Storms
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Snowflake

New Mexico snowstorm disrupts travel, forces road closures

Pam Wright
The Weather Channel
Fri, 28 Dec 2018 20:07 UTC
NM snow storm
A snowstorm blasted New Mexico Friday with blizzard conditions that disrupted travel and forced the closure of several major roadways.

Albuquerque became ground zero for the storm that has halted air traffic and forced the Albuquerque Police Department to close its Foothills Substation because of the weather.

On Friday, blizzard warnings were issued for Albuquerque through Saturday morning. The National Weather Service office in Albuquerque could not find any blizzard warnings ever issued for the city of 558,000 in its limited database.

Driving conditions are reportedly treacherous in many parts of the state, particularly in south-central portions of the Land of Enchantment state, the Associated Press reports.

Friday morning, Interstate 40 was shut down from Moriarty to Clines Corners, the Albuquerque Journal reports. The closure impacted 24 miles of the roadway.

Numerous flights were delayed or canceled at the Albuquerque International Sunport, according to the airport's website.

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Cow

Over 50 cows mysteriously found dead in India's Ganjam district


KalingaTV
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
mysterious cattle deaths Ganjam district india
The cattle were seen grazing just like another day, but their behaviour changed after a few minutes and they suddenly fell to the ground.

At least 50 cows were mysteriously found dead near Landaduali village under Aska block in Ganjam District on Thursday. The incident has triggered panic among the locals.

According to reports, five cowmen of the village were engaged in grazing over hundreds of cows this morning. The cattle were seen grazing just like another day, but their behaviour changed after a few minutes and they suddenly fell to the ground.

Farmers and concerned residents rushed to the area to find out how such a tragedy could have happened with their cattle.

Comment: Officials have said the deaths could be attributed to pneumonia as the animals were exposed to incessant rain triggered by Cyclone Phethai. 259 cattle, including 223 calves, have died in different places of Ganjam district after being exposed to rain for days.

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Windsock

70 homes damaged after tornadoes, straight line winds blow across Florida

Brian Lada
AccuWeather.com
Fri, 21 Dec 2018 12:13 UTC
Florida storm damage
© Polk Fire Rescue
Severe storms swept across Florida on Thursday, damaging dozens of homes ahead of the holiday weekend.

Up to 70 homes were damaged in Zephyrhills, Florida, on Thursday morning as severe storms rolled through. Paso County Emergency Management said that this damage was caused by straight-line winds, not a tornado.

Three tornadoes were reported elsewhere in Florida during Thursday's storms, but no significant damage was reported.

Only one injury was reported in Polk County, Florida, following the tornadoes.


Comment: This video shows a huge wave slamming into beachfront property in Sanibel, Florida.


A few days ago giant waves slammed into the California coast with expectations for conditions so extreme that the National Weather Service in the San Francisco Bay tweeted, "STAY WELL BACK FROM THE OCEAN OR RISK CERTAIN DEATH." The urgency highlights the unusual risk posed by this round of mega-swells.


A local resident, Joe Como, comments in the video below that the waves were, "the biggest he had seen in 40 years living in the Bay area."



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Windsock

British Columbia windstorm: Massive power outages, at least one killed


The Weather Network
Fri, 21 Dec 2018 04:05 UTC
BC windstorm
© Véro Hamel/FacebookA tree fell along the Sea-to-Sky Highway near Horseshoe Bay in the early afternoon on Thursday. A windstorm has knocked out power to more than 100,000 people and led to widespread ferry cancellations between the mainland and Vancouver Island.
More than 335,000 BC Hydro customers have lost power as another "significant" windstorm batters B.C.'s South Coast, also leading to widespread ferry closures and shutting down access to parts of Vancouver's Stanley Park for the sake of public safety.

The entire southwest corner of the province has been under a wind warning since Thursday morning, with Environment Canada forecasting winds up to 100 km/h in the afternoon - especially in exposed coastal areas.

Winds that strong can toss loose objects around and rip shingles from roofs.

"This is a significant windstorm and could cause widespread damage," the agency's warning said.

More than half of the power outages, according to BC Hydro, are across the Lower Mainland and Sunshine Coast. The rest are across Vancouver Island and mostly caused by falling trees downing power lines.

Utility spokesperson Tanya Fish said anyone who sees a power line on the ground needs to stay back and phone 911. The Vancouver Park Board said access to Stanley Park was closed due to the risk of falling branches.

