Boat Recovered That Sank During Rough Weather In Thailand This Summer, Killing 47 Chinese Tourists

At a Glance

• Two tour boats sank off Phuket on July 5.
• Tourists from one boat were rescued, while the sinking of the double-decker Phoenix left 47 Chinese tourists dead.
• The accident was one of Thailand’s worst tourism-related disasters in recent years.

Thai Officials recovered a boat on Saturday that sank this summer during rough weather off Thailand’s southern resort island of Phuket, killing 47 Chinese tourists.

Two tour boats sank off Phuket on July 5. Tourists from one boat were rescued, while the sinking of the double-decker Phoenix left 47 Chinese tourists dead.

The accident was one of Thailand’s worst tourism-related disasters in recent years.

The boat was raised from the 148-foot-deep sea floor on Saturday by a crane ship operated by a salvage company from Singapore, officials said.

The recovery operation itself faced many obstacles. The first company, hired to salvage the boat, lost a member of its team during the operation and failed to lift the boat.

(MORE: Massive Solar Storm Likely Detonated Vietnam Sea Mines in 1972, Study Says)

A group of senior police officers witnessing the raising of the boat stood in silence for one minute in commemoration of the victims.

The Phoenix, covered in brown algae and sludge, will be towed into a pier in Phuket. Police will inspect it as part of their investigation into the tragedy.

Five people have been charged so far, including the owner and two operators of the Phoenix. They have been accused of negligence causing death, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Officials said other people are also under investigation, including some at the company that built the boat.

More than 9.8 million Chinese visited Thailand in 2017, accounting for the biggest share of the 35.38 million total foreign tourists.

https://weather.com/news/news/2018-11-17-thai-boat-recovered-killed-47-chinese-rough-weather

Chicago prepares for ‘all winter-weather scenarios’

http://wgntv.com/2014/11/15/chicago-prepares-for-all-winter-weather-scenarios/

Speaking at a press conference Saturday with OEMC and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Charles Williams outlined some of the city’s upcoming winter-weather plans.

Williams said the city will begin this year’s snow season with “almost 400,000 tons of salt on the ground.”

The commissioner also discussed some of the technologies aimed to help improve resources, which include city-wide camera monitoring of road conditions and rate of snowfall.

The technologies, Williams said, allow the city “to adjust resources and equipment and deployment based on real-time conditions.”

Williams also took some time to remind motorists of the annual Chicago overnight parking ban. The ban will be enforced on certain streets beginning Dec. 1 through April 1, Williams said, from 3 a.m. 7 a.m., “regardless whether or not there is a snowfall.”

Violations of the bans “prevent critical routes from being fully plowed,” he added.

Williams also gave general advice to motorists to “be patient,” and reminded citizens to always “drive for the conditions.”

Winter is coming ... and the city is getting ready

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-chicago-winter-readiness-20141115-story.html

With one of Chicago's first snowfalls of the winter expected Saturday night, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and city department officials delivered a simple message for surviving this winter: Limit your time outdoors and wear plenty of layers.

"Keep yourselves warm, get your flu shots," the mayor said. "And we'll make sure the roads are clear and salted."

After last year's winter, which Emanuel said had the "most extreme weather we've seen in decades," the city anticipates similar weather this year. Preparations, which began in the spring, included improving the city's Plow Tracker app -- which tracks real-time snowfall conditions on the Internet -- and creating an initiative to target landlords who fail to provide their tenants with sufficient heat.

The Chicago Heat Ordinance mandates landlords keep their rental units heated to at least 65 degrees during the day and 66 degrees during the night from Sept. 15 to June 1, said Felicia Davis, Department of Buildings commissioner.

Landlords who fail to provide tenants with adequate heating can be fined up to $500 a day, she said.

The city has 400,000 tons of salt on hand this winter, 115,000 tons more than last year. They also have 330 spreader vehicles and snowplows, said Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Charlie Williams.

During snowfall, main arterial streets such as Lake Shore Drive will be plowed first. Once snowfall stops and the main streets are plowed, the city will move on to smaller streets, Williams said.

The city reminds residents that an annual overnight parking ban on main arterial streets will be in effect from 3 to 7 a.m. Dec. 1 through April 1, regardless of whether or not there's snow.

