2012: The Year of Extreme Weather

By CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE

The weather reports are in. 2012 was the hottest and the most extreme year on record in many places.
While parts of China are enduring the harshest winter in 30 years, the Antarctic is warming at an alarming rate. In Australia, out-of-control bushfires are partially the result of record-breaking weather (new colors were added to weather forecast maps, to account for the new kind of heat). In the United States, where Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New Jersey and New York and where extreme drought still lingers in the Midwest, the average temperature in 2012 was more than a whole degree Fahrenheit (or 5/9 of a degree Celsius) higher than average – shattering the record.

On Friday a long-term weather forecast for the United States was released, when the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee published a draft of the third Climate Assessment Report. Like last year’s weather, the assessment does not pull its punches.
“Climate change threatens human health and well-being in many ways, including impacts from increased extreme weather events, wildfire, decreased air quality, diseases transmitted by insects, food, and water, and threats to mental health,” write the authors as part of their key findings.
Experts from 13 federal agencies, including NASA, the State Department and the Department of Defense put together the report under the auspices of the United States Global Change Research Program.

While some predictions have been adjusted upward from previous reports, the difference in tone in this newest assessment is striking. The second assessment, published in 2009, predicted thresholds that will be crossed, while the 2013 draft presents a reality in which some of the changes are already irreversible. Read More

Colorado wildfire of 'epic proportions' displaces 32,000; tests firefighters

(CNN) -- Predicted thunderstorms could complicate efforts Wednesday to tame an explosive wildfire that has already chased some 32,000 residents from their homes near Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The fire doubled in size overnight and by Wednesday morning, 15,324 acres were burning with only 5% contained, said Rich Harvey, incident commander of the Waldo Canyon Fire.

"You saw yesterday as bad a fire behavior as you are going to see anywhere, anytime," he said, referring to extremely dry, hot and windy conditions. "We expect further trouble from the weather today."

Thunderstorms seem like a good thing in the midst of hot, arid conditions, but they bring with them strong winds that can gust in any direction. "That will make work for firefighters more difficult," Harvey said. Read More

Europe's Deep Freeze

(Time Science) by Bryan Walsh

Back at the beginning of January, I wrote that this season was already shaping up to be season that winter forgot in the U.S. About a month later, that prediction is coming true. The average temperature in the continental U.S. in January was 5.5°F above the 20th century norm, and snow was almost nonexistent — the National Weather Service reported that 157 out of 166 American cities had below-average amounts of the white stuff. The groundhog Punxsutawney Phil may have predicted six more weeks of winter when he popped up from his hole on Feb. 2, but for most of the U.S. winter never really began — and the unusually mild days seemed like a coming attraction for global warming.

Across the Atlantic, much of Europe is suffering through a winter of historic — and deadly — proportions. Over 600 people have died from the intense cold that has gripped the continent over the past few weeks, with the most severe toll recorded in Eastern Europe. Over 5,000 Russians have suffered from hypothermia or frostbite while the country has seen 20 days of unusually cold weather when temperatures fell 13°F to 25°F below normal and Moscow on Feb. 13 endured temperatures of -4°F. (It could be worse though — temperatures in the northern Russian city of Toko fell to -63°F.)

Severe Winter Weather Continues Its Hold on Europe

Severe winter weather continues to dominate in many European countries with air and road travel disrupted and gas supplies running low.
The hardest-hit country is Ukraine, where temperatures as low as minus 32 degrees Celsius have left at least 122 people dead. Oleksandr Heits, head of a rescue unit in Kiev, said many of the victims are homeless citizens of Ukraine's capital.
“There are many homeless people coming here. It is minus 20 to minus 25 degrees Celsius outside. We're heating them up with tea. Some of them are staying for a night here. We're heating, feeding them and then they leave. Some citizens are bringing clothes and food for the homeless.”
Snow and extremely low temperatures have also gripped the Balkans, where many people are trapped in their homes or vehicles and six have been reported dead. The government of Bosnia-Herzegovina declared a state of emergency Saturday. In parts of coastal Croatia, where snow is very rare, army units were deployed to rescue trapped citizens. Read More

Deep Freeze in Alaska
Even if it has been warmer than usual in much of the United States, there's no denying Alaska is seeing a real winter, even by its standards.
Anchorage is shivering through one of its coldest January's on record, while in Fairbanks, folks preparing for a sled dog race were being tested by temperatures nearly 50 degrees below zero. Farther inland, Fort Yukon has ranged from minus 50 to minus 62 degrees over the last three days, getting close to its record of minus 78...

