good things and commercial success.
There’s often a belief that if it sells, it must be bad,
or if it sells, it must be good.
Neither of those is true.
Alain de Botto
LARGEST QUAKES -
This morning -
None 5.0 or higher.
Yesterday -
11/8/10 -
5.5 NEW GUINEA, PAPUA NEW GUINEA
5.0 NEW BRITAIN REGION, P.N.G
5.2 GUAM REGION
VOLCANOES -
INDONESIA - Rescuers in Indonesia have voiced fears for missing children lost in the chaos of a mass exodus after the series of killer eruptions from the nation's most dangerous volcano. About 280,000 people are living in cramped temporary shelters after being ordered to evacuate from a 20-kilometre "danger zone" around Mount Merapi, which has been spewing ash and heat clouds for the past fortnight. "We're concerned about children who are yet to be united with their parents."
Friday's powerful eruption, the biggest since the 1870s, had caused many residents to flee the area on the island of Java in panic, leaving at least 1000 people desperately hunting for their loved ones. A total of 141 people have lost their lives since Mount Merapi began erupting again on October 26, with bodies being pulled from the sludge that incinerated villages on Friday. The volcano was still belching heat clouds today but not as intensely as on previous days. "The intensity of the eruption has decreased since yesterday but the volcano's activity is still high, its status is still alert." The Indonesian archipelago has dozens of active volcanoes.
TROPICAL STORMS -
No current tropical cyclones.
INDIA - Though cyclone Jal has weakened into a well marked low pressure area over Rayalaseema in Andhra Pradesh, meteorologists are keenly watching its further movement for possible changes in weather. But the rainy outlook will continue for two more days. "In some places, it may be rather heavy." Around noon on Monday, the cyclone Jal had weakened into a depression after crossing the east coast and was centred over Rayalseema, about 50 km north east of Anantpur in Andhra Pradesh. Further, it was expected to move towards the west coast. "We are watching the system to see in which direction it will move."
‘Jal' remnant may trigger fresh storm in Arabian Sea - Tropical cyclone ‘Jal' ran into vertical wind shear, a sudden increase in the wind speed and direction with height in the atmosphere, as it approached the North Coastal Tamil Nadu and adjoining South Coastal Andhra Pradesh for a landfall on Sunday night. The storm had also brought with it a barrage of monsoon easterly flows with it, which caused the towering storm to be sheared from the top, weakening it in the process. Model indications are that the weakened storm would canter across the peninsula as a tropical depression and head into the Arabian Sea off the Konkan coast by Tuesday. Some models indicated that the remnant circulation from erstwhile tropical cyclone ‘Jal' might regenerate as a fresh tropical storm in the Arabian Sea by the weekend. A number of international weather models retained the outlook for the Jal remnant to enter the Arabian Sea, while differing in terms of the strength that it might manage to rustle up.
Only the NGP model of the US Navy saw a full-fledged cyclone developing in the North-East Arabian Sea and heading for the South-West Coast of Gujarat for a landfall.
Meanwhile, tropical cyclone ‘Jal' may have affected 16.4 million people with winds speeding to above 63 km/h and another 1.8 million people with those clocking 119 km/h just before landfall. An estimated 1.75 lakh people living in coastal areas below five metres may have been hit by the storm surge alone. Fishermen had been advised to suspend fishing operations entirely on Monday. An extended forecast valid until Friday said that fairly widespread rainfall activity would occur over peninsular India.
Uprooted trees, snapped power cables as cyclone Jal" left its impact. Rains brought on by cyclone Jal' left their impact on the city of Chennai on Sunday morning, uprooting trees, snapping power cables and flooding roads. The LAST TIME A CYCLONE PASSED NEAR CHENNAI WAS 14 YEARS AGO, in 1996. The rains accompanied by gusty winds began lashing the city from 12.30 am on Sunday.
Tomas Remnants Pound Maine - The powerful storm has knocked out power to tens of thousands and toppled trees and utility poles. More than 60,000 Mainers are without power today after the remnants of Tropical Storm Tomas blew through southern and coastal Maine overnight. Especially hard hit was Cumberland County, where more than 25,000 homes and businesses are without electricity. Also hit hard were parts of Sagadahoc and Lincoln Counties. Company officials say extras crews are being brought in from New York to help with the repairs. At least 40 utility poles have been broken. Meanwhile, some roads in the area are closed, as are several schools.
Co-variability of tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic and the eastern North Pacific. In the Western Hemisphere, tropical cyclones "can form and develop in both the tropical North Atlantic (NA) and eastern North Pacific (ENP) Oceans, which are separated by the narrow landmass of Central America," and "in comparison with tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic, tropical cyclones in theeastern North Pacific have received less attention although tropical cyclone activity is generally greater in the eastern North Pacific than in the North Atlantic."
