Dust Devil Wows At Burlington, Vermont Airport

Dust devil at Burlington, Vermont
International Airport Wedenesday.
Photo by Charlene Whitehouse  

Charlene Whitehouse was at the Burlington International Airport in Vermont when she captured this remarkable scene.

Near the tarmac, with a nice shot of the beautiful Green Mountains, including the iconic Camels Hump in the background, was a well-formed dust devil.

It's a little disconcerting to see, especially since I'm flying out of that very airport Sunday, but the dust devil Whitehouse captured on camera, and almost all of them, are pretty damn harmless.

Still, the well defined dust devil as been the talk of local and even national meteorological circles, since it's such a cool photo. The Weather Channel even featured it. 

Dust devils usually form on hot, dry afternoons. It was 80 degrees and partly sunny Wednesday afternoon in Burlington, so close enough.

As the Weather Channel explains it:

"What likely happened in this situation was that the dark asphalt on the runway heated up faster than the surrounding grass, since grass contains moisture and absorbs some of the heat from the sun.

When this temperature contrast between different ground surfaces develops, it can overcome the large weather influence and create a mini weather patter. The warmer ground surface heats up the air above it, so the air becomes warmer than the ground and begins to rise. As it rises, it pushes through the cooler air above it and and creates a vertical column of warm, rising air.

The cool air that was pushed out of the way then circulates vertically around this column of warm, rising air. If a wind gust comes along, it can blow ths air arrangement onto its side, which forms a dust devil."

Dust devils tend not to be dangerous and last only a short while. Some of the strongest ones can cause some wind damage, but the one in Burlington wasn't likely strong enough to cause damage, had it hit anything.

Winter And Spring Blatantly Battle It Out On New England Lawn

Two seasons in one in a Massachusetts yard Sunday. Via
Twitter, @CoreyPez  

Pretty interesting photo from southern New England yesterday in this post.

Click on the photo to make it bigger and easier to see.

As we've mentioned, some bursts of heavy snow blustered through southern New England Sunday morning.

Then the sun came out, but of course it stayed pretty cold amid a strong Arctic outbreak affecting the region,

However, the April sun is strong, and melted the snow where the rays hit. In somewhat shadier areas, the snow stuck for a little while longer.

The result was the two seasons in one photo I found from Cory Pesaturo,  @CoreyPez via Twitter.

As far as I can tell, the photo is un-retouched. On the left side, it's spring, with green grass, budding trees and what appears to be a freshly mulched flower bed.

On the shadier right side of the photo, it was deep in winter.

The photo is proof that April can truly have a split personality.

Mexican Drought Makes Ghost Church Reappear

Ghost church reappears in a Mexican reservoir
as drought lowers water levels there.  

A drought has hit the state of Chiapas, Mexico and reservoirs have gotten low, low, low.

So low, that in one reservoir, a ghost church has emerged from the receding water.

According to The Independent, the Temple of Quechula was built in 1564 by Spanish colonists, who thought the area would become a major population center.

It didn't, and an outbreak of plague further reduced the population. The church never got that busy, and eventually, a dam was built in 1966 and the church disappeared beneath the new lake.

Now, local entrepreneurs are ferrying people out to the church for a look-see. It's pretty spooky looking, and it's amazing part of the structure is still around after being submerged like that for so long.

This isn't the first time the church has reappeared. In 2002, a drought made water so low that people could walk around the church and explore its rooms.

I'm sure the people of Chiapas are hoping the drought ends, but I guess the re-emergence of the church is one small bright spot to enjoy while waiting for the rains to return.

Finding The Bright Side To Pollution: Hurricane Weakener?

Satellite view of Irene in the Northeast
in August, 2011 causing catastrophic flooding.  

Finally! A reason to love air pollution.

Particles in the air from cars and smokestacks and such could sometime weaken hurricanes approaching the U.S. coastline.

Um, Yay?

Oh sure, there's lots to hate about air pollution. It causes illness, lung disease, early death. Plus it's unpleasant.

But according to Dr. Jeff Masters in his Weather Underground blog, air pollution might help weaken hurricanes if they encounter the junk we belch into the air day in and day out.

Citing research published recent in the Journal of Atmosphere Science, Masters said a study look at Hurricane Irene as it approached the North Carolina coast in August, 2011.

Irene had just gone through an eyewall replacement cycle, a common occurence in hurricanes in which the band of intense thunderstorms around the storm's eye reorganized. During the eyewall replacement cycle, a hurricane will usually temporary weaken, then regain strength as the replacement cycle is complete.

This time, Irene did not restrengthen when it finished an eyewall replacement cycle southeast of North Carolina.

Extreme flooding from Hurricane Irene
destroyed this Pittsfield, Vermont house in 2011.   

The research indicates that Irene was encountering air pollution as it approached the United States. The pollution particles reinvigorated and strenthened the outer rainbands of Irene at the expense of its inner core.  

So ultimately, the hurricane came ashore as a category one storm as opposed to the expected and more feared catagory three storm.

Of course, Hurricane Irene continued on, not as a strong hurricane, but one that dumped incredibly heavy rain on much of the Northeast, especially New York and Vermont, causing catastrophic flooding in those two states. 

