Weather!

[owlice]

Or was... now it's just sprinkling!

(We're forecast to have two bands of severe storms, with the worst of them being later today. "Derecho" was even mentioned as a possibility, along with tornadoes, hail, strong winds, downed trees, power outages, general and specific mayhem, beer shortages, extra feral cats patrolling for a handout, and retrieval of personal property from neighbors' yards.)

And now the rain is picking up some....

[owlice]

And now... nothing! The rain has stopped and it's getting brighter. Don't hear thunder anymore, either.

[neufer]

And now... nothing!

The rain has stopped and it's getting brighter.

Don't hear thunder anymore, either.

• Wait a minute, it stopped hailing,
  Guys are swimming, gals are sailing.
  Playing baseball, gee that's betta,
  Mudda, Fadda, kindly disregard this letter!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
QUEEN GERTRUDE: Let not thy [Mudda] lose her prayers, Hamlet:

• I pray thee, stay with us; go not to Wittenberg.

Click to view full size image 1 or image 2

Surging Elbe in Wittenberg
June 12, 2013

<<Unprecedented rainfall and flooding continued to plague central Europe in mid-June 2013, causing billions of dollars in damage. The Elbe, Danube, Saale, and other river systems rose well above their banks and breached flood defenses in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. Many news outlets and some government sources were describing it as the worst flooding since medieval times, surpassing the devastating floods of 2002 in many areas.

On June 7, 2013, the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8 captured a natural-color image (top) of flooding near Wittenberg, in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. For comparison, the lower image shows the same area on May 6. Note how the green floodplain around the river in the May image is completely inundated with muddy water in the June image. Puffs of white cumulus clouds are sprinkled across each image.

At the time of the June 7 image, the river stage stood at 6.7 meters (about 22 feet) in Wittenberg. On June 11, 2013, police shut down the center of Wittenberg as crews worked to shore up sandbag dikes and other defenses. The Elbe River was expected to crest again near the city, following another rainfall over the weekend. Downstream in Magdeburg, the surging river had already burst a dam and forced evacuations.

According to the Austrian Meteorological Agency (ZAMG) and meteorologist Jeff Masters, several months worth of typical rainfall soaked southern Germany and western Austria between May 29 to June 6. That precipitation landed on soil that was already soaked from above-average spring rains. “The primary cause of the torrential rains over Central Europe during late May and early June was a large loop in the jet stream that developed over Europe and got stuck in place,” Masters wrote. “A blocking high set up over Northern Europe, forcing two low pressure systems to avoid Northern Europe and instead track over Central Europe. The extreme kink in the jet stream ushered in a strong southerly flow of moisture-laden air from the Mediterranean Sea over Central Europe, which met up with colder air flowing from the north due to the stuck jet stream pattern.”>>

[owlice]

I was wondering where the severe storms were.... and now I know! OMG, did that come on quickly; nothing, then trees whipped and shredded by the wind, sudden wall of blinding rain, from bright to darkness within two minutes. I'm soaked from going about 10 feet from the car to the kitchen door. Tornado warning, too, for my area and a few others, and given what was happening, seemed a strong possibility; grabbed a cat and stood in the basement for a few minutes while the storm passed. The cat was both trembling and purring. A tornado was sighted just north of me.

Power went out then came back on before I got back. I know this because music that makes my ears bleed was blasting away in the living room, the kid having left one of his CDs in the CD player.

Oh..... maybe that's why the cat was trembling; he had to listen to what was playing.

Sun is out now where I am; still very dark to the east.

Water spout in the Patuxent River, too; soon to be on YouTube, I suspect.

And that's it for us; it's all over. The storms are passing over Annapolis now and will continue east.

[geckzilla]

Hm, the cat wasn't wet was it? I spent a lot of time with cats but understanding some of their emotional states is still difficult. I've heard that cats also purr when they are frightened or during some other negative emotions.

