Posts
Climate
& Extreme Weather News #32 (June 6th to June 8th 2017)
‘The whole town is burning’: Deaths, mass evacuations as fire sweeps Western Cape
Deadly heatwaves in India worse still ahead
‘The whole town is burning’: Deaths, mass evacuations as fire sweeps Western Cape
RT,
8
June, 2017
Eight
people are dead and 10,000 have fled their homes as an enormous fire
sweeps through the town of Knysna, South Africa.
Numerous
homes have been gutted by the blaze that started on Tuesday and grew
rapidly when a storm passed over the Western Cape town.
#KnysnaFires now affect a huge band along the southern coast all the way to #PlettenbergBay. Thoughts to those fighting this monster fire.
Western
Cape local government spokesman James-Brent Styan confirmed in a
statement that up to 10,000 evacuations had taken place in the town
of 77,000 residents.
“The
fire in Knysna is the largest and most destructive fire in a built-up
area in the Western Cape in recent memory with thousands displaced.
It comes on the back of the worst storm seen in the Western Cape in
at least 30 years‚” Styan said.
That
sentiment was echoed by the town’s mayor‚ Eleanore Bouw-Spies,
who told Herald Live: “These are the worst fires I have seen in the
45 years I’ve lived in Knysna.”
Eight
people were killed by the blaze, according to Reuters. Knysna fire
chief Clinton Manual said there was little hope of stopping the fire
and officials would continue evacuating all those in its path.
“The
fire began on the one side but is now spreading to the other side of
the town and the hospital is on fire. Basically the whole town is
burning‚” journalist Ivo Vegter said to Times Live.
City
of Cape Town Disaster Management spokesperson Charlotte Powell said
more than 800 families were homeless on Wednesday due to the storm.
Knysna looks like a warzone this morning. Some rain has started to fall, though.
Reuters
reports that thousands of people in shanty towns, who endured the
region's worst drought in a century, are hardest hit by the blaze, as
floods and heavy rain washed away homes built of planks and zinc
sheets.
Deadly heatwaves in India worse still ahead
To residents of the
Northeast United States, this has been the year without spring. The
high temperature in Boston on June 7, for example, was a record-tying
52 degrees, as rain and fog swept in off the stubbornly chilly
Atlantic waters.
Now, though,
Bostonians, along with tens of millions of Americans all the way west
to the High Plains, are about to experience the first truly brutal
heat wave of the season.
By June 11, the high
temperature in Boston is likely to be about 40 degrees Fahrenheit
higher than it was just a few days before. The same can be said for
New York City, where people adorned with winter hats were spotted on
the mist-shrouded streets on June 7.
Congo-Angola
region on fire
From drought to heavy storm: At least 8 killed as heavy winds and rain lash Cape Town
Middle East and Southwest Asia heat wave
During
the last week of May, an impressive dome of overheated air with an
isotherm of 35°C (95°F) at 850 hpa (approximately 5,000 feet)
extended across the Strait of Hormuz near southern Iran and
southwestern Pakistan. In places where this air was being forced
downward, the extreme heat allowed for strong compressional warming
that produced exceptional surface temperatures. On May 28, after
a minimum temperature of 34.5°C (94°F), the high temperature in the
Western Pakistani town of Turbat reached 53.5°C (128.3°F) in
mid-afternoon. This tied the all-time highest temperature ever
recorded in Pakistan, and the world record of highest temperature for
May--both set in Moen Jo Daro on May 26, 2010 (not May 27 as wrongly
reported in some media.)
There
is a controversy about the correct maximum temperature in Turbat,
though. It was reported by the Pakistan Meteorological Department as
53.5°C (the precision of the thermometer is 0.5°C, like in most
Pakistani stations), but the temperature was later rounded to 54.0°C
(129.2°F.) If that is correct, it would tie the highest reliable
temperature ever recorded in the planet, the 54.0°C reading set on
July 21, 2016 in Mitribah, Kuwait. Regardless, the 53.5°C reading at
Turbat on May 28, 2017, ranks as one of Earth’s top five
hottest reliably-measured temperatures
on record; see Wunderground weather historian Chris Burt’s July 22,
2016 post,Hottest
Reliably Measured Air Temperatures on Earth,
for more information. The World Meteorological Organization, which is
currently checking the reliability of the Mitribah thermometer, will
also carry out an investigation on the reliability of the Turbat
reading--and to find out whether this rounding from 53.5°C to 54.0°C
makes sense.
In
nearby eastern Iran, the temperatures peaked at 52.8°C (127°F) at
the military base of Konarak, and 52.6°C (126.7°F ) in the village
of Renk, destroying the record of the highest temperature ever
recorded in May in Iran (50.5°C in Bostan in May 1999), and
approaching the highest reliable temperature ever recorded in Iran,
53°C.
In
the following days, the intense heat moved down to Oman, where nearly
half of the stations set their all-time highest temperatures. The
most important of these records were the 50.8°C (123.4°F) recorded
on May 30 at Qurayyat and on May 31 at Joba. These readings tie the
national record of highest temperature ever recorded in Oman
(previously set at Buraimi in July 1990 and at Sohar Majis in May
2009.)
