Weather out of control????

June 12th
This is a Wild Weather Brief report for the USA.
On June 12, 2003, at 16:12, NEXRAD had detected 1,600 storms nationwide. According to Jesse Ferrell at WeatherMatrix, this was more storms than he had ever seen before.
This increased storm activity and wild weather, came at a time of EXTREME heightened solar activity.
The hot talk among researchers right now is pretty much contained within this brief 'official' statement: "Catania Sunspot group 22 (NOAA 0375) produced more than 30 M-flares and 3 X-flares in 1
rotation!" It is easy to see that quite an emphasis has been put on the solar flare activity that region 0375 produced in just one rotation. That quoted statement was made by a solar site that is affiliated with NASA.
Why all the solar flares? Here's a comment again from James McCanney:  The sun is going bonkers. Statistically we are and have been for some
time been barraged by comets from the south (and these are fairly big with some being extremely big) ... All from the south ... Statistically this is impossible unless there is an immediate cause locally in our solar system ... As in an incoming Planet X type of object ... By the way, as soon as this came in the SOHO feed stopped for at least 3 days and counting.

Feb 23rd,2003
I live in downtown Lexington KY area and we have just been through the worst ice storm you can imagine. Huge oak trees uprooted and pulling up pavement and sidewalks, due to the ice weight. We live in town and were without electrcity for 6.5 days. Fortunately, was able to get a generator and wire it to our gas furnace for the whole time. Until the cleanup, this town looked like a war zone. You would have to see it in person, to believe it.

Dec 14th  
"Bolivian glaciers shrinking fast" and it also talks about other glaciers worldwide that are shrinking too. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2559633.stm

"Record ice loss in Arctic" about the severe melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2558319.stm 

Nov 11
"Mass destruction and death" as quoted on ABC this morning as over 50 some tornadoes ? rip through the southern and eastern half of the US"  Tenn. (AP) - Devastating tornadoes ripped through Tennessee and Ohio on Sunday, killing at least eight people, trapping others in damaged buildings and leaving thousands without power, authorities said. At least five tornadoes swept across middle and western Tennessee packing winds up to 140 mph, the National Weather Service said.

See  http://www.weatherimages.org/data/imag6.html for a satellite view of the west coast getting storm after storm after storm

Nov 30th
Since early October 2002, sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska and the northeastern Pacific Ocean have risen between 2 and 4 degrees Celsius (4 and 7 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than average for this time of year. The above image shows the sea surface temperature anomaly over the region for the week beginning November 4, 2002. Pieced together from seven days of data gathered by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), aboard NASA’s Terra satellite, the image depicts the relative nighttime temperatures of the ocean compared to years past. In this image, bright red and orange represent areas where sea surface temperatures for the first full week in November were greater than they have been on average for the past 20 years, and the bright blue represents areas where sea surface temperature was lower than average.

I post news relating to space, planets, earth changes, weather,
political, and anything else interesting here:
http://www.parous.net/pxbb/viewforum.php?f=8

I also have a news page with Quake Sheets, Weather Action, and
Volcano watch with links and realtime maps here:
http://www.enteract.com/~jorune/pxnews.htm

An open discussion on the facts and myths concerning Planet X
http://www.enteract.com/~jorune/px.htm

 

Natural disasters just for the year 2002 
- tell me something big isn't affecting our weather this year.

