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Posted
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)

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Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

“New Mexico continues to forge into uncharted territory,†said Mark Svoboda, this week’s U.S. Drought Monitor author, “with data from NOAA-National Climatic Data Center (records going back to 1895) showing the past 12 months to be the driest on record for the state coupled with the past 24 and 36 months coming in as the second driest on record.†This week’s U.S. Drought Monitor showed extreme drought expanding in northern New Mexico, increasing the proportion of that state in extreme drought or worse to 93.46 percent, from 90.18 percent last week.

 

http://drought.unl.edu/NewsOutreach/NDMCNews.aspx?id=102

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Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne
Silver Fire, New Mexico

 

The Silver Fire in southern New Mexico continues to generate a lot of smoke, as seen recently on imagery from NASA's Terra satellite.

 

The Silver Fire is burning in the Gila National Forest. As of July 1, the fire had consumed 133,625 acres. It began on June 7 from a lightning strike near Kingston, New Mexico. According to the multi-agency Incident Information System called Inciweb, the fire was 50 percent contained on July 1.

 

http://www.nasa.gov/content/silver-fire-new-mexico/#.UdHK7dhNapC

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Posted
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK
  • Weather Preferences: anything extreme or intense !
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK

Nineteen firefighter members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots based in Prescott, Arizona were killed in their effort to contain a wildfire across Yarnell Hills on Sunday....

 

It so incredibly sad, fourteen of the firefighters were only in their 20's here are some of the touching stories of the firefighters as told by their loved ones...

 

 

http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/story/22736347/2013/07/01/names-of-firefighters-killed-in-yarnell-fire-released

 

 

The scene outside of the Maricopa County Medical Examiners office awaiting the bodies of the 19 fallen firefighters...

 

 

post-10773-0-79117900-1372751815_thumb.j

 

....what a great way to honour the fallen heroes - R.I.P.

 

 

 

Edited by MKsnowangel
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Posted
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK
  • Weather Preferences: anything extreme or intense !
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK

Waterspout at Seagrove Beach, Florida yesterday....

 

 

post-10773-0-29585900-1372752274_thumb.j

 

 

 

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Posted
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)

 

 

Heatwave grounds US flights

 

Several flights have been cancelled due to the record-breaking heatwave affecting parts of the US.

 

Posted Image
 
Eighteen US Airways flights scheduled to take off from Phoenix were cancelled on Saturday as temperatures reached 48.3 C (119 F). Planes are certified to take off for temperatures up to 47.8C (118), Todd Lechmacher, a US Airways spokesman said. Temperatures reached 53.3C (128 F) in Death Valley, California on Sunday and Saturday, while Las Vegas hit a record high of 118F on Saturday, breaking the city’s previous high of 47.2C (117 F), according the US National Weather Service. Concerns were also expressed for visitors to the area.

 

"I'm not worried as much about the people who have lived here a while," Troy Stirling, a police spokesman in Lake Havasu, Arizona near the California border, told CNN. "It's more the tourists coming into the area, even from Southern California, who aren't used to this kind of heat".  dangerous... we advise everybody to avoid being outdoors," said Charlotte Dewey, a meteorologist in Phoenix. The heat is also thought to have fuelled some of the worst wildfires in Arizona for 80 years. Nineteen fire-fighters have lost their lives battling a fire that started to the north-west of Phoenix on Friday.

 

The high temperatures are expected to continue in the south-west of the country, with heat warnings issued for large parts of California, Nevada and Arizona, although they are expected to drop by a couple of degrees on Wednesday.

 

 

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/10152512/Heatwave-grounds-US-flights.html

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Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

Some forensic fire weather of the deadly Yarnell Hill Fire, from the University of Wisconsin

 

The Yarnell Hill Fire was a relatively small wildfire that was started by lightning from a dry thunderstorm southwest of Prescott, Arizona on 28 June 2013. However, fire conditions became more favorable for growth on 30 June, as surface air  temperatures rose above 100 F across the area with low relative humidity values. During the afternoon hours, GOES-15 0.63 µm visible channel images (above; click image to play animation; also available as a QuickTime movie) showed that a line of thunderstorms developed over northwestern Arizona, and moved toward the southwest (the red circle highlights the general area of the Yarnell fire). It is likely that strong surface winds associated with a thunderstorm outflow boundary (nearby surface mesonet data) caused rapid growth and an abrupt change in direction of the fire, which tragically killed 19 firefighters who attempted to shelter in place (for additional details, see the Wildfire Today site).

 

http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/13341

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Posted
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)

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Posted
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)

 

Why the US heatwave is so scary

 

Excessive heat is the No. 1 weather killer in the United States and it's at its most dangerous when it doesn't cool down at night.
The current heat wave over California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico has temperatures hitting triple digits, with little relief at night. Hot weather is also baking the rest of the far West, including Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and parts of Utah and Montana.
 
