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Rare, Powerful Tornado Hits Russian City
Credit: RussiaToday/YouTube.
A rare tornado touched down in Russia last night (July 31), according to news reports.
The tornado hit Blagoveshchensk, a city of about 200,000 in eastern Russia near the China border.
The twister lasted 13 minutes and caused a reported 80 million rubles ($2.9 million) in damage.
Tornadoes have touched down in every continent except Antarctica. They can occur wherever cold, dry air hits moist, warm air high in the atmosphere. Most of the Earth’s tornadoes occur in the hotbed known as Tornado Alley, but the United Kingdom reports the most tornadoes by land area, given its Read more…
Is the weather worsening?
Extreme weather events occur every year in various parts of the earth, but the United States — and Missouri — have seen natural disasters strike its ground this year seemingly more often than not.The jury is still out as to what has caused these extreme events, pending major climatology studies that often take years to complete. Some say it’s due to a naturally variable earth, others argue it’s due to a changing climate, one that’s getting warmer and more intense, leading to weather events we’ve never seen, before calming down again.
Recent devastationMany scientists argue that 2010 was the most extreme year ever in terms of natural disasters across the globe. Devastating worldwide events made the headlines during what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said was the world’s warmest year on record (it tied with 2005).Among the most devastating were Pakistan’s flood, the most expensive natural disaster in its history, Russia’s deadliest heat wave in recorded history, and Read more…
The nine billion-dollar weather disasters of 2011 (so far); Invest 90L rises again
It’s been an unprecedented year for weather disasters in the United States, with the dangerous portion of hurricane season still to come. We’ve already seen nine billion-dollar weather disasters so far in 2011. The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) June disaster report estimates that, through May, 2011 is the costliest year since they began tracking billion-dollar disasters in 1980. The cost of the disasters through May could be as high as $32 billion, compared to a typical year-to-date cost of $6 billion. 2011 to-date now ties the entire year of 2008 for the most billion-dollar weather disasters in one year. Of course, this number could go up if we see some hurricane landfalls this year.
Here are NCDC’s estimates of the top-end damages from 2011’s billion-dollar weather disasters so far:
Missouri River Flooding
Snowfall was abnormally heavy in the Rocky Mountains of Montana and Wyoming this past winter (over 200% of average), and record rains fell over the Upper Read more…
Something is DEFINITELY wrong with our planet. (TIMELINE of Disasters, facts, and anomalies)
Apotheosis
Earthquakes
Yes Earthquakes happen all the time. In fact, they’ve happened millions of times. They began recording them in the mid 1600’s and couldn’t accurately measure the magnitude until the mid 1700’s. After reviewing past earthquakes they found it very rare that an earthquake hit over 8.5 magnitude or higher. Here is the results of all 8.5 magnitudes or higher.
1600’s there were 2 the whole century.
Lima, Peru 8.5
Valdivia, Chile 8.5
1700’s there were 5 the whole century.
Pacific Ocean, USA and Canada 8.7-9.2
Pacific Ocean, Shikoku region, Japan 8.6
Valparaiso, Chile 8.7-9.0
Concepción, Chile 8.5
Lisbon, Portugal 8.5-9.0
1800’s there were 2 the whole century. Read more…
New Zealand’s Record Snow Storm 25 July 2011
Sunday and Monday the worst winter storm in seventy years hit New Zealand, beginning in the south and moving north. New Zealand is near Antarctica (and the south pole), and during the winter months, Antarctic storms will move north. (It still seems strange to call them “Antarctic storms”, since I’ve always lived with Arctic storms.)
Some places, such as Auckland, haven’t had snow since June 1976. (Remember that winter is during June, July and August here in New Zealand.) People were stranded at airports and ski resorts, especially in the South Island, which was hardest hit.
We received no snow here where we live in Whakatete Bay, just north of Thames, but across the Firth of Thames, the Hunua Ranges (mountains) received a dusting.
Monday is supposed to have been the coldest day of 2011. Here at home, it was the Read more…
7/22/2011 — extremely RARE tornadoes in Puerto Rico
Climate factor involved in wars, crises
Christian Parenti is a contributing editor at the Nation and a visiting scholar at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, at the Cuny university of New York’s Grand Center.He has reported extensively on Afghanistan, Iraq, and various parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. His work has been published among others at the Fortune, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Mother Jones. He holds a PHD in Sociology from the London School of Economics.
Press TV has interviewed Parenti on his latest book, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence.
The following is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: Christian Parenti, thank you so much for joining us on the Autograph. While we often address the issue of climate change solely as an environmental challenge, in 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…
2010 – 2011: Earth’s most extreme weather since 1816?
Every year extraordinary weather events rock the Earth. Records that have stood centuries are broken. Great floods, droughts, and storms affect millions of people, and truly exceptional weather events unprecedented in human history may occur. But the wild roller-coaster ride of incredible weather events during 2010, in my mind, makes that year the planet’s most extraordinary year for extreme weather since reliable global upper-air data began in the late 1940s. Never in my 30 years as a meteorologist have I witnessed a year like 2010–the astonishing number of weather disasters and unprecedented wild swings in Earth’s atmospheric circulation were like nothing I’ve seen. The pace of incredible extreme weather events in the U.S. over the past few months have kept me so busy that I’ve been unable to write-up a retrospective look at the weather events of 2010. But I’ve finally managed to finish, so fasten Read more…
Rare Snowfall Blankets African Desert
Parts of the south-west Africa nation of Namibia usually associated with heat and dust have been blanketed in snow.
A storm brought sub zero temperatures and snow to the Namib-Naukluft Park this week, which local forecasters have described as an extremely rare event. The average overnight temperature, measured from Tuesday 18h00 until 06h00 Wednesday, was a record low of 2.1 degrees Celsius.
According to namibiaweather.info, the lowest temperature recorded by weather stations on Tuesday was Read more…
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