Storms
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Cloud Lightning

Six struck by lightning bolt, three die on the spot in Swaziland

lightning
Six people were struck by lightning on Wednesday and three of them died on the spot.

The people were struck by lightning at a bus stop waiting room in Mankayane during the fierce storm that swept through the area.

Acting Police Information and Communications Officer Assistant Superintendent Phindile Vilakati said the accident involved a girl aged 14 and two males aged 20 and 25 years old.

The others who survived were rushed to hospital.

Tornado2

Study confirms tornado outbreaks are increasing - Scientists don't understand why

Laramie tornado
© John Allen/Central Michigan UniversityA tornado near Elk Mountain, west of Laramie Wyoming on the 15th of June, 2015. The tornado passed over mostly rural areas of the county, lasting over 20 minutes.
Tornadoes and severe thunderstorms kill people and damage property every year. Estimated U.S. insured losses due to severe thunderstorms in the first half of 2016 were $8.5 billion. The largest U.S. impacts of tornadoes result from tornado outbreaks, sequences of tornadoes that occur in close succession. Last spring a research team led by Michael Tippett, associate professor of applied physics and applied mathematics at Columbia Engineering, published a study showing that the average number of tornadoes during outbreaks—large-scale weather events that can last one to three days and span huge regions—has risen since 1954. But they were not sure why.

In a new paper, published December 1 in Science via First Release, the researchers looked at increasing trends in the severity of tornado outbreaks where they measured severity by the number of tornadoes per outbreak. They found that these trends are increasing fastest for the most extreme outbreaks. While they saw changes in meteorological quantities that are consistent with these upward trends, the meteorological trends were not the ones expected under climate change.

"This study raises new questions about what climate change will do to severe thunderstorms and what is responsible for recent trends," says Tippett, who is also a member of the Data Science Institute and the Columbia Initiative on Extreme Weather and Climate. "The fact that we don't see the presently understood meteorological signature of global warming in changing outbreak statistics leaves two possibilities: either the recent increases are not due to a warming climate, or a warming climate has implications for tornado activity that we don't understand. This is an unexpected finding."

Comment: The climate scientists have not considered the importance of atmospheric dust loading and the winning Electric Universe model in their research. Such information and much more, are explained in the book Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection by Pierre Lescaudron and Laura Knight-Jadczyk.
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.
Increasing cometary and volcanic dust loading of the atmosphere (one indicator is the intensification of noctilucent clouds we are witnessing) is accentuating electric charge build-up, whereby we can expect to observe more extreme weather and planetary upheaval as well as awesome light shows and other related mysterious phenomena.


Cloud Precipitation

Fierce storm leaves thousands without power in Brisbane, Australia

Thousands without power after southeast Queensland storm
Thousands without power after southeast Queensland storm
A fierce storm that swept through the Brisbane region has left two people injured and thousands without power.

A traffic controller was struck by lightning on the Gold Coast. She had no visible injuries but was taken to hospital as a precaution.

A 13-year-old boy was taken to hospital with hip and leg injuries when a tree fell on him at Forest Lake, in Brisbane's southwest.

Electricity supplier Energex was working throughout the night to restore power to nearly 7000 customers.

There were more than 6000 lightning strikes during the Wednesday afternoon storm that also brought strong winds and hail to the Gold Coast, Logan and Brisbane.



Tornado2

Huge waterspout touches down near Destin, Florida

A photo of a waterspout, taken by Mark Hinds
A photo of a waterspout, taken by Mark Hinds and sent to Panama City meteorologist Chris Smith, hit near Destin Wednesday morning.

While parts of northern Florida are under tornado watch until 5 p.m. local time, a waterspout touched down near Destin on Wednesday morning.

About 11 a.m., according to Northwest Florida Daily News, the waterspout formed and grazed the coast for several miles.

Locals took video from balconies and cars as what they thought was a tornado made its way around the Choctawhatchee Bay.





Tornado2

'Disaster zone': Tornadoes kill at least 5 in southeast US states

Deadly tornado
© wokephotography / Instagram
Tornadoes have ripped across Alabama and Tennessee leaving at least five people dead, more injured and a trail of destruction in what authorities are calling a "disaster zone".

Three people are reported dead in Jackson County, Alabama and two in Polk County, Tennessee. The deaths in Jackson County are reported to all be from the same home while the Polk County deaths are reported to be a husband and wife.

It's understood two more people have died in Meigs County, Tennessee, according to a local ABC reporter.

Deadly storms hit the southeast of the US late Tuesday night, causing damage to numerous properties and leaving thousands without power. Images taken in DeKalb County show a daycare center completely destroyed after a tornado hit.

