Weird, wild weather: floods, freak storms, giant hail, record lows, all over the world

[Hervé]

Tsunami in Indonesia, Dec 2018: Anak Krakatau volcanic eruption, before and after © NASA

[Franny]

Just came across this video, Grand Solar Minimum 2019: What to Expect. The OP makes some good observations and speculations on what the continuing cooling trend could mean for the denizens of Earth.

Ice Age Farmer
Premiered Dec 30, 2018

2018 has been a hell of a year, and 2019 promises to be even more "fun." What can we expect? Christian breaks it down, from the geophysical to the geopolitical, in this Ice Age Farmer special edition.

FULL SHOW NOTES: Click Here

There are also links to organic gardening, stored food etc. as well as links to preparing for an ice age, crops loss map and more if you're interested.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=i4NxloTfxIU

[Savannah]

https://www.axios.com/polar-vortex-i...ffbe205b9.html

The polar vortex is about to split into 3 pieces


Scientists are seeing signs that global weather patterns toward the latter half of January and into February may shift significantly to usher in severe winter weather for parts of the U.S. and Europe.

How it works: The possible changes are being triggered by a sudden and drastic warming of the air in the stratosphere, some 100,000 feet above the Arctic, and by a resulting disruption of the polar vortex — an area of low pressure at high altitudes near the pole that, when disrupted, can wobble like a spinning top and send cold air to the south. In this case, it could split into three pieces, and those pieces would determine who gets hit the hardest.


Show less





The big picture: Studies show that what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic, and rapid Arctic warming may paradoxically be leading to more frequent cold weather outbreaks in Europe, Asia and North America, particularly later in the winter.

During the past 2 weeks, a sudden stratospheric warming event has taken place, showing up first in the Siberian Arctic, and then spreading over the North Pole.
•Such events occur when large atmospheric waves surge beyond the troposphere and into the layer of air above it. Such a vertical transport of energy can rapidly warm the stratosphere, and set in motion a chain reaction that disrupts the stratospheric polar vortex.
•Sudden stratospheric warming events are known to affect the weather in the U.S. and Europe on a time delay — typically on the order of a week to several weeks later, and their effects may persist for more than a month.

"In general, we see colder than normal temperatures over much of the U.S. and Europe/Northern Asia, and warmer than normal temperatures over Greenland and subtropical Africa/Asia" in the 60 days following sudden stratospheric warming events, Amy Butler, a research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, told Axios in an email.

What's next: Polar vortex projections show it's likely to split into possibly as many as 3 "sister vortices," spilling cold air out of the Arctic and concentrating it in spots across Eurasia and North America.
•In the past, polar vortex splits have been associated with major snowstorms, including 2010, when the Mid-Atlantic region was buried by blizzards.
•A sudden stratospheric warming event and polar vortex disruption was associated with several March snowstorms in the Northeast last winter, as well as the "Beast from the East" cold spell in Europe.
•Such events can have major ramifications for energy markets, leading to natural gas price spikes, for example.

What they're saying: “Arctic change has increased the frequency of these polar vortex disruption events and following these polar vortex disruption events you get more severe winter weather," says Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at AER, a Verisk company, who studies the connections between Arctic climate change and altered weather patterns.
•Cohen and Michael Ventrice, a meteorologist at The Weather Company, told Axios that there are increasing signs of high pressure forming over the North Atlantic near Greenland as well as close to the North Pole in late January, which can block the progress of weather systems moving from west to east.
•Such blocking patterns may be a manifestation of the polar vortex disruption, and favor colder and stormier weather in the eastern U.S. and parts of Europe.
•“Eventually we do think this blocking will set up,” Ventrice said. “I would not give up on winter.”

[Savannah]

The Little Ice Age and 20th-century deep Pacific cooling G. Gebbie1, & P. Huybers
Science 04 Jan 2019: Vol. 363, Issue 6422, pp. 70-74 - DOI: 10.1126/science.aar8413

Deep Pacific cooling

Earth's climate cooled considerably across the transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age about 700 years ago. Theoretically, owing to how the ocean circulates, this cooling should be recorded in Pacific deep-ocean temperatures, where water that was on the surface then is found today. Gebbie and Huybers used an ocean circulation model and observations from both the end of the 19th century and the end of the 20th century to detect and quantify this trend. The ongoing deep Pacific is cooling, which revises Earth's overall heat budget since 1750 downward by 35%.