Mexico: San Blas-Puerto Vallarta: Hurricane Kenna  2002
England: 13 major earthquakes in Manchester area 2002
Myanmar: Floods - Aug 2002
Bolivia: Forest Fires - Aug 2002
Viet Nam: Floods - Aug 2002
Mexico: Floods - Aug 2002
Iran: Flash Floods - Aug 2002
Czech Republic: Floods - Aug 2002
Russian Federation: Floods - Aug 2002
Cambodia: Drought - Aug 2002
Papua New Guinea: Volcanic Eruption - Aug 2002
Tajikistan: Floods - Aug 2002
DPR Korea: Floods - Aug 2002
El Salvador and Honduras: Dengue Outbreak - Aug 2002
India: Drought - Aug 2002
Venezuela: Floods - Jul 2002
Sri Lanka: Drought - Jul 2002
Bangladesh: Floods - Jul 2002
Nepal: Floods and Landslides - Jul 2002
Peru: Snowstorms - Jul 2002
Bolivia: Snowstorms - Jul 2002
India: Floods - Jul 2002
Micronesia: Tropical Storm Chata'an - Jul 2002
Russian Federation: Floods - Jun 2002
Iran: Earthquake - Jun 2002
Yugoslavia: Floods - Jun 2002
Honduras: Rains - Jun 2002
China: Floods - Jun 2002
Ghana: Floods - Jun 2002
Colombia: Rains - Jun 2002
Syria: Collapse of Dam/Floods - Jun 2002
Nicaragua: Rains - May 2002
Haiti: Floods - May 2002
Chile: Floods - May 2002
Jamaica: Floods - May 2002
Paraguay: Floods - May 2002
Costa Rica: Floods - May 2002
Kenya: Floods - May 2002
Madagascar: Tropical Cyclone Kesiny - May 2002
Bangladesh: Tropical Storms - May 2002
Georgia: Earthquake - Apr 2002
Afghanistan: Floods - Apr 2002
Ethiopia: Floods - Apr 2002
Afghanistan: Earthquake - Apr 2002
Viet Nam: Forest Fire - Apr 2002
Papua New Guinea: Landslide - Apr 2002
China: Earthquake - Mar 2002
Afghanistan: Earthquake - 25 Mar 2002
Madagascar: Tropical Cyclone Hary - Mar 2002
Micronesia: Typhoon Mitag - Mar 2002
Ecuador: Floods - Mar 2002
Djibouti: Toxic Pollution - Mar 2002
Philippines: Earthquake - Mar 2002
Malawi: Floods and Drought (food shortage) - Mar 2002
Afghanistan: Earthquake - Mar 2002
Bolivia: Floods - Feb 2002
Iran: Earthquake - Feb 2002
Guatemala: Volcano de Fuego - Feb 2002
Mexico: Volcano de Colima - Feb 2002
Turkey: Earthquake - Feb 2002
Peru: Floods - Feb 2002
Indonesia: Floods - Feb 2002
Nigeria: Ammunition Dump Explosion - Jan 2002
Senegal: Floods - Jan 2002
Mauritius: Tropical Cyclone Dina - Jan 2002
DR Congo: Volcano Nyiragongo - Jan 2002
Iran: Flash Floods - Jan 2002
Tajikistan: Earthquake - Jan 2002
Madagascar: Tropical Storm Cyprien - Jan 2002
Vanuatu: Earthquake - Jan 2002

Details on the disasters available at:
http://wwww.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/vLND?OpenView&Start=1

Oct 26th
In the uk we just had the highest winds in 15 years, it was a
nightmare. the power was down for 2 days and all transport was cut off,
apparently three people actually died. It was another example of the
uk's latest environmental anomoly showcase, I don't know what it
means but there you go.

Oct 25th - Hurricane Kenna Wrecks Mexican Towns
And NASA says the extreme solar flare conditions occurring right now aren't affecting our weather???   Tell that to Pacific Coast Mexicans today.

Amazing how none of this was posted on any mainstream media today.  Nor that another one is brewing in the same area...........hurricane Lowell. 
See  http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2121854,00.html  for a more extensive description.

The effects of solar flares on Earth's weather....

Sat Oct 26, 9:53 AM ET  By LISA J. ADAMS, Associated Press Writer
SAN BLAS, Mexico (AP) - The majority of homes in this fishing village were blown to bits, dozens of other coastal areas were cut off completely and
neck-high flood waters poured through the streets of Puerto Vallarta as
Hurricane Kenna tore across Mexico's Pacific coast.

Merciless 140 mph winds uprooted trees, blew away roofs and sent cars
hurtling through the air in San Blas, a village of 8,000 people that is
popular with tourists. Kenna weakened to a tropical depression late Friday,
but continued to douse the mountains of northern Mexico with torrential
rains.

Early estimates put the damage at more than $50 million.

Fearing flash floods, authorities as far north as the border state of
Tamulipas began evacuating thousands of people from communities built near
rivers and on hillsides. The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Kenna
was dissipating over northeast Mexico, but remnants would merge with a
weather system now in the northwest Gulf of Mexico.

There were no reports of deaths but authorities said more than 150 people in
the coastal states of Jalisco, Nayarit and Sinaloa were injured by flying
debris.

"Suddenly the wind came roaring in from the mountains and at the same time
more wind carried water in from the sea. The two forces clashed in the
middle," said Sergio Ramon Gonzalez, a 20-year-old police officer, who sat
staring at the flood-soaked San Blas police station.

"Metal began to fly, trees crashed to the ground and roofs were ripped off
of houses. It was really ugly."

Farther south in Puerto Vallarta, which attracts more than 2 million
tourists annually, waves flooded cobblestone streets, sending tourists and
residents scrambling for higher ground. Downtown storefronts were smashed,
upscale restaurants were battered and hotel swimming pools were flooded with
sea water.

