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Oklahoma tornadoes: Aerial footage shows trail of destruction
Oklahoma tornadoes: Aerial footage shows trail of destruction
Aerial footage shows the scale of the devastation in Oklahoma after tornadoes tore through the US state.
Buildings were destroyed and tens of thousands of residents were left without electricity.
The storm killed at least four people, including a young child.
Clean-up operations have been taking place in the town of Sulphur, where the storm flattened buildings, flipped over cars and tore off roofs.
On a visit to Sulphur, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt said it appeared that every business in the town had been destroyed.
A state of emergency has been declared in 12 counties. The White House said President Joe Biden had offered the full support of the federal government.Read more: At least five dead after tornadoes hit central US
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Powerful T-Storms Threaten 60 Million Americans As “Squall Lines” Could Produce Twisters
Powerful T-Storms Threaten 60 Million Americans As “Squall Lines” Could Produce Twisters
Widespread severe thunderstorms are expected to develop on Tuesday from Texas to Wisconsin, unleashing damaging winds, torrential rain, hail, and the threat of tornadoes in some regions.
“An upper-level trough will dig southeastward from the northern Plains into the central Plains today. An associated mid-level jet will dive southeastward into the central Plains. The leading edge of the stronger mid-level flow associated with the jet will overspread a corridor of maximized low-level moisture located from northeast Texas north-northeastward into the Ozarks,” the National Weather Service (NWS) Storm Prediction Center reported on Tuesday morning.
“Moisture advection ahead of the system, will increase surface dewpoints into the 60s F across most of Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri by afternoon. In response to surface heating, the moisture will contribute to moderate destabilization with MLCAPE values reaching the 2000 to 4000 J/kg range across parts of the moist sector. Thunderstorms are forecast to first initiate to the south of a surface low on the northern edge of the moist airmass in eastern Iowa around midday.”
NWS said a “squall line” will develop by evening as the system moves “southward across southwest Missouri, western Arkansas and east-central Oklahoma.”
“Wind damage will be likely along the leading edge of the squall line. Wind gusts over 65 kt will be possible ahead of the faster moving parts of the squall line. A few tornadoes may also occur with rotating cells embedded in the line. A widespread wind damage threat should continue into parts of north-central and northeast Texas during the mid to late evening before a gradual weakening takes place due to overnight decreasing instability.”
After Deadly Easter, More Tornados Expected For South This Weekend
After Deadly Easter, More Tornados Expected For South This Weekend
Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes are expected for much of the South on Sunday, including areas that are still recovering from last weekend’s deadly storm.
“The highest probability will be on Sunday across many of the same areas that saw severe weather on Easter,” CNN meteorologist Dave Hennen said. “This storm will be similar, but not as strong.”
About 105 tornadoes were spotted across the South during Easter weekend.
The devastating storms resulted in at least 32 deaths, and dozens of homes and buildings ripped apart across the South. At one point, nearly 25 million people on the East Coast were under a tornado watch.
Extreme Weather and Food Resilience, for Home Growers
Extreme Weather and Food Resilience, for Home Growers
A joint task force of experts from the UK and US have recently released recommendations for Extreme Weather and Resilience of the Global Food System. The report uses current climate and weather science coupled with food supply history to make predictions and recommendations to help governments mitigate the societal consequences of food price shocks.
The release of this report is almost ominous in relevance. As drought-stricken Californians and Australians brace for what is shaping up to be one of the most severe El Nino weather weather events in recent history, Section 1 of the report states “[i]n 2007/8, a small weather-related production shock, coupled with historically low stock-to-use levels, led to rapid food price inflation…”. The source of the small weather-related production shock was El Nino conditions in 2007 that caused severe drought in Australia, reduced Australian wheat production by more than half, and exploded wheat prices around the globe.
As we prepare for more El Nino related extreme weather events, the report confirms that we are still at risk for “shocks” to our food supply and prices. In fact, they may be more common and more detrimental in the future. Additionally, the report suggests that if corrective action is not taken, the consequences could cause more civil unrest like the “Arab Spring” of 2010.
While policy makers are still trying to understand the issues, home growers intuitively know that extreme weather events impact food production. We’re not dealing in abstract ‘what-if’ scenarios and distant financial markets, we’re facing the realities of planning and planting our gardens in uncertain and extreme weather conditions right now. Like governments at the global level, home growers also need to meet the challenges through positive action rather than unprepared reaction. Surprisingly, the advice offered in this report also provides good guidelines for us. Let’s take a closer look at the recommendations and see how they can be applied to our home gardens.
