Large Hurricane On Saturn

In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane's eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are traveling 330 mph(150 meters per second). The hurricane swirls inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon.

"We did a double take when we saw this vortex because it looks so much like a hurricane on Earth," said Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "But there it is at Saturn, on a much larger scale, and it is somehow getting by on the small amounts of water vapor in Saturn's hydrogen atmosphere."

Scientists will be studying the hurricane to gain insight into hurricanes on Earth, which feed off warm ocean water. Although there is no body of water close to these clouds high in Saturn's atmosphere, learning how these Saturnian storms use water vapor could tell scientists more about how terrestrial hurricanes are generated and sustained.

Both a terrestrial hurricane and Saturn's north polar vortex have a central eye with no clouds or very low clouds. Other similar features include high clouds forming an eye wall, other high clouds spiraling around the eye, and a counter-clockwise spin in the northern hemisphere.

A major difference between the hurricanes is that the one on Saturn is much bigger than its counterparts on Earth and spins surprisingly fast. At Saturn, the wind in the eye wall blows more than four times faster than hurricane-force winds on Earth. Unlike terrestrial hurricanes, which tend to move, the Saturnian hurricane is locked onto the planet's north pole. On Earth, hurricanes tend to drift northward because of the forces acting on the fast swirls of wind as the planet rotates. The one on Saturn does not drift and is already as far north as it can be.

"The polar hurricane has nowhere else to go, and that's likely why it's stuck at the pole," said Kunio Sayanagi, a Cassini imaging team associate at Hampton University in Hampton, Va.

Scientists believe the massive storm has been churning for years. When Cassini arrived in the Saturn system in 2004, Saturn's north pole was dark because the planet was in the middle of its north polar winter. During that time, the Cassini spacecraft's composite infrared spectrometer and visual and infrared mapping spectrometer detected a great vortex, but a visible-light view had to wait for the passing of the equinox in August 2009. Only then did sunlight begin flooding Saturn's northern hemisphere. The view required a change in the angle of Cassini's orbits around Saturn so the spacecraft could see the poles.

"Such a stunning and mesmerizing view of the hurricane-like storm at the north pole is only possible because Cassini is on a sportier course, with orbits tilted to loop the spacecraft above and below Saturn's equatorial plane," said Scott Edgington, Cassini deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "You cannot see the polar regions very well from an equatorial orbit. Observing the planet from different vantage points reveals more about the cloud layers that cover the entirety of the planet."

Cassini changes its orbital inclination for such an observing campaign only once every few years. Because the spacecraft uses flybys of Saturn's moon Titan to change the angle of its orbit, the inclined trajectories require attentive oversight from navigators. The path requires careful planning years in advance and sticking very precisely to the planned itinerary to ensure enough propellant is available for the spacecraft to reach future planned orbits and encounters.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team consists of scientists from the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130430101417.htm

UK weather: Coldest Easter ever lures skiiers to UK slopes

Britain was chillier than Lapland with spring colder than winter here for the first time in nearly 50 years

Greg Dewhurst, a Met Office forecaster, said: “It looks to have been the coldest Easter on record.

“It stays cold generally, with easterly winds picking up again, with no sign of temperatures rising to close to average through this week.”

Brian Gaze of The Weather Outlook added: “Now that upper air temperatures are forecast to be below January’s average temperature until mid-April, snow showers are an increasing risk from midweek.”

Icy conditions in mountain areas across the UK caused chaos for rescue services.

In Snowdonia, North Wales a climber was lucky to be alive last night after sliding 300ft down icy 3,261ft Glyder Fach, onto a rock.

He escaped with a broken leg and was flown by RAF rescue helicopter to Gwynedd Hospital, Bangor.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/uk-weather-coldest-easter-ever-1795544

Beijing mudslide

Rescuers digging for victims of a massive landslide at a gold-mining site in Tibet found just one body yesterday, a day after 83 workers were buried by two million cubic metres of mud, rock and debris. The avalanche swept through the mine near the village of Gyama in Lhasa's Maizhokunggar district covering an area of one and a half square miles.

Beijing says the cause of the mudslide is yet to be fully investigated, although state media say it was the result of a "natural disaster", without giving specifics. The Chinese government claims the reason for the heavy mining activity, which increases the risk of landslides in the already precarious region, is to raise living standards and create economic growth. Many Tibetans vehemently disagree and claim any wealth created is channelled straight to Beijing.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/tibet-landslide-kills-scores-of-goldminers-8555245.html

Severe Threat in Southern Plains

The best chance for a few severe storms as we start the new week on Monday will be in portions of northwest Texas. Large hail and damaging winds will be the primary threats, however we cannot completely rule out a tornado. A few severe storms are also possible in far southeast Florida on Monday. 

