Indonesia Wildfires Turn Earth Landscape To Mars

Dense smoke from Indonesian wildfires have changed the air
to a post-apocalyptic color

Wildfires in Indonesia are choking that region of the world in toxic, awful haze, causing all kinds of health problems, interfering with airports and just making people miserable. 

According to the Guardian:

"Forest fires are an annual occurrence in Indonesia, a result of slash and burn techniques used to quickly ad cheaply clear land for mostly oil palm plantations, but this year, due to a protracted drought, they are more severe.

The crisis has pushed air pollution indexes off the charts in Sumatra and Indonesian Borneo, forced cancellation of scores of flights, the closure of hundreds of schools across Indonesia and Malaysia, caused diplomatic tension and made hundreds of people sick.

On Monday, Indonesia's disaster mitigation agency said that almost one million people were suffering from acute respiratory infections caused by haze and forest fires."

The video below has had no editing.  The atmosphere was really this red as the sun interacted with all the dense smoke particles in the air. Definitely looks toxic. And post-apocalyptic:

Some Cool Weather Videos From The Past Month

Mud flies into the air in a Swiss village as a debris flow caused by
heavy rain in the mountains crashes through town 

Weather can be photogenic, that's for sure. And those images tend to end up on YouTube.

Below is a collection of some of the best ones I've seen lately. At least ones that don't have anyting to do with Typoon Jebi, Tropical Storm Gordon or the Midwest floods.

These videos are all fascinating, but I think the last one in this collection is the most dramatic.

So here goes:

Mid and late summer are monsoon season in the Desert Southwest, and some of the storms really are doozies. Some videos illustrate this point.

On Lake Powell, the summer monsoon season brought on this incredible microburst. As one person on the video says, "It's like an avalanche."



In mid-August, this microburst was strong enough to remove lots of shingles from this house in Arizona:



I'm not sure where this microburst happened, but boy, when you time lapse these things, it shows their power. Looks like a violent waterfall



Here's a frightening video taken in Glacier National Park during recent wildfires there. A father and son who had been hiking got caught in the wildfire. They tried to drive out as the temperature in their car got hotter and hotter. Then they encountered a flaming, fallen tree across the road. They backed up all the way to where they started.

Spoiler: Somehow, they survived. Firefighters picked them up at the shore of a lake:



In early August, a debris flow hit Chamonson, Switzerland. Severe storms in the mountains set off the mudflow that crashed through the picturesque village. It's really scary, but luckily no injuries were reported.

Spring Progress In Pictures, Also, A Couple Little Things To Watch Out For

A view of my yard, St. Albans, Vermont, March 19

It's been lovely watching spring finally progress around my property in St. Albans, Vermont.

Trees are greening, flowers are blooming. I thought spring would never get here, but of course it did.

I spent much of the snowy, gloomy March and April wondering why I live in Vermont, and now I'm saying, "Oh, yeah, this is why."

I've been taking photos daily on one spot on my yard since March. The first photo, on March 19, shows the aftermath of a large mid-March snowstorm.'

The second photo, taken April 10, shows the frustration of early spring this year. As you can see, the sun is out, the snow has melted, but even with the sun, more snow is falling.

The final photo was taken Thursday. Much better, huh?

Same view, April 10: Better, because the snow is gone. The sun is sort
of out, but if you look closely, you can see falling snow.

A couple hazards to watch out for in the weather over the next couple of days:

First, today, don't set your brush pile on fire, and don't throw those dang cigarettes out the car window. It hasn't rained lately, so the remaining dry grasses and stuff from last year are very dry.

Don't be the one who sets that brush fire.

Today will feature dry air, sunshine and gusty north winds. That means any fires that do get going today across New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine could easily spread very fast and erratically.

You'll also notice it's cool out. That sets the stage for a frost risk across the area overnight and early tomorrow morning. Frost is still pretty common this time of year, but we often want to get our sensitive plants out early. But bring 'em in today, as it will be chilly and possibly frosty tonight.


Same view on Thursday. Much better. 

There's another risk of frost Saturday night and Sunday morning, too.

But at least there's no snow in the forecast. And there is a warming trend in the offing for Sunday afternoon into at least Tuesday.

So, happy spring!

Texas Flash Flood Aids In Extinguishing Car Fire

How to put out a car fire during a Texas flood.

Flash flooding struck the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area on Friday, closing quite a few roads, stranding cars and causing the usual flash flood havoc.  

