Author: Matthieu

Matt has been a member of the AWM team since January 2012, writing the weekly feature Elsewhere in Weather News which highlights weather news from across the globe. Matt has lived in Winnipeg all his life and has been a weather enthusiast since a very young age. He is currently completing his B.Sc. in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Manitoba.

Elsewhere in Weather News: July 19th, 2014

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Another Super Typhoon Spins Up in the Western Pacific

The Western Pacific Ocean has been very active in the past few weeks, churning up numerous typhoons including its most recent – super typhoon Rammasun. Rammasun made landfall at least twice; once in the Philippines and China, respectively, during its trek across the Western Pacific.

The first landfall occurred southeast of Manila, Philippines, where it brought with it winds of 185km/h. Many precautions were taken ahead of this storm in the Philippines as it was the first typhoon to hit the country since super typhoon Haiyan. Over 500,000 people decided to ride out the storm in evacuation centres and plenty of warning (3 days) was given to residents before the typhoon made landfall. Despite the warnings, many homes could not be saved – as many as 7,000 as reported by authorities. Unfortunately 38 people died due to the typhoon in the Philippines.

After making landfall in the Philippines, Rammasun quickly strengthened with help from the very warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs) that approached 30°C in the South China Sea. With these warm SSTs conditions were primed for the storm to reorganize. Rammasun quickly developed a well-defined eye and became a super typhoon (category 4) as it approached China for a second landfall. The typhoon made landfall on Friday morning with sustained winds of 250km/h gusting to 280km/h on one of China’s southern provinces; Hainan. All modes of damage were possible with a storm of this intensity; including flooding rains, landslides and severe storm surge. It is still unclear how the region is doing in the aftermath of the storm as of Friday night. A report of 178mm of rain in the coastal city of Haikou (pop. 900,000) in 6 hours on Friday combined with expected storm surges of 20 feet in the general area made for big flooding/landslide concerns. Rammasun is expected make a turn for China’s mainland and die off this weekend, but not before bringing widespread torrential rains to the region.

IR image of Rammasun just before it made its second landfall. (Source: NASA/NOAA)
IR image of Rammasun just before it made its second landfall. (Source: NASA/NOAA)

More tropical storms are expected to spin up this week with possibilities in both the Atlantic and Western Pacific as depicted by some models. The strength or paths of these are uncertain.

Elsewhere in Weather News: July 12th, 2014

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Atlantic and West Pacific Oceans See Storms

Hurricane Arthur
The beginning of July started off on an active note as hurricane Arthur spun up just off the coast of Florida. Arthur quickly organized, pushing out the dry air that was initially a problem on the northwest side of the storm. Following the short bout with the dry air, Arthur formed a well-defined eye. The storm “only” reached category two as it made landfall on the Carolina coast near Cape Lookout, shortly after forming the well-defined eye. It brought with it sustained winds of 160km/h, whipping up a significant storm surge as high as 1.4m on the outer banks.

Base reflectivity radar image of Arthur shortly after it made landfall on the outer banks of North Carolina very early on July 4th. (Source: GRlevel3)
Base reflectivity radar image of Arthur shortly after it made landfall on the outer banks of North Carolina very early on July 4th. (Source: GRlevel3)

In the aftermath of the storm 41,000 residents from North Carolina had lost power, in addition to some minor damage to houses. Flooding was also a concern where a few areas received over 100mm of rain from the storm. Thanks to much warning in advance, no residents were injured or killed with this storm. Arthur brings an end to the lull in hurricane activity the United States has seen in the past couple years. The last hurricane to have made landfall in the United States prior to Arthur was in August, 2012.

Arthur further continued its trek up the East Coast bringing miserable weather to the US Northeast as well as Atlantic Canada, but was less of a threat (still significant) as a post-tropical storm.

Super Typhoon Neoguri
Super typhoon Neoguri was another significant storm that spun up to start off the month of July, this time in the western Pacific Ocean. With the help of very warm sea surface temperatures as well as little shear to tear it apart, Neoguri strengthened to a super typhoon producing sustained winds of 250km/h and bottoming out at a pressure of 930mb. Six deaths have been attributed to Neoguri as well as over 100 injuries. After passing through the Ryuku Islands, Neoguri got caught up in the polar jet stream and curved back east towards Japan as it started its transition to an extratropical storm over Japan. Satellite observations indicated rainfall totals of over 500mm in a few mountainous regions of Japan. Neoguri was officially declared an extratropical storm yesterday.

Another disturbed area is currently over the Pacific and is expected to become of tropical storm strength this weekend, however, is not expected to impact any landmasses in the near future.

Elsewhere in Weather News: June 28th, 2014

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Active Week in Southern Ontario

It’s been a fairly uneventful week worldwide regarding severe weather events. However, southern Ontario has seen its fair share of significant weather events this past week including a few tornadoes and flooding in Toronto.