Could you survive an extreme weather disaster?

(CNN) -- Ranee Roberts feels lucky to have survived the impact of a tornado that hit her Alabama convenience store in April.
"Before the twister hit, I sent a last text to say 'I love you' to my best friend, and then the building began to come apart around me," said the 34-year-old from Henagar.
Roberts said she knew only about two minutes before impact that the twister was heading toward her store. The tornado was rated an EF-4, with estimated winds peaking at 175 mph.
"There was no time for preparations, only prayer," she said. "I felt utterly hopeless thinking I might be spending my last moments on Earth curled up on the stockroom floor." Read More

[This is an amazing food storage and preparedness website. These two young mothers have a depth of knowledge, and if you want to explore preparedness, start here: Food Storage Made Easy]

Earthquake in Illinois? It can happen
More than 200 years ago, a series of major earthquakes struck the Mississippi River Valley along the New Madrid Seismic Zone. Recent events remind us that damaging earthquakes can happen at any time.
With more than 40 million people living and working in the region today, a major earthquake would cause widespread damage and disruption. The New Madrid Seismic Zone stretches 150 miles southwest from Cairo, Illinois through New Madrid, Missouri into Northeastern Arkansas, crossing through five states. Read More

The Great Central US ShakeOut: On February 7, 2012, at 10:15 a.m.* CST, more than one million people across nine states will participate in the 2012. Great Central U.S. ShakeOut!

Historic October Northeast storm: Epic. Incredible. Downright ridiculous.

By Andrew Freedman
Perhaps no combination of superlatives could do justice to the historic snowstorm that delivered a crippling wallop to parts of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast over the weekend. Widely referred to by its social media moniker, “Snowtober,” the storm smashed records that had stood since the beginning of the reliable instrument record in the late 1800s (and in some cases, even longer than that), and upended assumptions about what a fall nor’easter can do. The heavy, wet snow pasted onto trees still bearing foliage in many areas and weighed down power lines, knocking out power to at least three million people in the region.

The paralyzing storm overturned generations of commonly held wisdom that held that the first big snows don’t normally come before Thanksgiving for most areas, certainly not prior to Halloween. Late last week, as computer models began to lock onto a snowy forecast scenario, many meteorologists (including those of us at CWG) struggled with believing what the computers were projecting, given its unprecedented nature.

Coming in the midst of what is already one of the most extreme years in American weather history, the Snowtober event had a greater impact in some states than August’s much-hyped Tropical Storm Irene. It was the snowstorm, not Irene, which caused the largest power outage in Connecticut history, for example.

To put the storm into its proper meteorological context, consider these snowy facts. The storm brought thundersnow to New York City shortly past lunchtime on Saturday, October 29, before the city had even recorded its first freeze. Central Park received 2.9 inches of snow, with up to six inches falling in the Bronx. This was the only time in recorded history that an inch or more of snow has fallen in Central Park during the month of October. The combination of the heavy, wet snow and high winds damaged or destroyed hundreds of trees in the city. The New York Times reported that up to a thousand trees in Central Park could be lost due to storm-related damage. Read More

(Rolling Stone) Wingnut Watch: October Snow Ends Climate Change Debate It's snowing in October – so, sorry, that pretty much sews up the case against climate change. How could the planet be warming if it's getting colder? Thus, the logic of Fox News Eric Bolling, who tweeted ...

Feds may be muzzling scientist over Arctic research

More on Climate Change and Global Warming as prophesied in the I AM America Maps...~ Lori

By Bob Berwyn

SUMMIT COUNTY — Last summer’s Deepwater Horizon oil-drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico clearly showed the conflict between science, energy policy and politics, and the looming battle over drilling in Arctic waters will be no different, as a watchdog group claims that federal scientists are being muzzled and harassed over their efforts to disclose potential impacts of energy development in the fragile Arctic marine environment.

Dr. Charles Monnet, a senior federal scientist working the Arctic has been placed on administrative leave and is being investigated by the Interior Department’s Inspector General. Such inspections are not uncommon, but what’s unusual in this case is that the researcher says he has no idea what the investigators are looking for.
But a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog and whistle-blower protection group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, says the investigation is designed to interfere with scientific research that points out the dangers of Arctic drilling. In a scientific misconduct complaint filed last week, the group charged that Monnet is “being hounded in a political attempt to impugn his observations on polar bears’ vulnerability to retreating sea ice.” Read More