Abstract

Proxy records show that before the onset of modern anthropogenic warming, globally coherent cooling occurred from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age. The long memory of the ocean suggests that these historical surface anomalies are associated with ongoing deep-ocean temperature adjustments. Combining an ocean model with modern and paleoceanographic data leads to a prediction that the deep Pacific is still adjusting to the cooling going into the Little Ice Age, whereas temperature trends in the surface ocean and deep Atlantic reflect modern warming. This prediction is corroborated by temperature changes identified between the HMS Challenger expedition of the 1870s and modern hydrography. The implied heat loss in the deep ocean since 1750 CE offsets one-fourth of the global heat gain in the upper ocean.


http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6422/70

[Hervé]

Mud volcano continues to bubble away following eruption near Gisborne, New Zealand

Marty Sharpe Stuff
Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:15 UTC

This boundary fence was a casualty of the mud volcano. © Murry Cave

A mud volcano that erupted on a fenceline between two Gisborne farms is continuing to spew mud a month after it appeared.

A mud volcano is an eruption of mud, cold water and gases. This one, in the Waimata Valley, began on December 15.

Gisborne District Council scientist Murry Cave said the main eruption lasted five hours and spewed thousands of tonnes of mud over some 1.3 hectares, destroying a fenceline and partially burying trees.

"We've been monitoring the area for the last year or so because the area uplifted in the Te Araroa earthquake [in September 2016] and there were a lot of cracks," he said.

The mud volcano formed between two farms in the Waimata Valley, near Gisborne. © Murry Cave

Cave said the cause of eruption was unknown.

It was thought that it may have been related to movement on the boundary between the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates.

"The origins of these things are a wee bit enigmatic, which is why we and GNS Science have a project looking into these things. We'll be setting up a long-term monitoring programme to study it ... we have similar features within the city limits and they are a potential hazard when you have houses nearby," he said.

This latest eruption was in a remote area, about 150 metres from the nearest house.

Cave said GNS had sensors in the area prior to the eruption and it was hoped that these might shed some light on what led to the eruption.

"There's obviously been something brewing here for a while since the Te Araroa event and it's just gone boom," he said.

A mud volcano is an eruption of mud, cold water and gases. © Murry Cave



The mud volcano spewed mud over some 1.3 hectares. © Murry Cave

"We're also taking rock samples from it to see what mix of materials is involved so we can get an idea of how far down these things come from."

There was a hard crust covering some of the mud, but most of it was extremely soft.

The eruptions are associated with hydrocarbon gases and these were present in this eruption.

There was another mud volcano in the area that erupted every 10-15 years, but this was the first in this area in known records.

The eruption is on private land but can be seen from the Waimata Valley Rd.

Gisborne District Council principal scientist Dr Murry Cave, pictured, said the origins of mud volcanoes "are a wee bit enigmatic".

The eruption was in a remote area, about 150 metres from the nearest house. © Murry Cave

[Bill Ryan]

From https://cuencahighlife.com/governmen...el-nino-threat

Government warns of El Niño threat

Ecuador’s National Risk and Emergency Management Service (SNGRE) is warning that conditions are favorable for the formation of the El Niño weather phenomenon. SNGRE issued advisories to the coastal provinces of Esmeraldas, Manabí, Guayas, Santa Elena, El Oro to begin preparations for heavy rainfall, flooding and landslides.

[justntime2learn]

Good morning,

I wasn't sure where to post this.

According to Ben Davidson, pole reversal is speeding up exponentially. Ben claims the government shutdown is slowing the release of this information, but it's out there.

The climate models are reported every 5 years with the next one due in 2020. Since we "blew by the maximum acceleration" last year the report will be out this year, one year early.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=t4nbEqZ2T84

All of this fits into Ben's series "Earth catastrophe Cycles"

Here's the link if you're interested in the series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...zJ-aOZ3APVS8br

Have a great day, J

[Star Tsar]

Eleven & Twelve Of Twelve!