[Beyond]

The Owl and the Pussycat completely soaked and standing in the basement, waiting for the ferocious storm to pass by, while listening to loud and terrible music.
Sounds like a good short story. At least you got a free bath out of it (ignoring the headache). Now you can sit around listening to the purr of the cat, while you preen your feathers.

[owlice]

geckzilla, the cat was dry, as he hadn't been outside. I wrapped him in a towel (which smelled like dirty 19-year-old boy) when we got in the basement. He stayed dry (no peeing; yay for that!); when we came upstairs and I sat down at the computer, he had to come sit in my lap for a couple of minutes, which he doesn't try to do unless he's feeling anxious. He seems fine now.

I'm still wet; should go change my shirt.

Beyond, the first thing I did when I walked in the house (after closing the kitchen door) was turn the music off!

80-90000 people without power, if I followed the news reports correctly. Still have flash flood warnings up. News is now reporting on the damage from this morning's storms, which was nothing here but hit a couple of nearby counties pretty hard.

[BMAONE23]

Owl and Pussycat in the Pea Green (Life)boat

[geckzilla]

Looking at the radar loop near my dad's home earlier I saw a thin line going the opposite way of the storms. 200k gif animation of it. Is that an outflow boundary?

[Beyond]

Sure looks like one.

[Ann]

As I've said elsewhere, I've just returned from northern England. I come from a country where we concentrate all our efforts on keeping houses warm, so that we will be warm and snug inside; and now I came to a country where that is not a priority. I had brought fairly light clothes to England, but for some reason I had brought longjohns and woolly gloves there, too, and I ended up wearing them all the time.

I listened to the six o'clock news almost every morning in my hotel room, and one day they mentioned that last spring had been the coldest in - was it fifty years? - and the last seven summers had been colder than normal.

And like others have pointed out, there have been those awful floods in much of Europe. Here in Sweden, I can see in the weather forecasts that Midsummer is likely to be rainy and cold. And in my experience, the weather during Midsummer tends to "set the note" for the weather for much of the rest of the summer, too.

It really does look as if the weather in Europe is getting colder and wetter, whereas the weather in much of the United States is getting hotter and drier.

Ann

[Ann]

We got some interesting clouds today, and quite a bit of thunder, lightning and rain.

When you open the link, please scroll down to see the clouds.

Ann

[neufer]

We got some interesting clouds today, and quite a bit of thunder, lightning and rain.

When you open the link, please scroll down to see the clouds.

<<An arcus cloud is a low, horizontal cloud formation. Roll clouds and shelf clouds are the two types of arcus clouds. A shelf cloud is usually associated with the leading edge of thunderstorm outflow; roll clouds are usually formed by outflows of cold air from sea breezes or cold fronts in the absence of thunderstorms.

A shelf cloud is a low, horizontal, wedge-shaped arcus cloud. A shelf cloud is attached to the base of the parent cloud, which is usually a thunderstorm, but could form on any type of convective clouds. Rising cloud motion often can be seen in the leading (outer) part of the shelf cloud, while the underside often appears turbulent and wind-torn. Cool, sinking air from a storm cloud's downdraft spreads out across the land surface, with the leading edge called a gust front. This outflow cuts under warm air being drawn into the storm's updraft. As the lower cooler air lifts the warm moist air, its water condenses, creating a cloud which often rolls with the different winds above and below (wind shear).

People seeing a shelf cloud may believe they have seen a wall cloud. This is likely a mistake, since an approaching shelf cloud appears to form a wall made of cloud. A shelf cloud usually appears on the leading edge of a storm, and a wall cloud will usually be at the rear of the storm.

A sharp, strong gust front will cause the lowest part of the leading edge of a shelf cloud to be ragged and lined with rising fractus clouds. In a severe case there will be vortices along the edge, with twisting masses of scud that may reach to the ground or be accompanied by rising dust. A very low shelf cloud accompanied by these signs is the best indicator that a potentially violent wind squall is approaching. An extreme example of this phenomenon looks almost like a tornado and is known as a gustnado.>>

[Ann]

I heard something about severe flooding in Canada.