Cloud Precipitation

Atlantic Hurricane season ends above normal in count says NOAA scientists

Hurricanes
As the Atlantic, eastern Pacific and central Pacific 2016 hurricane seasons end today, NOAA scientists said that all three regions saw above-normal seasons.

For the Atlantic, this was the first above-normal season since 2012. The Atlantic saw 15 named storms during 2016, including 7 hurricanes (Alex, Earl, Gaston, Hermine, Matthew, Nicole, and Otto), 3 of which were major hurricanes (Gaston, Matthew and Nicole). NOAA's updated hurricane season outlook in August called for 12 to 17 named storms, including 5 to 8 hurricanes, with 2 to 4 of those predicted to become major hurricanes.

Five named storms made landfall in the United States during 2016, the most since 2008 when six storms struck. Tropical Storm Bonnie and Hurricane Matthew struck South Carolina. Tropical Storms Colin and Julia, as well as Hurricane Hermine, made landfall in Florida. Hermine was the first hurricane to make landfall in Florida since Wilma in 2005.

Cloud Precipitation

Floods and lightning kill seven in Saudi Arabia

At least seven people died and many others were injured or trapped by heavy rain and floods that swept various regions of Saudi Arabia.
© AFPAt least seven people died and many others were injured or trapped by heavy rain and floods that swept various regions of Saudi Arabia.
At least seven people died and many others were injured or trapped by heavy rain and floods that swept various regions of Saudi Arabia, press reports said on Tuesday.

The dead included three young Saudi men in Bisha, two others in Baha and two expatriates who were struck by a thunderbolt in Qunfudah.

Torrential floods also destroyed a number of houses, blocked roads and overturned vehicles. The rain and floods in the last few days uncovered the ineffective drainage systems in many parts of the country.

The two expatriates were killed by a thunderbolt, which also injured two of their companions in Qunfudah governorate in Makkah province. Civil Defense teams rushed the victims to hospital.

The rain inundated various parts of Qunfudah governorate and washed away large sections of the International Road linking Jeddah and Jazan.

Tornado2

Tornado kills at least three people in Alabama

A building destroyed by tornado in Rosalie, Alabama on early Wednesday.
© Teri MonroeA building destroyed by tornado in Rosalie, Alabama on early Wednesday.
A tornado has killed at least three people in the US state of Alabama and injured many more, including four children critically hurt when their 24 hour daycare centre was destroyed.

A line of severe storms had moved across the South overnight, authorities said. Lightning set homes alight, large hailstones battered a wide area and thousands were without power.

The three people who died were all in a mobile home in the northeastern Alabama community of Rosalie,
Jackson County Chief Deputy Rocky Harnen said early Wednesday (local time).
House damaged in Underwood Mountain area from severe storms pic.twitter.com/OPeyLnYhQ6
— Colbert EMA (@colbertema) November 30, 2016
Another person in the home was critically injured, Harnen said


Snowflake

Winter storm forces stretches of I-94, I-90 to close in parts of North Dakota and South Dakota

Snow on road
The North Dakota Department of Transportation and Highway Patrol have closed eastbound and westbound Interstate 94 from Mandan to Dickinson because of the winter snowstorm affecting most of central and western North Dakota.

In South Dakota, Interstate 90 was closed in the northern Black Hills from Rapid City to Spearfish.

On the 94-mile stretch of interstate from Mandan to Dickinson, the patrol said parts are blocked with heavy snow drifts along with extremely icy and snow compacted stretches. The patrol also said there was near zero visibility at times creating hazardous driving conditions.

The portion of the interstate was expected to remain closed throughout Tuesday night

Cloud Precipitation

Floods in Greece leave 1 dead

fLOODS gREECE
Parts of Greece recorded heavy rain during a series of storms that began late Saturday 26 November, 2016. The heavy rain has also affected northwestern Turkey, in particular Çanakkale province.

Greece

The Fire Service in Greece reported that one man died in floods on the island of Zakynthos (Zante), part of the Ionian Islands in western Greece. Flooding has left homes damaged, schools closed and traffic disrupted throughout the island.

Flooding also affected parts of Attica, including the country's capital city Athens, where several underground stations and roads have been closed.

A further storm on Monday 28 November brought yet more heavy rain and local media report that some areas of Zakynthos have recorded over 200 mm rain since Sunday.

Fire service officials said that they received 470 calls (390 in Attica, 80 in Zakynthos) for assistance in a 16 hour period on Sunday, mostly with requests for pumping flood water, rescuing stranded drivers and evacuating people to safer locations.