NASA 'bisects' Tropical Storm Amanda

Stephanie Pappas in Yahoo News via Live Science: NASA has sliced and diced the first named storm of the 2014 hurricane season, capturing a bisected view of Hurricane Amanda at its strongest. Amanda — now a tropical depression — formed over Memorial Day weekend and reached Category 4 hurricane strength, with winds reaching 155 mph (250 km/h).

Those wind speeds made the storm the strongest May hurricane ever seen. Fortunately, Amanda remained far out to sea in the eastern Pacific and never threatened land. After turning north over cooler waters this week, the storm weakened, its winds receding to tropical-storm level. As of today (May 29), Amanda is a mere tropical depression, with max
imum sustained winds of only about 35 mph (56 km/h), according to the National Hurricane Center.

NASA's CloudSat satellite caught a detailed glimpse of the storm when it was still a hurricane. On May 25, the storm's winds were blowing at around 150 mph (240 km/h) when the satellite passed over about 25 miles (40 km) from the center of the storm. [Hurricanes from Above: See Nature's Biggest Storms]

CloudSat uses ultrasensitive radar to measure clouds and their moisture. In Amanda's eastern half, the satellite detected moderate and heavy-moderate precipitation deep in the storm, below the altitude at which precipitation turns from solid into liquid. The profile of the storm revealed an expansive, anvil-shaped cloud extending northward, as well as smaller cumulus clouds underneath, NASA reported today (May 29)....

NASA image of Amanda on May 23, 2014

At least 26 dead, 10 missing as storms batter China

Australia Network News: Storms in central and southern China have left at least 26 people dead, state media reports. China's Xinhua news agency says working teams and relief materials are being sent to the affected areas as part of an emergency response.

At least 10 people are believed to be missing. Fifteen people have died since Wednesday and five remain missing in Guangdong province due to the storms, Xinhua said, citing local flood control authorities.

Seven people died and three were missing in Hunan because of the downpours, it added. Pictures showed flooded streets in the city of Lining, and residents eating dinner sitting ankle-deep in brown water.

Storms also battered the southwestern province of Guizhou, where three people died on Saturday night and early Sunday....

Winter storm brings devastation to Syria and neighbors

Erika Solomon and Oliver Holmes in Reuters: The worst winter storm in two decades has hit the eastern Mediterranean this week, bringing destruction and death to Syria and its neighbors who are already dealing with a refugee crisis from the country's civil war.

Opposition activists in Syria, where war has forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and cut off access to food, fuel and power for cities and towns, say dozens of people have died there in four days of relentless extreme weather.

At least 17 people have also died due to the storm in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Israel and the Palestinian territories. Schools in some areas have been shut for days, refugee camps flooded and villages isolated by closed roads. Meteorological agencies in Israel and Lebanon both called it the worst storm in 20 years.

Snowfall in the Syrian capital Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo did not halt the fighting between rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, which has killed more than 60,000 people in the past 21 months....

Winter in the village of Deirmama, Masyaf, Hama Governorate, Syria. The old mosque is covered with snow. A 2007 shot by Ammagaro., Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Some cities find small steps key to storm protection

Scott Malone in Reuters: In the aftermath of the historic floods caused by Superstorm Sandy, some city leaders have begun to argue for the construction of sea walls capable of shielding the U.S. coastline from ever more intense storms. But in Saco, Maine, storm protection comes in a far less glamorous package. Along what used to be Surf Street, owners of beachfront houses are jacking their homes up to allow storm surges from Saco Bay to flow underneath them.

The northeastern city of 19,000 people has reason to be wary of the water - over the past decade it has washed away six homes and in 2007 took several blocks of Surf Street itself. Today the street is a gravel track along a wall of dishwasher-size chunks of rock built by the city to blunt the force of storm waves.

The road "was damaged several times and we repaired it," said Dick Lambert, Saco code enforcement officer. But after a 2007 nor'easter swept away much of it, "We said, ‘We're spending good money after bad. This time we're going to stop.'"

The Saco City Council in May also adopted a resolution requiring owners of waterfront buildings who rebuild or do substantial renovations to raise them 3 feet above forecast 100-year flood levels - a projection of low-lying areas likely to be flooded once a century on average.

..."People want to look to a big, bold project they can point to that will make people feel safe," such as sea walls, said Adam Freed, a Nature Conservancy director who until August was one of New York City's top officials on sustainability. But those big projects, he added, do not guarantee safety....

