America's Weather was Extreme this Year
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December 29, 2005
By Seth Borenstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - It's not just your imagination. America's weather went wild this year.
It began with a record downpour in the Nevada desert and record warmth in Alaska, and it's ending with floods in California and wildfires in Texas and Oklahoma that have killed four people and consumed 37,795 acres.
Along the way, at least 214 climate records were smashed or tied, thanks to a slew of hurricanes, 21 straight days of 100-degree-plus temperatures in Fresno, Calif., and wildfires that have burned 8.64 million acres, nearly a quarter-million more than the previous record, set in 2000.
Extremes were everywhere. Above-normal heat covered twice as much land as usual. Excessive rain and/or snow blanketed three times as much land as normal. Average daily low temperatures were warmer than normal across four times as much U.S. territory as in average years.
It was the third worst year for U.S. extreme-weather events in history, according to the National Climatic Data Center. For 2005's first 11 months, the nation had an extreme-climate index figure of 35, behind only 1998's 42 and 1934's 37. The average annual score is 20.
One form of extreme weather fell short, however: tornadoes. In 2005, there were only half as many killer U.S. tornadoes as recent norms.
The relentless Atlantic hurricane season especially marked 2005 as wild - and tragic. Hurricanes set or tied 19 records, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including:
Hurricane Katrina caused $50 billion in insured damages.
Hurricane Wilma set a hemispheric record for low barometric pressure.
Three Category 5 hurricanes formed: Katrina, Rita and Wilma.
A record seven major storms packed winds above 110 mph; the old record was five.
Fourteen hurricanes in the season beat the old record of 12.
The 26 named storms shattered the old mark of 21, set in 1933, causing meteorologists to run out of conventional names for hurricanes and tropical storms. They had to go five deep into the Greek alphabet for new names.
Many of the remaining extremes came from Alaska, which had 53 percent of the wildfire acreage burned and set temperature, rain and snow records almost weekly. That's because Alaska is getting hotter from global warming and its permafrost is melting, said Jay Lawrimore, the chief of the National Climatic Data Center's climate-monitoring branch.
It's less clear whether what's happening nationally can be blamed on global warming or results from mere chance. Scientists are researching the question on supercomputers. One theory is that warmer air holds more moisture, creating bigger downpours, snowfalls and stronger hurricanes, and that warmer air also worsens droughts.
Lawrimore said that one year's extremes couldn't necessarily be blamed on climate change and were more likely to reflect random weather shifts. But Kevin Trenberth, the climate-analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said initial studies showed that global warming might be a factor.
In his latest research, Trenberth calculated that because the ocean is warmer, there's been an 8 percent increase in moisture flowing into tropical storms and hurricanes, and in rain coming out of them. For Katrina, that meant an extra inch of rain fell on the Gulf Coast.
"We're in the realm now where global warming is with us and we're going to see this year to year," Trenberth said.
Unusual weather records from 2005, and ones of local interest to some Knight Ridder newspapers.
January:
Jan. 3: Las Vegas sets a city record of 0.81 inches for the most rainfall on one January day.
Jan. 8: Valdez, Alaska's 54 degrees beats the city's previously warmest January day by 8 degrees.
Jan. 9: Pocatello, Idaho, had its snowiest January day, 8.3 inches.
January total: Boston's Logan airport reported 43.1 inches of snow, its snowiest month ever.
February:
Spokane, Wash.'s total 0.04 inches of rain was its driest February on record.
Miles City, Mont. - with no rain - had its driest February ever.
March:
March 11: San Jose, Calif.'s 87 degrees was its hottest March day ever.
March 18: Rochester, Minn., had its snowiest day ever with 19.8 inches, beating 15.4 inches in 1982.
Dec. `04-March `05: Cleveland's Hopkins airport had its snowiest season ever - 105.3 inches.
April:
April 29: Anchorage, Alaska's warmest April day ever, 72 degrees.
April 29-30: Jackson, Ky., had its wettest 24 hours, with 3.13 inches of rain.
April total: Pensacola, Fla., had its wettest month ever, with 24.46 inches of rain.
May:
May 3: Aberdeen, S.D.'s coldest May day ever, a low of 13 degrees.
