Patricia and Wilma

Hurricane Patricia, EcoWatch

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Early last Friday there was dire news of a category 5 hurricane, named Patricia, that was expected to make landfall in Mexico later in the day. Patricia was reported as the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the western hemisphere. Luckily she struck land in a relatively uninhabited area and her winds had subsided to about 160 miles per hour, as reported by the Washington Post in How Patricia, the strongest hurricane on record, may have miraculously killed so few. Here's a video from GlobalLeak News showing what Patricia and her 160 mph winds looked like.

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Patricia vies with hurricane (aka tropical cyclone) Wilma in the statistics department. However, Wilma traveled further and caused a great deal more damage. This was Wilma's path.

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Hurricane Wilma, 2005 track, Wikipedia

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What got me to wondering was "what exactly does a change of 100 millibars air pressure mean?" While I wasn't able to find a direct answer (guess you have to be there), I did find info on how high-low pressure works at WeatherWorks.  Here are a couple of diagrams. Note that highs move clockwise and lows, counter-clockwise--at least north of the equator.

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High-low pressure diagrams, WeatherWorks

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With high winds it seems to me the most destructive part is the constant barrage of force prying things apart in small steps.  Here's an example of how Wilma worked, published by Tropmet.

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-- Marge

So what's the weather like today

Got nothin' in the way of a topic today, so I'm looking at the weather around the U.S. and touching on the weather in the UK.

Freezing rain, snow, and sleet hit New York; and a storm with more snow is predicted. A headline from Syracuse says "So much snow that some schools in Central New York won't start on time."

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Syracuse University students from the Alpha Phi Sorority skate at the Clinton Square
ice rink Sunday afternoon. (Michael Greenlar | mgreenlar@syracuse.com

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Meanwhile a warning of fire danger was posted for Tulsa, Oklahoma on the 6th. The danger is due to dry conditions and high winds.

In both the Northwest and most of Alaska snow levels have been low this year. In Alaska sled makers and mushers are preparing for warm-weather competitions (Iditarod and other dogsled races). A map of the current state of Alaska's snowfall can be found at the National Weather Service site.

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A musher and dog team cross the ice between the Rohn and Nikolai checkpoints in Alaska during the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Tuesday, March 5, 2013. The Anchorage Daily News / Bill Roth, Sacramento Bee

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In Los Angeles a dog was rescued from the swollen Los Angeles river. After several years of drought, a 'River of Rain' is falling on California.

The UK is enduring what they call the 'winter misery'. Here's an article about heavy snows on the 5th. Other articles talk about low temperatures and torrential rains, all in the space of February 2015.

Miami, Florida, is balmy, for now.

-- Marge

Cartoons: Is it just weather or climate change?

And if it is climate change, do humans have anything to do with it?  Here's a collection of surveys of scientists' views on climate change.  The summary from the Doran and Kendall Zimmerman survey (2009) states:

It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.

The cartoonists also weigh in.

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Steve Sack, The Week

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Michael Ramirez, US News

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Mike Luckovich, The Week

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David Horsey, The Week

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Paul Combs, The Week

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-- Marge

Cartoons: Extreme weather and El Niño

Believe it or not November 2013 was the warmest year on record globally, according to a TIME magazine article (subscription needed to read the full item), "El Niño Is On Its Way:"

For many Americans, 2013 ended with an unusually bitter cold snap. Late November and December saw early snow and bone-chilling temperatures in much of the country, part of a year when--for the first time in two decades--record-cold days will likely turn out to have outnumbered record-warm ones. But the U.S. was the exception: November was the warmest ever globally, and the provisional data indicates that 2013 is likely to have been the fourth-hottest year on record.

Enjoy the snow now, because chances are good that 2014 will be even hotter--perhaps the hottest year since records have been kept. That's because, scientists are predicting, 2014 will be an El Niño year.

With the coming heat in mind, here are a few cartoon celebrating (sort of) cold and snow.

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Dave Granlund, Cagle

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Jimmy Margulies, Cagle

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Randy Bish, Cagle

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Had enough?

-- Marge