tagged w/ extreme weather
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A massive storm tore through the Southeast and parts of the Midwest Tuesday night and Wednesday, flipping cars on the interstate, demolishing homes and businesses, killing at least two people and leaving tens of thousands without power.
The National Weather Service reported that eight tornadoes touched down in Tennessee, with winds reaching 115 mph. The Red Cross was helping families in at least seven counties in the state, WSMV reports.
A 47-year-old man identified as Vernon Hartsell was killed in Nashville, Tenn., when a tree fell on a shed where he was sheltering from the storm, and separately, a man died in Adairsville, Ga., after a tree fell on his house, WSB-TV reports.
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal declared a state of emergency, and a curfew was set for Adairsville beginning at dusk to help keep residents safe, CBS Atlanta reports.
Although most of the damage was in Georgia and Tennessee, the storm reached farther west, injuring people as far away as Kentucky and Arkansas, according to the Associated Press.
The severe weather was caused by unseasonably warm winds from the south colliding with cold air from Canada, the Weather Channel's Chad Burke said, according to NBC News. "It's not a normal pattern for this time of year," Burke added.
There's a Facebook page set up for residents to find help and to communicate about the storm damage.
More at the linkA massive storm tore through the Southeast and parts of the Midwest Tuesday night and... more
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Climate change and changes in weather can affect species in many ways. From altering migration patterns, to varying plant growth leading to deviating diets, to extending or decreasing hibernation periods, climate can ultimately influence the success of a species. In an attempt to study some of these effects, a group of Norwegian scientists have found that extreme climate events can cause population fluctuations not only among single species, but also in a relatively simple high arctic community.
Scientists, with lead authors from the Centre for Conservation Biology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), investigated how climate and weather events influenced Arctic populations specifically in Spitsbergen, Svalbard, an arctic island that is home to just four winter species: the wild Svalbard reindeer, the Svalbard rock ptarmigan (a type of bird), the sibling vole, and the arctic fox.
Here, population fluctuations were mainly driven by rain-on-snow events, where rain seeps through the snowpack and pools on top of the frozen soil. It then freezes into an impermeable shell that prevents animals from grazing and reduces food accessibility for populations, causing extensive simultaneous population crashes in all three herbivore species in the following seasons after the extreme weather.
The arctic fox, on the other hand, did not experience population decline mainly due to the abundance of reindeer carcasses, which serves as the foxes' main winter food source. Even though the synchronized die-offs decrease the number of live prey available for foxes to eat, the high number of reindeer carcasses generates a food surplus, which ultimately leads to higher fox reproduction.
However, the reindeer that have survived the extreme weather events will thrive due to the reduced competition for resources and the following winter will have almost no reindeer carcasses. At the same time, the other herbivores that may be a secondary food source for the foxes will not be able to recover after the icing. This results in low fox reproduction and a strong reduction in the arctic fox population size one year after the herbivore die-offs.
"We have known for a long time that climate can synchronize populations of the same species, but these findings suggest that climate and particularly extreme weather events may also synchronize entire communities of species," says lead author Brage Bremset Hansen. "Svalbard's relatively simple ecosystem, which lacks specialist predators, combined with large weather fluctuations from year to year and strong climate signals in the population dynamics of herbivores, are the likely explanations for how such clear climate effects can be observed at the ecosystem level."
The findings are published in the 18 January issue of Science.
By Allison Winter, ENNClimate change and changes in weather can affect species in many ways. From altering... more
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by Staff Writers
Chicago (AFP) Dec 26, 2012
A massive winter storm system that whipped up tornadoes, ice and snow from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes on Christmas Day, killing at least seven people, headed for the northeastern US Wednesday.
The storm snarled holiday travel as 1,500 flights were cancelled and people were warned to stay home rather than brave the strong winds, freezing temperatures and treacherous roads.
The National Weather Service warned of "dangerous travel conditions due to snow and ice covered roads" and said the weight of ice and snow could knock down power lines and trees. Already, more than 200,000 people were in the dark.
The weather service forecast up to 18 inches (46 centimeters) of snow from New York state up to Maine and warned of freezing rain, tornadoes and severe thunderstorms all the way down to the Carolinas.
Areas in the Rocky Mountains were also set to get about a foot of snow from a second storm system on Wednesday.
