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Above-normal number of tornadoes expected in 2012
Following a near-record number of tornadoes in 2011, an active severe weather season with above-normal tornadoes is expected in 2012.
There were 1,709 tornadoes in 2011, falling short of the record 1,817 tornadoes set in 2004. In comparison, the average number of tornadoes over the past decade is around 1,300.
Last year ranks as the fourth most deadly tornado year ever recorded in the United States.
In 2011, there was a very strong La Niña, a phenomenon where the sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific around the equator are below normal. As a result, there was a very strong jet stream, which is a key ingredient for severe weather.
Often in a La Niña year, the “Tornado Alley” shifts to the east, spanning the Gulf States, including Mississippi and Alabama, and the Ohio and Tennessee valleys.
During the extremely active severe weather season of 2011, many tornadoes touched down east of Read more…
Missouri 4.0 earthquake felt across 13 states
SIKESTON, Mo. – A magnitude 4.0 earthquake struck early Tuesday in the southeast corner Missouri, waking up residents in as many as 12 other surrounding states.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake hit at 3:58am local time (4:58am ET). Its epicenter was located a shallow 3.1 miles (5km) underground, about 150 miles (240km) south of St. Louis, near the New Madrid fault line.
Outside of Missouri, the temblor was felt in Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas and Indiana. Residents also reported feeling the ground shake in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Kansas and Oklahoma.
Save for a few reports of items falling off shelves and windows cracking, the rumbling caused no real damage.
But experts said it serves as an important reminder of Read more…
No Warrant Needed for GPS Monitoring, Judge Rules
A Missouri federal judge ruled the FBI did not need a warrant to secretly attach a GPS monitoring device to a suspect’s car to track his public movements for two months.
The ruling, upholding federal theft and other charges, is one in a string of decisions nationwide supporting warrantless GPS surveillance. Last week’s decision comes as the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the issue within months in an unrelated case.
The ruling from Magistrate David Noce mirrored the Obama administration position before the Supreme Court during oral arguments on the topic in November. In short, defendant Fred Robinson, who was suspected of fudging his time sheets for his treasurer’s office job for the city of St. Louis, had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his public movements, Magistrate Noce said.
Noce ruled: (.pdf)
Here, installation of the GPS tracker device onto defendant Robinson’s Cavalier was not a Read more…
Experts warn epic weather ravaging US could worsen
CHICAGO — Epic floods, massive wildfires, drought and the deadliest tornado season in 60 years are ravaging the United States, with scientists warning that climate change will bring even more extreme weather.
The human and economic toll over just the past few months has been staggering: hundreds of people have died, and thousands of homes and millions of acres have been lost at a cost estimated at more than $20 billion.
And the United States has not even entered peak hurricane season.
“This spring was one of the most extreme springs that we’ve seen in the last century since we’ve had good records,” said Deke Arndt, chief of climate monitoring for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While it’s not possible to tie a specific weather event or pattern to climate change, Arndt said this spring’s extreme weather is in line with what is forecast for the future.
“In general, but not everywhere, it is expected that the wetter places will get wetter and the drier places will tend to see more prolonged dry periods,” he told AFP.
“We are seeing an increase in the amount (of rain and snow) that comes at once, and the ramifications are that it’s a lot more water to deal with at a Read more…
Local levees threatened by record-setting releases into Missouri River
COLUMBIA — Workers at the city’s water treatment plant in the Missouri River bottoms are getting the boats out of storage.
Two levees protect McBaine from river levels up to 32 feet, and a flood wall at the plant itself can withstand up to 40 feet, said Floyd Turner, Columbia’s manager of water operations.
Extremely high amounts of rainfall and melting snow along the northern sections of the Missouri River are expected to raise river levels enough to possibly overwhelm levees throughout the state. One of those at risk, the McBaine Levee District, protects the Columbia Drinking Water Plant.If the Missouri River overflows the levees along the river, though, plant workers will need their two 14-foot boats to navigate between the nearby wells and possibly transport workers to and from the plant.The water plant’s staff was stockpiling sand for spot leaks along with other supplies in case floods limit access to the plant, engineer Michael Anderson said Friday. Workers at the plant were also checking on emergency generators in the event the plant loses electricity.
A forecast from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers shows the Missouri River overflowing as many as 58 levees between Kansas City and St. Louis by the end of the month.
