Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal

Amazing satellite image from Monday showing smoke covering much of Western Russia. NASA/Modis image. Click for higher resolution. Fires denoted by red dots.

The death toll from the heat and smoke in Moscow is climbing rapidly. BBC Radio reported today that the death rate in Moscow is running 2-5 times normal.

This is not an ordinary heat wave. It’s actually almost unbelievable meteorologically. It’s not unusual to set a record high. It’s very rare to set an all time high temperature, but it happens from time to time in extreme situations.

What IS nearly unheard of is setting a new all time record high, then tying or breaking it 5 times in the same month! Imagine setting a record high and breaking the old record by 19 degrees F.! That’s what Moscow did on Monday 9 August. The old record was 90 in 2001. Monday Moscow hit 99F and that ties the warmest temp. Ever recorded there.

This has been going on since July as well. This kind of heat in a city where almost no one has or needs air conditioning.

CHOKING FOREST FOREST FIRES

The heat and dry weather has caused the swampy land full of peat bogs around Moscow to dry out and they are now burning. The smoke they are producing has reduced the visibility in Red Square to about 1 km. On Saturday, the Carbon Monoxide levels reached 5 times the unhealthful level.

RELIEF IN SIGHT?

There are some strong indications that a cool front will bring at least some temporary relief to NW Russia in about 5-7 days. Unfortunately, several thousand people will not likely live to see it.

Temperature anomalies in July over Eastern Europe. The heat has gotten worse since then...

SOME OTHER OPINIONS

Meteorologist Jeff Masters has a very good writeup about the heat in Russia here. There are some amazing pics from Russia courtesy of the Boston Globe as well.

CLIMATE CHANGE RELATED

You have to be very careful in blaming any one weather event on climate change. That said, the warming over the last 50 years has been much greater in the higher latitudes. Dr. Michael Tobis at the Univ. of Texas in Austin makes a decent case for calling this event at least VERY suspicious as far as climate is concerned.

Dan

Smoke covers the Canadian Prairies Saturday. NASA Aqua Satellite image. Click for super high HD resolution.

Smoke from forest fires in Western Canada has spread across much of the Canadian Prairies and well south into the U.S. British Columbia is tracking over 400 forest fires and other fires are reported in Alberta.

Smoke across the midwest USA. Image from Ray Hoff's U.S. Air Quality blog. Click to see more data.

The smoke is not only visible on satellite images across Canada but it has reached as far south as Kentucky. The smoke has pushed up air quality indexes across much of the Midwest. Those with asthma and other breathing disorders are being urged to avoid outdoor activity.

SOUTHERN HEAT

Across the Southern USA the weather story is the intense heat. Here in Huntsville we have had no rain in August in most areas. Another week of temperatures above 35C (95F) is on the way. Most areas will stay about 10 degrees above normal for August this week.

In Europe it is just the opposite. The heat and the smoke are in the North! Moscow continues to suffer though it’s hottest weather ever recorded along with thick smoke from forest fires. The smoke and smog in Moscow is so bad that it is downright dangerous to breathe!

GET USED TO IT

Something to think about. Here in the southeast USA, this kind of summer is expected to become the normal by the end of the century.

Dan

Duck and cover! The new U.S. Record hailstone. Image from the NWS Aberdeen SD/NOAA.

If you are a weather nut there are certain records that you know off the top of your head. No need to look them up. So I knew the record books listed the largest hailstone ever measured as the one from Coffeyville, Kansas that fell in 1970. That stone weighed in at a whopping 757 grams  (That’s 1.67 pounds for you metrically challenged folks).

Nancy Knight (Top expert on hailstones) of the National Centers For Atmospheric Research holds the previous record holder, the Coffeyville KS hailstone. Diameter 14.4 cm.

Then came the severe thunderstorm that hit Vivian, South Dakota on 23 July, 2010. Les Scott saw his yard covered with HUGE hailstones and saved the biggest he could find. A power outage caused it to melt a bit but he thought it might be a good idea to let the local NWS office know about it.

They of course were very interested and came out and measured and weighed it. The Warning Coordination Meteorologist for the Aberdeen, SD  NWS then contacted the NOAA Climate Extremes Committee. They have declared that the long standing Coffeyville Kansas ice chunk from the sky is no longer number one!

The official weight of the Vivian hailstone was recorded at 879 grams or 1.93 pounds! That’s a new record! The stone also broke the record diameter of a hailstone. The previous record was 7 inches from a stone that fell in Aurora, Nebraska in 2003.

Hurricane Darby in the Pacific (120 mph sustained winds) and a tropical wave south of cuba that may be developing. NOAA GOES image.

It seems we may have our first Atlantic Basin tropical system forming this evening. I’ve been here in Miami all week at the annual AMS Conference on Broadcast Meteorology. This is the 38th Broadcast Conference and one of the best I’ve attended.

The Director of the National Hurricane Center and many of their forecasters put on an excellent seminar Wednesday on tropical meteorology.  Director Bill Read also spoke at our luncheon today.

View from my room of Miami Beach.

The NOAA forecasters and broadcast meteorologists like myself know how important our jobs are in hurricane season. It really is helpful to both groups to understand the problems we each face. Many are very similar and some are rather different.

Tonight, we’re all interested in a system that seems to be organizing in the Western Caribbean. An Air Force Reserve plane is currently investigating to see if a tropical depression has formed.

With a La Nina brewing and record warm waters in the oceans, a late June storm would not be surprising. We get one about 50% of the time. Most of the hurricanes form after August 1st each year.

It’s too early to say much about this system but if it forms it might enter the western Gulf in a few days. Swell from a storm would likely have a big impact on the work around the oil spill, so this could be of extreme importance.

I met the Director of the NHC for the first time today. Say what you will about government, but they got the right man for that job. The forecasters and researchers who work under him are top notch as well, and all of the broadcasters were VERY appreciative of the tremendous seminar and presentations the hurricane specialists put together.

Without doubt we all have one thing in common. We are all very passionate about giving the best information possible to the public.

I’ll post an update if the plane finds a closed circulation.

Update 7:22 PM EDT Fri 25 June:

The recon plane has found a closed circulation and the NHC has begun advisories on TD One. The latest probabilities on tropical storm force winds are below:

From NOAA/TPC/NHC Forecast from Friday evening. Do not use after tonight.

More soon.

Rainfall estimates from the Oklahoma City NOAA WSR88D radar. Over 10 inches caused massive flooding in the city yesterday.

I wrote a post awhile back (See TENNESSEE FLOODS- CLIMATE RELATED?) on the possible climate connections to the Nashville flood. Since then we have had another two major events.  One in Arkansas that killed 20 and just this week a deluge in Oklahoma City that caused all three major interstates to be closed and a day of rescues.

As I said in the previous post, you cannot blame any one weather event on climate change, but with the atmosphere holding about 7% more water vapor (Because the planet is warmer) it is very suspicious that we are seeing so many 100 and 1000 year floods.

Joe Romm over at the blog Climate Progress has an interview with Kevin Trenbirth of NOAA NCAR that is well worth listening to. My buddy Stu Ostro at the Weather Channel gets a mention too.

It’s about this very topic. This on the same day that NOAA announces that May 2010 like April was the warmest on the thermometer record.

The data seems to be adding up. As far as normal weather goes, we live in a different world than existed in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Dan