In
Saudi Arabia, after a wind shift, an exceptional value of
48°C (118.4°F) was recorded in the port of
Wejh (Al Wahj), tying the highest temperature ever recorded in the
Northwestern coast of Saudi Arabia (facing the Red Sea); the same
value was recorded in June 1978.
In
the United Arab Emirates, the difference of temperature between the
atmosphere and the sea, together with the intense sea breeze, caused
impressive differences in weather. Coastal areas were affected by
thick fog, and even mist, but temperatures were very high on the
mountain peaks. At one point, the temperature of the weather station
on the Burj Al Khalifa Building in Dubai (625 meters above sea level)
was 15°C (27°F) higher than that of coastal Dubai.
 |
| Figure 1. Screen shot of the Pakistan Meteorological Department's web page on May 28, 2017, showing that the all-time Pakistan heat record of 53.5°C (128.3°F) had been tied that day. |
European heat wave
A
dome of high pressure from Morocco extended over Western Europe
beginning on May 24, then moved north and then east. As a result,
monthly records of highest temperatures were widespread in Spain,
France, Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Germany and Austria.
Very high temperatures were also set in the Alps, with an amazing
5.8°C (42.4°F) on May 27 on the top of Italy’s Col
Major(elevation 4750 meters or 15,584 feet), just at the side of
Mount Blanc. In particular, two national records for the month
of May were broken: in Norway with 32.2°C (90°F) at Tinnsjø on May
27, and in Austria with 35.0°C (95°F) at Horn on May 31.
Vietnamese heat wave
An
intense heat wave caused by downslope winds from the
Laotian mountains towards the Vietnamese coast affected the area
around Vietnam’s capital of Hanoi in early June, particularly
between June 2 - 4. The central observatory of Lang on June 4
recorded 41.5°C (106.7°F), destroying its previous all-time record
of 40.4°C, set in 1971. On June 4, the district of Ha Dong (which
hosts an international weather station representative of Hanoi)
recorded 42.5°C (108.5°F), by far the highest temperature ever
recorded in the Hanoi area. (During the colonial times, unusually
high values were recorded with stations affected by overexposure
conditions, including the infamous record of 42.8°C in May 1926,
which is believed to be unreliable--just like similar values recorded
in Indochina in those years.) In the central area of Hanoi, near Hoan
Kiem Lake, the humidity is usually higher than its surroundings, and
the combination of temperatures as high as 41°C (105.8°F) with
humidity values near 50% made the heat index an unbearable 55°C
(131°F).
Jeff
Masters contributed to this post.
NASA on Greenland's Thinning Ice (June 2017)
Numerous wildfires in Southwest Alaska
Firefighters
are leap frogging from one fire to another to protect villages,
cabins and other structures in Southwest Alaska after more than a
dozen new wildfires were started by lightning strikes in the past
three days.
The
Alaska Division of Forestry reports that as of Wednesday morning
there are 15 active fires burning in the area, which covers an
88-million acre swath of Southwest Alaska from McGrath to Dillingham.
Six of the 15 fires are staffed with firefighters while the remainder
are being monitored.
The
meltdown, following an extra warm Arctic winter, will have an impact
on coastal communities and permafrost.
The
Arctic's record-warm winter has allowed thousands of square miles of
sea ice off Alaska to melt more than a month early, leaving the
shoreline vulnerable to waves and exposing dark ocean water to absorb
more heat from the sun.
The
loss of ice in the Chukchi Sea will boost the regional temperature
and could increase precipitation over nearby land, said Alaska-based
climate scientist Rick Thoman.
As
of May 24, the ice cover on the Chukchi Sea had melted away from the
shore along a 300 mile stretch, from Point Hope all the way to
Barrow, the northernmost town in the United States. Satellite and
radar data show the ice-free area totaled about 54,000 square miles.
Six
more islands have large swaths of land, and villages, washed into sea
as coastline of Solomon Islands eroded and overwhelmed
Here's
why the Endangered Species Act can't save these trees.
The
whitebark pine faces intertwined threats that have killed the trees
across much of their historic range. In 1910, Gifford Pinchot
imported white pine blister rust, a fast-moving European fungal
disease that kills whitebarks, to the West in a tree shipment.
Earthquake
hits near North Pole
An
earthquake with a magnitude of 5.2 on the Richter scale hit the
Greenland Sea, in between Greenland and Svalbard, on June 9, 2017 at
20:49:52 UTC at 79.931°N, 0.605°E and at 18.4 km depth.
Snow
is in the forecast for the start of June's second full week across
the higher elevations of the mountain West, as an unseasonably cold
air mass infiltrates the northwestern United States.
The
cold air has moved in with a strong southward dip in the jet stream,
or upper-level trough, that is sweeping into the Northwest this
weekend as a result of a weather pattern flip.
This
system will then win
g
across the northern Rockies through Tuesday,
bringing periods of rain and a few thunderstorms to much of the
region and snow to some of the higher elevations. Gusty winds are
also expected across much of the West at times, into early week.
Temperatures
will be 10 to 20 degrees colder than average to begin this week,
which means it may be cold enough for slushy accumulations of snow in
portions of the Sierra Nevada and northern Rockies, especially at
night. Many valley locations won't see highs climb out of the 50s
Sunday and Monday.
Rising seas may wash away this US town
Jason Box is interviewed
Ice
sheets are turning black from coal-fired industrial pollution and
fires. This has terrible consequences for us all.
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