The Office of Emergency Management and Communications advised Chicagoans to prepare emergency kits for their homes and vehicles, and to stock up on necessities in case of dangerous weather conditions.

"Whatever Mother Nature decides to throw at the city of Chicago, the city of Chicago is ready," Emanuel said.

The city also shared the following tips for residents:

• Residents should be cognizant of weather conditions and heed forecast warnings, wind chill advisories and winter storm watches.

• Residents should winterize their vehicles. Stalled vehicles during the winter can worsen driving conditions and make it more difficult for emergency vehicles to get around.

• Residents should check pipes in their homes and garage to make sure they're properly insulated and not exposed to freezing air. If pipes freeze, do not use candles or open flames to thaw them. Use a hair dryer or heating pad.

• Anyone without heat or in need of a shelter should call 311 immediately for assistance and transportation to a warming center. The Department of Family and Support Service operates six warming centers through Chicago from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. The Garfield Community Service Center is open 24 hours a day.

• Residents should check on the well-being of friends and neighbors, especially seniors or those with disabilities. Residents should shovel sidewalks in front of their homes and businesses to ensure those with disabilities can travel safely.

• Residents should shovel around hydrants so firefighters can access them in the event of a fire.

• Residents can sign up for free text or email alerts from the OEMC at notifychicago.org.

Yes, The Weather Is Polar. No, It's Not The Vortex

http://www.npr.org/2014/11/16/364243343/yes-the-weather-is-polar-no-its-not-the-vortex

Much of the country had to bundle up this week due to some unusually cold weather. Even in the deep South, residents struggled with temperatures in the low 20s.

With the big chill comes the revival of an ominous phrase: "the polar vortex."

The sinister-sounding label has been hard to escape on TV news. The Today Show warned of the vortex in its promo spots. Some cautioned that the phenomenon might already put the squeeze on holiday shopping.

Even The Tonight Show's Jimmy Fallon poked fun at the hype.

"It's a phenomenon that signals the return of colder temperatures across North America," Fallon said. "... Or as it used to be called, the month of November."

Fallon's joke makes a point that Jeff Masters, chief meteorologist at Weather Underground, wants people understand.

"This is just a regular old cold front," Masters says. "The polar vortex has been around forever. It's just the media happened to notice it last year, and it's really not a very scientifically accurate thing to talk about."

He says the recent popularity of the phrase is misleading. The polar vortex is a constant flow of arctic air circling in the upper atmosphere above the North and South Poles. The cold is usually corralled up there — but sometimes little bits of the arctic air escape.

"It's just the ordinary sort of weather you expect in winter," Masters says. "Every now and then you get a big trough of low pressure. It dips down from the pole and it allows arctic air to seep southwards."

That's not to say the polar vortex wasn't involved in this bout of unseasonably cold weather. Masters says Typhoon Nuri, which hit Alaska last week, pushed one of those troughs of arctic air south across the eastern U.S.

Such temperature shifts serve a purpose, says Steven Nelson of the National Weather Service.

"These cold intrusions, cold fronts, are really restoring the balance in the temperature and moisture across the earth's surface," he says.

A good chunk of the South is expected to get another wave of unseasonably cold weather starting Monday. Just don't call it the polar vortex.

What Will Winter Hold for Drought-Plagued California?

http://preview.weather.com/science/environment/news/drought-california-winter-20141024

California really needs this winter to be a wet one.

The state is now at the beginning of the fourth year of one if its worst droughts on record. The drought has been fueled by a spate of disappointing winter rainy seasons that have left meager snowpacks and diminished reservoir levels, combined with record-warm temperatures that have driven demand for the increasingly precious resource, and spurred a series of conservation measures around the state.

Hopes that the coming winter could finally bring some relief were raised when the first murmurs of an impending El Niñobegan to emerge in March. The climate phenomenon can be associated with amped up rains in the southern part of the state, and so the words “El Niño” became something of a mantra across the parched lands.

“People have latched on to the notion that El Niño will bring about relief,” California state climatologist Michael Anderson told Climate Central. “That seems to be something they’ve grasped onto quite firmly.”

But this winter likely won’t be the one Californians so desperately need, as the budding El Niño is expected to only be a weak event and unlikely to do much to bolster those dwindling water reserves.

