Dec 12, 2011

New scientific research has is proving how certain weather affects the timing of natural hazards.  Data taken from seasonal rainfall and snowfall patterns are now being used to predict when to expect the next earthquake or volcanic eruption in some places and how often they may take place.  A case study done in the Himalayan mountains shows that in times when the season is rainy (especially in summer months) fewer earthquakes occur compared to the dry months.  Another case study done in Iceland, shows the opposite.  Summer is the time of greater hazard risk because of the ice caps melting.  Where ice caps sit on top of active volcanoes and then start to melt can trigger volcanic eruptions below.  Katla, a large volcano in Iceland, has been recorded to have lost a great deal of ice on the volcano and is predicted to erupt sooner than later.     

Dec 5, 2011

Over the last few days or so, California has been getting devastated with high power winds creating havoc all over the area and into places in Utah and Nevada.  Wind gusts were reported as high as 100 mph leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power, some of which are still without it.  The winds also were responsible for creating fires and uprooting trees leaving some people dead along with destroying houses.  The windstorms have been going on for 5 days so far and although they are dying down somewhat, many Californian counties are still under a weather alert as winds are expected to continue.  The reason for these winds being so ferocious was due to the fact that the weather was coming from west to east rather than east to west and the winds were coming strong from the north. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25ePaLKDdos&feature=related  This link shows a news report of the damage caused by the heavy winds recently tearing through California. 

Mudslides Leave at Least 3 Dead in Italy

Due to heavy rain lately in southern Italy, a number of landslides have occurred due to flooding leaving at least 3 people dead.  Italy is a landslide prone region due to its steep slopes and the resulting landslides have washed away cars and taken out bridges in the last few days.  Italian residents have taken a great risk by building their houses on these steep slopes and are now starting to pay for it due to the heavy rains.  The flooding and mudslides have also created havoc for railroads especially in Sicily closing them down temporarily.  This is the second time since fall that Italy has been hit by flash flooding and landslides.  Italian citizens are starting to blame much of the destruction on failure to regularly clean storm drains.  People are claiming this to be a "dramatic national emergency" and soldiers have been coming to the area to help rescue stranded persons.

This is an image from msnbc.com showing people leaving parts of Sicily to escape the mudslides resulting from the hard rain the last few days.

Severe Storms Hit the South

A number of severe storms nailed the south part of the U.S. late last night and throughout the day today.  The storm was responsible for at least 6 casualties so far, dozens taken to the hospital, dozens of houses were torn apart and thousands still remain without power.  The multiple tornadoes that hit the areas left debris trails of over 7 miles.  Tornadoes were reported in at least 5 southeastern states and surrounding states were also hit with severe weather, however no tornadoes were reported.  Survivors are saying that it looked like a seen out of "The Wizard of Oz" it happened so quickly.  Many of the areas hit are still in recovery mode from the years earlier tornadoes as well.  
This image is from a rural town in South Carolina were a twister touched down and created a plethora of damage.

November 14, 2011

For years people have been skeptible of the idea of global warming and climate change but more and more data reflects that the phenomena is definitely real and should be a serious area of concern.  More and more records have been showing that the world temperatures are getting to be as high as ever, resulting in the melting of icecaps and glaciers.  With the ice melting globally, sea levels will rise and you can then expect for water to surge onto land areas and bury some places which would then be non-existant.  With increasing sea levels, you can also expect a higher storm surge when a typhoon or a hurricane hits rendering the possibility of more human lives lost.  Another problem with increasing temperatures is that the snow on mountians will start melting more improving the risk of landslides and flooding to happen in heavily populated areas around the world.  Higher temperatures will reflect drier seasons as well in areas and places will become more vulnearble to drought. The global output of carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how weak the world's efforts are at slowing man-made global warming where most developed nations are at fault, especially the U.S.  The new data for the 2010 mean levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario talked about by climate experts in 2006.  The carbon output into the atmosphere rose 6% just from 2009 to 2010.  These numbers have scientists across the country urging the public to take action and become aware of this situation before the point of no return. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHZzACcYJRo  This is a really cool video I found on youtube that shows land temperatures around the world since 1800. 

November 8th 2011

As of today, Alaska is experiencing one its worst storms on record.  The storm is recorded at traveling 60 mph and is expected to hit the west coast soon with wind gusts of 85 mph.  Dozens of coastal communities are prepared for an emergency evacuation as storm surge is to reach 10 feet.  This storm is considered to be life threatening and shouldn't be seen as anything less.  The west coast of Alaska is to experience blizzard conditions like never before with record snow fall and winds creating poor visibility.  Another worry that people are having is that it's snowing sideways.  The storm represents a perfect mid latitude cyclone although the path of the storm has taken a turn that has not been predicted.