Emergency officials waded through neck-high waters, trying to restore power
and phone service to the area. Police closed Puerto Vallarta's popular city
center after receiving dozens of reports of looting.

Soldiers were patrolling downtown early Saturday and authorities said eight
people were arrested for looting in the area.

Hazel Burns, a 26-year-old student from Southampton, England, said she and
her friends tried to leave the resort Friday, but their bus was forced back
by a fallen tree blocking the road.

"I don't think I've ever been so scared in my entire life. All the cars were
swimming around," Burns said. "We didn't know what direction to go in."

The storm came ashore on the shrimp-rich coast of Nayarit between Puerto
Vallarta and Mazatlan, another resort city.

Federal authorities said communications with as many as 30 largely Indian
fishing villages were lost after Kenna's devastating center roared through
the area. President Vicente Fox said he was ready to offer federal disaster
aid to dozens of devastated communities.

Nayarit Gov. Antonio Echeverria monitored the crisis with aides by the light
of a battery-powered fluorescent lamp.

"We are worried because never before in the history of the state have we had
a phenomenon of this magnitude," Echeverria said, flinching as a metal
window guard banged against the glass.

The hurricane did not disrupt a summit of Pacific Rim leaders in Cabo San
Lucas, at the tip of the Baja California peninsula, but it sent trees
crashing down on roadside homes and made the highway connecting San Blas to nearby cities nearly impassable.

Authorities said the coastal highway from the city of Tepic to Mazatlan - a
key section on the road from Mexico City to the Arizona border - was washed
out, blocking ambulances.

But few places were hit harder than San Blas, where almost no building was
spared Kenna's wrath.

Winds collapsed hundreds of small cement houses, tore apart a gas station
and crushed the stained-glass window atop the town's only cathedral. The
hurricane also tossed telephone polls in all directions, leaving power lines
dangling and knocking out electricity to the area.

On the village's wrecked waterfront, massive commercial shrimp boats dragged
300 yards from the docks lay ashore in wrecked heaps.

Dazed residents wearing flip-flops and rubber boots waded through flood
waters that turned their town's narrow streets into canals. They were forced
to step over bits of metal roofs and chunks of concrete as they picked up
their smashed belongings.

Authorities said Kenna hit land with the strongest Pacific Coast winds since
Hurricane Madeline came ashore near Zihuatanejo in 1976 with 144 mph winds.

Sept 13th
38 victims caused by violent storms, 26 people are dead and 12 are feared missing after severe storms swept through south-east France in the last 48 hours. More details... http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/09/13/36460.html 

"New surveys from satellites and aircraft document an alarming acceleration in the melting of glaciers around the world." "scientists say the melt rate has accelerated dramatically since the mid-1990s, which was the hottest decade in a thousand years, according to data from ancient ice cores and tree rings."
The swift retreat of these great ice streams is helping to raise ocean levels and is threatening significant changes in human, animal, and plant life—some good, but mostly bad.

And when was Planet  X's approach  supposed to  start affecting  earth noticeably ; 7 years (like starting in 1995) before it passes in 2003???? Just another piece to the puzzle.  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/08/0821_020821_wireglaciers.html 

Aug 18th

More weather related info:

"840 dead, 3.5 million wounded, 500,000 disappeared, 10.3 million people affected as the worst storms on record sweep the planet. UN Environment Programme Director blames industrialised nations." Venezuela, Monterrey Mexico, Texas, midwest, China, - all these places are having record storms and rainfall. 

http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/08/15/34563.html 

 

June 29th

Wednesday, 12 June, 2002, 12:46 GMT 13:46 UK
BBC News - Floods ravage north-western China

"The area has seen a week of torrential rain, and in the worst
affected area - south of the city of Xian - close to half a metre of
rain fell in two days, in what is normally an arid part of China."

At least 205 people are dead, and hundreds more are missing, in
catastrophic floods in north-western China which some local reports describe as the worst in the area for more than a century.

The area has seen a week of torrential rain, and in the worst
affected area - south of the city of Xian - close to half a metre of
rain fell in two days, in what is normally an arid part of China.

Rivers that had been dry for years turned into raging torrents,
sweeping away roads, destroying tens of thousands of homes, and
bringing down a railway bridge in Xian just three minutes after a
train crossed it.

A huge rescue operation is under way, including army units specially formed to deal with flood emergencies, but the number of dead isexpected to rise.

Farmers drowned - Some of those swept away by the floodwaters were farmers who had planted their crops in the bottom of dried out riverbeds - taking advantage of three years of drought in the area.