However, that news doesn’t necessarily mean that this winter will be as dire as those of recent years past — though that’s a possibility. By virtue of not being under the drying influence of El Niño’s counterpart, La Niña, it’s also possible that California will at least see a wetter winter than they have in the past few years, the first step on the path out of the drought.

“We can’t rule anything out,” said Michelle L’Heureux, a meteorologist with the Climate Prediction Center, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who helps put together monthly El Niño outlooks.

California’s predicament

The drought that now has California in its iron grip didn’t happen overnight, and no matter what happens this winter, it won’t end overnight either, experts say.

The dry conditions have accumulated over the past three years, but really began to metastasize across the state this past winter. Coming in to the season, California had just seen its driest year on record, with some cities measuring precipitation deficits of 30 to 40 inches.

California generally gets about half of its precipitation (in the form of both snow and rain) from December to February. Most of it falls as snow in the Sierra Nevada range, and this portion is critically important, as it provides a sustained flow into reservoirs for much of the state when it gradually melts in late spring and early summer.

But the 2014 water year, which ran from Oct. 1, 2013, to Sept. 30, 2014, “has been one of the driest in decades and follows two consecutive dry years throughout the state,” according to the California Department of Water Resources. The past three years are the driest such stretch on record in the state, Kevin Werner, the western regional climate services director at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, said during a NOAA teleconference earlier this month.

'No Ambiguity' on Climate Change, UN Says in IPCC Report

http://preview.weather.com/science/environment/news/climate-change-un-ipcc-report-20141102

Climate change is here and human caused and the time to act is now, the U.N.'s panel on climate science said Sunday.

The fourth and final volume of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's giant climate assessment didn't offer any surprises, nor was it expected to since it combined the findings of three earlier reports released in the past 13 months.

But it underlined the scope of the climate challenge in stark terms. Emissions, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, may need to drop to zero by the end of this century for the world to have a decent chance of keeping the temperature rise below a level that many consider dangerous. Failure to do so, which could require deployment of technologies that suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, could lock the world on a trajectory with "irreversible" impacts on people and the environment, the report said. Some impacts are already being observed, including rising sea levels, a warmer and more acidic ocean, melting glaciers and Arctic sea ice and more frequent and intense heat waves.

"Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in their message. Leaders must act. Time is not on our side," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at the report's launch in Copenhagen.

Amid its grim projections, the report also offered hope. The tools needed to set the world on a low-emissions path are there; it just has to break its addiction to the oil, coal and gas that power the global energy system while polluting the atmosphere with heat-trapping CO2, the chief greenhouse gas.

"We have the means to limit climate change," IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said. "All we need is the will to change, which we trust will be motivated by knowledge and an understanding of the science of climate change."

The IPCC was set up in 1988 to assess global warming and its impacts. The report released Sunday caps its latest assessment, a mega-review of 30,000 climate change studies that establishes with 95-percent certainty that nearly all warming seen since the 1950s is man-made.

Today only a small minority of scientists challenge the mainstream conclusion that climate change is linked to human activity.

Global Warming Makes Marine Dead Zones Worse, Study Says

http://preview.weather.com/science/environment/news/global-warming-dead-zones-climate-change-study-20141111

A new study says that scientists underestimated the effects global warming is having on dead zones in bodies of water across the world. 

When fertilizer runoff is introduced into a body of water, it brings added nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus into the mix. These nutrients sustain microbes and algal blooms, creating dead zones that choke off oxygen availability to marine wildlife. 

Scientists have long known that warmer water increases this problem, but a new study Monday in the journal Global Change Biology by Smithsonian Institution researchers found about two dozen different ways - biologically, chemically and physically - that climate change worsens the oxygen depletion.

"We've underestimated the effect of climate change on dead zones," said study lead author Andrew Altieri, a researcher at the Smithsonian's tropical center in Panama.

The researchers looked at 476 dead zones worldwide- 264 in the United States. They found that standard computer climate models predict that, on average, the surface temperature around those dead zones will increase by about 4 degrees Fahrenheit (slightly more than 2 degrees Celsius) from the 1980s and 1990s to the end of this century.

The largest predicted warming is nearly 7 degrees (almost 4 degrees Celsius) where the St. Lawrence River dumps into the ocean in Canada. The most prominent U.S. dead zones, the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay, are projected to warm 4 degrees (2.3 degrees Celsius) and nearly 5 degrees (2.7 degrees Celsius) respectively.