Extreme weather: the new normal  Climate experts warn that setting weather records, be they for high or low temperatures, or record amounts of rain or snow as well as record drought, will likely be the new normal. According to a UN report released July 5, humanity is close to breaching the sustainability of Earth, and needs a technological revolution greater and faster than the industrial revolution in order to avoid "a major planetary catastrophe". The report said that major investments need to be made in developing, and scaling up, clean energy technologies, sustainable farming and forestry techniques, the climate-proofing of infrastructure, and technologies aimed at waste reduction, in order to shift civilization away from dependence on oil. Read More

Historic dust storm sweeps Arizona, turns day into night

(Reuters) - Phoenix brushed itself off and returned to normal on Wednesday after a "historic dust storm" swept over the area, sending residents scrambling for cover, halting drivers and delaying flights. Day turned into night as the billowy plumes of dust rolled over the mountains and clogged the skies over and around Phoenix in the late afternoon and into the evening on Tuesday, according to meteorologists. "A very large and historic dust storm moved through a large swatch of Arizona," the National Weather Service office in Phoenix said in a statement posted on its website, calling it an "impressive event." Residents rushed inside as sand from the storm blasted the area in winds of up to 50 miles per hour, NWS reported. Near zero visibility forced drivers to stop on area roads until the worst of the storm passed. Read More

Residents Told to Flee as Arizona Fire Spreads

New York Times
GREER, Ariz. — There was smoke — huge white plumes of it — as far as the eye could see, so much that the majestic views of this resort community were lost and the lungs of area residents breathed it in and coughed it out. And that smoke meant that off in the surrounding hills, there was fire. The nation’s largest wildfire is just a few miles from Greer, a tiny town of log cabins nestled in the woods in eastern Arizona. Those cabins are empty now, after the authorities trudged through the smoke on Monday afternoon warning residents that the Wallow Fire, which had burned up more than 233,000 acres in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest as of Tuesday morning, was surging their way. Residents of Alpine, Nutrioso, Bonita and other mountain communities enveloped in the smoke have received similarly urgent warnings to get out. Read More

The Horseshoe Two fire over in the Chiricahua Mountains keeps on burning and burning and burning…now over 100,000 acres.

Chiricahua Mountains … another “sky island” turned to ash The Horseshoe Two Fire has grown to over 100,000 acres as well as of late Sunday – only the fifth fire to do so in Arizona history. Over 1,000 persons are fighting the blaze, officials report, with 38 engines assisting as well. The inferno, which is also human-caused, has burned for nearly a month, injuring seven and costing nearly $28 million to fight. This fire is approximately 55 percent contained as of Sunday evening...

COMMENTARY: As you can see from the map of what has been burnt, a great majority of the Chiricahua Mountain forest lands have been burned. By the time this fire is over, the pine forest may be pretty much gone in that range. Back in the early 1960′s I spent some time at Camp Pine in the Chiricahuas…which is located below Barfoot mountain. The camp is saved (so far) but Barfoot is burned. It will probably be 100 years or more before that country looks anything like what I remember. The same story is being repeated all over the West and especially in Arizona. We have moved into a time of massive fires…major portions of the pine forest high country is gone. If this trend continues ponderosa pines will just be a memory here. Our “sky islands” will look more like barren volcanic islands. The oak forest south of Tucson are also going up in flames. We’ve had 6 fires down here this season with the Murphy Fire still going strong and headed into the Atascosa Mountains. Maybe this is a sign of global warming. Whether human caused or not, the southwest has always been experiencing climate change…swinging from wetter times tro extreme drougth. The bark beetles have not helped the situation. And neither did 100 years of aggressive fire prevention that allowed our forests to become giant dried out wood piles. Read More

Crews Work to Protect Communities from Arizona Wildfires

Smoke fills the sky casting an eerie orange glow over the town of Alpine as the Wallow Fire burns in the Bear Wallow Wilderness southwest of Alpine, Ariz.

TUCSON, Ariz. –  Crews on Saturday worked to protect several small Arizona communities from two large wildfires by clearing away brush near homes and setting fires aimed at robbing the blazes of their fuel. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer called the Wallow Fire, near the White Mountain community of Alpine, "absolutely frightening." The fire grew to 218 square miles, or more than 140,000 acres, becoming the third largest in state history, with its smoke visible well into New Mexico and parts of southern Colorado. Fire officials said they had zero containment of the fire near the New Mexico-Arizona state line, which has forced an unknown number of people to evacuate. "It was unbelievable -- the expansion of the smoke," Brewer said after an aerial tour of the blaze and a briefing from fire team's commander in Springerville. Read More

This is your Earth on gravity

This lumpy blob is a gravity map of our planet, showing an exaggerated view of where sea level would be if it weren't for waves, tides, currents, or weather. The European Space Agency's GOCE satellite has created the most detailed planetary gravity map ever, and it could help us understand everything from climate change to earthquakes.