The threat of scattered severe storms shifts to southern parts of Texas on Tuesday. After that, we will then watch the immediate Gulf Coast for the possibility of severe weather as we head through Wednesday and Thursday.

http://www.weather.com/news/weather-severe/severe-weather-tracker

Scientists link frozen spring to dramatic Arctic sea ice loss

Climate scientists have linked the massive snowstorms and bitter spring weather now being experienced across Britain and large parts of Europe and North America to the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice.

Both the extent and the volume of the sea ice that forms and melts each year in the Arctic Ocean fell to an historic low last autumn, and satellite records published on Monday by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, show the ice extent is close to the minimum recorded for this time of year.

"The sea ice is going rapidly. It's 80% less than it was just 30 years ago. There has been a dramatic loss. This is a symptom of global warming and it contributes to enhanced warming of the Arctic," said Jennifer Francis, research professor with the Rutgers Institute of Coastal and Marine Science.

According to Francis and a growing body of other researchers, the Arctic ice loss adds heat to the ocean and atmosphere which shifts the position of the jet stream – the high-altitude river of air that steers storm systems and governs most weather in northern hemisphere.

"This is what is affecting the jet stream and leading to the extreme weather we are seeing in mid-latitudes," she said. "It allows the cold air from the Arctic to plunge much further south. The pattern can be slow to change because the [southern] wave of the jet stream is getting bigger. It's now at a near record position, so whatever weather you have now is going to stick around," she said.

Francis linked the Arctic temperature rises to extreme weather in mid latitudes last year and warned in September that 2012's record sea ice melt could lead to a cold winter in the UK and northern Europe.

She was backed by Vladimir Petoukhov, professor of Earth system analysis at Potsdam Institute in Germany, whose research suggests the loss of ice this year could be changing the direction of the jet stream.

"The ice was at a record low last year and is now exceptionally low in some parts of the Arctic like the Labrador and Greenland seas. This could be one reason why anticyclones are developing," he said.

The heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures which have marked March 2013 across the northern hemisphere are in stark contrast to March 2012 when many countries experienced their warmest ever springs. The hypothesis that wind patterns are being changed because melting Arctic sea ice has exposed huge swaths of normally frozen ocean to the atmosphere would explain both the extremes of heat and cold, say the scientists.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/25/frozen-spring-arctic-sea-ice-loss

Bundle up for the five coldest cities in America

While relatively balmy conditions have prevailed across the USA the past few months, Old Man Winter is making a comeback - delighting skiers in snow-starved Lake Tahoe and elsewhere.

And for travelers eager to put those longjohns and fleece parkas to a real test, researchers at The Weather Channel have crunched the latest 30-year average annual temperature data from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center to come up with the five coldest cities in America.

To keep the ranking from being dominated by one or two states, The Weather Channel picked the coldest locations in each state and took the top five from that list. Locations were limited to cities with at least 5,000 residents, with one major exception: Winner Barrow, Alaska, which boasts an average temperature of just 11.7 degrees.

CAPTION

By EARL FINKLER, AP

Other bone-chilling cities included International Falls, Minnesota (whose average annual temperature of 37.8 degrees and all-time record low of 55 degrees below zero have earned it the nicknames "Frostbite Falls" and "Icebox of the Nation"), Gunnison, Colorado (where travelers can expect freezes almost every day of the year), and Jackson, Wyoming. Rounding out the top five: Caribou, Maine, which gets more than nine feet of snow each year and whose average temperature of 39.7 degrees is partially due to a "polar vortex" over Hudson Bay, which funnels frigid air from Canada into northern Maine.

http://travel.usatoday.com/destinations/dispatches/post/2012/01/bundle-up-for-the-five-coldest-cities-in-america/614610/1

It’s Move It or Lose It in Path of a Nor’easter

PLUM ISLAND, Mass. — Barbara Murray walked her dog past a ribbon of the police tape that wound its way around sections of this scenic barrier island, about an hour north of Boston, where she has lived for 50 years.She ascended a sandy driveway and watched three construction workers, one driving a construction scoop, stack concrete blocks and cover them with sand and plastic cloth — an effort to protect a recently built home here in the town of Newbury from waves that have been ravenously consuming the shoreline this winter.
“It’s not going to work,” Ms. Murray said. “You’re not going to stop the ocean. It’s too powerful.”