Last Tuesday two tornadoes touched down in Ontario causing some damage to homes and barns. The first tornado reported touched down in New Tecumseth, ONT – a town located about 100km from Mississauga. The EF-1 tornado did significant damage to a barn which was almost completely torn apart, and 15 buildings (one with structural damage) along a path of 10 kilometres. Only a horse perished in the tornado; no residents were injured or killed. The second tornado has not yet been confirmed by Environment Canada as of yet but there is speculation that it occurred near Hawkesbury on the same day. The New Tecumseth tornado comes in the wake of the Angus, EF-2, tornado which did significant damage to over 100 homes two weeks ago. Ontario’s tornado count is already at six for the year while the average for tornadoes in southern Ontario is between eight and ten.

The barn destroyed in the New Tecumseth area by the tornado on Tuesday. (Source: Rob Cooper/CTV)
The barn destroyed in the New Tecumseth area by the tornado on Tuesday. (Source: Rob Cooper/CTV)

Southern Ontario has also seen flooding problems this past Wednesday. A slack flow aloft combined with a disturbance moving in made for fairly slow moving cells that trailed each other in the Toronto area. This generated some fairly significant street flooding in the area, some power outages as well as part of the city’s subway system being put out of order for a few hours. Water rescues also had to be executed due to motorists stranded in their vehicles on one of the city’s large parkways. Some recorded rainfall accumulations were in excess of 30mm in the region Wednesday evening. Since then the water has subsided and the power is back for residents that were left in the dark.

Elsewhere in Weather News: June 21st, 2014

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South Dakota Wessington Springs Tornado – June 18th, 2014

Three members of A Weather Moment team headed out to South Dakota this past Wednesday to chase severe storms and try to catch a tornado. It turned out to be quite the event. Julien has written a summary of what how the chase unfolded.

We left Winnipeg bright and early at 7 am on Wednesday and headed south. Our plan for the day was to target the warm front/triple point in southeastern South Dakota. We reached Fargo by late morning. After getting our internet worked out and had lunch, we continued south to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to reassess things (by then it was mid/late afternoon). We decided to head west a bit to Mitchell first, then Plankinton, SD. It was oppressively humid with dewpoints in the low to mid 20’s and temperatures near 30°C. In fact, as I walked out of the car, my glasses were fogging up! These yielded MLCAPE values around 5,500J/kg resulting in an explosive environment for any storm that formed.

By then, storms to our northwest were strengthening rapidly and rotation became evident on radar imagery. A tornado was also reported by another storms chaser. We were concerned of the possibility that additional storms would fire off south of the existing ones and become dominant. As a result, we decided to wait a little longer. Nothing new was really forming due to a strong cap, so we decided to head west then north of Kimball, SD to view the existing storms. We were impressed! Towers were shooting up extremely rapidly and there was decent structure to the storm. Rotation could be seen in some parts of the storm.

Not too long later, we repositioned north of Plankinton, SD, which was eastward. As we got closer to the storm, two funnels poked out of the trees! It was evident that the one in the distance was a tornado. However, the second funnel was hard to say if it was touching down or not because it was not condensed all the way to the ground. However, it’s impressive seeing 2 funnels simultaneously!

One funnel and a tornado simultaneously, with the one on the left touching down. (Taken by Matt)
One funnel and a tornado simultaneously, with the one on the left touching down. (Taken by Matt)

We followed the storm eastward and the dominant tornado was not giving up! Even though we were well in the distance far away from the tornado, we could clearly see its circulating winds moving rapidly which was quite impressive. Unfortunately, we did occasionally see debris being picked up. It took several minutes for the tornado to finally rope out and lift… before we witnessed it strengthening and enlarging again briefly. Then it dissipated and that was it for tornadoes for us for the day. After our chase was finished, we had heard that there was serious damage to the town of Wessington Springs, SD however no serious injuries had been reported thankfully.

Stovepipe tornado we observed. (Taken by Matt)
Stovepipe tornado we observed. (Taken by Matt)

We slowly made our way east to Brookings, SD for the night at a hotel. We left back for Winnipeg Thursday morning before 11 am and reached Winnipeg by around 6 pm or so after stopping by at Longhorns restaurant for a well-deserved tornado steak dinner in Fargo. The next day NWS had done a damage survey of the tornado and rated it an EF-2 tornado, the strongest tornado we had ever witnessed. Overall, it was well worth the trip!

This trough not only produced tornadoes on Wednesday in South Dakota, but also on Monday and Tuesday in Nebraska, including the incredible supercell near Pilger, NE that produced two large wedge tornadoes simultaneously. The upcoming pattern definitely looks calmer with upper flow slacking up in the US Plains; possibly hinting that summer is right around the corner for the region.