How to Read a Weather Map

Meteorologists at the National Weather Service use information from ground stations and weather satellites to make these maps. Words like “rain” and “snow” are pretty obvious, but what exactly do the symbols on a weather map tell you about the weather? Use our handy dandy guide below to find out!

High and Low Pressure Areas

Earth’s atmosphere is a jacket of gases that surrounds the planet. Although it seems like these gases could easily float away into space, gravity is constantly pulling the atmosphere toward Earth’s surface. The force with which our atmosphere pushes down on a specific location on Earth is called atmospheric pressure.

Atmospheric pressure is mainly dependent on two things: the weight of the atmosphere in a specific location and the temperature of the air. If you’re at a low elevation—such as in a valley—there is a lot of atmosphere above you and the weight is very heavy. That means that you experience higher atmospheric pressure at lower elevations and lower atmospheric pressure in higher elevations.

https://scijinks.gov/weather-map/

Atmospheric Aerosol in the Changing Arctic

Warming and sea ice loss in the Arctic are affecting the complex interactions between the atmosphere, ocean, land, and ice-covered areas, including the formation and transport of aerosol.

The Arctic environment is changing rapidly. While Arctic climate change is mostly driven by increases in greenhouse gases produced by human activity, other types of atmospheric emissions also influence the climate system. A recent paper in Reviews of Geophysics explores the relationships between atmospheric aerosol and climate change in the Arctic. Here, the authors of the paper give an overview of aerosol sources, formation processes, variability and trends, and suggest where further research is needed.

What is atmospheric aerosol and why does it matter in the Arctic?

Atmospheric aerosols are tiny solid or liquid particles suspended in the atmosphere. These particles impact Earth’s climate by changing the amount of solar energy that reaches Earth’s surface; either by scattering sunlight, or by participating in the formation of clouds. To understand past and future changes in Arctic climate, we need to understand the processes that drive aerosol formation, transformation and eventual loss from the atmosphere.

https://eos.org/editors-vox/atmospheric-aerosol-in-the-changing-arctic

Weather Satellites: A New Era

Geostationary satellites rotate with the same speed as Earth while looking directly down at our equator from 22,236 miles above. Since these weather satellites are placed directly above their target areas, geostationary orbits allow quick communication capabilities. New measurements can be taken and sent to Earth about every 30 seconds!

Two of these four weather satellites have already been launched to space. The first one launched in November 2016, became operational in December 2016, and is now referred to as GOES-16. This first satellite focuses on the eastern portions of North and South America, but it also has the entire Atlantic Ocean in view. The second satellite, GOES-17, launched on March 1, 2018 and is currently in its testing stages awaiting full operation on December 10 of this year. GOES-17 will focus on the western portions of North and South America while also including the Pacific Ocean in view.

https://www.nbcdfw.com/contact-us/community/STEM-Perot-Museum-Weather-Satellites-A-New-Era-502381051.html

Lake effect snow: Shifting season and forecasting clues

Lake effect snow can be tricky to forecast as far as the exact location of the heaviest bands and amounts, but all lake effect forms in the same way. First, we need a "warmer" lake, or at least one where water temperatures are warmer than the surrounding air. The air just above the warmer water surface will want to rise, since it's less dense, and it interacts with colder air blowing over the lake. The rising air then cools, condenses, and forms clouds. In certain situations, the air will continue to rise, cool, and condense enough to form snow. Lastly, the cold air blowing over the lake continues to push those lake effect clouds and snow showers onshore, where they dump all of that snow.

Now, not every situation can create lake effect snow, but we have clues the atmosphere leaves behind to help give us the hint. First, we obviously need a big temperature difference between the land and the water.

https://www.abc57.com/news/lake-effect-snow-shifting-season-and-forecasting-clues-121018

Floods from extratropical cyclones in N America and Europe may triple

There could be a threefold increase in extratropical cyclones, which bring flooding to North America and Europe, due to climate change. Powerful storms that trigger extreme weather conditions such as flooding could wreak social and economic havoc in Europe and North America. The threefold increase could occur by the end of this century, says a team of researchers in the United Kingdom warn.

Climate change refers to the long-term change in Earth’s average temperatures and weather patterns. When long-term average temperatures rise, we can also use the term ‘global warming.’

Researchers from the Universities of Exeter, Oxford, and Reading (all in UK) wrote about their study and findings in the journal Environmental Research Letters (citation below). The authors were Matt Hawcroft, Ella Walsh, Kevin Hodges, and Giuseppe Zappa.