Q: What's so disturbing about this current heat wave?
 
A: Its unrelenting stubbornness. There is no relief at night. Phoenix set a record for highest nighttime temperature: 91 Fahrenheit (33 Celsius). Las Vegas has gone three days without getting below 90 Fahrenheit (32 Celsius), according to readings at the airport.
"Night-time heat is especially bad," said Eli Jacks, chief of fire and public weather services at the National Weather Service. "Not to get below 90 is crazy."
 
Q: What's so dangerous about that?
 
A: If you aren't in an air-conditioned place, "your body never has a chance to recover" at night, Jacks said. Normally the "feels-like" index - which factors in temperature and humidity - has to get to 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 Celsius) or below for your body to recover from the daytime heat, Jacks said. The lack of night-time cooling is more dangerous than the 117 degree Fahrenheit (47 Celsius) all-time record in Las Vegas, experts said.
 
Q: How do heat waves compare to other weather killers?
 
A: In recent years, heat has been more deadly than other weather extremes in the United States. On average, heat waves are killing about 117 people a year, according to figures from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. However, those numbers are incomplete and only based on reports during periods of extreme heat. The much more comprehensive numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that on average 658 people die each year from too much heat.
 
Q: Who is most at risk?
 
A: The elderly and children. The elderly make up 36 percent of heat deaths in the past decade, according to the CDC. And of all the excessive heat deaths, 69 percent are men. Also on average, 37 children left in car seats die from heat each year, according to a study at San Francisco State University.
 
Q: What can you do to stay safe?
 
A: Drink lots of water; the dry heat in the Southwest evaporates sweat so quickly that people don't notice they are perspiring and get dehydrated more quickly, Jacks said. Stay in the shade and out of the heat between 10am and 4pm. Use sunblock of SPF 15 or higher. Wear light-coloured clothing and light clothing. Reduce use of caffeine and alcohol, which tend to dehydrate, and slow down.
 
Q: So what's causing all this?
 
A: Part of it is normal summer heat spurts, said meteorologist Kenneth James of the Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Md. But there's another factor and that's the jet stream.
 
Normally the jet stream moves generally west-to-east, but when it slows and swings dramatically to the north or south, extreme weather can happen. What's happening now is "a really big kink in the jet stream, about as big as you can see anytime, covering the whole western US," said heat wave expert Ken Kunkel, a professor of atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University. To the west of the kink, in Arizona and Nevada, there's a high pressure system just parked there with stagnant heat, Kunkel said. And to its east are cool - even record cool - temperatures in Texas, he said.
 
Q: When will it end?
 
A: The extreme heat should continue for about a week, but it won't set records, James said.
 
Q: Is this related to the deadly Arizona fire?
 
A: "There's most assuredly a link" between the heat wave and the fire, Jacks said. It gets hot with extremely dry air, and then a no-rain lightning strike ignites bone-dry fuel into a fire.
 
Q: Is this global warming?
 
A: No single event can be blamed solely on man-made global warming, scientists and meteorologists say. But this is the type of heat wave than scientists have long said will be more common as the world warms.
 
Some, but not all, scientists also theorise that the jet stream is having more of these crazy kinks lately because of a warming Arctic and melting sea ice. Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann said there's an element of randomness in the current weather. Yet with all-time heat records in the past few years being broken at three times the expected rate, he said, "there can be little doubt that climate change and global warming are playing a role."

 

 
 
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Posted
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK
  • Weather Preferences: anything extreme or intense !
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK

Incredible hail accumulations in Santa Rosa, New Mexico where a hail storm dumped over a foot in some locations...

 

 

post-10773-0-66658500-1372949792_thumb.j

 

 

http://www.weather.com/news/two-feet-hail-new-mexico-town-20130704?hootPostID=db7b6035a7ed28041784ce25643bbcdd

 

 

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Posted
  • Location: Canmore, AB 4296ft|North Kent 350ft|Killearn 330ft
  • Location: Canmore, AB 4296ft|North Kent 350ft|Killearn 330ft

We got to 37oC here on Tuesday and then the next day down to 26oC. It was quite the difference. Warmest day since I've been out here

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Posted
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada

Not really surprising that you would run into extreme heat at Furnace Creek, Death Valley, both of which were named in the 19th century. Posted Image

 

This past week has been delightful on the west coast, got up to about 30 C on Monday and Tuesday but otherwise days around 23-26 C and clear, relatively cool nights I was further inland on the two hot days and it was about 35-37 C in the southern interior valley regions, but humidity moderate so I've endured worse back in Ontario (32 C and eastern variety humid is a lot sweatier than our dry 35 C heat "out west" especially if you're driving or working in it).