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Tornado2

Unusual Washington state twister caps year of tornado oddities

Jonathan Belles
The Weather Channel
Wed, 19 Dec 2018 23:42 UTC
Port orchard tornado
© Daily MailExtremely rare EF2 tornado rips through Seattle area, strongest to hit Washington state since 1986.
Tuesday's bizarre twister outside of Seattle, Washington, was just one of a slew of tornadic oddities in 2018.

The Port Orchard tornado was rated EF2 with winds of 120 to 130 mph by the National Weather Service in Seattle. This touchdown is the first EF2/F2 or stronger tornado in the state since May 13, 1986, according to the Tornado History Project.


Comment: Extremely rare EF2 tornado rips through Seattle area, strongest to hit Washington state since 1986 - UPDATE


This tornado is likely to be the last on the list of odd tornadoes in 2018. A few other weird twister headlines from this year:
  • New Hampshire Records Second-Longest Tornado Path in May
  • Wyoming Gets Hit by Three EF3 Tornadoes in Two Months
  • Connecticut Sets State Tornado Record with Nine Tornadoes
  • More Than Two Dozen Tornadoes Touch Down in Illinois in December
    • The Port Orchard tornado was one of the strongest to strike the Evergreen State. Since 1954, 15 strong tornadoes - F2/EF2 or stronger - have have touched down in the state, including three F/EF3 tornadoes.

    The most recent tornado in Washington state was in Spokane County in 2016, and the last December tornado in the state was in Clark County on Dec. 10, 2015.

    Washington is one of the least tornado-impacted states in the country, receiving an average of two tornadoes each year.

    Comment: So what is causing these tornadic oddities? Well, the model of cyclonic activity based solely on heat and moisture is outdated, and the likely explanation relates to our quieting sun, increased meteor dust, and the changing behaviour of electro-magnetism on our planet.

    In the book Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection Pierre Lescaudron and Laura Knight-Jadcyzk explain this in greater detail:
    The accumulation of cometary dust in the Earth's atmosphere plays an important role in the increase of tornadoes, cyclones, hurricanes and their associated rainfalls, snowfalls and lightning. To understand this mechanism we must first take into account the electric nature of hurricanes, tornadoes and cyclones, which are actually manifestations of the same electric phenomenon at different scales or levels of power. Because of this similarity, we will refer to these three phenomena collectively as 'air spirals' in the following discussion.

    McCanney describes the electric nature of hurricanes in these terms:

    A simple model showed that these [tropical] storms formed when electrical currents connected between the ionosphere and the top of the clouds. [...] the reason hurricanes lost power when they approached land was that the powering electrical current from the ionosphere to the cloud tops and to the Earth's surface had no connection (anode) while over the ocean [...] so it drew up vast surface areas of ionized air from the ocean surface and sucked them up a central column (the spinning vortex was caused by the moist air rising 'up the drain') [...] whereas the land provided a 'ground' for the current and therefore it shunted out the storm's power source. [...] I also calculated that the warm water theory for hurricane development lacked sufficient energy to account for the energy in these massive storms. We later witnessed hurricanes on Mars where there is no water at all. Clearly, the warm water concept did not work [...]1

    waterspout tornado
    © Fred K. Smith, National Geographic.A waterspout parallels a lightning strike over Lake Okeechobee in Florida.
    From this perspective, air spirals are simply the manifestation of electric discharges between the ionosphere and the Earth's surface. The image above shows a waterspout and a lightning bolt occurring in the same place at the same time, suggesting that indeed electric potential difference between the clouds at the top of the picture and the ground at the bottom is what powers both the lightning and the tornado.
    Once a rare phenomenon, waterspouts are increasingly common these days in some areas. At the same time, vortexes of water, fire and dust are appearing in very unusual places. There is pretty clear-cut evidence that cyclonic winds are all essentially electrical in nature. Heat exchange plays a role, but more as a side-effect to the distribution of electric charge potential between mediums - ground-to-air, water-to-air, fire-to-air, whatever. See also:

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    Cloud Precipitation

    Record-setting rain this year across the United States

    Judson Jones
    CNN
    Wed, 19 Dec 2018 13:21 UTC
    Mike Pollack searches for a drain in the yard of his flooded waterfront home a day after Hurricane Florence hit the area, on September 15, 2018 in Wilmington, North Carolina.
    © Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesMike Pollack searches for a drain in the yard of his flooded waterfront home a day after Hurricane Florence hit the area, on September 15, 2018 in Wilmington, North Carolina.
    Places like Washington, DC, have seen the most rain they have ever seen in a calendar year.

    In fact, 78 cities across the United States are on track to have their wettest years on record. At least 16 of those have already broken their yearly records, according to data from NOAA Regional Climate Centers.

    The continental United States as a whole is on pace to be the fifth wettest year on record and eight states are on track to have their wettest years on record.