The Saco River in Saco, Maine, shot by Decumanus, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Subject to disclaimers.

Bangladesh storm toll rises to 26, scores missing

Terra Daily via AFP: Tropical storms that battered southern Bangladesh are now known to have killed at least 26 people while some 60 fishermen are still missing, police and officials said on Friday.

The government's Disaster Management Bureau (DMB) said at least 30,000 mud, tin and straw-built houses were damaged in the storms that wreaked havoc in around half a dozen coastal towns and the islands of Hatiya, Bhola and Sandwip early Thurday.

Dalil Uddin, a senior DMB controller, said rescuers had found seven more bodies on Friday, raising the overall death toll to 26. Most of the bodies were recovered buried under the rubble of collapsed homes or from under fallen trees. "We are expecting the death toll might still rise, as rescue efforts are still on," Uddin told AFP....

Tropical Storm Isaac drenches Haiti, aims for Cuba

Susana Ferreira in Reuters: Tropical Storm Isaac emerged over warm Caribbean waters on Saturday slightly weaker but ready to regroup after dumping torrential rains on Haiti, where thousands of people remain homeless more than two years after a devastating earthquake.

Heavy rains and high winds lashed Haiti's southern coast, flooding parts of the capital Port-au-Prince, and flattening tents in some of the fragile resettlement camps that house more than 350,000 survivors of the 2010 earthquake.

A 10-year-old girl was killed in Port-au-Prince when a wall fell on her, the Civil Protection authority said. Power outages and flooding were reported as Isaac moved across the hilly and severely deforested Caribbean country.

"There's a lot of rain, a lot of wind," said Magdala Jean-Baptiste, who huddled with her frightened children in their home in the southern coastal city of Jacmel. "We haven't had any power since the storm started yesterday. We passed the night with no sleep."

Isaac was forecast to sweep over eastern Cuba on Saturday and strengthen into a hurricane as it approaches the Florida Keys. It was on track for the Gulf of Mexico, where major energy companies have begun offshore evacuations that could end up shutting nearly half the area's oil output...

Tropical Storm Isaac on August 23, 2012

Summer storm over the Arctic

NASA: An unusually strong storm formed off the coast of Alaska on August 5 and tracked into the center of the Arctic Ocean, where it slowly dissipated over the next several days. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color mosaic image on Aug. 6, 2012. The center of the storm at that date was located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.

The storm had an unusually low central pressure area. Paul A. Newman, chief scientist for Atmospheric Sciences at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., estimates that there have only been about eight storms of similar strength during the month of August in the last 34 years of satellite records. “It’s an uncommon event, especially because it’s occurring in the summer. Polar lows are more usual in the winter,” Newman said.

Arctic storms such as this one can have a large impact on the sea ice, causing it to melt rapidly through many mechanisms, such as tearing off large swaths of ice and pushing them to warmer sites, churning the ice and making it slushier, or lifting warmer waters from the depths of the Arctic Ocean.

“It seems that this storm has detached a large chunk of ice from the main sea ice pack. This could lead to a more serious decay of the summertime ice cover than would have been the case otherwise, even perhaps leading to a new Arctic sea ice minimum,” said Claire Parkinson, a climate scientist with NASA Goddard. “Decades ago, a storm of the same magnitude would have been less likely to have as large an impact on the sea ice, because at that time the ice cover was thicker and more expansive.”

Aqua passes over the poles many times a day, and the MODIS Rapid Response System stitches together images from throughout each day to generate a daily mosaic view of the Arctic. This technique creates the diagonal lines that give the image its "pie slice" appearance.

In the image, the bright white ice sheet of Greenland is seen in the lower left.

Image from NASA

Two dead as storms hit Austria, northern Italy

Terra Daily via AFP: Storms wreaked havoc in Austria and northern Italy over the weekend, causing landslides that killed two people, authorities said Sunday.

An 84-year-old woman was killed when a landslide hit a farm in Afens, on the Italian side of the border with Austria.

In nearby Tulfer, the body of another woman who had been declared missing after her house was struck by a mud flow, was uncovered on Sunday morning.

Major storms lashed much of Austria and German-speaking northern Italy late Saturday, causing flooding and power cuts, and disrupting rail and road connections. About 1,000 homes were without electricity Sunday morning in the Virgental valley in southern Austria.

In South Tyrol, a northern province of Italy also known as Alto Adige, some 500 emergency workers, firefighters and civil protection officers were mobilised to deal with the damages....

