Storms

NOAA images show wind farms distort weather radar data, affecting their primary mission of forecasting and safety

Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That
Thu, 07 Nov 2013 21:54 UTC

"Chaotic wind velocities associated with the rotating turbine blades triggers the doppler radar mesocyclone detection algorithm"

Note: this essay was written by the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Burlington, Vermont and tipped to me by a reader. Vermont's wind farm acreage pales in comparison to places like the Texas and Oklahoma, where there are literally thousands of acres of wind farms right in the middle of tornado alley. I've been there and seen them firsthand.

Certified Consulting Meteorologist Mike Smith writes:

"While driving to Norman, OK recently I saw the newest "wind farm" to the west of Interstate 35 southwest of Tonkawa. Wind farms show up as bright ground clutter on weather radars and here it is."

One has to wonder just how much trouble wind farms are causing the nation's doppler radar warning system. It looks like a classic case of the law of unintended consequences at work. - Anthony

National Weather Service WSR-88D Radar and Wind Farm Impacts

Introduction

The most valuable tool used by the National Weather Service (NWS) to detect precipitation is the radar. Radar stands for Radio, Detection, and Ranging, and has been used to detect precipitation since the 1940′s, with most of the technology coming from the military.

'Two out of five corpses are children' says survivor of Philippines typhoon Haiyan

David Eimer
The Telegraph
Sun, 10 Nov 2013 12:33 UTC

© REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco
Tacloban City, where two out of five killed by Typhoon Haiyan were children, according to aid worker

Survivor of what may be the strongest storm ever to make landfall tells of terrible destruction in Tacloban City

Only when Lynette Lim started to walk into Tacloban City, a few hours after 'Super' Typhoon Haiyan wreaked unimaginable devastation across the Philippines, did she realise how lucky she herself had been to survive the storm.

"Everything was just flattened," said Miss Lim, the Asia communications manager for Save the Children, who arrived in Tacloban with a group of aid workers assessing the potential need for help just 24 hours before Haiyan smashed into the city on Friday.

"The water was knee high and there were bodies floating in the streets. I saw several dead children. I'd say two out of every five corpses I saw were kids. Most of the houses were wooden and they were completely destroyed.

"There were trees and electrical poles strewn across the road and corrugated iron roofing that had been ripped off houses."

Making her way through the villages south of Tacloban, she discovered the full extent of the horrific damage caused by winds that came close to 200mph, and storm surges that sent waves as high as the second storey of houses crashing ashore.

"Everywhere we went, people told us between 10 and 50 people had been killed in their communities," said Miss Lim. "Most of the families who had decided to evacuate ahead of the storm left one member behind to guard their homes and possessions. Unfortunately, most of them died."

Deadly, rare tropical cyclone hits Somalia

Becky Oskin
LiveScience
Tue, 12 Nov 2013 14:31 UTC

© NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC
A slow-moving tropical cyclone destroyed hundreds of homes and farms in Somalia.

A slow-moving tropical storm pounded the Somalia coast this weekend, a rare hit for the war-torn country that killed more than 100 people and devastated coastal communities.

The unnamed tropical storm made landfall on Sunday (Nov. 10) north of Eyl in the Puntland state, a semiautonomous region that typically receives less than 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain every year.

The storm, designated Tropical Cyclone 03A, was forecast to dump a year's worth of rain on Puntland this week and hit the shore with winds of 46 mph (74 km/h).

Weak storms such as Cyclone 3A can wreak havoc along the arid African coast because they trigger flash floods, said Amato Evan, an atmospheric scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

"Even a very weak storm can cause huge damage and loss of life in this area," Evan told LiveScience. "In an area that doesn't receive a lot of rainfall in general, a storm that moves very, very slowly and dumps a lot of rain in one place for a long time can be particularly deadly."

'January temperatures' in November? First snows hit East Coast as arctic blast sweeps across the U.S.

Daily Mail UK
Tue, 12 Nov 2013 08:32 UTC

A biting arctic blast rattled from the Midwest to the Northeast this morning, sending temperatures plummeting and blanketing some areas with snow and sleet. Parts of New York, Chicago and New England, among others, are seeing the first snows of the season while nearly a third of the country can expect temperatures 10 to 20 degrees below normal for this time of the year, meteorologists warned.

Temperatures in the Great Plains and Upper Midwest dropped as low as single digits on Tuesday morning, while Texas and mid-Atlantic states saw temperatures in the 20s, NBC reported.

