Worldwide, The Weather Extremes Continue

Two guys build a snowman over the weekend near
Ballarat, Australia. Photo by Ian Currie/Herald-Sun

Now's a good time, on a nice slow weekend, to catch up on the weather extremes gripping other parts of the world lately.

As usual, it's pretty extreme in spots.

In Italy, at least four people died when a flash flood swept through a festival site near Venice, the BBC reports.  Several people were swept away while in their tents or cars. Some people clung to trees during the flood and survived.

Down in Australia, they just had a relatively rare bout with snow and cold.

In the high elevations outside of Sydney, Australia, it snowed in the past few days.  The Blue Mountains do get snow from time to time in the Australian winter, which is now. Temperatures reached near record lows in some areas of Australia with this latest cold front.

The cold front that caused the snow also packed high, damaging winds, thunderstorms, sleet and a deep chill, according to the Herald Sun of Australia.  The high temperature in Melbourne Friday was 50 degrees, only the fourth time since 2000 the temperature stayed that low there.

This cold isn't unprecedented in Australia, but since they've had record warm temperatures consistently for the past year and a half, this chill must have come as a shock.

In the Pacific Ocean, Super Typhoon Halong is now packing 160 mph winds, and could cause a lot of trouble in southern Japan or maybe Korea later this week. Conditions along the storm's expected path are good for the typhoon to remain strong.

A program note: When there's a big typhoon in that part of the world, a sharp cool snap often follows in the central and eastern United States a week or two later. That happened twice in July after huge typhoons hit the western Pacific ocean area.

Japan has had enough problems lately. Last week, a torrid heat wave in Japan killed at least 15 people and sent about 8,600 to hospitals. Temperatures there exceeded 95 degrees, and the humidity was killer. Korea is experiencing a torrid heat wave, too.

England just endured its 8th hottest July since 1910, and the heat has been interspersed with severe storms and flooding. The heat is fading now, but local flooding is expected to continue.

Meanwhile, in Instanbul, Turkey, the problem was a tornado and other severe weather that passed through the other day.

Here's a video of the tornado and downpours in Instanbul:

Video Shows Tornado Blasting Store, Then Stunned Survivors

A surveillance video surfaced last month taken inside a store in that town in Nebraska that was hit by double tornadoes in June.

The video shows the store blasting apart, then people slowly emerging closets and such where they took shelter  to see what happened.

They look stunned, as anybody would be.  Amazingly, nobody was hurt in this store.

Here's the video:

W. Va. Congressman At It Again: Tries To Block Federal Agencies From Factoring in Climate Change

David McKinley is at it again.

David McKinley seems to
think if we pretend something
doesn't exist then, POOF! it's gone. 

 
He's the  U.S. Representative from West Virginia who proposed a measure that would    stop the Department of Defense from considering climate change while making its strategic plans.

After all, if climate change ultimately causes conflicts, refugee crises and unstable governments, why should the Department of Defense be ready for it? Who cares if such things threaten U.S. security?

As a March Pentagon report states, "poverty, environmental degradation, political instability and social tensions ... can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence."

I guess if we pretend climate change doesn't exist, and that it would never cause any problems, we can just ignore it, right?

Now, McKinley has promoted a bill that would block two key U.S. government agencies from factoring climate change into their decisions, according to the Charleston, (W.Va) Gazette.

He seems to think that if he blocks U.S. agencies from gathering the facts about issues like climate change, the problem will go away.

McKinley's latest masterpiece would prohibit the U.S. Department of Energy and the Army Corps of Engineers from using funds to "design, implement, administer or carry out specified assessments regarding climate change."

He's continuing his rich tack of using fact-free political ideology to say government agencies shouldn't plan for climate change because that very idea is political ideology.

Don't believe me? I'll quote McKinley:  "With all the unrest around the (world) why should Congress divert funds from the mssion of our military and national security to support a political ideology?"

Yeah, like the sea level is rising a bit and the weather is getting more erratic because Mother Nature is a flaming liberal who wants to stick it to conservative Republicans.

Some conservatives say they're not scientists, so they won't try to understand what climate scientists are saying. I'm not a scientist, either, but when I don't know about something and need to find out, I go to the experts.

