It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, June 22, 2023
Monday, August 02, 2021
Nathan Howes
While waterspouts are a common sight on the Great Lakes in the fall, a considerable threat for them is unfolding on Sunday.
The setup for waterspouts Sunday is particularly suited over lakes Huron and Erie, thanks to an upper-level low pulling in ample amounts of cold air aloft. The framework is seen more often in the fall and is not that typical during the summer months.
SEE ALSO: New world record smashes previous record, 232 waterspouts over the Great Lakes
Mark Robinson, Storm Hunter and meteorologist at The Weather Network, said when there is relatively warm lakes and cold air aloft, these ingredients can facilitate the development of cumulus clouds “quite quickly.”
Combined with the right amount of surface shear and wind, these conditions can become conducive for waterspout development.
“That normally happens in the fall. We don’t normally get this cold air aloft at this time of the year. So we’re just a little bit early, and that’s what making this event kind of interesting,” said Robinson.
The International Centre for Waterspout Research (ICWR) released its forecast, noting that waterspouts can be associated with any shower or thunderstorm Sunday. It highlighted the potential is greatest on southern Lake Huron and eastern Lake Erie. It has already confirmed more than 40 waterspouts/funnels from Sunday morning, with photos posted by users on social media.
There are waterspout watches in effect for southern Lake Huron, and eastern and western Lake Erie.
A waterspout is a non-supercell tornado that forms beneath a rapidly growing cumulus cloud. While 'spouts usually dissipate over the water, they may occasionally come ashore as a weak landspout tornado. When that occurs, a tornado warning is normally issued for the area
Provided you're at a safe distance from them, they're usually harmless.
Thumbnail courtesy of Matt Shiffler Photography, taken on Lake Erie, near downtown Cleveland, Ohio.
Tuesday, September 06, 2022
Large waterspout caught on camera off Florida coast
Sept. 2 (UPI) -- A waterspout swirling water high up into the air off the Florida coast was caught on camera by a witness Friday morning.
Bryan Shepherd captured video when he spotted the weather phenomenon off the coast of New Smyrna Beach about 8:15 a.m. Friday.
The waterspout followed an early morning thunderstorm and comes amid several days of strong storms in Central Florida.
Weather forecasters said the storms are expected to continue through Friday
Saturday, March 07, 2020
PUTRAJAYA (Reuters) - Six years since Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished from radars, relatives of the 239 people who were on board are calling on authorities to revive efforts to find the missing plane.
Badges are displayed during the sixth annual remembrance event for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in Putrajaya, Malaysia, March 7, 2020. REUTERS/Lim Huey Teng
The fate of flight MH370 became one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries when it disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Repeated searches for the aircraft were called off in 2018.
Holding star-shaped signs reading “Never give up”, “Waiting”, and “Resume the search”, the relatives of those who were on the flight marked the sixth anniversary of their disappearance by making a fresh appeal for answers.
“The pain is still the same, the fact that the plane is still missing is still the same, and the fact that we don’t know what happened to the plane is still the same, “ said Grace Nathan, a lawyer whose mother was on the flight, during the event in Malaysia’s administrative capital, Putrajaya.
“There are more questions than there are answers and that shouldn’t be the case after six years,” she told reporters after the event.
A piece of aircraft debris, believed to be from the missing plane, was on display at the gathering.
In 2018, Malaysia contracted U.S. firm Ocean Infinity to resume the search on a “no-cure, no-fee”-basis, meaning it would pay the firm up to $70 million if it found the plane. But the 138-day search was also fruitless.
“We depend a lot on the government to take some initiative. We want the government to come forward and say that they are open to companies coming to search,” Nathan said, calling for the government to engage Ocean Infinity again.
Last month, the Transport Ministry said it had not received any new credible evidence to initiate a new search following a report that a fresh effort to find the plane could be mounted.
Meanwhile, Najib Razak, who was prime minister when MH370 disappeared, said he hoped the new government would restart search efforts.
“We spent a lot of money looking for the plane... But unfortunately, we couldn’t locate it,” Najib told Reuters during an interview on Wednesday,
“There is no finality to what actually happened,” he said.
Both Najib and former Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai have dismissed claims by former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott that the tragedy was a murder-suicide by the pilot.
Sunday, November 07, 2021
Tornado spotted Saturday off coast of YVR
ITS A WATERSPOUT
A tornado alert for the Vancouver area had been issued by Environment Canada earlier in the day
about 6 hours ago By: Alan Campbell
This tornado was spotted off the coast of YVR Saturday evening
Dramatic video and photos are emerging after a tornado was spotted just off the coast at Vancouver Airport Saturday evening.
Footage of the giant water spout near the airport is taking over social media platforms across the region.
Some of the video and photos are being shot from passengers at the airport, while many are being taken from high rises and one across the dike trail in south Richmond.
A tornado watch was issued earlier in the day by Environment Canada before being lifted later in the evening.
The report advises people to be prepared for severe weather and to take cover immediately if a tornado does form.
According the alert, there was a possibility of funnel clouds and that possibly brief, weak tornadoes could develop.
The alert came after the northbound waterspout was spotted moving west of YVR Airport.
Sunday, April 23, 2023
Monday, January 24, 2022
Sunday, January 02, 2022
Scottie Andrew
CNNDigital
Saturday, January 1, 2022
It's raining fish in east Texas -- but it's nothing too out of the ordinary.
Earlier this week, residents of Texarkana reported small fish falling from the sky in what seemed like an epochal weather event. The reality was more mundane: The swimmers, many of them palm-sized, were likely picked up by a waterspout and dropped back down to earth as it lost momentum, the city told residents in a Facebook post.