 

This is an interesting weather-related photo that we took during the heavy rainfall event June 19-20 while near Slocan Lake in central BC. That ring of yellow material in the water (you'll need to click on the picture to see this feature) is the outer edge of pollen and leaf debris that was washed into the lake by a raging creek about a half mile south (left) of the edge of the photo. During the flood event, we could see large logs and tree debris washed into the lake and floating north in the current. The lake was almost two feet above its normal flood stage and had pretty much washed out the shoreline hiking trail. I have included another scenic view of nearby Kootenay Lake and the Selkirk Mountain Range across to the northeast of it (view from Kaslo, BC).

 

post-4238-0-81690400-1373075389_thumb.jp

 

post-4238-0-25812400-1373075184_thumb.jp

Edited by Roger J Smith
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Posted
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada

Here's some video of the aftermath of road washouts in the same area (Kaslo BC) with the video taken by my wife Sheila Smith, from a (slowly) moving car as we drove through a construction zone about 3-4 days after the flooding -- you can see what the creek beside the highway must have done as it briefly overflowed the whole roadway and washed out shoulders etc, leaving behind a lot of debris including entire trees.

 

RoadtoKaslo1.wmv

 

RoadtoKaslo2.wmv

 

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Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

Urban flooding likely to worsen, say experts

 

'Soft engineering' more urban parks, porous pavement might help, but costly sewers will still need to be replaced

 

Southern Alberta's June floods and those in Toronto this week may be freak occurrences that were caused by unusually severe storms.

 

But they have highlighted a desperate need for upgraded urban storm systems that account for increases in severe weather, engineers and municipal planners say.

 

In municipalities across Canada, outdated storm and waste water infrastructure has resulted in increased flood damage to homes and these types of situations will likely get worse in the near future, says Paul Kovacs, executive director at the insurance industry's Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/07/10/f-floods-rain-engineering.html

Edited by knocker
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Posted
  • Location: Canmore, AB 4296ft|North Kent 350ft|Killearn 330ft
  • Location: Canmore, AB 4296ft|North Kent 350ft|Killearn 330ft

Canmore has always been susceptible to flooding given its low-lying location on the Bow River floodplain. For people who lived near the river on both sides of Canmore, flooding was a simple fact of life. Provincial records indicate the Bow River has flooded at least 19 times between 1883 and 1967 with a number of those inundating Canmore, specifically Mineside, with water.

But on Tuesday, June 25, 1974, with warm June weather and an unusually heavy snowpack, the Bow River began to flood causing Canmore’s mayor and doctor, Alfred Miltins, to declare a state of emergency. The flood’s crest, which was expected on Thursday, was going to be larger than anticipated as Calgary Power had been forced to release water from Lake Minnesemolinaa to keep it from overflowing.

 

The Calgary Herald reported the water level could rise an additional nine inches to a flood that was already six feet higher than the normal level of flow for the Bow River, and at 13,276 cubic feet per second, it was a flow amount only recorded once every 10 to 15 years.

By Wednesday, the Calgary Herald reported the flood had affected nearly 95 per cent of Canmore’s 600 homes, with Eighth Avenue, Second Street and Mineside the worst hit. A handful of families had to be evacuated.

 

Hundreds of volunteers laboured throughout the day and night filling the 40,000 sandbags needed to build a three-kilometre-long dike to keep the brown flood water from spreading further into town. Children even sacrificed the sand in their sandboxes as they helped their parents to fill the burlap sacks that would make the 50-pound sandbags.

 

The flood of 1974 spurred officials to build the Bow River dike that stretches along from east of First Street in South Canmore west along the river to the end of Larch Avenue. The dike also runs along a relatively short section of the south bank of the river to protect homes in the Mineside area, has protected Canmore since its last big flood. The dike is designed to protect from all but that one per cent flood, a flood so large that only occurs one per cent of the time in any year.

 

Taken from The History of Canmore, by Rob Alexander, published by Summerthought.

 

A great website - http://canmorehistory.wordpress.com/

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Posted
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada

In my view, having lived in southern Ontario much of my life, there is a lot of misleading information about heavy rainfall potential being circulated. Toronto has really been quite fortunate over 150 years to miss heavier rainfalls than their records. The Hazel records (Oct 15,1954) include amounts over 200mm just to the northwest of Toronto airport. The airport station is the one which just broke the 24h record last week, the longer-period downtown station had somewhat heavier 24h rainfalls before Hazel from summer thunderstorms but not over 100 mm. Anyone familiar with rainfall records in southern Ontario will know that many locations have seen 150-250 mm rainfalls in 24h, in fact I've seen and recorded two myself in central Ontario. One of these caused severe flooding on a local golf course which was about six feet under water for part of the day. I always thought Toronto was partly dodging a lot of heavy rainfall bullets and was partly protected by its location which has some downsloping and regional meso-scale air mass issues that can generally be negative factors for rainfall there compared to some other locations. However, even some climat stations in the greater Toronto region have seen 150mm rainfalls, and there was a report of same (about 170 mm) with this recent flooding from a station about 5 km southeast of the airport. Toronto is not engineered for much more than 50-75 mm rainfall amounts, anything over that tends to flood out intersections and low-lying areas near the Don River. People should be aware that Toronto is a little on the hilly side of flat and many areas can't flood unless a local drain totally clogs up, so in general there isn't as much political pressure to correct flooding issues as there might be in a generally low-lying place where waste-deep floodwater is a common occurrence.

 

Meanwhile in Alberta (and to a lesser extent in BC) I believe the problem has been partly caused by the widespread misconception that spread through media and some academic sources about 10-20 years ago, that the climate was changing to a semi-arid drought prone climate that would involve a lot of water shortages and forest fires. This appeared to be "coming true" between (I would say subjectively) 1998 and 2006 which period featured several very hot and dry summers. Since then the tendency has been more towards wet. I'm not saying that floodplain concepts were entirely disregarded but it's fairly clear that floodplain 50-100 year extreme criteria were either ignored or placed on the back burner of planning and zoning in rapidly expanding southern Alberta and in a few cases in southern BC where this applies, although we have tended to see less catastrophic flooding so far in this province. Around Vancouver that would never happen because we see major flooding often enough that flood plains tend to be rigorously enforced. Our problem is more with widespread nuisance flooding in winter from just the sheer volume of water having nowhere to drain off when small creeks overflow. This tends to put a lot of the local road system under a fair amount of flood stress and routinely isolates a few industrial parks from the road network but home flooding in the "lower mainland" is relatively infrequent unless there's something very localized such as a landslide blocking a creek. The larger mountain streams on the north shore here are in very deep valleys and can flood all they like without reaching anywhere near residential or commercial areas.

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Posted
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada

Yes, it has turned scorching hot in the eastern U.S. and Midwest, highs generally around 35 C yesterday and today in most of the larger cities with humidex values into the low 40s. Overnight lows are only falling to the mid-20s. The region is under a 600-dm high at 500 mb.

 

For the past week or so, it has been anomalously cold in northwestern Canada. Highs of only 8-12 C were reported recently in parts of the southern Yukon and NWT, northern BC and Alberta. Those regions have July normals near 24-25 C daytime. The cool air lost its chill when it got into southern parts of BC and Alberta, a couple of days here were a bit cooler than average (20 C) but now it's back to about 27 C in blazing sunshine. Very fine stretch of weather here since about June 28th following weeks of cool wet stuff. Not as anomalously warm as you're having in the UK but similar weather to what you're having.

 

 

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Posted
  • Location: Edmonton Alberta(via Chelmsford, Exeter & Calgary)
  • Weather Preferences: Sunshine and 15-25c
  • Location: Edmonton Alberta(via Chelmsford, Exeter & Calgary)

so i was back in the UK for 2 weeks and brought the Hot sunny weather to the UK with me..now im back in Calgary with my UK sun tan..returned to quite a stormy few days...dry bright often sunny mornings before storms pop up during the afternoon and evening and then rinse and repeat the next day..it has been warm but not hot 21-25c.

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Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

D.C. sets record for longest streak above 80 degrees

 

Add another impressive heat record to Washington, D.C.’s astonishingly long list over the last four summers.

 

For over five and a half days ending this morning, the temperature was least 80 degrees in Washington, D.C. This 138-hour streak is the longest on record (dating back to 1871), besting the 128-hour streak of two years ago.

 

Here are the details:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/07/21/d-c-s-sets-record-for-longest-streak-above-80-degrees/

Edited by knocker
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Posted
  • Location: Canmore, AB 4296ft|North Kent 350ft|Killearn 330ft
  • Location: Canmore, AB 4296ft|North Kent 350ft|Killearn 330ft

so i was back in the UK for 2 weeks and brought the Hot sunny weather to the UK with me..now im back in Calgary with my UK sun tan..returned to quite a stormy few days...dry bright often sunny mornings before storms pop up during the afternoon and evening and then rinse and repeat the next day..it has been warm but not hot 21-25c.

 

Hope u had a good trip. Its been pretty warm here, if not hot. I have been to Calgary a couple times and surprised at how cool it was compared to Canmore. Thursday we went and it was 25oC in Canmore and 18oC in Calgary. Yesterday (Friday) it topped out at 31oC here in Canmore. Very warm. Today is a different matter, extremely windy and much cooler.

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