When I had a recent illness, I went to a doctor who specializes in the problem I had, and I'm much better now.  Had I pretended the illness didn't exist, I would have gotten sicker and sicker until my ailment was harder if not impossible to treat.

In other words, I consultant an expert. And no, there's not some grand conspiracy among climate scientists hoaxing us on climate change. If there were such a hoax, some loudmouth would have spilled the beans right now. (And, no offense to you scientists, but there's plenty of loudmouth scientists out there.)

Luckily, the Senate, at least in its current configuration, would never pass McKinley's measures so tey wil die.

And that's good, since the Department of Energy is heavily involved in dealing with climate change, says the Charleston Gazette article.

I'm sure much of McKinley's motivation is to protect the coal industry in West Virginia. I don't like to see coal miners lose their jobs, either. But maybe it's time to spend government time and energy re-training them for better, safer jobs and stop just making things up to suit your political viewpoint on climate change.

Of course, maybe if McKinley stops blowing hot air, global warming might slow a bit.

Dodged A Bullet: Not Much Severe Weather Yesterday

A thunderstorm begins to cross Lake Champlain
toward Vermont Wednesday afternoon. This storm wasn't severe
and that low cloud in the center of the
photo wasn't anything to worry about.  

Those of you reading this here blog thingy Wednesday morning saw me get all excited about the possibility of strong, damaging winds and big, giant hailstones by yesterday afternoon.

Turns out there was very little to report in the severe weather department. Oh sure, almost all of us in northern New York and northern New England got a thunderstorm or two, and a few of those storms were fairly strong.

Aside from a severe storm that caused some damage around Saratoga, N.Y. this wasn't exactly the severe outbreak of the year.

So why were I and some other forecasters, including the NOAA Storm Prediction Center kinda wrong?

We overestimated the amount of instability in the air.  Even overestimating things a bit meant the storms we thought were going to be severe weren't really.

But I hope you can forgive the slightly off forecasts, considering your garden wasn't destroyed by hail and five trees didn't fall on your house.

A weather disturbance coming in from Ontario looked like it would cause enough of a temperature contrast between the earth's surface and the air several thousand feet above us to cause at least some severe thunderstorms.

I don't think the contrast was quite as big as some of us thought. Plus, an initial line of storms came through New York, Vermont and New Hampshire between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Especially in New York and Vermont, that was before the peak heating of the day from the sun.

A man sits on his skateboard while waiting out
a downpour in Burlington, Vermont Wednesday.  n

Had the sun had more time to increase the temperature contrast between the surface, where we live, and high aloft, the storms might have been worse.

A few more widely scattered storms formed late Wednesday afternoon and evening, but the previous storms stabilized the air. And that weather disturbance was already departing, so it couldn't really fire up more big storms.

Still, during Wednesday we had some downpours, some dramatic clouds and wind gusts of over 30 mph, so at least it was vaguely exciting.

We're stuck in a weather pattern now and for the next week where the weather across the Northeast is going to be, Meh!

There's still a dip in the jet stream over the Great Lakes, but it has gotten weaker. On the East Coast, there's an overall airflow form the southwest on this side of the jet stream dip. That means some moderately humid air, near normal temperatures, and a daily chance of mostly afternoon and evening thunderstorms pretty much anywhere in the eastern third of the country.

Most of the East has been wet. Up here in Vermont, St. Johnsbury scored in the top five wettest Julys. Burlington's total of 5.54 inches for July is 1.38 inches above normal.

That means that any slow moving, drenching thunderstorms in the Northeast could cause some local flash floods over the next few days.

It won't be anything widespread, and might not happen at all. But there's a risk, especially in the Appalachians from North Carolina to Maine, that one or two towns could be bullseyed by a huge downpour and a flash flood.

Again, though, the risk of flooding in any one town or city is low.

So enjoy the hit and miss weather. Sun for now, storm for awhile, then more sun.

Hey, at least it's not violent, right?

Totally Awesome Timelapse Of Supercell Storm Over Barcelona

This video has it all. Scenic location, good production values, and best of all, a rotating supercell thunderstorm.

Video was taken in the past week in Barcelona, Spain. Totally amazing!!

Even MORE Severe Weather: Today, NY, VT. NH Are The Targets

This hailstone, about the size of a tennis ball, fell
on Charlotte, Vermont Sunday. More big hail
is possible in Vermont today. Photo byTom Gardner
via NWS/Burlington  

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The Northeast just can't catch a break from severe weather this summer.

A couple days ago, a cold front passed off the coast, ending a bout of severe storms that brought tornadoes from Tennessee to Massachusetts and Maine, and flash flooding from places as diverse as Ohio and Vermont.

You'd think in the cool air that followed the front we'd be free of the bad storms for awhile.

Nope.

An unsually strong upper level disturbance was coming out of Ontario and headed into New York, and then on into Vermont and New Hampshire today.

It's not hot or humid out there, so that's a couple ingredients we don't have for severe weather. But this disturbance is so strong it doesn't matter there isn't much heat for the storms to feed off of.

The disturbance is an area of higher upper level winds, which would be brought down to the surface by thunderstorms. So damaging winds are a threat with these storms.

An even bigger threat today across eastern New York, Vermont and New Hampshire is giant hail. This disturbance is essentially a pool of very chilly air several thousand feet overhead.

Since the freezing level isn't that high above us, hailstones can easily form. The violent updrafts within the storms can keep sending hail back up into the cold air, where they'll get bigger and bigger.

The hailstones won't have as big a layer of warm air to fall through than they typically do during the summer, they won't melt as much as they often do. So when they land, some of the hailstones will be pretty damn big.

Not everybody will get big, damaging hail, of course. Most towns won't get any hail at all.  Most of the storms that do produce hail will only bring pea to dime sized hail, which really isn't THAT big a deal. But a few towns could get much larger hailstones than that.

Vermont has not had a good year in the hail department. A supercell in late May brought bucket loads of damaging hail to Rutland County, especially around Proctor and Pittsford.

Another hailstorm caused damage in the Rutland area on July 3. And just last Sunday, hail as big as tennis balls pelted Charlotte, Vermont.

I'm really hoping today's hail avoids the apple growing regions of New York, Vermont and surrounding areas. The fruit is especially vulnerable now.

The thunderstorms will quickly end this evening. More daily shows and thunderstorms are possible every day, Friday through Wednesday, though at this point, it doesn't look like they'll be severe.

Then again, you never know.

Alabama Officials: God Gave Us Coal. Maybe The Lord Wants Global Warming?

Chip Beeker said God gave
Alabama coal so it can do
anything it wants with it.  

Some Alabama officials have come up with the wackiest reasoning yet for continuing to extract coal, burn it and add to global warming:

God wants us to do it.

According to Al.com, an Alabama news site, some officials said the federal EPA's attempt to regulate coal emissions is against God's will, an affront to God, if you will.

Alabama Public Service Commission President Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh (love that name!) said the EPA is also taking away Alabama's way of life.

Here's the money quote from Al.com:

"At their news conference...Cavanaugh and PSC commissioner-elect Chip Beeker invoked the name of God in stating their opposition to the EPA proposal. 

Beeker, a Republican who is running unopposed for a PSC seat, said coal was created in Alabama by God, and the federal government should not enact policy that runs counter to God's plan.

'Who has the the right to take what God's given a state?' he said."

OK, I've got a few questions.

God wants us to burn coal and worsen global warming? Maybe God wants the second Great Flood? Paging Noah!!!

How does Beeker know God gave Alabama the coal?  Yes, it's there, but who's is it? What about the landowner where the coal is? What about the people, or the plants that will burn it?  Maybe God secretly gave the EPA control over the coal and didn't tell anybody else?  Did God specifically appoint Cavanaugh and Beeker to administer the coal He gave them? If so, where's the paperwork?

This hue and cry started when the EPA announced back in June it wanted to curb carbon emissions from coal in an effort to curb global warming.

In any event, Cavanaugh implored the fine citizens of Alabama to seek God's help. "I hope all the citizens of Alabama will be in prayer that the right thing will be done," she said.

Well, there's something Cavanaugh and I agree on. Although I doubt her idea of the "right thing" and mine match.