    Much of the Mid-Atlantic has observed 20 inches above what they get in an average year.

    Comment: See also: Record rainfall! North Carolina city hits 100 inches of rain for 2018

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    Cloud Precipitation

    Hockey-ball-size hailstones smash Sydney, Australia

    Jessica Dunne and Viki Gerova
    Ten Daily
    Thu, 20 Dec 2018 11:53 UTC
    The size of the hail that just fell
    The size of the hail that fell in Sydney
    A series of extremely fast-moving storms have swept through Sydney, dumping hail and delaying flights at the airport.

    UPDATE: The NSW SES has received more than 1400 calls for help since the storms began on Thursday afternoon.

    Sydney metropolitan was the hardest hit area, Andrew Galvin from NSW SES told 10 Daily.

    There have been about 350 requests for help in Hornsby in the city's Upper North Shore, while more than 270 calls have been received from Liverpool in the west.

    "We have had huge demand on the telephones with a large number of calls," Galvin said.

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    Cloud Lightning

    Lightning bolt kills mother, two daughters in Malawi

    Archangel Nzangaya
    Malawi 24
    Thu, 20 Dec 2018 11:20 UTC
    lightning
    Lightning killed a woman and her two daughters aged 8 and 4 during thunderous rains on Monday in Mchinji district.

    Confirming the development was Mchinji public relations officer, Lubrino Kaitano, who said the incident occurred on December 17, 2018, when the district experienced heavy rains associated with cloudburst.

    Kaitano said at around six o'clock in the evening on Monday, the 34-year-old mother with her two daughters and a son were in the kitchen preparing food when they were hit by the lightning.

    The publicist identified the woman as Clara Andrew Mbewe who died together with her two daughters; Judith and Enelesi Banda

    Comment: Also within the last week lightning killed one individual in Kenya and a teenage girl in South Africa while in Odisha, India a bolt fatally hit 2 youths.

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    Tornado2

    Extremely rare EF2 tornado rips through Seattle area, strongest to hit Washington state since 1986 - UPDATE


    The Weather Network
    Wed, 19 Dec 2018 02:07 UTC
    seattle tornado damage
    © TedLandk5/ Twitter
    A powerful tornado tore through a Seattle-area town on Tuesday afternoon, damaging homes and vehicles along its path.

    The twister touched down just before 2 p.m. local time, according to the National Weather Service (NWS), raking through the Puget Sound community of Port Orchard, about 13 miles west of Seattle.

    Images of significant damage to homes and trees in the area quickly started appearing on social media as well as via local news agencies. There are no reports of any injuries at this time.

    The NWS will send a survey team on Wednesday morning to asses the damage and classify the intensity of the storm. "Until we conduct a tornado survey tomorrow morning, we can not speculate on the strength of the tornado," the weather agency said via Twitter.


    Comment:

    UPDATE: On 20th Dec. AP reports:
    An extremely rare tornado that touched down west of Seattle was the strongest to hit Washington state since 1986, the National Weather Service said Wednesday.

    A Weather Service storm team surveyed the damage just south of Port Orchard, Washington, and rated the twister an Ef2 on the Enhanced Fujita scale with top wind speeds of up to 130 mph (210 kph). The scale rates an Ef2 as "significant."

    In five minutes Tuesday afternoon, the twister's 1.4 mile-path (2.3 kilometers) tore roofs off homes, shattered windows and toppled large fir trees, but no injuries have been reported.


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    Attention

    'Stay well back ... or risk certain death': Giant waves slam California coast

    Ian Livingston
    Washington Post
    Mon, 17 Dec 2018 06:53 UTC
    Large waves crash ashore in California
    © Kent Porter, APLarge waves crash ashore at Duncan's Landing north of Bodega Bay, Calif., Monday, Dec. 17, 2018, as a large swell train arrive on the Sonoma Coast.
    Storm systems, driven by persistent low pressure near Alaska, are churning waters to dangerous levels along the West Coast of the United States.

    The focus of the punishment from massive waves is from southern Washington state through central California. The San Francisco Bay area is one region taking the brunt, with waves expected to reach 30 to 40 feet in height through Tuesday. It's even been enough to postpone a surfing competition.

    This event is huge, and truly affecting the whole West Coast. High surf warnings extend from north of the Oregon and Washington border to about a two-hour drive north of Los Angeles. High surf advisories or gale warnings stretch from the Canada to Mexico border.

    "The dramatic wave heights are related to a consistent fetch of wind action that . . . has origins up near Alaska," Marshall Shepherd, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Georgia, writes at Forbes.

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