Posted by Star Tsar (here)
SOTT Media

November 2018 : Earth Changes Summary

Published 14th Decemember 2018

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=EHxAe3js68A

&

Posted by Star Tsar (here)
SOTT Media

December 2018 : Earth Changes Summary

Published 10th January 2019

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lqGivL39HBk

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
From https://cuencahighlife.com/governmen...el-nino-threat

Government warns of El Niño threat

Ecuador’s National Risk and Emergency Management Service (SNGRE) is warning that conditions are favorable for the formation of the El Niño weather phenomenon. SNGRE issued advisories to the coastal provinces of Esmeraldas, Manabí, Guayas, Santa Elena, El Oro to begin preparations for heavy rainfall, flooding and landslides.

More on this. (It doesn't only affect South America... North America's weather on the west coast would also be impacted. My emphasis in red below.)

• https://cuencahighlife.com/el-nino-a...rain-continues

El Niño alert extended as rain continues
Jan 14, 2019

Ecuador’s Secretariat of Risk Management (SNGRE) has added two inland provinces to the yellow alert warning zone for potential damage from the developing El Niño weather system in the Pacific Ocean. Los Ríos and Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas Provinces join Esmeraldas, Manabí, Guayas, Santa Elena, El Oro in the area designated as “high risk.”

SNGRE reported that heavy rain continued through the weekend in the seven affected provinces causing multiple road closures due to flooding and landslides. Flooding was particularly intense in Los Rios, where more than 100 houses were inundated by heavy rains that began Friday.

The main highway connecting Quito and the coast was closed Saturday due to a landslide but reopened Sunday morning.

World Meteorological Organization forecasters predict that there is a 75 to 80 percent chance that an El Niño will form within the next three months, bringing heavy rain and flooding to coastal regions of South and Central America and to some parts of North America.

El Niño is a naturally occurring weather event that warms the ocean surface, raising sea surface temperatures to above average in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. It is often associated with dry winter conditions in southeastern Africa and northern Brazil and wetter conditions along the Gulf coast of the U.S.

[Rosemarie]

Went to Cuenca January 1-3 and the mountain part before El Cajas had a deep fog and raining in parts coming and going. Lots of dirt on the road coming down from the mountain and some big rocks. Last week the road was closed for a couple of days and this week we just cancelled a business trip to Cuenca because it has continue to rain heavily and seems a little risky driving if there is no urgency. Hope to get there soon. This year the rainy season started very early in the coast.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Rosemarie (here)
Lots of dirt on the road coming down from the mountains and some big rocks.

Yes... here's one, that landed on the highway from Cuenca to Machala on Friday night:



It was about 15 feet long, and must have weighed at least 100 tons. (No-one was hurt, though it might have been very different if it had fallen on a bus in the daytime.)

[Innocent Warrior]

Record breaking floods in North Queensland, Australia.

Jan 27 - Far north Queensland river breaks 118-year flood record

Feb 1 - Parts of Queensland declared disaster zones as emergency services evacuate thousands

Feb 2 - Townsville flooding could worsen with more heavy rain and dam releases

Feb 4 - Australian authorities deliberately flood 2,000 Queensland homes after record downpours

Today - BOM says Townsville flooding far from over, as city lies trapped in weather 'convergence' zone

Why has this monsoon been so record breaking?

A single graph sums up the dire situation in northern Queensland where what should be just another monsoon has morphed into one of the state’s most extreme weather events, affecting at least 200,000 people.

Forecasters have explained why this monsoon trough has proved so destructive.

Up to 500 homes in Townsville are now under water after authorities opened the gates of the Ross River Dam, sending 2000 cubic metres of water a second gushing towards the city.

In the 24 hours to 9am this morning, 181mm of rain fell at Townsville Airport, the city’s main weather station. Since the monsoon began about nine days ago, more than one metre of rain has fallen on the city. In Ingham, half a metre of rain fell in just six hours.

Sky News Weather channel meteorologist Rob Sharpe said the deluge had been “exceptional” for Queensland: “It’s the wettest week on record for Townsville.”

So how bad has the rain been and how bad could it get? The graph below shows Townsville’s previous record seven-day rain event. In 1998, 886mm rain fell including 500mm in just a few hours. The evening and early morning of January 10-11 that year were so sodden it become known as the “night of Noah”. Noah could perhaps make a return visit to Townsville this week and float two arks just for good measure.

In the seven days to 9am Sunday, 1012mm of rain fell on the city, easily beating the 1998 record by 126mm.

Full article.

Aplins Weir four days ago.



One day ago.

[Hervé]

Atacama desert, world's driest place suffers massive flooding in northern Chile

CGTN
Sat, 02 Feb 2019 15:08 UTC

Heavy showers on high altitudes in northern Chile have caused dry river beds to become rushing torrents of water.

The flooding has left one dead, one child missing and over 1,200 homeless, according to officials.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Rve8fDZ8DdQ

(click on picture to view video)

severe-weather.EU @severeweatherEU

*World Weather* Flash flood creates a big waterfall in Valle de Quisma, Pica-Matilla, northern Chile yesterday, Feb 5. Report: Clima Extremo 24

162
8:01 AM - Feb 6, 2019

[RunningDeer]

Posted by Hervé (here)
Atacama desert, world's driest place suffers massive flooding in northern Chile

Check this out from Hervé’s article: *World Weather* Flash flood creates a big waterfall in Valle de Quisma, Pica-Matilla, northern Chile yesterday, Feb, 5, 2019

side note - link correction

[Bob]

Paradise - no, not California, but Hawaii

191 mile per hour winds

60 foot surf

and SNOW

They weren't supposed to have a hurricane or tornadoes but..

One man died in the high surf.

Forecasters “are calling this an unprecedented event and we concur that we rarely if ever have seen the combination of record high onshore waves, coupled with gale force winds,” said Sam Lemmo, administrator of Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR).

The storm’s most extreme blow was generated on the Big Island’s towering peak of Mauna Kea, where a 191-mph wind gust blasted the mountain summit at 4:40 p.m. local time Sunday.

“That’s the strongest wind gust I’ve ever seen up there,” said Jon Jelsema, senior forecaster at the Weather Service office in Honolulu. “We tend to get a gust maybe to 150 mph once a winter or so, but never 191 mph.”

The visitor station on the 13,308-foot mountain is closed until Tuesday “due to the predicted continuation of severe weather,” according to the station’s website. The road is shut down whenever visibility drops below 50 feet, or winds gust to 65 mph or greater.

Hawaii saw a mixed bag of bizarre precipitation over the weekend. Several inches of snow fell on Haleakalā, a shield volcano in East Maui — something Jelsema described as “very unusual.”

“Polipoli State Park on Maui is blanketed with snow. It could also be the lowest elevation snow ever recorded in the state.”

The vigorous storm triggered rare severe thunderstorm warning for southern Kauai Saturday night.

Wind gusts up to 67 mph were clocked in the oceanside town of Port Allen in Kauai. The community is on the south side of the island, protected from the harshest conditions streaming in out of the northeast.

Wave heights approached 40 feet just north of Kauai on Sunday.

Is this going somewhere - looks like it..

The atmospheric river now approaching California’s doorstep has been seen in computer models for more than a week.

While streaming toward the mainland from Hawaii is a significant amount of moisture — remains of the Kona low that sent hurricane-force winds over the Big Island’s tallest peaks during the weekend — a pair of low-pressure systems are sliding down the back (eastern) side of a high-pressure system over Alaska.

[Hervé]

Australian river swells to 37 miles wide due to flooding, creates its own weather system

Joshua Berlinger CNN
Fri, 15 Feb 2019 12:08 UTC

Satellite imagery shows the massive flooding that has hit northeast Australia in 2019.

A river has gone from thin and dry to 37 miles (60 kilometers) wide in a matter of weeks as a result of floods in northeast Australia, satellite imagery shows.

Images released by NASA show the change to the Flinders River -- one of Australia's longest waterways -- over the past month, with flooding there at its worst in more than half a century.

Bureau of Meteorology, Queensland ✔ @BOM_Qld

The #FlindersRiver is experiencing its most significant flooding in more than 50 years with major flooding to continue well into next week. Flood plumes spill into the Gulf of Carpentaria as seen from Japan's Himawari-8 satellite: http://ow.ly/JHox50lgL7N
88
7:48 AM - Feb 13, 2019

CNN meteorologists analyzed the image and said it appeared the river had swelled 60 kilometers wide at some points.

The river is now so big it's creating its own weather system.

The Queensland Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said extra moisture from the flooding helped create a thunderstorm early Thursday.

