Severe
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Another tragedy due to wild weather occurred this week in Kansas, as the hurricane-force winds that occurred across the central Plains led to out-of control wildfires that destroyed homes, barns, and livestock. This storm system also brought tornadoes as far north as Minnesota and central Wisconsin, something that is just astounding to me as the…
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The past few days have been unprecedented in the location and magnitude of severe weather in the central U.S. In spite of the number of tornadoes and their occurrence at night and at an unusual time of year, the total number of deaths was (at least as far as we know now) less than 100…
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UGA’s Dr. Marshall Shepherd of the Atmospheric Sciences program wrote an article for Forbes.com about the deadly tornadoes that occurred overnight in Kentucky and surrounding states that may be useful for us here in the Southeast as well. His main points: 1) Tornadoes are often deadlier at night because people are not paying attention and…
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Here’s a great video that describes the extremes we have had this past year by Jeff Masters, who was previously with Weather Underground and is now a meteorologist for Yale Climate Connections. He does a great job describing severe weather events around the world in the past year in this video. You can view it…
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At the recent annual meeting of the National Weather Association in August, Steve Nelson of the National Weather Service produced a poster that described some of the extreme wind events that have been measured by the University of Georgia’s mesonet of weather stations. You might be interested in viewing the 5-minute video–you can see it…
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Here is an excellent piece describing trends in tornadoes in the United States over time from Yale Climate Connections. The online title asks if climate change is affecting tornado climatology, and the short answer is “not as far as we can tell now”. There are some trends towards seeing more tornadoes, especially weak ones, that…
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This week is the National Weather Service’s Lightning Awareness week. All this week they will be posting information about lightning causes, climatology, and safety. In Georgia, sadly, we have already had at least one death from lightning this year when a lightning bolt hit the ocean near a swimmer near Tybee Island and the electrical…