The impact of low-pressure weather systems on Australia's water security

Newcastle Herald (Australia): A new University of Newcastle research project will examine the influence of east coast low weather systems, on the future water security of Australia’s eastern seaboard.
Researchers from the Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment and Faculty of Science and Information Technology aim to develop a greater understanding of the impact of extreme low pressure systems on climate change and the implications for water storage.

East coast lows are intense low-pressure systems that occur off eastern Australia and can generate gale force winds and heavy rainfall. The weather phenomenon is the same type that created the destructive storm that grounded the bulk carrier, Pasha Bulker, at Newcastle’s Nobbys Beach in 2007.

“East coast lows often result in major flooding and destruction, but this water is crucial for topping up storage levels in coastal regions,” one of the project’s chief investigators, Professor Garry Willgoose said.

“Without the heavy rainfall we experienced during that infamous Pasha Bulker storm boosting the Hunter’s water stores, the region’s reservoirs could have ran dangerously low, having major implications for residents and heavy industry.”...

The Pasha Bulker grounded at Nobby's Beach, Newcastle, Australia, shot by Web107, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Rain from Tropical Strom Debby drenches Florida

Suzette Laboy in the Associated Press: Tropical Storm Debby spun drenching rains Monday over northern Florida as it hung nearly stationary over the Gulf of Mexico, making its biggest threat flooding rather than winds.

Tropical storm warnings were in effect along the Florida Panhandle as the storm parked offshore. Even with the storm's center far from land, it lashed Florida with heavy rains and spawned isolated tornadoes that killed at least one person.

And in Alabama, crews planned to continue searching for a South Carolina man who disappeared in rough surf Sunday afternoon. The man, whose name and hometown were not immediately released, was vacationing with his family when he went underwater around 1:45 p.m. Sunday, said Melvin Shepherd, director of beach safety for Orange Beach, Ala. The storm also prompted the closing of a bridge to St. George Island, popular vacation island in Florida.

Residents in several counties near the crook of Florida's elbow were urged to leave low-lying neighborhoods because of the threat of flooding. High winds forced the closure of an interstate bridge that spans Tampa Bay and links St. Petersburg with areas to the southeast. In several locations, homes and businesses were damaged by high winds authorities believe were from tornadoes.

Authorities in the Tampa Bay area were asking residents and tourists to stay away from flooded streets. Some streets were still under water early Monday, while others were blocked with debris. The constant barrage of wind and rain triggered fears of the widespread flooding that occurred across the Florida Panhandle during Hurricane Dennis in 2005....

Tropical Storm Debby on June 24, 2012, from NASA

Exploring the chemistry of thunderstorms

NASA: NASA researchers are about to fly off on a campaign that will take them into the heart of thunderstorm country. The Deep Convective Clouds and Chemistry (DC3) field campaign will use an airport in Salina, Kan., as a base to explore the impact of large thunderstorms on the concentration of ozone and other substances in the upper troposphere. The campaign is being led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA.

"Thunderstorms provide a mechanism for rapid lifting of air from the surface to higher altitudes in a matter of minutes to hours," said James Crawford of NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., and a member of the mission's scientific steering committee. "This allows molecules that are short-lived and more abundant near the surface to be transported to the upper troposphere in amounts that could not happen under normal atmospheric conditions," he said.

Additional chemical impacts come from the production of nitrogen oxides by lightning, but the details of these processes are not well understood.

"All of this together has an influence on ozone in the coldest part of the atmosphere where it exerts the largest influence on climate," Crawford said. "Of the chemicals we'll be studying, nitrogen oxides in particular are key to the creation of ozone and are produced both naturally by lightning and by human activity through the burning of fossil fuels."

The campaign is scheduled to run from May 15 to June 30. NASA partners include Langley, Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. and Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif...

A thunderstorm shot by Rolf van Melis (RvM), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

As climate changes, Louisiana seeks to lift a highway

Juliet Eilperin in the Boston Globe, via the Washington Post: Here on the side of Louisiana’s Highway 1, next to Raymond’s Bait Shop, a spindly pole with Global Positioning System equipment and a cellphone stuck on top charts the water’s gradual encroachment on dry land. In 1991, this stretch of road through the marshlands of southern Louisiana was 3.9 feet above sea level, but the instrument - which measures the ground’s position in relation to sea level - shows the land has lost more than a foot against the sea. It sank 2 inches in the past 16 months alone.

That’s a problem because Highway 1, unprotected by levees, connects critical oil and gas resources in booming Port Fourchon to the rest of the nation. Ten miles of the highway is now standing 22 feet above sea level on cement piles. But another 7 miles is not, and if less than half a mile of this highway succumbs to the 14-foot storm surges expected in the future, the highway will need to be shut down, cutting off the port.

Residents and business leaders are demanding that the federal government help pay to rebuild and elevate the additional section of Highway 1. Federal officials have provided scientific and technical expertise but will not contribute funding unless the state pledges to complete the road. Louisiana says it does not have the money. The dilemma facing this important lowland road is one shared by communities across the country as climate change begins to transform the nation’s landscape.

...Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who started measuring tides in Louisiana in the mid-1800s, have analyzed the numbers for Highway 1, and they do not bode well. At today’s rate of sea-level rise the road would be under water roughly 22 days of the year by 2030...

Highway sign for Louisana's Highway 1, shot by NOAA

UK nuclear sites at risk of flooding

Rob Edwards in the Guardian (UK): As many as 12 of Britain's 19 civil nuclear sites are at risk of flooding and coastal erosion because of climate change, according to an unpublished government analysis obtained by the Guardian.

Nine of the sites have been assessed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as being vulnerable now, with others in danger from rising sea levels and storms in future decades. They include all of the eight sites proposed for new nuclear power stations around the coast, as well as numerous radioactive waste stores, operating reactors and defunct nuclear facilities.

Two of the sites for new nuclear stations are said to have a "high risk" of flooding now: Sizewell in Suffolk and Hartlepool in County Durham, where there are also operating reactors. Shutdown and running reactors at Dungeness in Kent are also classed as currently at high risk.

Another of the sites most at risk is Hinkley Point in Somerset, where the first of the new nuclear stations is planned and there are reactors in operation and being decommissioned. According to Defra, it already has a "low" risk of flooding, and by the 2080s will face a high risk of both flooding and erosion.

Other new reactor sites that face some risk now and high risks by the 2080s are Oldbury in South Gloucestershire and Bradwell in Essex. The huge old nuclear complex at Sellafield in Cumbria is said to face a "medium risk" of flooding now and in the future...

A view to the Sizewell A & B nuclear power stations along the beach near Thorpness, looking north. Shot by William M. Connolley, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

With climate change, today's '100-year floods' may happen every three to 20 years

Jennifer Chu in PhysOrg: Last August, Hurricane Irene spun through the Caribbean and parts of the eastern United States, leaving widespread wreckage in its wake. The Category 3 storm whipped up water levels, generating storm surges that swept over seawalls and flooded seaside and inland communities. Many hurricane analysts suggested, based on the wide extent of flooding, that Irene was a “100-year event”: a storm that only comes around once in a century.

However, researchers from MIT and Princeton University have found that with climate change, such storms could make landfall far more frequently, causing powerful, devastating storm surges every three to 20 years. The group simulated tens of thousands of storms under different climate conditions, finding that today’s “500-year floods” could, with climate change, occur once every 25 to 240 years. The researchers published their results in the current issue of Nature Climate Change.

MIT postdoc Ning Lin, lead author of the study, says knowing the frequency of storm surges may help urban and coastal planners design seawalls and other protective structures. “When you design your buildings or dams or structures on the coast, you have to know how high your seawall has to be,” Lin says. “You have to decide whether to build a seawall to prevent being flooded every 20 years.”

Lin collaborated with Kerry Emanuel, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, as well as with Michael Oppenheimer and Erik Vanmarcke at Princeton. The group looked at the impact of climate change on storm surges, using New York City as a case study. To simulate present and future storm activity in the region, the researchers combined four climate models with a specific hurricane model. The combined models generated 45,000 synthetic storms within a 200-kilometer radius of Battery Park, at the southern tip of Manhattan....

A view of the marina in Battery Park City, Manhattan, shot by David Moran, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Blizzards push southeastern Europe energy grids to limits

Oleg Vukmanovic and Maja Zuvela in Reuters: Blizzards and ice-laden power lines in southeastern Europe pushed gas and electricity networks near to breaking point Wednesday as consumption soared, while some western countries scrambled to prevent similar breakdowns.

As electricity cables buckled under the weight of ice and snow in southeastern Bosnia, where some 15,000 customers were left in darkness, Serbia warned of a "possible collapse" of its energy system as record-breaking demand stretched the power grid near its technical limits.

Serbia's government adviser for energy issues, Petar Skundric, said the Balkan nation should reduce power consumption by 10 percent "to avoid problems and possible collapse of the energy system."

"In only a week's time Serbia has broken six historical records both in consumption and production of electricity," Skundric told reporters. "The system is operating at the very border of its technical capabilities, and we should do our best to reduce both consumption by at least 10 percent from the current level and production by around some 500 MW," he said....

A snowflake, shot by NOAA

Philippine flood death toll surges

Al Jazeera.com: The death toll from killer floods in the Philippines has risen by more than 200, more than a week after the disaster struck, with officials expecting more corpses to be found. The confirmed toll reached 1,453 on Tuesday, up sharply from 1,236 the previous day as navy and coastguard ships fished more bodies out of the waters off the southern island of Mindanao, the civil defence office said.

The stench of death pervaded the region, a sign that many corpses still remained unrecovered on land, Ana Caneda, the regional civil defence chief, said. Tropical storm Washi brought heavy rains, overflowing rivers and flash floods to the southern Philippines from December 16 to 18, sweeping away whole villages built on sandbars and riverbanks.

"There are still a lot of areas we have examined that are stinking of dead bodies. We don't know how many people are buried under that mud," Caneda said, adding the toll could reach 2,000. "There are so many bodies being found, floating in the bays. If not for the small islands in the bays, they would be in the Pacific already," she said.

Recovering the bodies has been hampered by the fatigue of rescue workers who have been labouring non-stop since the storm hit, Caneda said. "Even the [corpse] sniffing dogs are tired."...

From NASA: Rainfall estimates from the TRMM data are shown here for the period Dec. 13 to 20, 2011 for the southern Philippines. Storm symbols mark Washi's track. Rainfall totals are on the order of 200 to over 250 mm (~8 to 10 inches, shown in green and yellow) along Mindanao's east coast where Washi made landfall, but the highest amounts are along the northwest coast, where totals are on the order of 300 to over 400 mm (~12 to over 16 inches, shown in orange and red).

President Aquino vows political will to solve Philippine flooding

Aurea Calica in the PhilStar.com: President Aquino has vowed to exercise political will to make government officials do whatever would be necessary to mitigate the effects of disasters hitting the country every year. Aquino also said those officials found to have been responsible for the loss of lives in the flashfloods that struck the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan during tropical storm “Sendong” last week would have to face the consequences.

“Like what happened in Iligan, there were so many logs when the ban on logging in the residual forests and natural forests has been there because forest cover has been (denuded), that’s where the flooding is coming from,” Aquino said during an interview with GMA 7 late Friday.

“But the problem is many are still violating (the log ban). So we have a fact-finding team that will determine the violators and we will file cases and hold them accountable,” he said. Aquino stressed the importance of imposing political will. “Firstly, we will demonstrate political will and force my subordinates to do what is right,” he said.

...The President added he wanted concerned authorities to do their jobs well in responding to the disaster so he waited before proceeding to Cagayan de Oro, Iligan and Dumaguete City. He said he wanted local officials to concentrate on attending to the problems rather than bother with his visit.

Aquino on Tuesday ordered a probe to determine the possible negligence of officials in the floods that left over a thousand people dead and scores more missing in several areas in Mindanao following the storm. Aquino said he wanted a probe on who should be held responsible for the tragedy to serve as a lesson so that it would not happen again....

Tropical Storm Washi (also known as Sendong) devastated the Philippines on December 16 and 17, 2011. The storm was not powerful in the traditional sense—it’s winds never surpassed 55 knots (100 kilometers per hour or 63 miles per hour) and it lacked the organization of an intense typhoon or hurricane. Nonetheless, Washi unleashed extremely heavy rain on northwest Mindanao,. and the resulting floods left hundreds dead or missing. This image shows rainfall between December 15 and midday on December 19. Dark blue spots indicate areas of extreme rain, and the largest area is in northwest Mindanao. The image was made with data from the Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis, which combines measurements from many satellites and calibrates them with rainfall data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite. Most of the rain fell on Friday, December 16. The rain rushed down mountain slopes and converged on coastal communities overnight, while people were sleeping. The ensuing flash floods left 957 dead and 1,582 injured as of December 20, reported the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council. Most of the fatalities came in Cagayan De Oro and Iligan City. Nearly 340,000 people have been affected by the disaster.

Great Plains storm tapers off, but holiday travel could be rough

Amy Hubbard in the Los Angeles Times: The fierce winter storm sweeping across the Great Plains on Tuesday, wreaking havoc on highways and causing at least six deaths, is tapering off. But transportation is still wretched, and holiday travelers this week should plan on a few bumps, according to experts.

Travel will be "an issue" in the aftermath of the area's first big blizzard of the season, according to AccuWeather. Meteorologists at the website saw the possibility of weather-related travel problems continuing for hundreds of thousands of people at major transportation hubs, including Denver, Atlanta and New York City.

A winter storm warning was canceled for parts of Kansas as of 1:34 p.m. CST, said the National Weather Service, although a winter weather advisory remained in effect for some parts of that state and Oklahoma through 6 p.m. CST.

Early Tuesday, snow and rain were pushing through the heart of the U.S., according to AccuWeather. Colorado received 15 inches of snow; New Mexico, 12; and the storm reached into Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle and parts of Kansas.

Major highways were closed during the worst of the storm, but officials have since reopened portions of several interstates, according to the Associated Press. Around noon CST, Interstate 70 in Kansas and the I-40 in the Texas Panhandle and New Mexico reopened, the AP reported....

Photo of a 1966 blizzard in Jamestown, North Dakota, shot by Bill Koch, North Dakota State Highway Department. The original caption: "I believe there is a train under here somewhere!"

Massive dust storm shows importance of federal, state conservation programs

Southwest Farm Press (US): A dust storm reminiscent of those which plagued the Southern Plains of the United States during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s that struck Lubbock, Texas, this week should serve as a reminder of the importance of state and federal conservation programs according to Joe Parker, president of the Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts (OACD).

“The massive dust storm that hit Lubbock, Texas, on October 17 ironically happened on the same day that the leaders of the U.S. House and Senate Agriculture Committees announced their willingness to reduce federal Farm Bill Programs, including Conservation programs, by over $23 billion as part of the effort to balance the federal budget,” Parker said. “While it’s true we all need to do our part to help put our fiscal house in order, this storm should show why these cuts can’t all come from conservation and why it’s important that we keep a focus on natural resource protection on working farm and ranch land unless we want to see a new Dust Bowl.”

On October 17, a massive dust storm started in the far southwest Texas Panhandle along the edge of a cold front that moved south toward Lubbock at approximately 55 mph. The storm reached Lubbock at 5:30 p.m. and took roughly 30 minutes to blow through the city. At the height of the storm, visibility ranged from a quarter-mile to near-zero for 40 minutes at Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport. Reports from the National Weather Service said winds gusts as high as 60 to 65 miles per hour were recorded.

According to OACD’s Executive Director Clay Pope, this storm should send a message to policy makers and agriculture producers alike—we have to stay focused on working lands conservation. “Whether its policy makers ensuring that conservation programs are available and funded or farmers and ranchers practicing good stewardship on their land, we all have to remember the importance of natural resource conservation,” Pope said. “Earlier this spring we started telling producers to be careful about how they farmed this summer and for the most part, we have maintained the strong conservation track record that goes all the way back to the 1930s."...

From June 2009, a gust-front dust cloud, called a Haboob, moving across the Llano Estacado toward Yellow House Canyon near the residential community of Ransom Canyon, Texas, shot by Leaflet

Tropical Storm Gert is turning to open sea as new system heads for Mexico

Brian K. Sullivan in Bloomberg writes about the latest named storm in the Caribbean. We're already up to "G": Tropical Storm Gert is turning north-northeast on a track away from Bermuda and the North American coast, while a new system off the Lesser Antilles will probably move toward Mexico, forecasters said. Both Gert and a cluster of thunderstorms to its southeast “are going to be fish storms,” said Matt Rogers, president of Commodity Weather Group LLC in Bethesda, Maryland.

Gert, with top winds of 60 miles (97 kilometers) per hour, was 155 miles east-southeast of Bermuda and moving north at 12 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in an advisory at about 10:40 a.m. East Coast time. The government of Bermuda dropped its storm warnings, as Gert is expected to pass well to the east of the island and will probably weaken after 24 hours, the center said.

The system about 300 miles east of the Lesser Antilles has a 10 percent chance of becoming a tropical depression or tropical storm in the next 48 hours. Rogers said that disturbance may eventually make its way to near the Yucatan Peninsula, where warm waters may fuel development. Currently, the system has a lot of dry air around it, and Rogers said that will retard its growth.

Once it reaches the western Caribbean, the system has the potential to grow into a storm, Rogers said. “It doesn’t give it a large amount of time to do anything too threatening, so I would keep it at a low risk,"...

Tropical Storm Gert on August 14, 2011, thanks to one of NASA's vigilant eyes in the sky