The fish showers are an example of "animal rain," the city explained, and "while it's uncommon," it can happen when the weather is just right -- and the fish are just light enough.
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Fish fall from sky with rain in northern Mexico
The animals didn't originate in the sky before they started raining, of course -- rather, they were picked up off the ground by powerful waterspouts, which begin in the air and move down toward water's surface. As these spouts gain momentum, the vortex at the center of the waterspouts can start picking up small, light objects -- including fish. And when the waterspout loses energy, those small objects come falling back down, explains the Library of Congress.
Updrafts -- super-strong winds -- are more powerful than waterspouts and can pick up animals larger than skinny fish, according to National Geographic, including birds, bats, frogs and snakes.
The residents of Texarkana were by all accounts relatively nonplussed by the bizarre weather event. Tim Brigham told CNN affiliate KSLA he thought it was "pretty cool" to see tiny fish falling from the sky and useful, too -- he said he "started to get me a bucket and pick them up for fishing bait." The employees of Discount Wheel and Tire stepped away from the tires and instead started cleaning up their parking lot's surprise seafood platter.
Others shared photos of their own backyard fish finds after the city's Facebook page asked them to "show us your fishy pics." Most of them were no bigger than the palm of the hand of the resident who took the photo.
Texarkana's animal rain may be one of the only recorded instances of the phenomenon in the state, but California last saw the same thing in 2017, when elementary school officials in Oroville reported that 100 fish fell from the sky and onto school property. Fish have fallen from the sky in the town of Lajamanu in Australia's Northern Territory at least three times in the last 30 years, per the Weather Channel.
Monday, October 10, 2022
How we tracked one small seabird species' remarkable flight into a typhoon
by Emily Shepard, The Conversation
In 2018, 49,000 people in Japan were ordered to evacuate their homes as the strongest typhoon in 25 years, Typhoon Jebi, was on course to make landfall. Among those heading for shelter were my colleague Ken Yoda, professor of behavior and evolution, and his team, who were doing their annual field season studying a type of seabird called streaked shearwaters.
Typhoon Jebi broke wind records at 100 Japanese weather stations, with sustained wind speeds of 120 mp/h. These winds damaged nearly 98,000 houses, caused insurance payouts of $13 billion to £14 billion (£11.4 billion to £12.3 billion) and resulted in the deaths of seven people.
The experience of Typhoon Jebi made Ken realize he had amassed a unique tracking dataset that could be used to study how these seabirds respond to storms out on the open ocean. This information revealed the shearwaters he studied sometimes did the unthinkable: flying straight towards the eye of the storm.
So how does an animal that weighs the same as a pint of milk, weather such conditions?
Using GPS tracking data collected by tagging streaked shearwaters over 11 years on Awashima Island in the Sea of Japan, Ken Yoda teamed up with biologists Manos Lempidakis and I, and meteorologist Andrew Ross, to find out. Manos analyzed the tagging data to see which birds where flying over the Sea of Japan during the passage of a typhoon or tropical storm. Then he analyzed their GPS tracks in relation to the wind.
We never imagined the result would show that shearwaters sometimes fly directly towards the eye of a storm. The few previous studies that tracked seabirds responding to storms showed that adults flew hundreds of miles to circumnavigate them. Yet our results showed the shearwaters chased the storm eye, tracking it for up to eight hours.
How it works
Like albatrosses and other tubenose birds so-called due to the arrangement of their nostrils, shearwaters are adapted for windy conditions, using energy in the wind to fly with little flapping.
Their wing shape allows them to glide for long distances without losing much altitude. Tubenoses tend to live in windy regions, including many that are prone to cyclones.
When shearwaters fly towards the eye of the storm, they are sometimes in or near the eye wall (the region surrounding the storm eye, where the strongest typhoon winds are). But there comes a point where they cannot match the wind speed. When this happens, the birds start to drift with the wind and lose control of their direction of travel.
We used statistical modeling to delve deeper into the shearwater's movements. This work revealed shearwaters sometimes circumvented storms, but only when they were far out to sea and had a clear path around the storm system.
Most shearwaters in the study colony foraged close to the Japanese mainland. It was here, when birds were sandwiched between the storm and the land, that birds flew towards the eye of the storm.
In the northern hemisphere, cyclones move anti-clockwise. So birds foraging close to Japan could have been caught in the strong onshore winds behind the storm eye and forced to fly over land.
Flying over land is dangerous for shearwaters, due to the risk of uncontrolled landings. These birds, which are so agile in the air, are clumsy on land. They struggle to take off, even in normal conditions, which makes them vulnerable to predators, including crows and birds of prey.
Flying towards the eye of the storm, away from land, is the safer option. But birds need to know where land is in order to avoid it. While adults appear to have an internal map, research suggests younger birds have not had the time to build up this knowledge. This might help explain why it is the juvenile shearwaters that sometimes wash up in their thousands in the aftermath of storms.
Stormy weather ahead
We know very little about how seabirds respond to storms, because this kind of extreme weather is, by definition, a rare event. And no two storms are the same. So we need huge amounts of tracking data (and luck) to capture the times when birds are exposed to storms and find patterns in how they behave.
One of the things that makes our study particularly valuable is the amount of data we had. We examined data from 401 shearwaters over 11 years. Within this, 75 birds flew during ten typhoons or tropical storms, making this the largest tracking dataset for animals in storms at the time of publication.
But the strategy of flying towards the eye is probably only an option for fast-flying, wind-adapted birds such as albatrosses and shearwaters. We will need more data to understand whether and how seabirds with different flight styles and energy costs respond to to typhoons that are increasing in intensity, as well as potentially in size and duration.Pelagic seabirds fly into the eye of the storm when faced with extreme weather conditions
Provided by The Conversation
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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