After a year’s worth of rain in recent weeks and snowpack 140 percent above average in the Read more…
Joplin storm contained a rare multivortex tornado
DAVID EULITTJOPLIN, Mo. | The death toll from Sunday’s tornado has risen to 122, making it the eighth-deadliest tornado in U.S. history, the National Weather Service said.
The Joplin twister was upgraded to EF-5, the strongest category on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, with winds exceeding 200 mph. The storm was apparently a “multivortex” tornado, with two or more small and intense centers of rotation orbiting the larger funnel, a rare occurrence.
It’s the country’s deadliest storm since 1950.
The number of those still missing isn’t known because many have left Joplin to stay with relatives and friends. Rescue Read more…
Joplin, Mo., tornado witness: ‘Swath cut through town is huge’
Emergency personnel walk through a neighborhood severely damaged by a tornado near the Joplin Regional Medical Center in Joplin, Mo. (Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press / May 22, 2011)
In the moments between the first and second tornado sirens that sounded the warning in Joplin, Mo., on Sunday evening, Sara Ferguson knelt in prayer inside a church classroom.
The congregation of Citywide Christian Fellowship Church had been in the middle of services when a few parishioners who’d been keeping watch on the darkening skies outside came back to say it was time to seek safety.
“There was a bit of hail and it was raining terrible,” said Ferguson, 50, who was reached by phone. “We’re up on a hill and the men who stayed at the door watched the tornado pass by a few blocks from us.”
Once it was over, she and her husband made their way to their home, passing a scene of unfathomable destruction. A trip that typically takes 10 minutes lasted an hour and a half.
“I cried the whole way,” she said.
They dodged downed power lines. They passed St. John’s Regional Medical Center, where it “looked like bomb Read more…
Missouri levee blast inundates acres of farmland
The Army Corps of Engineers blew a two-mile hole into the Birds Point levee, which has flooded 130,000 acres of farmland in Missouri’s Mississippi County, in an effort to protect nearby Cairo, Ill., from rising floodwaters.
But farmers who pleaded unsuccessfully for the Supreme Court to stop the blast, which diverted floodwaters and inundated their land, had 130,000 acres of severely damaged farmland and close to $100 million in crop losses, a farmers’ association said. About 100 homes are in the deluged area, according to Army engineers.
The purpose was to divert floodwaters from Cairo, a town of about 3,000.
The government engineers blasted the first hole into the Birds Point levee site at Sikeston, Mo., at about 10 p.m. Monday and the second one at around noon Tuesday, said Lisa Coghlan, spokeswoman for the Army engineers in Sikeston.
Flood stage for the Mississippi River in the area is normally 40 feet, but on Monday, the water was at 61.72 feet, the engineers said. By Tuesday, after the two blasts, the water was receding and had fallen to 60.12 feet, the engineers said.
“It was definitely a success,” Coghlan said. The engineers planned to stage one more blast, probably today, depending on how quickly they could move equipment through the rain-soaked area, Coghlan said.
“The ground is absolutely just mush,” she explained. “It’s been raining for two weeks and today is actually the first sunny day.” Read more…
Ex-FEMA chief says Arkansas should prepare for quakes
Former Federal Emergency Management Agency director James Lee Witt is urging Arkansans to better prepare for major earthquakes in light of the natural disaster that’s ravaging Japan.
Witt made the comments at a rotary club gathering in downtown Little Rock on Tuesday.
He says that people in Arkansas need to make sure that the state’s bridges, schools and nursing homes are capable of withstanding earthquakes, especially with a rash of quakes hitting the towns of Greenbrier and Guy and the presence of the New Madrid Fault in northeast Arkansas, where seismologists say a major quake could occur any time.
President Bill Clinton appointed Witt to head FEMA in 1993. He’s now considered one of the nation’s go-to guys for disaster response.
Largest earthquake in 35 years hits Arkansas
The central Arkansas town of Greenbrier has been plagued for months by hundreds of small earthquakes, and after being woken up by the largest quake to hit the state in 35 years, residents said Monday they’re unsettled by the increasing severity and lack of warning.
The U.S. Geological Survey recorded the quake at 11 p.m. Sunday, centered just northeast of Greenbrier, about 40 miles north of Little Rock. It was the largest of more than 800 quakes to strike the area since September in what is now being called the Guy-Greenbrier earthquake swarm.
The activity has garnered national attention and researchers are studying whether there’s a possible connection to the region’s natural gas drilling industry. The earthquake activity varies each week, though as many as nearly two dozen small quakes have Read more…
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