Dr Matt Hawcroft led pioneering research which showed new and detailed information on the frequency of extratropical cyclones. Dr. Hawcroft is a Research Fellow at Exeter University’s College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences.

https://marketbusinessnews.com/extratropical-cyclones/191049/

Hail storm causes icy flooding

Flash flooding and hail combined to turn the streets of Sakakah, Saudi Arabia, in to what looks like an icy river.


https://www.accuweather.com/en/videos/hail-storm-causes-icy-flooding/h0nmzzzze6x9zamsrk4uifm8lfj6wqmx

Forecasters say winter and spring could bring active tornado season because of El Niño

There have been several tornadoes that have touched down in the Bay Area multiple times in just over a month. And weather forecasters say this could be just the beginning of tornadoes this winter and spring.

The National Weather Service says it was an EF-1 tornado that touched down in a Pasco County front yard on Sunday morning, while the homeowners were outside having coffee.

"The tornadoes had wind speeds of about 90 mph. They’re quick, they’re thin, and you don’t get a lot of notice that they're coming," said Daniel Noah, National Weather Service Meteorologist.

This happening on the heels of multiple EF-1 tornadoes that hit across the Bay Area on November 2. 

"It just came out of nowhere and it was gone. Never would’ve expected it," said neighbor Renee Piehl.

But forecasters say people should get ready to expect more. The National Weather Service says Florida averages about 52 tornadoes a year, making Florida 10th in the nation for states with the most tornadoes. And they expect this winter and spring to be more active than usual.

https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/region-pasco/forecasters-say-winter-and-spring-could-bring-active-tornado-season-because-of-el-nino

Heavy rain has state on alert for floods

Yesterday and the day before, heavy rain resulted in flash floods in several urban and semi-rural districts.

The Sarawak Fire and Rescue Department in its latest report said flash floods hit Bintulu district yesterday morning.

The floods at about 8am followed incessant rain during the wee hours of the day, it said.

Its latest updates said several roads leading into and out of Bintulu were inundated, resulting in traffic flow being disrupted.

“The worst affected were those areas linked to Jalan Sebiew,” it said, adding that floodwaters in Bintulu were affecting nearby settlements because of heavy rain but there were no evacuations as yet.A check by StarMetro on the latest weather alert yesterday found three districts – Bintulu, Tubau and Sibu – being placed on alert.

https://www.thestar.com.my/metro/metro-news/2018/12/11/heavy-rain-has-state-on-alert-for-floods/

Clean up efforts begin following downburst in Hutchinson

Clean up efforts began Saturday morning after a 79 mph downburst caused serious damage in Hutchinson.

Debris and trees lined the streets prompting a city wide clean up.

"There was only rain on the radar so I was listening to it, watching the lightning thinking no big deal and within just minutes it hit like a freight train, " says Golden Coker.

Coker thought it was just a normal thunderstorm until she went outside to get a toy for her daughter.

"It was black, when i came outside there was no power on no nothing"

Vernetta Rogers owns bills appliance and has lived next to her business of 29 years. She says a loud crash woke her up.

"I woke up at about a quarter to one and heard this terrible boom and thought somebody had drove into my building. I opened up my sliding glass doors to look and half of my roof was in my front yard."

Rogers estimates the repairs to her building will cost over $100,000.

Residents say the storm came in quick and they are shocked at the amount of damage to the city. 
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Residents in Hutchinson are cleaning up after a downburst caused damage overnight.

https://www.kwch.com/content/news/Possible-downburst-causes-damage-in-Hutchinson-491704801.html

500 lightning strikes hit Rotorua and cut power to 1400 homes

A storm lasting just over an hour that saw 500 bolts of lightning and crashing thunder cut power to more than 1400 homes in Rotorua today.

But the exact amount of rain that fell isn't known because a lightning bolt struck the city's rainfall gauge at the Rotorua Airport.

The storm, which had earlier in the morning wrecked havoc in the Auckland and Waikato regions, struck Rotorua about 9.30am and was all over by 11am.

The lightning caused power outages to 1448 customers around the Ngongotahā, Fairy Springs, Mamaku and Hamurana areas, near Rotorua.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12170919

A severe thunderstorm warning is in effect throughout Northeast Ohio

A severe thunderstorm warning is in effect until 7:30 p.m. for:  

• Trumbull County 
• Northern Portage County 
• Geauga County
• East central Cuyahoga County
• Lake County
• Northeastern Summit County
• Ashtabula County

As it approached, severe thunderstorms were located along a line extending from Chardon to near South Russell, moving northeast at 50 mph.