Warmer water holds less oxygen, adding to the problem from runoff, said co-author Keryn Gedan, who is at both the Smithsonian and the University of Maryland. But warmer water also affects dead zones by keeping the water more separate, so that oxygen-poor deep water mixes less.

"It's like Italian dressing that you haven't shaken, where you have the oil and water separate," Altieri said.

When the water gets warmer, marine life's metabolism increases, making them require more oxygen just as the oxygen levels are already dropping. Other ways that climate change affects dead zones includes longer summers, ocean acidification and changing wind and current patterns, the study said.

Donald Boesch, a University of Maryland ecologist who wasn't part of the study and works at a different department than Gedan, said there is not enough evidence to say that climate change has already played such a big role in the spread of dead zones. But he said the study is probably right in warning that future warming will make the problem even worse.

Lightning Will Increase With Global Warming, Study Says

http://preview.weather.com/science/environment/news/lightning-will-increase-warming-20141113

While severe weather like hurricanes and tornadoes typically only hit particular areas of the globe, lightning can strike anywhere. And it does, a lot. A bolt of lightning flashes through the sky and hits the ground somewhere around the world about 100 times every second. That’s 8 million lightning strikes in a single day — yes, you read that right: just one day.

Now, a new study finds that lightning strikes will become even more frequent as the planet warms, at least in the continental U.S.

For years scientists have been exploring how the steady warming of the planet might be impacting severe weather, though most of the attention has been placed on hazards like hurricanes and heavy downpours. And while those events are major killers, lightning is also a significant hazard. So far this year, 25 people have been killed by lightning strikes in the U.S., and lightning is the trigger for more than half of U.S. wildfires, putting pressure on human infrastructure as well as natural ecosystems.

But so far, relatively scant attention has been paid to how lightning might change as the planet’s temperature rises with the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And the studies that have been done to date estimate the increase in lightning to be anywhere from 5 to 100 percent per degree Celsius rise — a strikingly wide range.

The new study, detailed in the Nov. 13 issue of the journal Science, has found a relatively simple way to use other atmospheric factors to predict changes in lightning rates. The findings suggest that lighting rates will increase 12 percent per every degree Celsius (about 2°F) rise in global temperatures. That comes to a 50 percent increase by the end of the century.

‘Beautiful’ Lightning Data

Study author David Romps, who studies atmospheric dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley, didn’t set out to study the effect of warming on lightning, but instead was trying to use lightning to “understand something about how, when, where, and why convection pops up over the United States,” he told Climate Central. (Convection is the process that drives thunderstorms.)

It just so happens that there is what Romps calls a “really beautiful” lightning dataset from the National Lightning Detection Network, which records when and where each of the approximately 20 million flashes of cloud-to-ground lightning occurs over the U.S. each year.

Somewhere during the process of exploring his initial question, Romps started to wonder if other atmospheric variables could be used to predict lightning rates. In science, “it’s rare that you end up doing what you think you’re going to do,” he said.

The particular variables he looked at can be used as measures of storm convection, the idea being that more vigorous convection is linked to more lightning. They include how heavy the rain in a storm is and how much energy is available in the atmosphere to fuel the storm’s convection.

Measurements at individual weather stations suggested these factors could say something about lightning rates, but they were fairly isolated. While he was skeptical, it was enough for Romps to start digging deeper into the data.

To start, Romps made some simple maps: One showed lightning strike data over the continental U.S. from 2011. The other combined precipitation and convection energy data for the same year (the only one for which data for all three variables was available). The two maps showed a surprising similarity, with much of the area with the most lightning also the area where the other two factors were high.

Lightning flashes (bottom right) compared to other atmospheric variables that could be used to help predict changes in lightning rates. (Credit: Romps, et al./Science)

 “I was puzzled by that,” Romps said. “It’s very rare in observations that you see a correlation that good, especially for three completely independent datasets.”

A graph that compared lightning with the other two factors over time was even more shocking, with the peaks and valleys of all three matching strikingly closely. Romps was, well, thunderstruck.

“That’s basically when my jaw hit the floor,” Romps said. “That’s when we knew we were really on to something.”

