Imagine walking out your door early in the morning before the sun came up, and seeing this:
Unless you live in the northern hemisphere, an aurora is not something you’d see except on rare occasions. This picture was taken in Edmonton, Canada, and is one reason why I’m looking to Rent Edmonton apartments once it’s time to move from Washington.
The other reason it’s interesting to me is because of the climate.
At it’s warmest, Edmonton can reach 94.1ºF, and at it’s coldest -54.9ºF. Not many places have such a tremendous temperature range for their record highs and lows. Because of it’s latitude so far north, Edmonton can get quite cold when the air from the nearby arctic blows in during the winter.
Snow can occur in all but three months at Edmonton, but with an average yearly snowfall of 48.62″, it is hardly a tremendous amount. 48.62″ may seem like a large amount to some, but consider that it is spread out across 9 months rather than most southern cities 2 to 4 months of winter weather. In many cases, some cities further south located in the U.S. receive much more snowfall on a month to month basis due to the moisture from the Gulf of Mexico enhancing the frozen precipitation when it does fall.
This isn’t exactly a story I was expecting to read about on AccuWeather.com, but it has an interesting twist to the story which makes it a relevant article on the website. Record low rainfalls recently in Koblenz, Germany resulted in a bomb from World War II being uncovered in the nearby Rhine River. As a result, an astounding half of the city was evacuated (45,000 people)! The bomb (which was dropped by Britain) is estimated to have the explosive power to destroy an entire city block, and is one of the largest unexploded bombs ever found.
The month of November was extremely dry in the area with barely any measurable precipitation being recorded. According to AccuWeather, the area will be receiving rain this week. In the mean time, efforts are going to be made to defuse the bomb.
In a matter of days, the high and low temperatures will plummet 10 to 20 degrees across most of the US. Gone is the seemingly never-ending stream of 80ºF+ temperature days with high humidity. Here’s the forecast for our area this week:
NWS Forecast
I’m pretty confident that I’m not alone in welcoming the cooler weather. Ever since that tropical storm from the Gulf called “Lee” moved through, it’s been muggy and humid almost every single day – and that’s following a good 5-6 days of heavy rainfall.
For me, Fall is really the only time of the year I can enjoy temperatures in the 60s and 70s. This is because of excessive pollen in the Spring which I am highly allergic to . Fortunately, the next six months constitute my favorite parts of the year, meteorologically speaking. Bring on the snow!
Meet Ma-On, a Category 4 typhoon in the Pacific Ocean making its way towards Japan. With peak wind gusts of 160mph and sustained winds of 130mph, the storm is posing a serious threat to Japan, including the regions that were devastated by the nuclear meltdown near the Fukushima Daiichi reactor last March. To make matters worse, the storm is expected to strengthen, possibly into a Category 5 super-typhoon before threatening the Japanese coastline.
Typhoon Ma-on Projected Path
The projected path depicted in the above image is currently the forecast, and also appears to be one of the “worst case” scenarios in which the storm is close enough to the coast to produce significant wind damage and storm surge along the coast, yet the center remains over the ocean which prevents against the substantial weakening that occurs when the center moves over land. Weakening would still occur since it’s moving into a colder climate, just not as fast as if it had made a direct landfall and then hit the mountainous regions. With all that said, hopefully Japan is prepared for this, especially in the nuclear zones.
A powerful snowstorm swept up the east coast the day after Christmas, leaving over a foot of snow from southeastern Virginia to New England, with parts of New Jersey receiving up to 30″. Take a look at this amazing time-lapse video from New Jersey:
The NWS has more information at a website summarizing the storm, here.
The most frustrating part of the storm is that merely 24 hours prior, some of the computer models for the storm were depicting 10″ to 18″ of snow for Central Maryland, where I live. There was however, no model consensus on this (which is strange so close to the storm’s onset), but it was still enough to get the National Weather Service to predict 4″ to 10″ across the entire area. Most of the area with this snowfall forecast received no accumulating snow whatsoever. The end result was a nice snow hole, with accumulating snow North, East, South, AND West of where I live , as depicted by this map:
The next significant event appears to be rain as a warm up is expected around the New Year.
. Fortunately, the next six months constitute my favorite parts of the year, meteorologically speaking. Bring on the snow!