There were no fewer than 81 rescues of people stranded in flooded cars, and lightning set off five house fires i the Dallas area, says the NBC affiliate in Dallas.

In the video below, the flooding sort of had a silver lining. A car caught fire in a flooded parking lot, and a Texan found a nice weather-related way to put out the fire.

Watch:

Terrifying Wildfire Roars Through Tennessee City, Resort

Sharon Pinyan snapped this scary photo as she
evacuated from the Gatlinburg fire last night.
She said the car behind her caught fire as
flames jumped into the road. 

I watched in horror on social media last night as an immense wildfire tour through the city of Gatlinbug, Tennessee and surrounding resort communities like Pigeon Forge

Details are still coming in but dozens and dozens of buildings appear to be lost. I don't know if anybody died in the fires but the flames came into town so fast, and the evacuation was so chaotic, I definitely worry about people there.

Incredibly scary videos of the Gatlinburg fire are at the bottom of this post.

Television station WATE in Knoxville, Tennessee was reporting that 30 buildings in Gatlinburg were on fire, including a 16-story hotel and a large apartment complex.

Incredibly scary video emerged on social media of people trapped inside the smoke-filled hotel as flames danced wildly just outside the windows.

WATE interviewed a man named Logan Baker, via phone, who was trapped in the burning Gatlinburg Park Vista hotel. Firefighters on the scene told people it was unsafe to leave due to 80 mph winds and swirling flames and embers, and falling, burning trees outdoors.


Sadly, the wedding chapel
during the fire



A Gatlingburg wedding chapel
before the fire

"The only road to get down from the hotel, trees had fallen down in the road and were just engulfed in flames...Then the flames came up into the parking lot and then they told us we all had to stay inside," Baker told WATE.

The hotel's emergency doors came off their rollers, so dense smoke and hot embers swept into the hotel's interior.

The smoke was so dense in the hotel it was hard to breathe. Guests like Baker went to upper floors of the hotel and smashed out windows to get (slightly) better air.

Sound absolutely terrifying to me.   

Baker said as he leaned out these windows, he could see fires in downtown Gatlinburg and numerous cabins on the hillsides exploding into flames.

Ripley's Aquarium was evacuated, and workers there had to abandon 10,000 or so animals there. At last report, the building was still standing, but we don't know how things are there. The Aquarium's manager said some workers had to be forcibly removed from the building because they didn't want to leave the animals.

Another wildfire was just on the edge of the famed Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge. Guests at the parks hotels and cabins were all evacuated. At last report, none of the strucures at Dollywood were on fire, and firefighters were setting up in the park to protect buildings.

The Amercian Eagle Foundation was also conducting an emergency evacuation of its bird sanctuary and rehabilitation center in Pigeon Forge. I imagine it must be incredibly difficult to move all those birds out of harm's wa.

People in the fire zone were also urged to stay off their cell phones unless they were making emergency calls because the system was overloaded.

A weather station on the east side of Gatlinburg during the fires was telling: It reported a temperature of 118 degrees with a 43 mph wind, gusting to 69 mph. Yikes!

FIres have been burning for weeks near Gatlinburg and much of the Southeast due to a record drought.

A strong cold front was approaching with a burst of much needed rain last night. However, preceding the rain were very strong south winds that fanned the flames and send them cascading uncontrollably into Gatlinburg.  


A popular restaurant burns near Gatlinburg,
Tennessee Monday evening.

I was watching weather radar and you could see the increasing plume of smoke from Gatlinburg and a large band of rain approaching from the west. I was literally urging the rain to move faster toward Gatlinburg, but it obviously didn't arrive fast enough.

The Gatlinburg fire disaster comes just a week after a wildfire crashed into the big city of Haifa, Israel. Another immense wildfire tore into Fort McMurray Alberta, Canada this spring.

You have to wonder if the Gatlinburg disaster, and the other fires are part of climate change. It's hard to tease out one incident, like Gatlinburg and start screaming "CLIMATE CHANGE!!!!"

But it is consistent with climate change, in that global warming makes extreme weather more likely.

Oh, sure, there have always been epic wildfire disasters. In 1871, on the same night as the Great Chicago Fire, a wildfire swept into Peshtigo, Wisconsin, killing perhaps 2,000 people. (It's known as America's forgotten fire, as Chicago took the headlines, but Peshtigo was the more deadly of the two disasters.)

In 1910, America's largest wildfire, fed by hurricane force winds, killed 86 people in Idaho.