In Chicago on Monday, the National Weather service recorded 0.4 inches of snow - the first of the season and a week ahead of schedule - and today, the temperature is expected to reach 24 degrees, which is 11 below normal for the date. And the Weather Service reported that even the Southeast can expect surprisingly low temperatures in the teens.

Low temperatures: Nearly a third of the country is experiencing temperatures between 10 and 20 degrees lower than normal for this time of year. This map shows the temperatures this morning

Additional images

Typhoon Haiyan overshadows UN climate change talks in Poland

Monika Scislowska
The Independent
Tue, 12 Nov 2013 07:05 UTC

Philippine delegate weeps at UN climate conference

The devastation caused by Typhoon Haiyan cast a gloom over UN climate talks Monday as the envoy from the Philippines broke down in tears and announced he would fast until a "meaningful outcome is in sight."

Naderev "Yeb" Sano's emotional appeal was met with a standing ovation at the start of two-week talks in Warsaw where more than 190 countries will try to lay the groundwork for a new pact to fight global warming.

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres also made reference to the "devastating impact" of the typhoon in her opening speech, and urged delegates to "go that extra mile" in their negotiations.

Scientists say single weather events cannot conclusively be linked to global warming. Also, the link between man-made warming and hurricane activity is unclear, though rising sea levels are expected to make low-lying nations more vulnerable to storm surges.

Nevertheless, extreme weather such as hurricanes often prompt calls for urgency at the UN talks.

Comment: What happened in the Philippines as a result of the recent typhoon is tragic. It is therefore also important to direct the focus where it belongs and not use this loss of life to propagate false ideas about climate change.

Warming has occurred, also on some of our neigbouring planets such as Mars, but that warming has stopped here on planet Earth and it looks more like a global cooling is on the cards as the activity on the sun is getting eerily quiet.

As for the Philippines, the lack of sufficient infrastructure has more to do with the extent of the damage seen than global warming, and that lack of sufficient infrastructure is in no small amount due to the in all but name colonial exploitation of the Philippines by the ponerological elite of the world.

Rising global temperatures on Mars melt hints at solar-system-wide, not human, cause for warming
German scientists: Solar cycle 24 points to Dalton or Maunder-like minimum, boding ill for a climate cooling
Shock Doctrine in action: Anglo-Saxon elites send warships, destroyers and special forces to 'protect' crisis-hit Philippines

Accumulated Cyclone Energy of all cyclones below normal

Bjørn Lomborg
Watts up with that
Tue, 12 Nov 2013 06:23 UTC

It is phenomenal. Climate campaigners like [John] Vidal in Guardian keeps arguing that the terrible typhoon Haiyan shows we need to do more about global warming.

Yet, even *after* Haiyan, the Accumulated Cyclone Energy of all cyclones in the Western North Pacific is below normal (99%, http://models.weatherbell.com/tropical.php). The global ACE is at 74%.

As you can see in the graph below (updated Nov 10), both Northern Hemisphere ACE and global ACE are at the lowest since the 1970s.

Comment: It is also worth pointing out that there has been no warming for the last 15+ years and that it looks more likely that we are entering a cooling climate if not a full blown ice age.

Shock Doctrine in action: Anglo-Saxon elites send warships, destroyers and special forces to 'protect' crisis-hit Philippines

The Guardian
Tue, 12 Nov 2013 05:04 UTC

HMS Daring and USS George Washington lead military push to help relief effort with drinking water and air support

Britain and the US are sending warships to help relief efforts in the Philippines after typhoon Haiyan left thousands dead.

The Philippine government raised the official death toll to 1,744 on Tuesday, but the figure is expected to climb drastically, with authorities estimating that the storm killed 10,000 or more across a vast region of the country, and displaced about 660,000 others.

David Cameron said HMS Daring, which carries equipment to make drinking water from seawater, would provide humanitarian assistance and flights from its onboard helicopter. At least one Boeing C-17 military transport aircraft would be allocated to move humanitarian aid to areas that are most in need and hardest to reach, the prime minister said.

"HMS Daring, currently deployed near Singapore, will shortly be heading at full speed towards the disaster zone with further support from an RAF C-17 which will be a powerful help to the relief operation," Cameron told a dinner attended by business leaders in London.