Details

• 60 mph wind gusts
• There have been reports of minor wind damage with several trees and power lines blown down with these storms
• Expect damage to trees and power lines.
• Locations impacted include Warren, Painesville, Ashtabula, Conneaut, Chardon, Fairport Harbor, Geneva-On-The-Lake, Mentor, Solon, Willoughby, Hudson, Twinsburg, Streetsboro, Cortland, Geneva, South Russell, Madison, North Kingsville, Middlefield and Garrettsville.

As a precaution, says the National Weather Service, move to an interior room on the lowest floor of a building.

https://www.news5cleveland.com/weather/weather-news/a-severe-thunderstorm-warning-is-in-effect

Lowest temperature recorded 9.3˚C in Sreemangal

According to the met office, lowest temperature of 9.3 degrees Celsius has been recorded in Sreemangal on Monday. However, no initiatives on distributing warm clothes among the needy were seen taken by the district or local administrations yet.

In the early hours of the morning, vast layers of fog were seen swirling around and fully covering Sreemangal and other nearby upazilas of the district. Children and elderly folks are mainly receiving the first bite of cold waves with a dose of various fresh diseases.

Meanwhile, seasonal birds have started their winter migration towards Bangladesh. Thousands of winter birds are arriving daily to their safe heavens like Baikka Beel haor, water reservoirs and lakes inside the tea gardens of Sreemangal.

Meteorologist Md Badrul Hossain of Dhaka Met office told the Dhaka Tribune that a temperature of 9.3 degrees Celsius was recorded in Sreemangal at 9am on Monday, whereas 9.6 degrees Celsius was recorded in the Tetulia upazila of the Panchagarh district. 

https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/nation/2018/12/11/lowest-temperature-recorded-9-3-c-in-sreemangal

Potential tropical cyclone may impact India during mid-December

An area of disturbed weather in the Bay of Bengal may develop into a tropical cyclone later this week and could impact southern India this weekend.

Several days of largely dry weather across southern India into Friday will allow residents of southern India to prepare for potential impacts and evacuations from the storm.

The low pressure system in the Bay of Bengal may strengthen into a tropical depression or cyclonic storm by mid to late week. As it nears the coast of southeast India, regardless of strength, it will likely bring areas of rain and thunderstorms with the risk for flooding and mudslides.

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/potential-tropical-cyclone-may-impact-india-during-mid-december/70006841

Why the 2018 Hurricane Season Was More Active Than We Predicted

At a Glance

• More storms and hurricanes formed this season than were expected.
• We talked to a couple of the seasonal outlook experts to see what happened.
• Michael and Florence led to billions of dollars in damage and many broken records.

The 2018 Atlantic hurricane season included two billion-dollar hurricanes and a slightly above-average number of named storms, which overshot seasonal forecasts.

In our end-of-season recap, we spoke to a few of the experts who issue seasonal forecasts to learn why the year was more active than expected.

https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/2018-11-28-hurricane-season-2018-more-active-than-expected-recap

75 mph to 130 mph in just 25 hours, ending at noon EDT Sept. 10.

Florence made landfall near Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, at 7:15 a.m. EDT Sept. 14 with maximum sustained winds around 90 mph.

Florence's water was a major story days before it slowed down and made landfall. Surf came up on the shores of North Carolina as Florence passed south of Bermuda, then flooded the town of New Bern in the eastern part of the Tar Heel State with more than 10 feet of storm surge.

Then rainfall became a big story as Florence drifted inland.

How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet

For the past few years, a tide of optimistic thinking has held that conditions for human beings around the globe have been improving. Wars are scarcer, poverty and hunger are less severe, and there are better prospects for wide-scale literacy and education. But there are newer signs that human progress has begun to flag. In the face of our environmental deterioration, it’s now reasonable to ask whether the human game has begun to falter—perhaps even to play itself out. Late in 2017, a United Nations agency announced that the number of chronically malnourished people in the world, after a decade of decline, had started to grow again—by thirty-eight million, to a total of eight hundred and fifteen million, “largely due to the proliferation of violent conflicts and climate-related shocks.” In June, 2018, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. found that child labor, after years of falling, was growing, “driven in part by an increase in conflicts and climate-induced disasters.”