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Calgary thunderstorm causes power outages, flooding in Chestermere
Lightning advisory that grounded all flights at Calgary airport now lifted
People in Calgary woke up with a bang early Sunday morning as a line of thunderstorms hovered over the city, bringing lightning, power outages and overland flooding in communities to the east.
As the storms moved eastward, severe thunderstorm warnings issued by Environment Canada remained in effect for Red Deer, Ponoka, Innisfail and Stettler by 3 p.m. MT. An earlier storm warning for Calgary was cancelled at 9:40 a.m. MT.
“Meteorologists are tracking a dangerous thunderstorm capable of producing up to penny size hail and flooding rain,” the agency said on its website.
Thunderstrom watches — the agency’s less urgent category of alert — were still in effect for much of the southeastern part of the province by late afternoon.
- Have images of the storm? Send photos or video towebcalgary@cbc.ca
When the storm hit early Sunday morning it caused flash-flooding in parts of northeast Calgary as well as Langdon and Chestermere east of the city.
The Alberta emergency public alert system tweeted a warning about overland flooding in Chestermere.
“While short, this was an intensely severe storm that brought an amount of water that overwhelmed our systems” Steve Bagley, Chetermere’s director of emergency management. said in a release.
“We are working hard to assist residents and restore services as quickly as possible.”
Officials said power had been restored to most parts of the city by 1:30 p.m. MT and that Chestermere Lake water levels were under control.
Langdon resident Andrew Kucy said it didn’t take long for his basement to flood.
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Global Warming May Spawn More Southeast US Tornadoes
Global Warming May Spawn More Southeast US Tornadoes
The same loopy weather patterns directing California’s ongoing drought and last year’s deep freeze across the East Coast may also change how often tornadoes strike the southeastern United States, a new modeling study finds.
Researchers examined how global warming will affect severe weather during the heart of tornado season — March, April and May. They found that while the yearly tornado total will climb by 2080, the number of tornadoes will also vary wildly from year to year. That’s because sometimes, the weather will get stuck in a pattern that favors tornadoes, and sometimes, conditions will stymie stormy weather, according to the report, published Jan. 15 in the journal Climatic Change.
“We see this trend in a lot of extreme weather,” said lead study author Victor Gensini, a severe storms climatologist at the College of DuPage in Illinois. “Changes in the jet stream are causing the jet to break down and get stuck in these blocking patterns,” Gensini said. “It just so happens it could be in a favorable pattern for tornadoes or a really bad pattern [for tornadoes].” [The Top 5 Deadliest Tornado Years in U.S. History]
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Dust Storms Again in the High Plains
Dust Storms Again in the High Plains.
A cold Arctic air mass swept southward across the high plains last Tuesday, its 50 mph winds dropping temperatures by 50 degrees overnight. Blowing over drought-parched farm soil, the wind created a huge dust storm in eastern Colorado, visible in striking photographs from aircraft and from space. The same region had seven dust storms last year. In 2012, a severe dust storm caused multiple traffic accidents in northern Oklahoma.
Dust storm near Lamar, Colorado, 2013. Photo by Denver Post, permission requested.
“You hear sand and dirt pounding against the window,” said Colorado farmer Dave Hixson after a 2013 storm. “You know that it’s your crop that’s hitting the windows and blowing away, and it’s not just affecting you, but also everyone else.”
Wind takes nearly half the soil eroded from American farmlands. It does its worstin parts of the high plains, where agriculture is pushing its limits: eastern Colorado and nearby regions of Oklahoma and Texas, as well as North Dakota. East of the high plains, severe wind erosion affects the Red River valley of North Dakota-Minnesota. Unprotected soil blows away many times faster than it forms in these regions.
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Arctic Ice Melt Seen Doubling Risk of Harsh Winter in EU – Bloomberg
Arctic Ice Melt Seen Doubling Risk of Harsh Winter in EU – Bloomberg.
The decline in Arctic sea ice has doubled the chance of severe winters in Europe andAsia in the past decade, according to researchers in Japan.
Sea-ice melt in the Arctic, Barents and Kara seas since 2004 has made more than twice as likely atmospheric circulations that suck cold Arctic air to Europe and Asia, a group of Japanese researchers led by the University of Tokyo’s Masato Mori said in astudy published today in Nature Geoscience.
“This counterintuitive effect of the global warming that led to the sea ice decline in the first place makes some people think that global warming has stopped. It has not,” Colin Summerhayes, emeritus associate of the Scott Polar Research Institute, said in a statement provided by the journal Nature Geoscience, where the study is published.
The findings back up the view of United Nations climate scientists that a warmer average temperature for the world will make storms more severe in some places and change the character of seasons in many others. It also helps debunk the suggestion that slower pace of global warming in the past decade may suggest the issue is less of a problem.
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