Comment: The US.-UK regime has some nerve posturing as the Philippines' saviour. Having colonized and indirectly (and sometimes very directly) militarily occupied the country for over 100 years, the Anglo-Saxon elites are substantially to blame for Philippines never developing adequate infrastructure to cope with typhoons and everything else Nature throws at it.

Typhoon Haiyan nears Vietnam, 600,000 evacuated: officials

The International News
Sun, 10 Nov 2013 14:32 UTC

More than 600,000 people were evacuated as super typhoon Haiyan veered towards Vietnam, authorities said Sunday, after the storm smashed through the Philippines killing thousands and causing widespread devastation.

"We have evacuated more than 174,000 households, which is equivalent to
more than 600,000 people," an official report by Vietnam's flood and storm control department said Sunday.

The storm is expected to strike on Monday morning after changing course
prompting mass evacuations in northern Nghe An province around 230 kilometres (145 miles) from the captial Hanoi, the update said.

However, many of the estimated 200,000 evacuated in four central provinces on Saturday have been allowed to return to their homes.

Haiyan "is quickly moving north and northwest, travelling at a speed of up to 35 kilometres per hour", the country's weather bureau added in a statement.

The weather system -- one of the most intense typhoons on record when it
tore into the Philippines -- has weakened over the South China Sea and is expected to hit as a weaker category 1 storm, meteorologists added.

Super-typhoon Haiyan leaves "at least" 10,000 dead in Philippines

Kate Hodal
The Observer, UK
Sun, 10 Nov 2013 06:49 UTC

© Dennis Sabangan/EPA
Residents search for belongings in the wreckage of Tacloban.
Estimated death toll soars as path of destruction leaves many parts of Philippines inaccessible to government and aid officials

At least 10,000 people are thought to have died in the central Philippine province of Leyte after Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest storms ever to make landfall, lashed the area, swallowing coastal towns, a senior police official said early on Sunday morning.

About 70-80% of the buildings in the area in the path of Haiyan in Leyte province was destroyed, said chief superintendent Elmer Soria. "We had a meeting last night with the governor and the other officials. The governor said based on their estimate, 10,000 died," he said.

Tacloban city administrator Tecson Lim said that the death toll in that city alone "could go up to 10,000". Tacloban is the provincial capital of Leyte, with a population of more than 200,000. The Philippine Red Cross said in Tacloban bodies had been found "piled up around the roads" and in churches. Between 300 and 400 bodies had been recovered, Lim said.

Comment: Update 10 November 2013:

The wind speed was not recorded at 395km/h, as we previously reported. At least, we have found no independent confirmation of that. Instead it appears that some broadcasters such as the BBC mistakenly translated 235km/h into '235mph' and the storm suddenly became something bigger than it actually was.

Anthony Watts has more on this here.

Nevertheless, the storm does appear to have wrought severe destruction on another defenceless country whose leaders are more concerned with appeasing the CEO Gods of Multinational Corporations than developing infrastructure to mitigate Nature's forces and improve the people's well-being.

10,000 feared killed in Philippines by super typhoon Haiyan

RT
Sun, 10 Nov 2013 01:34 UTC

© Reuters / Erik De Castro
A view of destroyed houses after super Typhoon Haiyan battered Tacloban city in central Philippines November 9, 2013

An estimated 10,000 people might have been killed in the central Philippine province of Leyte alone, which was almost completely destroyed by the powerful typhoon Haiyan, local authorities said.

The typhoon has devastated up to 80 percent of the Leyte province area as it ripped through the Philippines, Chief Superintendent Elmer Soria told Reuters.

"We had a meeting last night with the governor and other officials. The governor said based on their estimate, 10,000 died," Soria said.

The Red Cross said earlier that 1,200 people we confirmed dead in the Philippines.

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Storms

NOAA images show wind farms distort weather radar data, affecting their primary mission of forecasting and safety

'Two out of five corpses are children' says survivor of Philippines typhoon Haiyan

Deadly, rare tropical cyclone hits Somalia

'January temperatures' in November? First snows hit East Coast as arctic blast sweeps across the U.S.

Typhoon Haiyan overshadows UN climate change talks in Poland

Accumulated Cyclone Energy of all cyclones below normal

Shock Doctrine in action: Anglo-Saxon elites send warships, destroyers and special forces to 'protect' crisis-hit Philippines

Typhoon Haiyan nears Vietnam, 600,000 evacuated: officials

Super-typhoon Haiyan leaves "at least" 10,000 dead in Philippines

10,000 feared killed in Philippines by super typhoon Haiyan

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