In 2015, at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris, the world’s governments, noting that the earth has so far warmed a little more than one degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels, set a goal of holding the increase this century to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), with a fallback target of two degrees (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). This past October, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a special report stating that global warming “is likely to reach 1.5 C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.” We will have drawn a line in the sand and then watched a rising tide erase it. The report did not mention that, in Paris, countries’ initial pledges would cut emissions only enough to limit warming to 3.5 degrees Celsius (about 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, a scale and pace of change so profound as to call into question whether our current societies could survive it.

(There were no pictures for this article)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/26/how-extreme-weather-is-shrinking-the-planet

Winter Storm Diego afternoon weather update

People across the Hickory area woke up Sunday morning to a winter wonderland thanks to Winter Storm Diego.

As of 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, 8 to 15 inches of snow had been recorded across the foothills, Foothills Weather Network meteorologist Scotty Powell said.

Readers reported 9 inches of snow in Conover as of 9:30 a.m. with similar totals across Hickory. One reader, who lives near the Hickory Regional Airport, reported 16 inches of snow by 11:50 a.m. on Sunday.

Winter Storm Diego scenes from across Catawba County

Readers from across the Greater Hickory area and the kind folks at the City of Hickory share…

Road conditions are treacherous, with law enforcement advising people to stay off the roads. Photos showed Highway 127 in Viewmont completely covered in snow on Sunday morning.

https://www.hickoryrecord.com/news/winter-storm-diego-afternoon-weather-update/article_38a2c0fc-fbd6-11e8-bb83-7798de4d0f42.html

2019 may be the hottest year yet—here's why

  An El Niño event is very likely under way, amping up extreme weather already made worse by climate change and increasing the odds that 2019 will be the hottest year in recorded human history, scientists warn.
There is an 80 percent chance a full-fledged El Niño has already begun and will last until at least the end of February 2019, according to the Climate Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The impacts of El Niño have been more severe in recent years because of global warming, and these impacts will be worse as temperatures continue to rise, according to a recent study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/nature/2019-may-be-the-hottest-year-yetheres-why.aspx

Why So Many Illinois Tornadoes Were Spawned on a December Day

In Saturday's case, a bullish swirl of low pressure aloft was spinning over the Missouri Valley near St. Joseph, Missouri.
A strong jet stream rounded the base of that upper low from the Red River Valley of Texas, punching northeastward into the mid-Mississippi and Ohio Valley.
Closer to the surface, a complex frontal system was tapping milder and somewhat more humid air northward from the Deep South into central and southern Illinois.
But is it really warm enough in December for severe thunderstorms?
After all, high temperatures in central Illinois only topped out in the 60s – not exactly the hot, humid day you might think of before severe thunderstorms break out in, say, late spring or early summer.
What's important isn't the actual surface temperature or dew point, but rather the relative difference between the air near the ground and aloft, which meteorologists refer to as instability.
Warmer and more humid air near the ground topped by colder and drier air aloft is an environment with more instability to generate thunderstorms.

https://weather.com/storms/tornado/news/2018-12-03-illinois-tornadoes-december-why

 

More wildfires, droughts and extreme weather in store for Oregon

Climate change is already impacting nearly every aspect of life in Oregon, from respiratory health to the state's agriculture and fisheries, according to a new federal report.
Extreme weather, severe wildfires, winter storms and droughts will all become more common as the effects of climate change in Oregon accelerate, according to a recently released federal climate science report.
Over the next decade, Oregon will see more years like 2015, where a record low snowpack and drought led to a wildfire season that burned more than 685,000 acres across the state, according to federal data.
The changes are affecting many of the industries that play a key role in Oregon's economy, including agriculture, forestry and outdoor recreation and tourism, and increasingly affecting the health of residents.

https://pamplinmedia.com/sl/413907-315265-more-wildfires-droughts-and-extreme-weather-in-store-for-oregon

 

Climate change increases India’s vulnerability to extreme weather events: Report

In just four years, over 5,800 people and thousands of animals in India have lost their lives to “extremes of temperature, rainfall and tropical cyclones.” Increase in frequency and intensity of such disasters related to climate change impacts on the weather systems is a serious concern, notes the draft of India’s report to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).  
A final version of the report, ‘Second biennial update report (BUR) to the UNFCCC’, which is to be submitted during the ongoing 24th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP-24) to the UNFCCC at Katowice, Poland. The meeting from December 2-14 is significant as it is expected to finalise the guidelines for implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement. At Paris Agreement in 2015, the world agreed to aim to limit the rise in global average temperature to well below two degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

https://india.mongabay.com/2018/12/04/climate-change-increases-indias-vulnerability-to-extreme-weather-events-report/