Lightning hits Seattle-bound jet, puts on a show as summertime front sweeps through

SEATTLE -- That was quite the punctuation mark to end a weekend!

A rather strong cold front swept through Western Washington Sunday night, bringing a burst of heavy rains and vivid lightning, including one bolt that hit an inbound jetliner into Sea-Tac Airport.

Emily Todd was on Hawaiian Air Flight 30 from Maui into Seattle when the plane had to traverse that potent cold front just before landing around 11:15 p.m

SEATTLE -- That was quite the punctuation mark to end a weekend!

A rather strong cold front swept through Western Washington Sunday night, bringing a burst of heavy rains and vivid lightning, including one bolt that hit an inbound jetliner into Sea-Tac Airport.

Emily Todd was on Hawaiian Air Flight 30 from Maui into Seattle when the plane had to traverse that potent cold front just before landing around 11:15 p.m

SEATTLE -- That was quite the punctuation mark to end a weekend!

A rather strong cold front swept through Western Washington Sunday night, bringing a burst of heavy rains and vivid lightning, including one bolt that hit an inbound jetliner into Sea-Tac Airport.

Emily Todd was on Hawaiian Air Flight 30 from Maui into Seattle when the plane had to traverse that potent cold front just before landing around 11:15 p.m

SEATTLE -- That was quite the punctuation mark to end a weekend!

A rather strong cold front swept through Western Washington Sunday night, bringing a burst of heavy rains and vivid lightning, including one bolt that hit an inbound jetliner into Sea-Tac Airport.

Emily Todd was on Hawaiian Air Flight 30 from Maui into Seattle when the plane had to traverse that potent cold front just before landing around 11:15 p.m

SEATTLE -- That was quite the punctuation mark to end a weekend!

A rather strong cold front swept through Western Washington Sunday night, bringing a burst of heavy rains and vivid lightning, including one bolt that hit an inbound jetliner into Sea-Tac Airport.

Emily Todd was on Hawaiian Air Flight 30 from Maui into Seattle when the plane had to traverse that potent cold front just before landing around 11:15 p.m

SEATTLE -- That was quite the punctuation mark to end a weekend!

A rather strong cold front swept through Western Washington Sunday night, bringing a burst of heavy rains and vivid lightning, including one bolt that hit an inbound jetliner into Sea-Tac Airport.

Emily Todd was on Hawaiian Air Flight 30 from Maui into Seattle when the plane had to traverse that potent cold front just before landing around 11:15 p.m.

"Terrible turbulence during that bit," she said. Then came the flash.

Lightning Basics

What is lightning?

Lightning is a giant spark of electricity in the atmosphere between clouds, the air, or the ground. In the early stages of development, air acts as an insulator between the positive and negative charges in the cloud and between the cloud and the ground. When the opposite charges builds up enough, this insulating capacity of the air breaks down and there is a rapid discharge of electricity that we know as lightning. The flash of lightning temporarily equalizes the charged regions in the atmosphere until the opposite charges build up again.

Hey Golfers, Sports Fans And Everyone Else - Lightning Causes Thunder

Have you ever watched a college football or baseball game on TV and noticed fans sitting in the stands during a lightning delay. I always find it amusing that they stay during lightning but leave if it starts raining. A few years ago I was watching a sporting even on a major network. One of the announcers said something along the lines of  "it is thundering but we should be okay because I didn't see any lightning."

Severe storms with hail, winds, lightning possible in KC area as dangerous heat looms

Severe thunderstorms are threatening to return to the Kansas City area Tuesday afternoon and evening, bringing the possibility of damaging winds, large hail, flash flooding and frequent lightning.

While most people in the Kansas City area will see the chance for showers with embedded thunderstorms, the threat of severe weather is more likely south of a line stretching from Kansas City to Kirksville, according to the National Weather Service in Pleasant Hill.

The threat of tornadoes is very low with Tuesday's storms, according to the weather service.

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/weather/article213837769.html#storylink=cpy

Everything You Need to Know To Stay Safe During a Tornado

Tornadoes

Tornadoes can destroy buildings, flip cars, and create deadly flying debris. Tornadoes are violently rotating columns of air that extend from a thunderstorm to the ground. Tornadoes can:

• Happen anytime and anywhere;
• Bring intense winds, over 200 MPH; and
• Look like funnels.

 IF YOU ARE UNDER A TORNADO WARNING, FIND SAFE SHELTER RIGHT AWAY

• If you can safely get to a sturdy building, then do so immediately.
• Go to a safe room, basement, or storm cellar.
• If you are in a building with no basement, then get to a small interior room on the lowest level.
• Stay away from windows, doors, and outside walls.
• Do not get under an overpass or bridge. You’re safer in a low, flat location.
• Watch out for flying debris that can cause injury or death.
• Use your arms to protect your head and neck.

https://www.ready.gov/tornadoes

Increasing Tornado Outbreaks: Is Climate Change Responsible?

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 the researchers were not sure why.
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2016/12/01/increasing-tornado-outbreaks-is-climate-change-responsible/

Weather updates: Multiple tornado warnings issued in south-central Iowa

A tornado was spotted Monday afternoon in Ringgold County in south-central Iowa, the National Weather Service said. 

Weather spotters confirmed the tornado shortly before 5:20 p.m. near Mount Ayr, moving northeast at 20 mph, the service said. Minutes later, a severe thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado was located nearby. 