Romps said that match shows that using precipitation and storm energy data was “a much more robust method for predicting lightning” than other studies have previously used.

Lightning in a Warmer World

It’s also fortuitous because the latest batch of climate models from the most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are the first to include those two factors, meaning Romps and his colleagues could use that model data to make a prediction of the changes to lightning rates in a warmer future.

Running the data, the team found that lightning would be expected to increase by about 12 percent per degree Celsius of warming (give or take 5 percent), with about a 50 percent rise over the 21st century. Using the 20 million-strike average, that would mean some 30 million lightning strikes per year over the continental U.S. by 2100.

The results make physical sense given that both heavy precipitation and storm energy are related to the amount of water vapor available in the atmosphere and one of the main accepted results of a warming atmosphere is also a moister one. Essentially, more moisture suggests more vigorous thunderstorms and so more lightning.

Colin Price, an atmospheric scientist at Tel Aviv University and one of the few people to look at the issue of warming and lightning, said that the results of the study were in broad agreement with ones he published for the whole globe in 1994, “so I am happy to see this study supports our earlier work.”

Price, who was not involved in the new study, said that it was “not surprising” that factors investigated in this study could say something about lightning rates. “But I am sure there are many other indices and parameters that may be just as good in predicting lightning. And the proxies will very likely vary with region and season,” he said in an email.

That variation is something the new study didn’t look at, since it examined only the continental U.S. “We don’t know how that increase is distributed over the seasons or geographically,” Romps said, adding that tackling those questions are the next step in his research.

China Shows It’s Ready to Grow Up on Climate Change

China and the US have agreed to a deal to lower greenhouse gases and carbon emissions. China and US account for 40% of all these emissions. 

The U.S. diplomats wandering around the Copenhagen airport in the aftermath of the 2009 U.N. climate summit looked like the walking dead. With reason—those talks, billed as the most important climate negotiations ever, were pure torture for almost everyone involved, just barely saved from total collapse by the last-minute creation of the relatively weak Copenhagen Protocol. And while there was plenty of blame to go around, including for the U.S., much of it was directed at China, which consistently blocked negotiations throughout the summit and almost managed to torpedo the protocol. No wonder the American negotiators looked so exhausted—they’d just spent a fortnight grappling with a country that seemed firmly opposed to doing anything about global warming.

MORE

Watch: What You Need to Know Right Now In Less Than 2 MinutesPlant-Based Diet Is Best for the Planet, New Science SaysMore Than Seasick: Virus Outbreak Hits Cruise Ship NBC NewsGrisly Video Claims 'Treasured' U.S. Aid Worker Killed by ISIS NBC NewsWaiting for the Jury: What Do We Know About Michael Brown Case?NBC News

But China, it seems, has changed. The climate deal worked out between Washington and Beijing on Wednesday—you can see the details in this post by Emily Rauhala— won’t come close to saving the planet on its own. No, the deal isn’t binding, but few international agreements really are.

While together China and the U.S. account for 40% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, this marks the first time that the world’s two biggest carbon emitters sat down and agreed together to limits on future greenhouse gas emissions, however voluntary. And more importantly, it marks what seems to be a very different approach by Beijing on international climate diplomacy—and perhaps on diplomacy more generally.

As Michael Levi at the Council on Foreign Relations notes, the fact that Beijing chose to work together with the U.S.—usually an antagonist on climate and other issues—may be more meaningful than the emission targets themselves:

China has typically gone out of its way to assert its independence in anything climate-related. That approach would usually have led it to announce major goals like these in a clearly unilateral context – even if they were developed in tandem with the United States. Rolling them out together with the United States says that China is increasingly comfortable being seen to act as part of an international effort.

Environmentalists hope that the announcement from Beijing will inject a little momentum into flagging global climate negotiations, which begin shortly in Lima and are meant to culminate with a real global deal in Paris at the end of 2015. Perhaps. But while it might seem as if a problem like global warming can only be solved with a global deal that covers every country, the reality is that just a handful of countries account for nearly all greenhouse gas emissions—China and the U.S. first among them. What they do—alone or in concert—is what will ultimately matter.