The winter storm, which unexpectedly missed Washington, sucked sand from the beach and dragged waves high up on the shore. Last week, six homes were demolished by construction crews, having been irreparably damaged in the storm. Seven more were too dangerous to be occupied.

An additional 24 homes are considered to be in imminent danger of being seriously damaged should there be another storm or an abnormally high tide, which means residents were warily watching a new winter storm expected to reach here on Monday night.

“We’ve had one horrendous winter since, really, Hurricane Sandy,” said Robert Connors, who owns a construction company and lives in a house raised above the sand on pilings. “Our beach and our dune system has been leaking, compromised, and now it’s just completely done.”

The storm damage was so serious that state officials made an exception to rules preventing what is known as hard coastal armoring along this coast, including the construction of bulkheads and concrete-block walls to protect against waves and erosion. They are allowing people whose houses are still standing to put up walls that they say are one of the only ways to protect the structures in the short term. But that is only for now.

“When the emergency conditions abate, we will be inspecting those properties,” said Kenneth L. Kimmell, the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. “And in all likelihood, those hard structures they’re putting in will have to be removed.”Many residents are frustrated that they have not been able to do more to shore up the coastline, but some officials are calling for a different strategy to face the reality of increasingly violent storms and rising seas.

The best solution, the officials say, would be to move some of the homes up and away from what they consider part of the fastest-shrinking coastline in Massachusetts.

Barrier islands are subject to the whims of wind and waves. Plum Island has lost about 100 feet of beach in the last 20 years, much of it in the last five. Meanwhile, shoreline development has increased, with the fisherman’s shacks that used to dot the coast replaced by homes and infrastructure.

http://www.dailynewscrunch.com/science/it-s-move-it-or-lose-it-in-path-of-a-nor-easter/

Sochi Organizers Are Stockpiling Snow, Just in Case

SOCHI, Russia — The biggest worry among organizers for next year’s Winter Olympics is not whether the sites will be in order, or that the 30-mile road and the new railroad tracks and the thousands of hotel rooms all being built from scratch will be complete, or that the stands will be full of fans despite this city’s remote location.

The biggest worry is the one the Russians cannot control: the weather.
And they have plenty of reasons to worry.

The last Winter Games, in Vancouver in 2010, were bedeviled by unseasonably mild temperatures in British Columbia. Alpine ski races were persistently postponed because of fog and slushy conditions. Hidden hay bales took the place of snow to build mounds for various courses. A lasting image of those Games is that of helicopters ferrying buckets of snow to the snowboarding site.

Sochi is more worrisome. This city of nearly 500,000, filled with palm trees and year-round flowers, hugs the shore of the Black Sea. Unlike Vancouver, where most of the outdoor mountain events were held 90 minutes away around Whistler, the venues in the Caucasus Mountains are about 30 minutes away, up a winding canyon.

There is a plan, and it does not include helicopters and hay bales. Sochi organizers, fully aware of the problems in Vancouver, have installed what they say is the biggest snowmaking operation in Europe. More than 400 snowmaking cannons, each looking a bit like a jet engine, are continually spitting streams of crystals for next year’s Olympics.

On the advice of a Finnish company called Snow Secure, the goal this season is to stockpile 500,000 cubic meters of snow into 10 shady pockets above the venues. The massive piles will be covered by insulated blankets, not unlike giant yoga mats, to protect them from the heat of summer.
Up to half of the saved snow may melt by next winter, but the site managers said they could conduct the Olympics even in the unlikely event that no natural snow falls next winter. The stockpiled snow can be shoved down the mountain with Sno-Cats or guided onto steep slides — pipes, a meter in diameter, cut in half — aimed at where the snow is most needed.

“Each venue in the mountains has its own peculiarities,” said Valeriy Lukjanov, whose job is to forecast the weather at the Sochi Games, perhaps the least appreciated task of them all. He sat in his office recently in the mountain valley where more than half of the events will take place.
“Last year, there was a meter of snow outside this window,” Lukjanov said.
One year from the start of the Sochi Games, there was none.

The places hosting the mountain competitions — not only the five Olympic sites, but also the ski resorts surrounding them — are mostly new, constructed since Russia was awarded the Games six years ago. Sochi has little experience in hosting world-class sports events, and little historical climate data is available to fully appreciate the weather possibilities.