The main east-west railway line linking China's coast to its vast
inland provinces has been cut, power supplies have been interrupted, and thousands of acres of farmland are flooded.

The flooding in Shaanxi alone has washed out 13 bridges, 30
kilometres (20 miles) of highways and railway lines and has wrecked 29 hydropower stations, said a spokeswoman for the Shaanxi provincial flood control centre.

"Casualties will certainly increase as the investigation continues,"
the spokeswoman said.  Several provinces have been severely hit by the floods: At least 150 people are reported dead, 266 are missing and more than 110,000 need emergency aid in Shaanxi province. Twenty-seven people are reported dead and 15 missing in Sichuan province, including 14 in the worst-hit city, Suining, and 210,000 people need emergency aid

Two people are reported to have been killed and four injured in Gansu province. In Hubei province, Guizhou province and Chongqing municipality 29 others were reported dead.
 And in the northwest region of Xinjiang, rains have destroyed 500
homes and 1,600 hectares (4,000 acres) of cropland, the official
Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.

Annual danger

China is often crippled by floods in the summer and there are fears
that this week's floods could herald a repeat of those in 1998, when more than 300,000 soldiers were mobilized to overcome floods in which at least 2,000 people died.

The government has since taken extra measures to battle the disaster - banning tree felling, forming special army units to combat flooding on major rivers, and pressing ahead with the controversial Three Gorges Dam.

China has been plagued by flooding for centuries, but major floods
are becoming more and more frequent - one reason is environmental  destruction.

July 19

Very interesting, I just saw on the Fox News Channel that scientist are reporting that the major glaciers in Alaska are losing somewhere around 24 miles every year at this time. To me this is a major melt.

85% of Alaskan glaciers melting at 'incredible rate'

Tim Radford, science editor  Friday July 19, 2002

The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalwarming/story/0,7369,757734,00.html

Glaciers in Alaska are melting at "an incredible rate" according to US researchers. They report in Science today that 85% of the glaciers they examined had lost vast portions of their mass in the last 40 years. Some were now thinning at double the rates of the 1950s. "Most glaciers have thinned several hundred feet at low elevation in the last 40 years and about 60 feet at higher elevations," said Keith Echelmayer of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, who with four colleagues has systematically flown over 67 of Alaska's ice streams, and checked glacier thickness against measurements made by the US geological survey in the 1950s.

He calculated that at least 9% of the sea level rise in the last century could be explained by the melting of Alaska's glaciers. One glacier in southern Alaska - with an area bigger than the US state of Rhode Island - is surrendering 2.7 cubic kilometres of fresh water to the sea each year. The scientists do not blame global warming - the shrinking of the glaciers, like the apparent retreat of sea ice around Antarctica, could be part of a local climatic cycle - but the discovery fits into the larger picture of a warmer world. Glaciers in the tropics - among them the snows of Kilimanjaro and the ice rivers high in the Andes - are melting so fast that they could disappear in the next 20 years.

The ice cover in the Arctic ocean itself is shrinking by an area the size of the Netherlands each year. The ice cap has also thinned from three metres on average, to two meters, in 30 years of nuclear submarine measurements. Ecologists have warned that Arctic bird populations are threatened, and that polar bear, seal and caribou populations are losing their natural habitat.

Six of the 10 warmest years have been recorded in the last 10 years, the other four were in the 1980s. The growing season in Europe is now 11 days longer than it was 30 years ago. There are around 160,000 glaciers on Earth. Only around 40 have been monitored closely in the last 20 years. But the glaciers of the high latitudes - Greenland, northern Canada, Alaska and Antarctica - are important in global warming calculations because the predicted warming will be greatest in the polar regions. Glaciers in Alaska and Canada cover 90,000 sq km, or 13% of the planet's mountain glaciers. The team calculated that on average the glaciers were thinning at the rate of 1.8m a year, spilling an extra 96 cubic km of water into the oceans.

washingtonpost.com
Grasshopper Infestation Plagues West
By Amy Lorentzen
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, July 17, 2002; 2:59 PM

VERDIGRE, Neb. –– Their numbers swelled by the drought, grasshoppers and Mormon crickets are ravaging crops and pastures across the West in what could be the biggest such infestation since World War II.

"They're even eating the paint off some of the houses," said Nebraska farmer Robert Larsen, who raises alfalfa, corn, soybeans and cattle on 1,600 acres where thousands upon thousands grasshoppers jump out of the way as he walks by in what looks like the parting of the sea.

The infestation threatens the livelihood of farmers and ranchers already suffering because of the dry spell.

Agriculture officials are reluctant to put a dollar figure on the damage so far this year. But last year, grasshoppers and Mormon crickets – a black, wingless cousin of the grasshopper – caused $25 million in crop damage in Utah alone.

A mild winter and hot, dry weather since the spring have sped up the maturation of some grasshopper species and allowed more of the insects and their eggs to survive the cold. The drought has also cut into the population of birds and rodents that prey on grasshoppers, and reduced the fungal diseases that normally keep the insects' numbers down.

The result: Larsen and other farmers in parts of Nebraska have counted 50 to 100 grasshoppers per square yard in their fields, compared with three or four during a typical year. Even worse, near Steamboat Springs, Colo., about 200 grasshoppers per square yard invaded rangeland in June, reaching about 1 million grasshoppers per acre.

"We probably have farmers that have never experienced it before. The ones that have are probably in their 60s or 70s," said Michael Cooper, chairman of the National Grasshopper Management Board and acting administrator for the Idaho Department of Agriculture.

Nebraska, New Mexico, Idaho, Oregon and South Dakota are among the states hit hardest. But outbreaks have been reported in parts of most states west of the Mississippi River.

A grasshopper can devour more than half its body weight in vegetation per day, which can leave crops looking like Swiss cheese and rob pastures of feed for cattle.

"You walk across the edge of some fields and it looks like it is moving," said Ron Seymour, a University of Nebraska extension educator based in Hastings.

Farmers are left with two options: They can hold out for a change in the weather – rain would encourage the spread of predators and diseases that can kill off grasshoppers – or they can spray pesticides. But spraying can be costly.

Hiring an aerial sprayer can cost $6 to more than $11 per acre depending on the type of land and the chemicals used, said Dahl Jungren, owner of Flying J Aviation in Broken Bow. Cropland is more expensive than rangeland.

A total of $3.6 million is available to farmers this year through the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service for surveys and technical assistance in dealing with the grasshopper infestation. But that does not pay for spraying or the damage done by the pests.

Some ranchers will have to decide whether to try to save their grass or give up and buy hay to feed their cattle.

And the problem could get a lot worse. Many of the grasshoppers are still young and will become more voracious after they have become winged adults this month.

Also, grasshopper infestations can contribute to high numbers of other pests such as blister beetles, which feed on grasshopper eggs. The beetles, also known as potato bugs, blister the throats and stomachs of animals that eat them while feeding on alfalfa.

Dawson and Custer counties in the center of Nebraska are seeing some of the worst grasshopper infestations. About 40,000 acres – 62.5 square miles – were sprayed in May alone in Custer County.

"This is probably the most widespread infestation I've seen," Jungren said, "and I've been in the business for 30 years."

According to Eric Pianin, a Washington Post Staff Writer, Alaskan glaciers have been accelerating in their rate of melting during the past seven or eight years.  Friday, July 19, 2002; Page A14

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25660-2002Jul18.html

Giant hailstones kill 15 in central China -- TV
BEIJING, July 20 (Reuters) - A downpour of giant hailstones, some the size of eggs, killed 15 people and left hospitals overflowing with head-wound victims in central China, state media and local officials said on Saturday. The hailstorm, with winds of up to Force Eight, struck northern parts of Henan province on Friday
evening, uprooting trees, smashing car windscreens, cutting off electricity and destroying buildings, they said.

Locals described it as the worst hailstorm in at least half a century, state radio said. Television news showed pictures of a gutted petrol station, uprooted trees and victims being loaded into ambulances.  The violent hailstorm only lasted for half an hour but by the time it had finished, all the ambulances  in the cities of Zhengzhou and Luoyang had been called out and emergency rooms were so crammed full of people with head gashes, the radio said. An official in the Zhengzhou city government contacted by telephone said the death toll of 15 was only for cities in the affected area along the south bank of the Yellow River.

"About 10 people were killed on the spot," he said. "Some more were seriously wounded and may have died in hospital." An official in the Luoyang city government said there had been no reported deaths in the city and damage was limited.  The Xinhua news agency quoted the director of the Henan Meteorological Bureau, Gu Wanlong, saying they had only issued a warning about the storm one hour before it struck because they lacked a sophisticated radar system.

                     "If the warning had reached the public in time, a lot of damage might have been avoided, like deaths, injuries, traffic accidents and collapsed buildings," Gu said. More than 800 people have died in floods and torrential rains across China this year and officials are now bracing for flooding worse than that of 1998, when the Yangtze River overflowed and deluged killed more than 4,000 nationwide.