Tropical weather
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A rare occurrence of a tropical cyclone (equivalent to a hurricane in the Atlantic) making landfall on the Arabian peninsula is expected to occur this week as Chapala moves west towards Yemen and Oman. Some areas of the desert countries could receive up to 8 years’ worth of rain in 1 to 2 days. Chapala…
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With the landfall of record-setting Hurricane Patricia on the coast of Mexico, news agencies have been abuzz with stories about the storm and its aftermath. Fortunately, the storm came ashore on a relatively sparsely populated part of the coast away from major tourist cities, and since it was small in diameter most of the populated…
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In the last day, Hurricane Patricia in the Eastern Pacific Ocean has reached an unprecedented pressure of 880 mb and sustained winds of 200 mph with gusts to 250 mph. This is the strongest hurricane ever measured, although some past storms may have surpassed it but were not directly measured. No doubt its rapid growth…
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What do we expect this coming winter now that the strong El Niño is here? Mike Halpert of NOAA discusses the likely conditions across the US in the Climate.gov blog post here and shows the variation of previous El Niño winters from strong to weak years. Even in the strong years, there is still quite…
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You probably could not guess it from our quiet Atlantic tropical season, but 2015 has already experienced a record number of tropical storms this year. According to Minnesota Public Radio meteorologist Paul Huttner in this blog post, this year has set new records in both number and intensity of the storms, based on extremely active Pacific…
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The 11 pm forecast track for Hurricane Joaquin shows the tendency toward moving the track east is continuing, with the latest track now holding the center of the storm well off the East Coast as it travels north. This will result in less hurricane-based impacts from the storm in the Southeast. The 10:30 pm infrared NOAA…
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As of 2 pm, Hurricane Joaquin is now considered a dangerous category 4 hurricane with winds of 130 mph battering parts of the Bahama Islands. The latest projected path keeps it off shore, although there is still a lot of range in what the models are predicting. However, the strong flow around the storm directing…