May 3: Fort Wayne, Ind., tied its 1966 coldest May day ever with a low of 27 degrees.
May total: Burley, Idaho, had the wettest May with 5.06 inches of rain, beating 1998's 4.35 inches.
June:
Naples, Fla., had its wettest June with 21.28 inches of rain.
Boundary Dam, Wash., had its wettest June with 5.47 inches, beating 1981's 4.67 inches.
July:
July 18: Big Bear Lake, Calif., tied its 1972 hottest day ever with 94 degrees.
July 19: Las Vegas tied its 1942 hottest day ever with 117 degrees. It also had the highest low temperature for the day, 95 degrees.
July total: Miami had its highest average monthly temperature, 85.1 degrees, breaking 1983's 85.0 degrees.
August:
July 23-Aug. 12: Fresno, Calif., had a record 21 consecutive days of 100-degree-plus weather.
Aug. 11-12: Hoonah, Alaska, had its hottest day ever each day, at 86 degrees.
Aug. 18: Highest recorded sea temperature for a New Jersey-Delaware buoy, at 84.7 degrees.
August total: Wichita, Kan., had its wettest August, with 11.96 inches of rain.
August total: Orlando, Fla., had its hottest August, averaging 85.1 degrees.
August total: West Palm Beach, Fla., tied its hottest August ever with an average temperature of 84.9 degrees.
September:
Sept. 23: Topeka, Kan., had its wettest day ever with 5.61 inches of rain, beating 1919's 5.23 inches.
Sept. 25: San Angelo, Texas, tied a September 1952 heat record of 107 degrees.
September total: Columbia, S.C., had its driest September ever, with just a trace of rain, less than 1985's 0.07 inches.
October:
Oct. 5: Jackson, Ky., had its warmest October day, 87 degrees.
Oct. 7: Columbia, S.C., tied its 1941 warmest low temperature of 74 degrees.
October total: Minneapolis-St. Paul airport had record October rainfall, 4.61 inches.
November:
Nov. 7: Joplin, Mo., tied its November 1980 high temperature, 83 degrees.
Nov. 26-28: Great Falls, Mont., had its heaviest snowstorm on record with 18.1 inches.
December:
Dec. 4: Little Rock, Ark., tied a December 1956 high of 80 degrees.
Yearly: The U.S. wildfire total is 8.64 million acres, beating 2000's 8.4 million acres.
SOURCES: National Climatic Data Center, National Interagency Fire Center.
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13510437.htm
The Year of Unnatural Disasters
December 23, 2005
AFP
PARIS — In the space of a year, a tsunami, an earthquake, brutal storms and floods have claimed more than 300,000 lives and cost at least 100 billion dollars in damage.
Humans prefer to view these catastrophes as the result of misfortune, of randomness, of the unfathomable forces of Nature, of the whim of gods or of God.
But the exceptional disasters of the past 12 months raise a far more difficult question.
Could mankind be to blame?
For many scientists, the deep pain from this year's string of disasters is to a very large degree man-made.
From the Mississippi delta to the mountains of Kashmir and the beaches of the Andaman Sea, governments failed in almost every case to respect the basic laws of sustainable development.
In a nutshell, these rules are: don't house people in places that are at risk to disasters -- but if you do, respect natural defences; keep the population growth to sensible limits; build wisely and ensure high safety standards in construction; and set up effective alert and response networks in the event disaster does strike.
"We like to talk about natural disasters because it puts the blame on Mother Nature... (but) it's nonsense, it misrepresents what the causal factors really are," said Anthony Oliver-Smith, a doctor of anthropology at the University of Florida at Gainesville.
"Obviously, there are big, big hurricanes and there are big, big earthquakes that will create a certain amount of damage. But the degree and level of destruction is really much more a result of society than it is of the natural agent."
The October 8 earthquake that struck Kashmir, killing 73,000 in Pakistan and 1,400 in India, exposed shoddy construction standards in which homes and schools became killers and the lack of emergency backup in a vulnerable seismic region.
The Geological Survey of Pakistan described the temblor as "a wakeup call".