"Tropical cyclone activity in the NA varies out-of-phase with that in the ENP on both interannual and multidecadal timescales, "so that "when tropical cyclone activity in the NA increases (decreases), tropical cyclone activity in the ENP decreases (increases)...The out-of-phase relationship seems to [have] become stronger in the recent decades."
In terms of the combined tropical cyclone activity over the NA and ENP ocean basins as a whole, there is little variability on either interannual or multidecadal timescales; and real-world empirical data suggest that the variability that does exist over the conglomerate of the two basins has grown slightly weaker as the earth has warmed over the past six decades, which runs counter to climate-alarmist claims that earth's hurricanes or tropical cyclones should become more numerous, stronger and longer-lasting as temperatures rise.
The U.S. has gotten through the hurricane season largely unscathed, with NOT A SINGLE LANDFALLING HURRICANE. Two storms - Earl and Hermine - did bring hurricane force winds onshore, however. The Atlantic was UNUSUALLY HOT, but parts of the Pacific Ocean were cooler-than-average, due to a natural climate cycle known as La Nina. La Nina, which is characterized by an area of below average sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. It can be a boon for hurricanes because it tends to reduce wind shear over the tropical Atlantic. Wind shear, or winds that differ in speed or direction with height, can tear brewing storms apart. There were RECORD WARM SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES throughout the region where hurricanes tend to develop. In fact, water temperatures in some areas of the Atlantic have been so warm that they have been contributing to the death of coral reefs in the Caribbean, according to recent reports.
This season has been remarkable in many ways. The lack of a U.S. landfall is statistically RARE given the large number of storms that have occurred. They found that in seasons that are this active, the U.S. has a whopping 95 percent chance of being hit by a hurricane, and about a 21 percent chance of being struck by a major hurricane. Hurricane Richard, which struck Belize on October 24 before dissipating over Mexico, pushed this hurricane season into even RARER territory. "IN THE LAST 110 YEARS, there has NEVER BEEN A SEASON WITH 10 HURRICANES AND ZERO U.S. HURRICANE LANDFALLS."
The season has also featured storms of UNUSUAL SIZE. Hurricane Igor, which affected Bermuda and caused significant damage in Newfoundland, Canada, was ONE OF THE LARGEST HURRICANES ON RECORD, whereas Hurricane Paula, which struck Cuba, was ONE OF THE SMALLEST. For a time, Igor’s tropical storm force wind field stretched almost 500 miles out from the center of the storm -- about the distance between Boston and Washington, D.C. This compares to Paula’s tropical storm force wind field of only 60 miles.
The locations of some of the major hurricanes were also UNUSUAL. Hurricane Julia, which reached Category Four status, was the STRONGEST ATLANTIC HURRICANE EVER OBSERVED SO FAR EAST. "When one considers that earlier this year, Hurricane Earl became the fourth strongest hurricane so far north, it appears that this year's record SSTs [sea surface temperatures] have significantly expanded the area over which major hurricanes can exist over the Atlantic. Also, this year marked only the second time in recorded history that two Category Four or stronger storms occurred in the Atlantic at the same time."
But why the lack of a U.S. landfall this year? The U.S. has been protected from hurricanes by a persistent upper air steering pattern that has featured a "trough" of low pressure, so named because it appears on weather maps as a dip in the jet stream, along the east coast. This pattern caused numerous Atlantic hurricanes to recurve out into the open ocean rather than striking land. “In all these cases troughing over the western Atlantic caused these storms to recurve over the open sea." Storms that formed farther west did not recurve out into the open Atlantic, but instead headed for Central America and Mexico, which have been particularly hard hit this year. The persistent steering pattern of storms away from the U.S. points to a limitation of seasonal hurricane forecasts: they give no indication of which locations are more vulnerable to a landfalling storm.
HEAVY SNOW / EXTREME COLD -
BRITAIN is set to be battered by 75mph winds and snow as winter really sets in today. An extreme weather warning from the Met Office was issued, predicting that trees could be uprooted and homes damaged by the icy blast. The UK enjoyed temperatures as high as 17C (62.6F) last week – 7C above average. But a ferocious storm from the North Pole arrived last night, with blizzards, dangerous winds and temperatures feeling as cold as -9C (15.8F) at night. Most of the country will be affected by the bad weather, with winds reaching 65mph, and in north-west Scotland hitting 75mph in the early hours. Forecasters warned of falling trees and blizzards in Scotland, northern England and Wales, with sleet predicted in central England. Plummeting temperatures will limp to just 6C (42.8F) in the north and west and fall well below zero at night, before winds ease and it gets warmer on Thursday.