There is no shortage of skeptics picking apart the U.S.-China deal—David Stout has a good roundup of them here. Any time governments make promises about action they won’t carry out for more than 15 years—long after today’s leaders are out of office—there’s reason to be skeptical. Climate diplomacy is like dieting: tomorrow is always a lot easier than today.

However, the very fact that China is publicly willing, in concert with the U.S., to dedicate itself to emissions targets that will be challenging is a sign that there is political will in Beijing to move on climate change, as well as political confidence that technological means will be there to do so without cramping the country’s all-important economic growth. It’s a sign, as Fred Kaplan writes in Slate, that China understands that “with great power comes at least some responsibility.”

That fact, more than the specifics of emissions cuts or timeframes, is what really made the China-U.S. climate deal historic.

http://time.com/3582178/china-us-climate-change-deal/

Polar Vortex Spiked U.S. CO2 Emissions in 2013

Last years bitter cold winter led to an increase in CO2 emissions. The good news is that despite the spike they where overall lower than they had been in 2007.

Bitter cold and a chill wind inevitably mean the heat gets cranked up inside. And as the polar vortex parked itself over Canada and the northeastern U.S. to end 2013, that’s what people did.

Largely as a result of trying to keep warm from that Arctic chill, carbon dioxide emitted from burning energy in the U.S. increased 2.5 percent in 2013 over the previous year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s annual CO2 emissions report, released Tuesday.

 PLAY VIDEO

What Do Our Oceans Reveal About Global Warming?

A new NASA study has revealed that the ocean abyss has not warmed in the past few years. What does this mean for global warming?

DCI

Only three other years since 1990 have seen a greater annual increase in energy-related CO2 emissions — 1996, 2000 and 2010.

The spike in emissions from burning energy last year had less to do with the United States reversing a trend in declining CO2 emissions than it did with 2012 being unusually warm — the warmest year on record, in fact.

“2012 was so warm, and then 2013 started returning to normal on its way to a chilly winter when you got to the end of the year,” EIA analyst Perry Lindstrom told Climate Central.

Even though the United States burned through more natural gas, coal and home heating fuel to stay toasty last year, CO2 emissions related to energy consumption were still lower than they were earlier in the decade when emissions peaked in 2007.

Here’s how the numbers break down: Energy-related CO2 emissions totaled 5.9 billion metric tons in 2005, peaking at more than 6 billion in 2007 and in 2012 dropped to nearly 5.3 billion tons, their lowest level in 18 years. In 2013, they spiked to nearly 5.4 billion tons.

http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/polar-vortex-spiked-us-co2-emissions-in-2013-141022.htm

September 2014 Global Weather Extremes Summary

NASA and NOAA have recorded September to be the warmest month ever. This is interesting because Illinois specifically was considered to be below average.

September 2014 Global Weather Extremes Summary

September was globally the warmest such on record according to NASA and NOAA. Deadly flooding affected the Kashmir region of India and Pakistan as well as in southern France, China, and Serbia. Record heat occurred in Jakarta, Indonesia and south-central Canada. It was the driest September on record for the U.K.

NORTH AMERICA

It was a warmer than average month for the contiguous U.S. (ranked 26th warmest out of the past 120 years) and precipitation was, nationwide, average although the Southwest experienced one of its wettest Septembers on record and the Northeast one of its driest.



http://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/comment.html?entrynum=312#commenttop

Developing Cyclone Arabian Sea / INVEST 94L Caribbean / Warm Weather Ahead

UNUSUAL CYCLONE DEVELOPING IN ARABIAN SEA 

A disturbance (INVEST IO90) in the Arabian Sea has been slowly developing into a Tropical Cyclone over the last few days, and appears very close to reaching Tropical Depression intensity. The developing storm is located about 600NM SE of the Oman coast, and remains quasi-stationary. Most models are showing intensification to a CAT 1 storm over the next 72 hours, and is forecast to move towards the OMAN coast by Tuesday. After which, the storm should turn northeast and accelerate away from the coast and weaken quickly to minimal tropical storm intensity (or depression) by next Thursday. It’s worth mentioning that latest imagery loops suggest very dry air is approaching from the Northwest – and this may prevent the storm from intensifying beyond Tropical Storm (gale) force – AND prevent the system from even approaching the Oman coast before it turns Northeast and weakens. Tropical Storms in this region of the world are unusual – but they are not rare , 

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2842