"Construction codes are non-existent, or criminally violated," it said.
"It is feared that if mushrooming construction of inferior quality continues unchecked in the cities, half the newly-constructed buildings will crumble in 20-30 years with just a moderate earthquake hitting the region."
In the case of the December 26 2004 Asian earthquake and tsunami, which killed at least 220,000 people, the toll was amplified by the burgeoning development on the Indian Ocean coastline, where villages, towns and tourist resorts have sprung up in the past decade.
This was most notable in Thailand, where hotel complexes were built right on the beach, thus putting them right in the path of a big wave, and mangroves and coral reefs, which would have dampened much of the impact, had been destroyed.
"Indiscriminate economic development and ecologically destructive policies have left many communities more vulnerable to disasters than they realise," said the Washington-based environmental group the Worldwatch Institute.
A classic example of this was the monsoon flooding that hit Mumbai in August, temporarily transforming the city of 15 million into the so-called "Venice of the East" where streets were drowned and more than 400 lost their lives.
Experts blamed the tragedy on decrepit drainage dating back to the British colonial era, explosive growth in slum housing and the loss of green areas and river channels that used to soak up rainwater seepage and then take it out to sea.
"A myopic view of development and misuse of no-development 'green' zones has virtually killed the city," said Chandrashekar Prabhu, an urban planner.
Such folly is not exclusive to a developing country.
On August 29, Hurricane Katrina laid waste to New Orleans -- a delta city built below floodlevel and whose coastal wetlands, which would have been a useful buffer against storm surge, had been destroyed by developers.
Katrina left a trail of a thousand dead across the US Gulf coast and an economic bill variously estimated from 80 billion to 200 billion.
It was the peak in an Atlantic hurricane season that broke records for duration, the number of storms -- 26 tropical storms, 14 of them hurricanes -- and severity, with three reaching the topmost category of five on the Saffir-Simpson intensity scale.
The tsunami and quakes were natural events whose impacts were magnified by human mistakes. The big, troubling question is whether Katrina and Co. were spawned by man.
Climate scientists are loath to pin a single event, or even a season, to the greenhouse-gas effect.
Despite this, a small but increasing number of experts are venturing the opinion that the 2005 hurricane season was no accident, for it coincides with ever-rising sea temperatures that fuel bad hurricanes, and a year set to be the warmest ever recorded.
Others urge caution, saying it could be years before we get confirmation as to whether 2005 was just a freak year for storms, part of a natural cycle for hurricanes, or the start of a man-made phenomenon.
Oliver-Smith says it is too early to say whether the string of catastrophes of the past 12 months has dented mankind's obsession with economic growth regardless of the cost.
"It's a tough call to say that people's consciousness is being changed by these disasters," he said. "We will do anything rather than change."
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http://www.terradaily.com/2005/051223114121.jxr86hdd.html
Drought in Texas
December 23, 2005
Texas is about to finish 2005 as the 10th driest year on record. We have not had any significant rain since the first week of August. Central Texas is over -9 inches for the year. 155 out of 274 counties in Texas are in Severe/Extreme Drought conditions, and have burn bans in place, meaning no outdoor burning of any kind.
Here in the greater Waco area, we normally see 2-3 house fires per WEEK on the news. Since Thanksgiving we have been seeing 2-3 house fires per DAY in the greater Waco area. Not to mention the fact that we have a lunatic arsonist on the loose here in my county. This arsonist is burning up what little grazing the ranchers have left, not to mention scores of hay bales, and a couple of barns. The wonderful sheriff's department says they can't afford to patrol the more rural areas of the county where the arsonist like to strike. So we have to fend for ourselves.
The ranchers are selling their cattle as fast as they can get them to market. Many farmers are already out of hay, and most others will be running out in January. There is no winter wheat or oats for the cattle to graze on, as there has been no rain to sprout it.
I know there are many more important things for you to talk about, but please let the people know what we are going through. This has been an eye opening experience for me from the survival standpoint as I have always worried about water supplies in a drought condition. I now know which creeks are still running, and which are dry. Now I know I will have to modify my bugout locations in a emergency.
Please keep us in your prayers, and thank you for all that you do for us.
TG