But it's the apparent uptick in the frequency of wildfires and other strange weather disasters that has caught my attention this year, which will go down as the world's warmest in modern record.

Something very disconcerning is definitely going on,  and Donald Trump is a fool if he still thinks climate change is hoax.

Some Gatlinburg videos:

In the first one, Michael Luciano filmed his narrow escape by car from the hills around Gatlinburg, as forests and cabins around him burned ferociously. He's lucky to be alive:



Here's the view from inside the smoke-filled Park Vista Hotel during the wildfire:

Terrifying Wildfires In Israel

People flee raging wildfires in Haifa, Israel.  

There are few things as terrifying as a wildfire rampaging through urban neighborhoods, and for the second time this year, we've seen just that disaster.  

Wildfires, many started by arsonists, tore through Haifa, Israel and surrounding areas this week. Some of the fires burned in trees and parks amid high rise buildings in the city, which is Israel's third largest.

Videos, which you can see at the bottom of this post, shows flames burning against tall buildings, people running for their lives as fires rapidly approach and aircraft buzzing buildings and dropping fire retardant on neighborhoods.

At least one high rise appears to catch fire in the videos.

The fires peaked on Thursday amid drought conditions and strong easterly winds, Reuters reported

According to Reuters:

"With fires burning in the forests west of Jerusalem, around Haifa, on central and northern hilltops and parts of the Israeli-occupied West Banks, the government sought assistance from neighboring countries to tackle the conflagration.

Greece, Cyprus, Croatia, Turkey and Russia offered help, with several aircraft already joining efforts to quell the blaze, dropping fire-retardant material to try to douse the heaviest fires and stem their spread."

Haifa was apocalyptic Thursday, with the city's mayor asking residents to turn on their water sprinklers to keep flames at bay before they fled to the relative safety of sports stadiums and other areas away from the fires.  

Wildfire burning in a Haifa, Israel neighborhoo

It hasn't rained in Israel for several months. By now, seasonal winter rains start to arrive in Israel but that hasn't happened yet. Dry, windy weather is expected to continue into early next week.

The dry weather is helping flames spread, but political unrest appears to be causing them.

"'Every fire that was caused by arson, or incitement to arson, is terrorism by all accounts. And we will treat it as such, ' Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters gathered in Haifa. 'Whoever tries to burn parts of Israel will be punished severely,'" Reuters reported. 

On social media, some Arabs and Palestinians celebrated the fires, Reuters added.

The fires in Haifa recalled the fires around Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada this past spring that forced the full evacuation of that city and destroyed parts of it. While the Canadian fire had no connection to terrorism, it was another example of the horrors of a fire crashing into a busy city.

Here are some videos of the Haifa fires:

Canada's Fire Weather Spread Into Minnesota, Other U.S. Areas, Too.

Cover photo from Canada's National Post illustrates
the utter destruction of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.  

The cataclysmic Fort McMurray wildfire rages on, and the weather that caused that fire spread into the Upper Midwest.

Fires broke out there, too.

While certainly tiny in comparison to Fort McMurray, wildfires in northern Minnesota prompted evacuations and threatened numerous homes.

An assisted living facility was evacuated as a precaution in Minnesota, the Duluth News Tribune reported. 

It's not in immediate danger, but they wisely wanted to get residents out of the way in case the wind changes direction and drives the fire toward the facility.

Television station KARE reported one fire in northern Minnesota had consumed 450 acres as of Friday and was only 10 percent contained.

The temperature reached 92 degrees in Duluth, Minnesota Friday, the earliest 90 degree reading on record there. That reading also broke the previous record high for the date by a full 10 degrees.

Minneapolis also had a record high for the date Friday at 92 degrees. Saturday morning Minneapolis was among the places stuck in a murky cloud of grey smoke.

Air pollution is a big problem in places like Wisconsin and Minnesota now, too. Smoke from Fort McMurray, combined with smoke from local wildfires, has made fine particulates in the air skyrocket.

Scattered thunderstorms arrived later Friday in northern Minnesota, cooling the temperatures and providing a little wetting.

But the rain wasn't enough to contain fires, or eliminate the fire danger across northern Minnesota. Red flag warnings are up for today because windy dry weather could encourage more wildfires.

Updates And More Scary Fort McMurray Fire Videos

The fire menacing a Fort McMurray neighborhood
Photo by Mary Sexsmith  

It had to be terrifying. The flames descended on Fort McMurray, Canada so fast that nobody had time to grab anything.