How are you doing, Rob?

Ann

[orin stepanek]

It's hot; and the forecast is for temperatures in the 90's all week!

[rstevenson]

I heard something about severe flooding in Canada.
How are you doing, Rob?

High and dry. Canada is a very large country -- the flooding is occurring more than 2000 km from here, in the foothills of the Rockies. That's about the same distance as from southern Sweden to the middle of Saudi Arabia, more or less.

We have, however, had quite a wet Spring, with June rainfall as of mid-month already exceeding normal June totals. But to get a flood where I live would require something like a large asteroid splashing down just offshore. Mere rainfall won't do it. (We didn't even get a wet basement during 2003's Hurricane Juan.)

Rob

[mjimih]

It's amazing how Minnesota can be next to Canada, half way to the north pole, stuck in the very center of a huge continent and still receive so much humidity from a thousand miles away in the gulf of Mexico (the gulf is not even west of here, it's due south! go figure)? Last night I could've read a book by the light of the constant lightning.

I have a question for the scientists amongst us; What would Earth's weather be like if Earth didn't spin as fast? Like half as fast for instance. Maybe it's too hard to predict what would change exactly, but I can imagine it would be a wilder ride every morning and evening as the air masses adjust to sun/no sun after reaching towards more extreme states given the extra time it would have to do so.

Wonder what the meteorological computer models would show if the days were 48 hours long instead of 24?

M

[mjimih]

http://addins.wrex.com/blogs/weather/20 ... etty-corny
Why is the humidity so high? The answer is pretty corny.

Indeed, humidity levels are much higher outside of major cities. For instance, Freeport has seen dewpoints of more than 80° in the past few days while surrounding (more urban) cities are in the 74-78° range. This has to do with the evapotranspiration from cornfields. During middle July, our crops are at their mature, healthy stage. As they take moisture from the ground and roots, the healthy leaves give off the moisture during the day (faster during higher temperature). In fact, each corn stalk gives off 53 gallons of water to the atmosphere in it’s lifespan.

Because there are about 20,000 corn stalks in each acre of land, that means that one acre of corn will yield 1,060,000 gallons of water into the air! That translates to A LOT of humidity!

[Chris Peterson]

Hiked up to the top of a local mountain yesterday. Air quality was good on the way up, but by mid-afternoon the smoke was blowing in from fires in the San Juans, 100 miles away. We've had this the last two days. This was the view as we were hiking out, about an hour before sunset. Today I feel like I've been pepper sprayed. And the smoke will probably be back again later. It's as bad as standing on the wrong side of a campfire.

[geckzilla]

Does the sun look more obscured than it appears in the photo? I think it's difficult (or perhaps impossible) to convey the special way the sun looks through smoke with photography.

[Beyond]

Well, there are a lot of off's, such as bug-off, ticked-off and one referring to a bodily function, but this is the first time i have run into "popped-off". I guess it only applies to 'corny' jokes.

[Chris Peterson]

Does the sun look more obscured than it appears in the photo? I think it's difficult (or perhaps impossible) to convey the special way the sun looks through smoke with photography.

Yes, visually the Sun didn't look quite so bright. To get the landscape looking right (and that's exactly how it looked, color and contrast) the Sun got a bit blown out. I took different exposures (could try some HD processing), and this one is how the Sun appeared visually.

[geckzilla]

I've tried using HDR processing on a sunset and no matter what I did it up looking funky.

[Beyond]

Some prognostication of New York City's weather in the future.
http://www.livescience.com/37549-climat ... rming.html
It may be good that you may be moving out, geckzilla, but if you go to Oregon, stay far away from Mount Saint Helens, or you may find yourself going from the frying pan into the fire.

[geckzilla]

Destroy New York City? Post-apocalyptic NYC can't be any worse than it is today. Anything that causes people to move away from this dreadfully packed city is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. Maybe I'll come back in 50 years.