With few exceptions, the weather stations have been in place only since 2010. What the Russians have learned since then is that the weather in the mountains above Sochi can be wildly unpredictable.
In February, World Cup snowboard cross and ski cross events were canceled because of a lack of snow, and other competitions at the Extreme Park were held amid criticism of slushy conditions.
Two years earlier, part of the European Cup Alpine skiing championships was canceled because of too much snow. Low clouds rearranged the schedule for last month’s Russian Alpine ski championships, an official test event. During the World Cup luge event in late February, it rained.

At the Olympics, unlike at test events, competitions cannot be canceled.
“During the Games, we will have more snow and we will have all the events,” Dmitry Chernyshenko, the president of the Sochi 2014 organizing committee, said in an interview last month. “We didn’t expect that the amount of snow we collected was not enough. So now we learned this lesson and paid the price.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/sports/olympics/with-weather-concerns-organizers-are-storing-snow-for-winter-olympics-in-sochi-russia.html?ref=weather&_r=0

Spring Delayed, Europe Shivers

LONDON — “When will this winter ever end?”
Thursday’s Plaintive headline in Britain’s Daily Telegraph was prompted by forecasts that the big freeze gripping much of Europe is likely to last well into April.
From Ireland to Romania, unseasonable snowfalls have caused travel chaos, power outages and serious losses to livestock farmers during the coldest March in almost half a century.

Sun-starved Germans have endured their gloomiest winter in at least 43 years, while Northern France is shivering in near-freezing temperatures more than a week after the official arrival of spring.
The cold weather phenomenon, which has also affected the parts of the United States, is being blamed on a slowing of the Atlantic jet stream that scientists say is paradoxically linked to global warming.
This time last year, northern Europe and the eastern United States were basking in a mini-heat wave that brought the warmest March on record in some areas.

It was one of the many examples of climate phenomena that made 2012 a record year for extreme weather events in some regions, as my colleague Christopher F. Schuetze reported in January.
Last year saw the start of an unusually harsh winter in China, record-breaking temperatures in Australia, summer floods in Britain, drought in the American Midwest, and a storm that devastated parts of New Jersey and New York in late October.

As my colleague Sarah Lyall has written, quoting Omar Baddour of the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, extreme weather events are increasing in intensity as well as frequency.
They are signs that climate change is not just about rising temperatures, but also about intense, anomalous weather events of all kinds, according to Mr. Baddour.

Europe’s freezing spring, far from reinforcing the arguments of climate change skeptics, is actually one of the consequences of man-made global warming, according to climate experts.

Scientists in the United States and elsewhere have explained that the loss of Arctic sea ice as a result of global warming is disrupting the course and strength of the westerly jet stream, resulting in longer winters in some years.

“The sea ice is going rapidly. It’s 80 percent less than it was just 30 years ago,” Jennifer Francis, a research professor with the Rutgers Institute of Coastal and Marine Science, Told the Guardian. “This is a symptom of global warming and it contributes to enhanced warming of the Arctic.”
Ms. Francis warned back in September that the phenomenon might bring a harsh winter to northern Europe.


http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/spring-delayed-europe-shivers/?ref=weather

5 tornado ghost towns

When it comes to ghost towns, images of the Wild West, not tornado destruction, probably come to mind first. However, for a handful of towns devastated by tornadoes in the central United States, this term is appropriate.

Our Severe Weather Expert Dr. Greg Forbes has compiled a list of so-called "tornado ghost towns" that no longer exist because of extreme tornado damage. For our first ghost town, we don't have to go far back in the history books According to the 2000 census, the town only had a population of 109 before the tornado wiped out just about everything it its path. Afterwards, Manchester was never rebuilt and in 2007 a monument was dedicated in the former town.On the evening of June 24, 2003, the town of Manchester, S.D. was leveled by a powerful F4 tornado. The tornado that moved through the small town was around a half mile wide! Amazingly, no fatalities were reported.

The Manchester tornado was the strongest of 95 tornadoes that struck parts of South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wyoming and Iowa in the outbreak. An incredible 66 tornadoes touched downed in South Dakota alone in eight hours.

http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-central/tornado-ghost-towns-20130321

March 2013 Tornadoes: Fewest in Decades

The persistent, stubborn March cold in the Plains, South and East has had at least one benefit.  

March 2013 is poised to be one of the least tornadic Marches in the U.S. in decades.

In preliminary data through March 31, only 15 tornadoes have been tallied across the nation in March 2013, according to Severe Weather Expert, Dr. Greg Forbes

If this preliminary total holds up, this would be thelowest March U.S. tornado count in 35 years, since only 17 tornadoes were counted in March 1978.  The last March with a lower U.S. tornado tally was 1969, with only 8 U.S. tornadoes. 

