I grew up in Calgary and a small bedroom community west of it called Bragg Creek. Â This event is not on a par with the flooding of a couple years ago, but it still qualifies as "freaky". Freak Summer Snowstorm in Calgary Leaves 30,000 Without Power.
Filed under "data can be cool" This is a graph of wind and air pressure at a weather station as a hurricane passes directly over. Â Notice the double spikes as each eye wall passes overhead.
So, the bad news is that it is looking increasingly likely that the world will experience a very strong El Nino event this 2014-2015 winter (winter in the N. hemisphere, summer down under). There is even talk of a super-El Nino, one to rival 1998's phenomenal event. Lots of good information on that here at … Continue reading Bad news, good news, bad news.
I am a longtime fan of ThingsBreak though his/her posts are a bit of a rarity these days. The latest post is a very good one on the recent debut of Nate Silver's 538 blog. I have read a few now and "Nate Silver falls off" is the one to choose if you only only choose … Continue reading 538 Broken Things
As most of you know already, England's dramatic sequence of winter storms since December has resulted in its worst winter on record. England's records go back 248 years. (Al Jazeera is reporting 300 years). Who knows if such a series of storms has ever occurred since the climate stabilized after the last glaciation ended some … Continue reading England’s worst winter weather in at least 248 years
Some remarkable weather in North America recently as most of you probably know. Check out Jeff Masters for some of the details. Record warmth and precipitation in Alaska As of January 26, 13.83" of precipitation had fallen in Valdez during the month of January. This is more than 8" above average for this point in … Continue reading Too cold for you in Texas? Move to Alaska!
[Update: it seems clear that records were broken after all as has been pointed out in the comments. So we are only left with Fox's reaction and youtube fog-pee videos. And let's face it, Fox's reaction was pretty predictable...] The recent cold snap was indeed remarkable and the media was buzzing about it for days. … Continue reading Yes, it was a remarkable cold snap, but in what way?
This is just a quick post to suggest an answer to the question posed by Greg Laden here: should we have a category 6 and above for hurricanes. My answer is no. I say this in agreement with many of the points expressed in Greg's post, mainly that category 5 basically means total destruction and … Continue reading Should the Saffir-Simpson scale go beyond 5?
While reading an AP attributed article on Huffington post about Super Typhoon Haiyan (also known as Yolanda), I did a double take at this paragraph: Weather officials said Haiyan had sustained winds of 235 kilometers per hour (147 miles per hour), with gusts of 275 kph (170 mph), when it made landfall. By those measurements, … Continue reading AP Misreports Haiyan as Category 4
(the featured image above is of the once aptly named Rio Grande, now referred to by locals as the "Rio Sand") The LA Times has a very chilling piece on New Mexico's not so chilling climate change. Here are a few quotes to pique your interest: "All of New Mexico is officially in a drought, … Continue reading New Mexico’s extreme drought
A Few Things Illconsidered 