Just get in the car and flee as fast as you can. But you couldn't go fast because of the traffic congestion caused by everybody else fleeing.

It's amazing that I have only heard of two deaths with this thing so far. Both apparently were in car crashes during the evacuation and not the fire itself.

Reuters reports at least 1,600 structures, including hundreds of homes, have been destroyed so far.

There is no telling when all these evacuees will be able to return to Fort McMurray. Some had to evacuate evacuation centers because of the spreading fire.

Smoke from the fire has spread southward all the way to the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coastline, That's a distance of at least 2,500 miles, which tells you massive and powerful this blaze is.

On top of the human suffering - which of course is by far the most important -- the fires have disrupted production in the oil sands area around Fort McMurray.

So this affects you. Oil on the world markets is trading at a 3 percent higher because of tighter supplies brought on by the Alberta fire, CBC reports.

Below is a compilation of some of the wilder videos.

Here's one view of the harrowing escape. You can tell how frightened the people in the car are amid the flames. I'd be scared out of my mind, too:



Here's the traffic congestion. No surprise when the guy on the motorcycle finally freaks out:



This guy is so understandably frightened he can't start his car as spot fires break out on front lawns and a wall of flames approaches from the forest. He says it's probably the last time he'll see his house.

Sadly, he was probably right.



In this rear dash cam, I thought he was driving at night the smoke was so thick. I realized it was daylight when he emerged from the worst of it:

Fire And Ice Raining Down On Us

From NBC News: Cars burn after being caught in a brush fire
that swept across Interstate 15 in California.  

As usual, there was plenty of weird weather drama around the United States and around the world in the past couple of days.

You probably heard about that brush fire in very, very droughty California. It swept across a freeway somewhere near San Bernardino, stopping motorists in thick smoke, sending the drivers running for their lives.

The fire along Interstate 15 set a number of vehicles on fire. At least 20 cars were destroyed.

Sounds like a blast. Not that kind of traffic issue I'd want to encounter

Luckily, I haven't heard of any serious injuries. More weird weather to report below this freeway brush fire video:



Meanwhile, in sunny Hawaii, it snowed Friday. In July. Seriously.

A passing thunderstorm and near freezing temperatures atop 13,796 Mauna Kea combined to produce the 1.5 inches of snow Friday.

It's a wicked tall mountain, so it snows regularly there in the winter, but no so often in the summer. But it does happen sometimes.

Don't worry, the balmy beaches of Waikiki didn't share in the snow. The high temperature in Honolulu yesterday was 90 degrees

Check out this timelapse taken atop Mauna Kea Friday. You see nothing until halfway through the 24-second video, so be patient:



An even rarer snow hit parts of Australia this week, too. It IS winter in the Land Down Under, so you expect it to be colder there. And it often snows in the high elevations in parts of Australia during their winter.

Areas near Sydney recorded the coldest temperatures and the most snow since the 1970s and 1980s. There wasn't much snow, just a few inches, and it didn't fall in the big cities, but nearby, it did snow.

You'd expect to see the scene in the next video in Buffalo, New York in December, not Australia any time of year, but this is what it looked like this week:




Back in the United States, a spell of very humid, hot weather is spending the weekend in the eastern half of the nation. I don't expect many, if any record highs to fall, but the humidity is hellish.

And, that's contributing to ice. Giant hailstones fell on parts of the northern Plains, especially in South Dakota, as you'll see in the video below.  Hail in some areas was as big as baseballs or even soft balls. Though the hail itself certainly wasn't soft!

There were also reports of tornadoes. Winds gusted to (Yikes!) 97 mph near Clear Lake, South Dakota and 92 mph in Summit, South Dakota.

The tornadic storms evolved into a nasty squall line that swept across Minnesota and was waking people up before dawn in Wisconsin early this morning with lots of wind and lightning

Expect more storms, some strong to severe in the Great Lakes and maybe into parts of New England today.

Here's a tornadic storm, beginning with a time lapse of a wall cloud, then a TON of hail near Sisseton, South Dakota Friday. Video is from StormChasingVideo

"Pyrocumulus Clouds" Are Dramatic, Beautiful And Products Of Disaster

Hat tip to the Capital Weather Gang and the National Weather Service office in Medford Oregon for giving us these incredible, wild photos of something called pyrocumulus clouds.

The photos were taken by the Oregon Air National Guard. 

As Capital Weather Gang notes, pyrocumulus clouds form the way most clouds do: Via an updraft.