10 ways to prepare for tornadoes, strong winds and hailstorms

Is your home ready to withstand powerful gusts of wind and pounding hail? While damage from strong storms is often inevitable, there are steps you can take to minimize harm to your property and protect your personal safety. You shouldn't wait until severe weather is predicted in your area to take action – plan ahead for hailstorms, wind storms and tornadoes by following these steps.

Just Why Are Trailer Parks Always A Tornado Hotspot?

Although the 2014 tornado season kicked off with a whimper, not a bang, thanks in part to cool weather persisting across much of the United States, this past weekend was a particular violent one in terms of extreme weather, with twisters leaving behind them a sizable swath of destruction and despair across Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and beyond (and judging from reports out of Mississippi, this storm system is very much from done). At least 18 people, a majority of them residents of Arkansas, lost their lives in this weekend’s storms, the first reported fatalities in an otherwise quiet tornado season.

And while numerous “traditional” buildings and homes were leveled by this weekend’s deadly storm system, a handful of trailer parks were also destroyed including one in North Carolina that was “ripped to shreds.”

New Tornado Detection Could Predict Exactly When A Twister Will Hit

Most experts agree that waiting until you've heard a tornado's signature jet engine roar is a recipe for disaster. With only five to 13 minutes of advanced warning possible using current technology, your best bet is to seek shelter at the first hint of danger. By the time you hear the churning vortex of a twister, it's often too late.

Unbeknownst to many, however, is that tornadoes and the storms that spawn them generate something called infrasound. These sound waves have frequencies below 20 hertz (cycles per second) or beyond the lower limit of human audibility. Infrasound stations have been created around the world to monitor both man-made events (such as nuclear explosions and sonic booms) and natural events (such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and avalanches).

The Moore Tornado Disaster: What to know to understand it.

A massive and powerful tornado hit Moore, Oklahoma this afternoon, causing widespread destruction, including at least 51 deaths. It's the deadliest tornado since 2011, and one of the worst in the last 20 years. This evening, President Obama signed a disaster declaration for Oklahoma.

One Town, Four Tornados

On the evening of May 3, 1999, a massive tornado tore through the Oklahoma City area. Known today as the Bridge Creek-Moore Tornado, it’s infamous for its size (a mile wide) and strength (wind speeds reached 300 miles per hour, on par with a Tokyo bullet train). It moved, as tornadoes so often do, from the southwest to the northeast, touching down in the rural plains before churning its way through the suburb of Moore and up to Midwest City, just east of downtown — which was where it pulverized my dad’s truck.

Floods 101

What is flooding?

Flooding is an overflowing of water onto land that is normally dry. Floods can happen during heavy rains, when ocean waves come on shore, when snow melts too fast, or when dams or levees break. Flooding may happen with only a few inches of water, or it may cover a house to the rooftop. They can occur quickly or over a long period and may last days, weeks, or longer. Floods are the most common and widespread of all weather-related natural disasters.

Flash floods are the most dangerous kind of floods, because they combine the destructive power of a flood with incredible speed and unpredictability. Flash floods occur when excessive water fills normally dry creeks or river beds along with currently flowing creeks and rivers, causing rapid rises of water in a short amount of time. They can happen with little or no warning.

Just What Is La Nina?

La Niña is characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific, compared to El Niño, which is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific. The graphic below shows the sea surface temperature in the equatorial Pacific  (20ºN-20ºS, 100ºE-60ºW) from Indonesia on the left to central America on the right. 

Strong La Niña conditions during December 1998 are shown in the top panel. The Eastern Pacific is cooler than usual, and unusually cool water extends farther westward than is usual (see the blue color extending further off-shore from South America along the equator).

Normal Equatorial Pacific Ocean surface temperatures (December 1993) are shown in the middle panel, including the usual cool water, called the 'cold tongue', in the Eastern Pacific (in blue, on the right of the plot) and the usual warm water, called the 'warm pool' in the Western Pacific (in red, on the left).

https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/elnino/what-is-la-nina

The Great El Nino of 1998

Not all El Niño’s have the same affects globally but one place that is always adversely affected is Peru (where the term ‘El Niño’ was first used). The warming of the Eastern Pacific during an El Niño event always contributes to higher than normal rainfall in Peru, sometimes, as was the case in 1997-1998, catastrophically so. One location, Tumbes, in northwestern Peru, received 2,100 mm (82.7”) of precipitation between December 1997 and May 1998, including 730 mm (28.7”) in January alone. The normal rainfall for Tumbes between December-May is just 200 mm (8”). Flooding and mudslides killed over 200 in Peru and over 250 in Ecuador. The Peruvian government said that damage to the nation’s infrastructure cost US$2 billion. In September of 1997 Hurricane Linda formed off the coast of Mexico and developed into the strongest Eastern Pacific tropical cyclone on record with sustained winds reaching 185 mph and a central barometric pressure as low as 900 mb (26.58”) on September 12th. A month later, Hurricane Pauline hit Mexico killing 250-400 people and dropping 686 mm (27.01”) of rainfall in 24 hours on the town of San Luis Actatlan, the 2nd heaviest rainfall recorded in Mexico as a result of a Pacific Hurricane. In the Western Pacific, three of the top 10 most intense typhoons on record formed (two of them simultaneously): Super Typhoon Joan (872 mb/25.75” on Oct. 19), ST Ivan (872 mb on Oct. 18), and ST Keith (878 mb/25.92”) on Nov. 2nd.