To get all technical on you, this image is showing what's called the geoid. If you imagine the Earth's surface totally smoothed out, you'd get a nice round reference ellipsoid of our planet. And if you then take that reference ellipsoid and squish it around to account for differences in gravity caused by land masses and mountains and denser regions of rock and such, you get the geoid. Read More

Freight And Container Handling Halted By Extreme Weather  SOUTH AFRICA – 2011 may well be the year the world remembers as the one when everything stopped due to natural disasters as so far we have seen a catalogue of unforeseen catastrophe’s affect the freight industry and so much more besides. Some things however never change and windy conditions have resulted in cargo operations being halted at container depots in Cape Town as shipping companies struggled to maintain ocean freight schedules...

Snow Falls on San Francisco After a 35-Year Wait

SAN FRANCISCO — As a Pacific storm coincided with a blast of cold Canadian air over their fair city, residents here saw snow late Friday, a long-absent visitor for a city accustomed to fog, sweater-weather and other nearly bone-chilling accoutrements.

Predictions had called for the possibility of the first significant snowfall in San Francisco since February 1976, when all of an inch fell, according to the National Weather Service. And just before midnight, several high-lying city neighborhoods, including Twin Peaks, at some 900 feet, reported light snowfall.

The scattering of flakes capped a weeklong flurry of activity among civic leaders and commuters — as well as dreams of flying down some of the city’s famous inclines. Read More

Magnetic Polar Shifts Causing Massive Global Superstorms

(CHICAGO) - NASA has been warning about it…scientific papers have been written about it…geologists have seen its traces in rock strata and ice core samples…

Now "it" is here: an unstoppable magnetic pole shift that has sped up and is causing life-threatening havoc with the world's weather.

Forget about global warming—man-made or natural—what drives planetary weather patterns is the climate and what drives the climate is the sun's magnetosphere and its electromagnetic interaction with a planet's own magnetic field.

When the field shifts, when it fluctuates, when it goes into flux and begins to become unstable anything can happen. And what normally happens is that all hell breaks loose.

Magnetic polar shifts have occurred many times in Earth's history. It's happening again now to every planet in the solar system including Earth. Read More

Note: The earth is currently under the influence of Ardra--a sign in Vedic Astrology--which means the Teardrop and rules vicious storms. This is the Astrological reason behind the extreme weather and the Blizzard of 2011. The storms will lessen when Ketu (the moon's south node) moves into a new sign, Mrigasira, on March 6, 2011.

Blizzard roars through US's snow-weary midsection

Origin of the North Atlantic Freeze

"It is not clear whether the decreased polarity between the Azores High and the Iceland Low may also be related to a weakening of the North Atlantic Thermohaline Current (NATC), emanating from the Gulf Stream. If and when the NATC collapses, the North Atlantic would undergo longer term cooling..."

Dr Andrew Glikson, Earth and paleo-climate scientist at the Australian National University, writes: As predicted by the IPCC-2001 report, global warming trends tracking toward 2100 are likely to be expressed by an increase in weather variability. Expect these to include a series of heat waves, fires, floods, hurricanes and cold fronts, the consequence of an increase in the energy level (temperature) of the atmosphere/ocean system:
For the uninitiated, the weather and the climate are not to be confused. Weather events comprise transient and regional variations in atmospheric conditions on a scale of a few days to few weeks, whereas climate trends occur on a global multi-annual to decade-long time scales.
The effects of global warming, at a mean of +0.8 degrees C since the early 20th century but +4 to +5 degrees C in the polar regions, include enhanced collision of warm and cold air masses, which can perpetrate snow storms. The current North Atlantic freeze is no exception. Read More

Huge winter storm slams U.S. Midwest, Northeast

From New Mexico to Maine!
(Reuters) - A huge winter storm pummelled the United States on Wednesday, bringing parts of the Midwest to a standstill, delivering another wintry swipe to the Northeast, and disrupting businesses, flights and other transport.

Major automakers shut down plants in six Midwestern states and Ontario. The storm also paralyzed grain and livestock movement.

The storm, touching some 30 states and a third of the U.S. population, stretched from New Mexico to Maine as it moved towards the northeast where an ice storm wreaked havoc on New York City's morning commuters.