In this case, heat generated by a large forest fire forces air to rise. The rising air, like it often does when it heads upward, causing what moisture there is in the air to condense into clouds.

And sometimes it doesn't take a huge amount of moisture to make clouds. Pyrocumulus clouds have more of a gray color than do regular cumulus clouds, the kind of puffy cloud you often see on a summer day, because pyrocumulus clouds are full of ash.

As a lot of people noted on the National Weather Service/Medford Facebook page, the incredibly awesome clouds are a testament to a disaster happening on the ground.

They're huge clouds in those photos, produced by a huge wildfire that has so far burned more than 36,000 acres.

The fire was started by lightning, which is another hazard of pyrocumulus clouds. They can grow into big thunderstorms, which produce lightning strikes that can set off new fires.

The fire causing this was about 65 percent contained as of Wednesday morning. Let's hope the weather cooperates and they can get this fully under control.

Amazing Fire Whirl Spins Over Missouri Field

This photo, which popped up on the Weather Channel and appears to be legit and not a photoshop scam, shows an amazing firewhirl in Chillicothe, Missouri last weekend. 

A farmer was burning his field and a gust of wind got the whirl going.

According to the Jon Erdman of the Weather Channel, via the Washington Post:

"Firewhirls turn and burn. They are rapidly spinning vortices that form when air superheated by an intense wildfire rises rapidly, consolidating low-level spin from winds converging into the fire like a spinning ice skater, pulling its arms inward."

Meanwhile, in Oklahoma and surrounding states, the fire danger remains very high today.

Wildfires killed a person in Oklahoma Sunday, and new fires Monday forced evacuations near the town of Woodward, Oklahoma.

Rain might finally hit parts of the region later today and Thursday, but almost all of the rain will fall east of the sections of the High Plains where extreme drought and the wildfires have settled in.

Plus, any rain that does fall in and near Oklahoma will likely come in the form of severe thunderstorms over the next couple days, which could produce huge hail, near hurricane force wind gusts and a few tornadoes.

Meanwhile, more to the north, a winter storm warning is up today for the Black Hills of South Dakota, which are due for five to eight inches of snow.

And the nations wild weather train rolls on.

Meanwhile, In Chile, A Terrible Wildfire Kills At Least Four

We in the Northeast United States should count our blessings that we've been dealing with flooding, snow and cold.

Valparaiso, Chile burns, as you can see
in this Reuters photo. 

The Chilean coastal city of Valparaiso is mourning the dead and tallying the damage after a massive wildfire swept the city in recent days.

The fire killed 15 people and destroyed about 3,000 homes. 

Dry conditions and strong winds blowing off the hills toward the Pacific Ocean prevented firefighters from gaining control of the blaze.

A lot of destroyed homes were on steep hills with very narrow streets, making firefighting and evacuations all the more difficult.

Thick smoke has caused many people to suffer smoke inhalation, says the BBC.

So we've got another big weather related disaster in a string of calamities that have hit different parts of the globe so far this year.

Here's some videos of the disaster:

More Totally Amazing Views of Dust Devils, Tumbleweeds, Tornadoes and Fires

I know I featured a couple posts in the past couple of weeks of dust devils,  tumbleweeds and other dry climate stuff doing amazing things, if only to give us a break from the endless discussions of winter weather.

But wait! There's more!

For fans of weather porn, (the viewing of photos and videos of severe, large or weird storms, no nudity!) we have more.

From Twitter, we got a photo,  originating from @KOB4, shows an enormous dust devil near Las Vegas, New Mexico recently.

(The New Mexico town is not to be confused with the glittery gambling Nevada city.)

This has to be the most humongous dust devil I've ever seen.

Most dust devils don't have strong enough winds to cause damage, but a few do. I bet if this huge
dust devil had hit any of the buildings in the foreground, there would have been damage.

Luckily, no structural damage was reported.

Next, we have a video of a controlled burn at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado, to get rid of some brush.

Or, at least it WOULD have been a controlled burn had the big dust devil not come along to stir up a ton of tumbleweeds, set them aflame, and spread the blaze all over the place.

Luckily, the crew got things under control a little while later, and the so-called control burn didn't scorch THAT much more land than it should have.

The video is next but warning: The idiot who posted the video decided screaming death metal music would be the perfect accompanyment to the visuals. So turn the volume to mute before watching.

Your ears will thank you, and you'll still get your weather porn fix:




Finally, we have a spectacular tornado in Mexico that struck Saturday. Quite the spectacle: