Throwback 2012 #9 Alaska Town Buried

Throwback of 2012 is going to take us up to Valdez, Alaska. Where a town was buried with about 7ft of snow in about a month time.

Valdez is one of the snowiest cities in America, which receives about 27 feet of snow over about a 9 month period. However, 7ft in a month was too much for this Alaskan town to handle. There was reported drifts of 12-14ft of snow.
 
Info/Photos From:
accuweather.com
ktuu.com

Throwback 2012 #10 CO Wildfires

At #10 The Worst Wildfires in Colorado History.

The start of a wildfire can range from a cigarette butt to a strike of lighting, but once these bad boys start a blazin' they can be quite destructive, very dangerous and quite complex to get under control.

A combination of a very long dry period of weather, high temperatures, and low humidity made the 2012 fire season worst than normal all over the Western United States. In particular, the Waldo Canyon fire was the most devastating of them all.

A dry thunderstorm, just north and west of Colorado Springs, supported high winds and no rainfall creating a wildfire nightmare for firefighters. After this dry thunderstorm passed through on June 26th the Waldo Canyon fire spread at a rapid rate. A total of 346 homes were destroyed and over 18,000 acres were destroyed.

I wanted to clear up what exactly a dry thunderstorm is before preceding. A dry thunderstorm is a regular thunderstorm with lighting, thunder, and wind, however, the precipitation from a dry thunderstorm evaporates before reaching the ground.

Wildfires are very hard to control and usually at the bend of mother natures will.

Photo From:
theatlantic.com

White Christmas??

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas! However, all of you will not see my dream come true in real life. Right now we have several states who already have snow on the ground. Check out the current snow depth from the National Weather Service.

 With some new data in this is what I'm thinking for the United States snow cover through December 26th. These chances represent at least 1 inch of snow.

Hope you have a wonderful Holiday!! The next two weeks will be filled with throwbacks from 2012.

Wacky Weather: Snow in Texas

Dallas, Texas had it's first snow of the season, picking up 0.1" of snow on Monday, December 10th. Just north of Dallas, Wichita Falls which is pictured below had a heavier band of snow pass through and received about an inch and a half of snow. However, most of this snow did melt as temperature reached the lower to mid 40's across northern Texas.

The most interesting part about this story is that Dallas had it's first snowfall of the season before Chicago. That's right Chicago has not seen snow for 281 days. Chicago usually gets it first snowfall around November 16th. Its latest first snowfall occurred on December 16th, 1965. So it is possible we could see some more record breaking weather before 2012 closes out.


Photo/Info From:
myfoxdfw.com
wunderground.com

Myth: When a cow lies down, bad weather is coming.

Myth: It is believed that a when a cow lays down this means that a storm is coming soon. Many believe that the cow lays down for its joints are in pain because of the pressure change due to an impending storm.

Result: This myth, although sounds plausible, is not true.

The Reason: Cows can lay down for many reasons, it could be giving birth, sleeping, or dead. And most of the time bad weather does not come after it has laid down. With this information I would say this myth is busted!!

Happy Monday! And never trust a cow for weather advice!

Photo From:
the-picnic-site.com

New Hurricane Regulations

The National Hurricane Center is modifying its qualifications to issue a Hurricane Warnings north of North Carolina. The National Hurricane Center, NHC, had a boat load of criticism because of how they handled Hurricane Sandy's warnings. In all honesty they went by the book on this storm and didn't put out Hurricane warnings out in New Jersey, New York and Delaware. I say this because all of the models were forecasting that Sandy would transition into a post-tropical system meaning that it was no longer a hurricane before it made landfall. And the models were right, Sandy did become post-tropical before it made landfall, however, just because it became a post-tropical system didn't mean that the storm system would not have hurricane force winds and hurricane type storm surge.

I am not saying that if the Hurricane Warnings were issued that there would have been less damage. But I think that more lives would have been saved, and that the local authorities would have taken this storm more seriously and enforced evacuations within their city limits. However, that is all in the past and you can only learn and hopefully improve for next time, which is exactly what the National Hurricane Center is doing. Starting in 2013, the National Hurricane Center will have the wiggle room to issue multiple advisories on post-tropical cyclones. Ultimately this means they mended the qualifications for an Hurricane Warning to be issued.

Photo and Info From:
ouramazingplanet.com
io9.com

Wacky Weather: Tornado in Italy

Sometimes hard to believe that tornadoes occur in places other than the United States. These tornadoes aren't as frequent but they do happen. The southern part of Italy experienced a strong tornado last week. In a town called Taranto, which is highlighted in red on the map of Italy below. 


The tornado stuck on November 28th. It hit a steel plant which injured some of the workers and one man is still missing. According to the European Severe Weather Database, this is the 9th tornado reported since October. This is quite high for Italy as in 2011 there were only 11 tornadoes reported. Below is a photo of the November 28th tornado in Italy.

Sorry for the lack of post for the beginning of the week, I was out of town. Happy Wednesday!!

Photo/Info From:
Wiki.com
avantyra.ru
Washingtonpost.com