More than 1,000 US flights had been cancelled by Wednesday afternoon, after 533 were grounded on Tuesday, according to flight tracker FlightAware.
"The biggest factor on both coasts is high winds and winds not aligned with runways," FlightAware chief Daniel Baker said.
"This causes significant capacity constraints that leads to long delays and cancellations."
Scores of homes and businesses were damaged Tuesday after 34 tornadoes were reported in the southern US states of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.
James Bowman said he was sitting in his living room when a sudden wind rattled his rural Texas home apart Tuesday afternoon.
"The inside of the living room started falling down, so I just sat there in the recliner and then it didn't last but just a few seconds -- then it stopped," Bowman, who was alone at the time, told KTRE news.
"I just thank God that I wasn't hurt and the walls and stuff didn't fall in on me."
The governors of both Mississippi and Alabama have declared a state of emergency.
More than 200,000 people remained in the cold and dark Wednesday after the storm knocked down power lines in Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas.
More at the linkby Staff Writers
Chicago (AFP) Dec 26, 2012
A massive winter storm system that... more
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by Staff Writers
Paris (AFP) Dec 24, 2012
From deadly cold in Russia, floods in Britain and balmy conditions that have residents in southwest France rummaging for their bathing suits, the weather has gone haywire across Europe in the days leading up to Christmas.
The mercury in Moscow has fallen to minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit) -- unseasonably cold in a country where such chills don't normally arrive until January or February.
The cold has claimed 90 lives in Russia since mid-December and 83 in Ukraine, with eastern Eurasia in the grips of an unusually icy month that has seen temperatures drop to as low as minus 50 degrees C in eastern Siberia.
Another 57 people have died from the cold in Poland this month, and officials say the icy front is probably "the most severe of the last 70 years," according to Regis Crepet, a forecaster with Meteo-Consult.
While the former Eastern bloc shivers and Britain fights severe flooding after heavy rains, holiday-makers and residents in the south of France and in Italy have dug out their shorts and swimwear to welcome an unexpected blast of beach weather.
Temperatures on Sunday climbed to 24.3 degrees C in Biarritz on the Atlantic coast, nearly 12 degrees hotter than the seasonal average, and nudging the 1983 record of 24.4 degrees C.
"These are remarkable temperatures that we do not see every year," French weather forecaster Patrick Galois said.
In Catania on Italy's Sicily coast, beach temperatures on Christmas day are forecast to climb as high as 22 degrees C in some places, while in Austria, the small village of Brand at an altitude of more than 1,000 metres (3,200 feet), noted a December 24 record of 17.7 degrees C.
Tim Palmer, professor of climate physics at Oxford University, told AFP the weather extremes are explained by the northern hemisphere "jet stream", a ribbon of air that speeds around the planet high up in the atmosphere.
The stream is akin to a length of rope "that you wiggle a bit", said Palmer -- its undulations differing from year to year.
This winter the jet stream is particularly wavy, pulling cold air in over Russia from the far north, and bringing hotter air up from the south over France and its neighbours.
"The question: Is the waviness and the unusual configuration of the jet stream the result of climate change? We don't know. The models are probably not quite good enough to tell us," said Palmer, though there was "some evidence" this may be the case.
"It is quite possible that carbon dioxide (being pumped into the atmosphere by human activity) is having the effect of making this jet stream waviness more intense," said the weather expert, but cautioned against apportioning premature blame for what may simply be localised weather glitches.
_____by Staff Writers
Paris (AFP) Dec 24, 2012
From deadly cold in Russia, floods in... more
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11 billion dollar disasters just coming under the 14 billion dollar disasters of 2011. Yet this was not important enough to be mentioned at the presidential debates in 2012, nor to be addressed by this Congress or the president of this country beyond more lipservice. Nor was it adequately addressed in climate talks in Doha this past month. A crisis already threatening our survival killing and displacing people globally that gets less coverage than Kim Kardashian. We can't have another year without action.
From Weather Underground: Hour-by-hour animation of infrared satellite images for 2012. The loop goes in slow-motion to feature such events as Hurricane Sandy, the June Derecho, Summer in March, and other top weather events of 2012. The date stamp is at lower left; you will want to make the animation full screen to see the date. Special thanks to wunderground’s Deb Mitchell for putting this together!11 billion dollar disasters just coming under the 14 billion dollar disasters of 2011.... more
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