March 2012 couldn't have been more different, nearly doubling the monthly average with 154 tornadoes, punctuated by the Mar. 2-3 outbreak, heavily damaging the towns of W. Liberty, Ky, and Henryville, Ind

http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-central/march-tornadoes-fewest-20130330

Severe weather takes a swipe at South Africa

The storms across South Africa have lead to the death of at least eight people and damaged roads and properties [EPA]

South Africa has been pounded by some hazardous weather over the past few days.

The weather first turned severe on Thursday in the southwest of the country. 32 hikers had to be rescued after being trapped by heavy rain on the Whale Trail near Bredasdorp.

The worst of the weather struck in the southeast of the country. According to provincial disaster management officials, eight people, including a five-year-old boy, died in the severe weather in the Eastern Cape.

The deaths occurred whilst people were attempting to cross streams or when their vehicles were washed away.

The flooding was so severe, that it even washed away a section of the main N2 highway, which links Grahamstown to Port Elizabeth.

As well as torrential rain, the weather system also delivered large hailstones. Some reports say that the hail was as big as tennis balls in some parts of Johannesburg.

The ice smashed into cars and broke windows of many homes and businesses, and caused a number of traffic accidents.

The severe weather is due to a low pressure which is still delivering widespread thunderstorms across many parts of the country. The treacherous conditions are expected to continue across southern parts of the Western and Eastern Cape during Monday, before clearing away from the southern regions on Tuesday.

http://www.aljazeera.com/weather/2012/10/2012102284341144733.html

Blizzard Looms for Amarillo, Wichita, Kansas City

Communities from the Texas panhandle to Missouri are bracing for an immobilizing blizzard to kickoff the workweek on Monday.

Evolving from the snowstorm delivering a fresh 6-12 inches to Denver to close out the weekend, the blizzard will take shape from the Texas panhandle to southwestern Kansas tonight.

The blizzard will then spread to central Kansas and places north and west of Oklahoma City on Monday before unleashing its fury on eastern Kansas, western Missouri and northeastern Oklahoma Monday night.

http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/blizzard-looms-for-amarillo-wi/6799982

Severe Storm Threat Returns Sunday Night

Monday's Forecast

A few strong to severe thunderstorms may develop Sunday evening and Sunday night from parts of central Texas to the Louisiana Gulf Coast. A few strong wind gusts, hail and perhaps a tornado or two could occur in those areas.

A more significant threat of severe storms will return to parts of the Gulf Coast and Southeast Monday through Tuesday. Both damaging winds and tornadoes will be possible. Torrential rainfall could contribute to flooding as well. 

Biggest Snow of the Year for Chicago Possible

A storm system set on bringing heavy snow from northwestern Kansas to Iowa at midweek may still pack enough punch to bring the biggest single snowfall of the season so far to Chicago.
The storm is projected to put down a general 6 to 12 inches of snow over the central Plains with blizzard conditions for a few hours could remain organized enough to spread moderate snow into northern Illinois and Chicagoland Thursday night into Friday morning.
Snowfall in Chicago has been, well, pathetic this winter so far with only 10.7 inches falling as of Feb. 18 at O'Hare. The normal snowfall for the season to date is 27 inches.
The first few days of this month brought the snowiest weather of the season as a series of weak storms from western Canada passed through with rounds of snow just about every day.

The biggest snow on a single calendar day was 2.4 inches on Feb. 4. at O'Hare. The storm total, which spanned part of Feb. 3 and 4 was 2.9 inches.
A storm spanning Feb. 1 and 2 brought 2.3 inches at the same airport.

While the storm coming in late Thursday with snow and finishing up Friday with a wintry mix will be past peak and beginning to unwind, it has the potential to bring 3 inches or a bit more of the white stuff.

White-Out Conditions, Road Closures Possible in Four Corners Snowstorm

Locally heavy, blinding snow will slow travel along I-10, I-25, I-15, I-17, I-40 and I-70 in the Four Corners region into Wednesday night.

Rough travel conditions from snow will be along I-17 and I-40 in Arizona, where snow levels will dip as low as 3,000 feet with accumulating snow and slippery travel beginning near 3,500 feet. Up to a foot of snow will fall over the Rim Country.

Pockets of heavy snow will also occur farther east along I-40 in western New Mexico.

The snow could be intense enough for a time to bring white-out conditions and road closures.

Snow will fall as far south as the mountains of southeastern Arizona. Slushy, snow-covered roads are possible along high-elevation stretches of I-10 east of Tucson.