November 2, 2011 "Snow Storms Hammer the Northeast"

On Saturday, October 29, the northeast experienced a snow storm like none other before.  Cities in the New England area accumulated up to 32 inches of snow leaving over 3 million houses (worst in history) without power for days (some were told they'd be without power for up to 10 days), schools have been closed for a week and 23 people are dead so far from slippery roads, trees falling and being electrocuted from downed wires.  This area has been said to still have not recovered from recent flooding from hurricane Irene and after this snow melts the area can expect a lot more flooding.  The severe snow accumulation has battered public transportation, especially train lines, in the northeast forcing people to all drive, resulting in a number of accidents and hour long traffic delays.  Many people have been taking refuge at local community centers to try and stay warm from the cold temperatures and get a nights sleep.  Another major issue is that some town officials are worried that cleanup would stretch already depleted budgets to the breaking point.  Climate experts are saying to expect more and more of these natural disasters, especially more typhoons and severe storms as climate change is really starting to take it's toll.    

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.

September 29, 2011

This is a map that I found today when looking for current hazards and it's from http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/hazards/2011/09/tx-fire-danger-map-09-05-2011.png showing Texas' daily fire danger.  The blue and the green indicate areas of low or moderate danger which you can see there are very few sections and the dark red shows extremely high chances of fire and the light red and yellow are still very high and high.  You can also see how many of Texas' large cities and weather stations are located in the areas under extreme concern.  The fires are as a result of strong winds from Tropical Storm Lee, record heat, drought, low humidity and lack of rain and all of these factors combined have created dozens of fires including the most destructive in Texas history. 

September 27, 2011

I large typhoon known as typhoon Nesat, in the last few days has brought heavy destruction to the Philippines.  At least 8 are confirmed dead with over 2 million people without power.  The typhoon brought heavy rain and winds close to 90 mph.  The craziest thing about this typhoon is that in an area about 120 hours north of Manila, land fell 120 miles from getting over an inch of rain an hour.  The storm is expected to now move to southeastern China and this storm is another perfect example of Asia and southeast Asia continues to get hit by these large storms.  As for the U.S. the only thing really going on right now is some flooding especially in the northeast but also in parts of the midwest.   

Sept. 22, 2011

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=52224
This is an image of Typhoon Roke which is building up strength and is about to bring a whole lot of rain to Japan and other Asian countries who are still recovering from the damage that another Typhoon brought earlier in September.  Japan has already ordered 80,000 people to evacuate and advised another 1 million due to the flooding of two major rivers expected and the mudslides from the rain.  Winds from this storm are currently over 130 mph classifying it as a category 4 storm however the storm is expected to get stronger.  Roke is expected to hit Japan with 20 inches of rain, again hitting an area that has already been devastated by large disasters this year. 

Sept. 19, 2011

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iX2jeXsAw-L5eNjWO_uWTss_glhA?docId=1fbea8b8514845efb5e0372d048c4412
This link goes to an article about a large Earthquake (6.9 magnitude) that took place earlier today in India by the Himalaya region.  As a result of the earthquake, 53 people died and 100,000 homes got damaged at least so far affecting other regions of southern Asia as well.  The quake also provided some large mudslides which were also responsible for damage.  Relief efforts were halted during a large rainstorm and a great deal of military personnel have been working frantically to help save people, many of the rescuers have been killed or hurt as well.  It seems like these poor regions of the world have been getting hammered by these large disasters, especially in the recent last few years and this disaster seems like it affected much of the Asian continent.
   this is a picture of some of the damage.

September 13, 2011

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/interactive/2011/sep/12/hurricane-katia-map-interactive  I was looking around this site and noticed that there is a hurricane (Katia) going on that I didn't know was happening, probably because it never hit us, but is now just considered a tropical storm, however it has put many European places in a severe weather alert and these areas are expected to get hit hard by the tail of this storm.  If this category 4 hurricane would have hit us, it would have been headline news for days, maybe weeks, but since it's not going to effect us, we don't hear about it which isn't right.  

Fires Devastating Bolivia Sept. 8, 2011

Since the beginning of September, Bolivia has been getting hammered by a series of fires destroying much of their land.  This is important because their crops that they need to survive and crops that they are exporting are getting burned resulting in money lost for an already poor country and the loss of lives. 
The hazy areas are a result of the smoke from these fires and the red dots all over the place are places where fires are currently burning and many are considered to be "burning out of control." 

May 16, 2011

Its currently 5:30 and its still beautiful out like it has been all day.  Current temperature is still 67 degrees with still not a cloud in the sky, which will make it a cold night.  There is a 13 mph wind coming from the northeast and the barometric pressure is 1030.4 and falling some.  The relative humidity is 19% and the dew point is 21 degrees so the air isn't very saturated.  The jet stream shows the whole country in some sort of different troughs, the west has a trough bringing in cold air, the central has an inverse trough bringing in warm air and the east has a trough with a large swirl in the middle which could be why they have been getting hit by storms lately or it's associated with a dry line in this area.  The current surface map shows a lot going on on the east coast with some low pressure systems and a stationary front that brought some rain, as for us there isn't much going on, but there does seem to be a low pressure occluded front coming in but it's dying down, so I don't think it will bring any rain.  My prediction for tomorrow is another warm, clear day with increasing winds shifting towards the north because of a high pressure system by us.