Chicago was set to get its biggest snowfall in more than 40 years. Some 20 inches (54 cm) of snow was forecast to pile up by late Wednesday. Snowfalls of a foot (30 cm) or more were recorded from Oklahoma City to Kansas City and Indianapolis.

The website flightaware.com, which tracks airline cancellation information, said more than 5,000 flights had been cancelled in the United States so far on Wednesday. That followed thousands of flight cancellations on Tuesday.

Power was out for more than 375,000 customers from Texas to New England, and into Canada.

Treacherous ice, rather than deep snow, hit New York City. The heavily used commuter rail service between New Jersey and New York was suspended due to ice build-up on the overhead power lines, authorities said. Read More

Thundersnow in the Blizzard of 2011

Brrr! Bitter freeze follows snowstorm in central U.S.

Australian Dollar Falls as Cyclone With 180 mph Winds Hits Coast

Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Australia’s dollar fell from almost a one-month high as Cyclone Yasi, with winds stronger than Hurricane Katrina that hit New Orleans, reached the country’s northeast coastline.

The Aussie weakened against the greenback as thousands of people evacuated low-lying areas in the city of Cairns before Yasi makes landfall. The storm is estimated to be more powerful than a 2006 storm that wiped out most of Australia’s banana crop and devastated sugar cane fields.

“The cyclone is probably weighing on Aussie,” said Amelia Bourdeau, a currency strategist in Stamford, Connecticut, at UBS AG. “In addition to the floods in Queensland, this may be something that negatively impacts the first quarter gross domestic product in Australia.” Read More

Dead Birds Fall from Sky in Sweden; Millions of Dead Fish found in Maryland, Brazil, New Zealand

Millions of dead fish surfaced in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay in the U.S., Tuesday, while similar unexplained mass fish deaths occurred across the world in Brazil and New Zealand. On Wednesday, 50 birds were found dead on a street in Sweden. The news come after recents reports of mysterious massive bird and fish deaths days prior in Arkansas and Louisiana.

The Baltimore Sun reports that an estimated 2 million fish were found dead in the Chesapeake Bay, mostly adult spot with some juvenile croakers in the mix, as well. Maryland Department of the Environment spokesperson Dawn Stoltzfus says "cold-water stress" is believed to be the culprit. She told The Sun that similar large winter fish deaths were documented in 1976 and 1980. Read More

Bruising storm leaves damage across the state

Arizona: "High winds late Thursday blew a huge tent sheltering the cars onto a nearby freeway at about the same time there were unconfirmed reports of a tornado in the area..."

Arizona took stock of the damage Friday from a powerful winter storm that swept a 6-year-old boy to his presumed death, flooded a handful of communities, caved in roofs in Flagstaff and made a shambles of a host of expensive collector cars set for auction.
Though much of Arizona, including the Valley, was relieved that the brutish winter storm had not delivered as strong a punch as was feared, there remained a possibility that more precipitation could be on its way to some parts of the state. The Phoenix forecast calls for partly cloudy skies today with a chance of showers, while more storms could hit the high country next week. Read More

Extreme Winter Weather

Scotland Still Preparing For Extreme Weather
After almost a month in operation, during which the country experienced its worst weather in decades. The last meeting of the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Scottish Government Resilience took place today. Rural Affairs secretary Richard Lochhead praised the continuing work to address and monitor the aftermath of the four-week freeze and warned that, although the worst of the recent cold snap may be over, we are still only halfway through winter and should remain prepared for ice and snow. Read More

Snowstorms Cause Travel Chaos In China
Four people have died and more than 1.6 million have been affected by blizzards and extreme cold weather in northwestern China. Read More

California Tornado Warning: More Intense Weather Expected
Destructive weather seems to be in the news constantly and the weather in California is causing big headaches for residents of Southern California. Southern California's Long Beach, Los Angeles, San Diego, Huntington Beach and San Pedro were some of the areas affected by high winds, massive rainfall and a tornado that touched down outside of Los Angeles. Read More

Beijing battles heaviest snowfall in decades with shovels and bamboo

No plows? No problem. Residents, workers, and soldiers in China’s capital dug through eight inches of snow using shovels and – at the new international airport – bamboo twig brushes.
By Peter Ford
The Chinese capital is not used to snow. Winters here are among the driest I have ever experienced. So when a storm on Sunday dumped nearly eight inches of powder onto the city – the most since 1951 – life pretty much ground to a halt.
By Monday morning, though, armies of citizens (and the Army itself in some districts) were clearing the aftermath using the tactic that the Chinese so often use in tackling unusual challenges – mass manpower. Read Entire Article