time.  Farmers just west of the Mississippi River have perhaps experienced the most, having both hazards wreck their crops.  The cost of bad weather in these farming regions for is figured to hit $1 billion for the farmers.  Individual farmers in Arkansas have been reported to have lost 200 acres or more of farm land due to flooding in the spring and now have had their cattle grazing land be shot due to the severe drought, costing some farmers close to $100,000.  States like Arkansas and Louisiana have lost close to $1 billion by themselves statewide from these hazards.  This is a huge deal because these two states alone supply 60% of our nation's rice but due to the flooding the supply has gone down dramatically, resulting in higher prices.  Farmers had said that this has been the most expensive year ever because of the need for irrigation due to the record drought.  Because of the severe contrast of weather in the last few month is this region, flooding in the spring and drought currently, the region's farm land has been desecrated resulting in many of our important crops not being produced like normal.    http://www.weather.com/weather/videos/news-41/top-stories-169/iwitness-dust-bowl-2011-22232

October 13, 2011 Thailand Flooding

Many areas of Thailand (two-thirds total) are currently being flooded severely with some places being flooded with over 10 feet of water, destroying many villages and drowning a crazy 108 temples.  Rescue teams rescued a lot of people using navy boats and motorized canoes while the rest of the people affected floated on whatever they could find, pedal boats, inner tubes and even some foam.  This is just another disaster that has damaged parts of Asia most notably the epic monsoon rains and typhoons.  Thailand has been one of the hardest hit killing nearly 300 people recently and their flooding is the worst it's been in the last 50 years.  The Asian continent has experienced billions of dollars of damage and many factories have been forced to shut down and their rice fields have been completely wrecked affected their economy.  Bangkok, one of the areas not yet affected, has its residents buying emergency supplies fearing that they will soon be next.
  This is an image from Wednesday of one of the most sacred temples in Thailand.

October 11, 2011

As of yesterday and early today, a pacific hurricane (hurricane Jova), is been nearing Mexico's vulnerable coastline, which is packed with tourists resorts and flood-prone mountain villages.  Since the hurricane is going to hit this area, many people have begun to evacuate and the fear of this storm, although it's not all that strong, has resulted in shutting down one of Mexico's top cargo ports.  Other hazards that have been occurring across the world in the last few days are some intense flooding going on in India from all of the rain, killing over 100 people, a tropical storm, off the Atlantic Coast, had been classified as a hurricane (Philippe), however it isn't a threat to reach land.  There have also been numerous fires reported in Russia and China to the point where both countries have issued their second highest fire warnings due to dry and windy conditions.

The red dots indicate where fires have been occurring in the last few days (image from http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=73870)

1970 Bangladesh Cyclone

In 1970 one of the deadliest cyclones (Bhloa Cyclone) in history hit Bangladesh killing about 500,000 people.  Winds hit 230 mph which resulted in nearby flooding.  The cyclone hit the densely and heavily populated coastal area around the Bay of Bengal, which is one of the poorest places in the world as well.  The resulting waves took out entire villages leaving many homeless.  This hazard I'd say fits the engineering paradigm as well as the developmental paradigm and the behavioural paradigm.  It fits the engineering paradigm because the city didn't have proper infrastructure to sustain both a large cyclone and the resulting flooding due to the poor state of the country.  It also fit the developmental paradigm because Bangladesh is a least developed country so they suffered more because of their lack of wealth for proper infrastructure and with having such a largely populated area with the population being so dense, many people died.  It fits the behavioural paradigm too because the cyclone hit hardest on the low-lying coast of Bangladesh where they had nothing they could do with the 9 meter storm surge and 4 meter rise in tide level, and this wall of water devastated this area of the country.  The low lying islands off the coast experienced the bulk of the destruction.  When looking how the complexity paradigm fits in with this hazard, since it hit in 1970 and it hit an extremely poor country, there wasn't a significant warning issued out resulting in people not being notified that this intense storm was coming and there wasn't a large response team sent out immediately to try to find survivors and rescue them which could have prevented many people from dying.     
    http://www.interragate.info/notable-past-event/3928  
http://across.co.nz/WorldsWorstDisasters.html
I go this picture from http://www.tlitb.org/%E2%80%98when-nature-gets-angry%E2%80%99-the-worst-natural-disasters-caused-by-wind/  and just thought it was incredible how large this storm was. 

October 4, 2011

I got this U.S. current weather watch/warning map from http://www.nws.noaa.gov/largemap.php and I've looked at these maps before but the one for today has a lot of stuff going on.  The main thing I see is the bright pinkish area in the central part of the country where all of these counties are in a red flag warning, which means that these areas are extremely dry and windy which is a good recipe for wildfires to sprout.  Another thing I found interesting is the dark blue to the west which is a winter storm watch which seems so early in the year and especially odd that there's a watch in Nevada and Utah.  Nevada and parts of Northwestern Arizona are also in a flood warning too.  The last thing I found to be interesting on this map is looking at Texas and all of the grey counties which represents an air quality alert.  This could possibly be from all of the wildfires that have taken place here in the last month.