Bureau of Meteorology, Queensland ✔ @BOM_Qld

A flood so vast it creates its own weather! The extra moisture from the flooding in #NWQld helped this thunderstorm form this morning. It can be seen following the path of the flood waters very closely, thankfully falls were isolated. More images: http://ow.ly/eCEI30nH35y #BigWet
160
2:20 AM - Feb 14, 2019

Australia's billion-dollar beef industry is expected to sustain heavy losses due to the storms. About 500,000 cattle are believed to have died in the flooding, estimated to be to be worth about $213 million (AU$300 million), CNN affiliate Seven News reported.

Many of the cattle carcasses remain, and will pose a health hazard if not buried or burned.

"People have gone through drought, they have come out of years and years of drought, and they have now gone smack-bang into a natural disaster the likes of which no one out there has seen before," Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said.

[Star Tsar]

Here we go again! One o' twelve...

Posted by Star Tsar (here)
SOTT Media

January 2019 : Earth Changes Summary

Published 15th February 2019

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=RkVRHA42Jpg

[Nick Matkin]

Posted by Star Tsar (here)
Here we go again! One o' twelve...

Posted by Star Tsar (here)
SOTT Media

January 2019 : Earth Changes Summary

Published 15th February 2019

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=RkVRHA42Jpg

It's just the weather. Every year some record or other gets broken. The difference is, now we all have cameras to capture it. Yes, the climate is changing, but this video was edited to show things to be more dramatic than they really are. Now why would anyone running a video channel do that...?

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Nick Matkin (here)

Posted by Star Tsar (here)
Here we go again! One o' twelve...

Posted by Star Tsar (here)
SOTT Media

January 2019 : Earth Changes Summary

Published 15th February 2019

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=RkVRHA42Jpg

It's just the weather. Every year some record or other gets broken. The difference is, now we all have cameras to capture it. Yes, the climate is changing, but this video was edited to show things to be more dramatic than they really are. Now why would anyone running a video channel do that...?

Nick, I do understand that. But I'm not convinced it's quite so simple as regular normal seasonal or annual variations. Things really do seem to be getting wilder, all told.

We all might argue about the causes (and the prognostications), but you're right: there's widespread agreement that something's changing, whether one's a global warming supporter or an 'ice age now' advocate.

The videos are just news or social media clips, of course. It's not really a Panorama documentary. But I personally found it fascinating to see the flowers in bloom in the Saudi desert, for instance: I'd never have heard about that otherwise.

So I always watch this, every month, to keep in touch. It's all selective, for sure (SOTT's agenda is simply to alert people to the idea that our own attitudes may be affecting thngs); but all those events are real, affecting real people.

~~~

Meanwhile here in Ecuador, this happened yesterday just a few miles down the road from me:



Underneath all that is (was!) a pretty good, well-maintained, two lane highway. I drove down it just last week. The cause of the landslide was torrential rain, extreme even for the rainy season here. (A short while ago there was a cloudburst locally that one meteorologist here said was the heaviest he'd ever seen in his career.)

As a totally separate issue (not connected with rain or El Niño, but almost certainly with the diminishing Earth's magnetic field), the UV levels here are soaring. I wrote elsewhere that I accidentally burned my eyes (twice! ) because I had no idea the UV was spiking so high.

The UV burn (like snowblindness) was severe, and I had to spend 3 days in a darkened room allowing my eyes to heal somewhat. I now have some high-tech UV goggles that make me look like a human fly: (They're perfect for the mountains, where the only sentient being that can see me is my dog, but I can hardly go shopping in them!)



I took this screenshot of the real-time readout from a local UV measuring station on 14 Feb, just 5 days ago. The level spiked at 18, which is 60% higher than the regularly described 'extreme-so-stay-indoors' level of 11. (18 is crazy-high, and dangerous. 11 is as high as any internet UV charts go.)





It's been between 13—16 regularly the last few weeks, almost every day. It's a serious problem, but at the moment it's only really affecting populations near the equator and also at high altitude (i.e. close to the sun, like yours truly). Peru, much of which is very high as well, is affected similarly. Tourists at Machu Picchu, unless they've been warned, may be doing themselves quite some damage.

So UV, too, is changing. And extreme UV is a kind of silent, invisible thing, unlike heatwaves, snow, or floods, so it's rarely talked about. I hardly paid any attention to it until I fried my eyes last month, and then went to check out what the heck had happened to me.

Interesting stuff. (But even SOTT can't report on UV, as there's nothing to take a video of...!)

[avid]

Such fetching shades - thank goodness you have them, and Mara isn’t looking at you like you are an alien! X