It turns out that the “land hurricane” (technically, a super storm, aka extra tropical cyclone or bomb cyclone) may have been the biggest (most energetic) storm hisorically recorded for the region. Of particular interest is the pressure record (the ultimate measure for a storm) but also, the number of tornadoes and the damage due to winds was also impressive. And, there are interesting tropical things going on in the Atlantic Ocean.

Is this all caused by Global Warming? Yes, probably. Gone are the days when the knee-jerk reaction must be “well, no, no one storm can be attributed to bla bla bla.” Instead, we increasingly recognize that the energy balance sheet has shifted (are my metaphors mixing?) and we live in a stormier world now than we did 100 years ago, because of the release of carbon trapped in antiquity into the atmosphere.

Global warming is like your checking account. Your paycheck is automatically deposited every two weeks (that’s energy from the sun) and varies only a little from time to time. Several bills are paid every month, and thus the money dissipates from your account like the sun’s heat returning to outer space. But then, imagine that the people who bill you delay billing a couple of days each month, until they are a full month out of sync. The same amount of money is going in, the same amount of money is going out, but the money stays in your checking account longer. In this way, instead of the average amount of money in your account hovering around zero (I hope you have overdraft protection!), it hovers around a higher value.

Greenhouse gases retain the energy from the sun longer than usual in the atmosphere. Weather is all about the transfer of the sun’s energy, unevenly (at several scales) distributed on delivery, evening out. A hurricane is a blip in the rush of tropical energy (where there is extra) towards the poles (where there is less), for instance.

A certain amount of this energy simply goes away (returns to space) and plays no further part in the weather, but when that energy is retained longer due to greenhouse gasses, the entire system is more energetic.

So this week, Anthropocentric Global Warming gives you the most intense continental storm ever in North America, and three tropical cyclones trying to get borned in the Atlantic …

Continue reading Stormy World →

I think we are having a land hurricane here in Minnesota. The tree in front of my daughter’s other house (her mom’s place) that was topped by a tornado the week after we bought it has lost a big dead branch, a bunch of firs at the junction of 10 and 35W are down, a colleague of my wife lost a fence, traffic lights have been knocked out on University in Blaine, Monica lost power in the cities last night, all sorts of things like that happening as we experience a steady drum of 35 mph winds with gusts reaching 80 now and then, but more commonly, about 55 mph.

The precip is horizontal, but it is moving so fast it is hard to tell if it is rain or snow, and truthfully, it seems to be both. But I’ve seen no accumulation here. Just the occasional car dusted with slush, obviously come from a different micro-climate.

But then there was this: Driving south on 35W, I spotted what I thought was a chunk of slush snowy icy stuff like that which accumulates under a car behind a wheel, about soft-ball size. That would require snow on the ground, and I don’t think there is any in short driving distance. So I convinced myself that it was a Styrofoam cup and not a chunk of snow. Never mind that Styrofoam cups are no longer used and you no longer see them along the highway, at least around these parts.

Then, three miles down the road we saw it. The same exact thing … slush icy snow-stuff like would fall off the bottom of a car, but larger. About as big as a medium-size dog, a bit bigger than a bushel basket, roughly the dimensions of an old CRT TV. In the middle of the road, people driving around it. If it was blue, I would have figured it to be something that dropped out of an airplane. I have no idea how to explain this.

Meanwhile, in the tropical regions of the Atlantic Ocean, we have this:

No really well organized storms, but two blobs that look like pre-tropical storm features. Each one is tagged by the Hurricane Prediction Center as having a mere 10% chance of forming into a storm over then next 48 hours, but there is a reasonable chance that either or both will eventually do so.

Shary and Tomas. Those are the next two names on the list. So now, we have the question: Which of the two blobs will turn into a storm and get named first, the westerly one or the easterly one, and will either one or the other, both or neither even do so?

I’m guessing they both will be named storms, the westerly forming first.