This is pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if the outer rain bands, strengthened by the pollution, dumped more rain on New York and Vermont than they otherwise would have without the pollution. That combined with the downpours closer to the center of Irene, maybe produced a more prolonged and heavy rainstorm, making the flooding worse.

There is evidence that pollution weakened Hurricane Katrina in 2005 from a monster Catagory 5 storm to a somewhat weaker Catagory 3 storm as it approached the Gulf Coast.

A lot of good that did. New Orleans still drowned.

In his blog, Masters raises an excellent point: If pollution particles weaken hurricanes, why not blast every hurricane that is threatening death and destruction at landfall with particles to weaken it?

Masters reports that this idea is actually a bad one.

It seems the injection of particles must happen at the right time, when the hurricane is going through an eyewall replacement cycle. If you inject the particles at the wrong time, you might actually strengthen the hurricane because the polllution would penetrate to the core of the storm, intensifying the thunderstorms surrounding the hurricane eye.

Most hurricanes don't go through a hurricane replacement cycle at the most convenient time, right before landfall.

There's probably other factors at work, too that would make injecting pollution into hurricanes backfire, making the problems worse.

Still, next time you find yourself choking in the smog, remember, this awful air pollution might be your friend in the unlikely event a hurricane is approaching.

With friends like this, who needs enemies?

Awesome Satellite View of Spring Snow Melt In Vermont/Northern New York.

On April 12 in this screen shot from a NWS Burlington
Vermont video, a satellite image shows bare
ground in the Champlain Valley and ice breaking up
in Lake Champlain, but much of the rest of the
region still buried under snow and ice.  n

The National Weather Service in Burlington, Vermont today released a cool video showing the progression of early spring over most of Vermont, Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks of New York.

The view is via NOAA's MODIS visible satellite images, which can get down to pretty good detail in a relatively small area, like Vermont and northern New York.

The National Weather Service put images April 1, 12, 15 and 19 up in the video for comparison. They picked these days because skies were crystal clear, so no clouds were in the way of the view.

On April 1, everything is covered in snow except for a few evident bare patches in parts of the Champlain Valley.

By April 12, all of the Champlain Valley is clear of snow and ice is beginning to break up on Lake Champlain. Pretty much everyone else is snow covered. Things progress to Sunday, April 19, with snow only in the highest elevations, and no ice on Lake Champlain.

Things are beginning to backslide a little bit, temporarily of course.  Snow and sleet fell for a time this morning at mid and high elevations of New York and Vermont, though that had mostly changed to rain showers region wide by noon today.

Later this week and this weekend, a few inches of fresh snow might dust the mountains again as a chilly, unsettled spell of weather takes hold.

But soon enough, similar MODIS satellite images won't look so brown. Trees and fields will green up in another month or so, and the satellite images of Vermont on a clear day will be largely green instead of brown, as spring continues its unsteady advance toward the North Country.  

Here's the video:

Suction Vortices Exposed! Incredible Inside Look At Tornado

Hat tip to Capital Weather Gang for highlighting this video of a tornado near Woonsocket, South Dakota this week.  

Suction vortices are visible in this tornado a few years
ago in a photo taken by Roger Edwards.  

In it, you can see many suction vortices dancing around the rotation of the tornado.

Suction vortices, little mini tornadoes within one main tornado circulation, are fairly common.

But you usually don't seem them that often in tornado videos, because the suction vortices are largely hidden in the dirt and debris and cloudiness of the main tornado.

This twister, however, showed how the suction vortices twirl around inside a tornado like a bunch of feverish ballet dancers.

Suction vortices are often why you see the capricious nature of tornado damage. One house is destroyed, while the home right next door has only minor damage.

The destroyed house was probably hit by a suction vortice. The spin of the mini-tornado, combined with the overall wind of the main twister, combine to as much as double the wind speed. Meanwhile, the house with minor damage probably got strong winds from the main tornado, but no suction vortices hit it.

Here's the video. Pretty fascinating:

Hodgepodge Today: Last Nor'easter Look, California Twister, Weird Amsterdam Clouds

Now that the huge megastorm is pulling away from Atlantic Canada, I've just got a hodgepodge of stuff to show you this morning, just for fun.

One last photo for you of that massive storm off the
U.S. East Coast yesterday.  

The first photo in this post is one last satellite photo of that huge Atlantic storm, just, from a weather geek's perspective, it's incredible and beautiful.

Next, we had a couple tornadoes touch down in California, near Sacramento. While California isn't exactly Tornado Alley, they do get them from time to time.

The two confirmed tornado touchdowns yesterday caused minor damage.

There were also many reports of funnel clouds and hail near Sacramento.

Today, that storminess moves out into the middle of the nation. There might be a few severe thunderstorms and maybe a couple of tornadoes around Missouri and Arkansas, which is what you might expect this time of year.

A tornado near Sacramento, Calif. yesterday.   

Finally, the last photo shows some weird clouds over Amsterdam, The Netherlands. They're mammatus clouds, often attached to strong and severe thunderstorms.

The weird thing about these clouds is how big they are. They clouds usually have small lumps and bumps.

But still pretty neat, eh?

Menacing mammatus clouds over Amsterdam, the Netherlands,
from Govet/Reisling via @Anthonywx on Twitter.