Hurricanes // Current

Hurricane Paloma Smashes Cayman Islands, Cuba Next

The U.S. National Hurricane Center says Hurricane Paloma in the Caribbean has become "extremely dangerous" as it pounds... more

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What Weather Gurus Love Most

Discovery-News.com: What do two of the world’s greatest meteorologists think is great about the sky? James Williams finds out.

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Hurricanes erode Louisiana jobs

Twin strikes from hurricanes Gustav and Ike reduced Louisiana’s employment by as many as 17,500 jobs in September, according to the Louisiana Workforce Commission.

That jolt came in a month traditionally known for rising seasonal employment with the return of school-based jobs.

Cities below Interstate 10 were hit hardest by the hurricanes — Houma lost 2,800 jobs and New Orleans lost 2,600. Baton Rouge was the only city among Louisiana’s eight metro areas to post a gain, adding 1,300 jobs last month.

The state’s 17,500-job loss is an estimate that takes into account unusual fluctuations in the workplace. If the seasonal adjustment model’s effects are removed, Louisiana’s job change from August amounted to a 4,500-job decline.

That’s not what historical patterns have shown for the state. Hence, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics model showed the 17,500-job margin as an indication of how large a hit state employment may have taken, based on survey results.

The numbers will be revised next month. But a final benchmark won’t be seen until about March, when state and federal officials move from phone survey data used now to figures reported from actual employer payrolls later.

In the interim, state officials said a trend may emerge from survey estimates in the next two months.

The September job estimates were derived from surveys of Louisiana households and businesses the week of Sept. 12, the day before Hurricane Ike struck southeast Texas and affected southwest Louisiana. Those numbers may not include the full impact of both storms. Hurricane Gustav struck Sept. 1.

“We’re really going to have to look maybe two or three months out to see if this is really Louisiana falling more in line with economic trends in the United States, or if it was more the after-effects of the storm,” said Patty Granier, who manages labor market information for the state labor agency.

There are other indications that Louisiana’s job picture deteriorated in September. The commission established additional toll-free lines and expanded office hours to accommodate growing unemployment claims.

The number of unemployed Louisiana residents rose 10,000 to 106,000 in September, the commission reported.

This week, however, the state reported that a four-week moving average for initial unemployment insurance claims fell to 5,600 from 11,800 the prior week.Twin strikes from hurricanes Gustav and Ike reduced Louisiana’s employment by as many as 17,500 jobs in September, according... more

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23 days ago

Hurricanes protect Earth from global warming

Typhoons and hurricanes act as a natural pressure valve to help Earth resist global warming, according to a new study. The... more

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27 days ago

The First Lady Of Tropical Meteorology

Discovery-News.com: When hurricanes churn across the Atlantic Ocean, much of what we know about them comes from the work of Joanne... more

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1 month ago

Hurricane Omar weakening as it heads out to sea

Hurricane Omar weakened Thursday to a Category 1 storm and sped away from the northern Leeward Islands after barreling through... more

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1 month ago

Behind The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale

Discovery-News.com: Hurricanes played a big part in Robert Simpson’s life, which is why his name is on the Saffir-Simpson... more

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1 month ago

Giant Cyclones at Saturn's Poles Create a Swirl of Mystery

From the report: New images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveal a giant cyclone at Saturn's north pole, and show that a similarly monstrous cyclone churning at Saturn's south pole is powered by Earth-like storm patterns.

The new-found cyclone at Saturn's north pole is only visible in the near-infrared wavelengths because the north pole is in winter, thus in darkness to visible-light cameras. At these wavelengths, about seven times greater than light seen by the human eye, the clouds deep inside Saturn's atmosphere are seen in silhouette against the background glow of Saturn's internal heat.

The entire north pole of Saturn is now mapped in detail in infrared, with features as small as 120 kilometers (75 miles) visible in the images. Time-lapse movies of the clouds circling the north pole show the whirlpool-like cyclone there is rotating at 530 kilometers per hour (325 miles per hour), more than twice as fast as the highest winds measured in cyclonic features on Earth. This cyclone is surrounded by an odd, honeycombed-shaped hexagon, which itself does not seem to move while the clouds within it whip around at high speeds, also greater than 500 kilometers per hour (300 miles per hour). Oddly, neither the fast-moving clouds inside the hexagon nor this new cyclone seem to disrupt the six-sided hexagon.

New Cassini imagery of Saturn's south pole shows complementary aspects of the region through the eyes of two different instruments. Near-infrared images from the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer instrument show the whole region is pockmarked with storms, while the imaging cameras show close-up details.

Unlike Earth-bound hurricanes, powered by the ocean's heat and water, Saturn's cyclones have no body of water at their bases, yet the eye-walls of Saturn's and Earth's storms look strikingly similar. Saturn's hurricanes are locked to the planet's poles, whereas terrestrial hurricanes drift across the ocean.

"These are truly massive cyclones, hundreds of times stronger than the most giant hurricanes on Earth," said Kevin Baines, Cassini scientist on the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Dozens of puffy, convectively formed cumulus clouds swirl around both poles, betraying the presence of giant thunderstorms lurking beneath. Thunderstorms are the likely engine for these giant weather systems," said Baines.

Just as condensing water in clouds on Earth powers hurricane vortices, the heat released from the condensing water in Saturnian thunderstorms deep down in the atmosphere may be the primary power source energizing the vortex.

Follow link for full article.From the report: New images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveal a giant cyclone at Saturn's north pole, and show that... more

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1 month ago

Food Relief in Haiti

Residents of Haiti were already facing food shortages and rising inflation rates when triple natural disasters hit. Hurricanes... more

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1 month ago

Hurricanes may be associated with sunspots

A recent study suggests that hurricane intensity may be linked to the number of sunspots on the Sun. A decrease in the number of... more

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1 month ago

Islanders who insisted on staying died in Ike

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) -- The final hours brought the awful realization to victims of Hurricane Ike that they had waited too long.... more

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1 month ago

Two weeks after Ike, more than 400 are still missing

Gail Ettenger made her last phone call at 10:10 p.m. She was trapped in her Bolivar Peninsula bungalow with her Great Dane, Reba. A drowning cat cried outside. Her Jeep bobbed in the seawater surging around her home.

Ettenger, 58, told her friend she was reading old love letters by flashlight. "I think I really screwed up this time," she said, according to Monroe Burks, Ettenger's neighbor who had evacuated to Houston.

That was Friday, Sept 12. On Wednesday — 12 days later — her nearly nude body was found face down by a huge debris pile in a remote mosquito-ridden marsh in Chambers County, about 10 miles inland from where her gray beach house once stood.

Two weeks after Hurricane Ike swept through the Texas coast, 400 people remain missing, mostly from Galveston County, according to an analysis of calls logged to a hot line set up by the nonprofit Laura Recovery Center to assist local authorities.

Until Wednesday, Ettenger was one of them.

About 60 of the missing lived on the Bolivar Peninsula, stripped bare by the storm surge that felled beach houses like a bomb. More than 200 were listed as missing on Galveston Island itself, according to a city-by-city analysis of the data conducted for the Houston Chronicle by Bob Walcutt, executive director of the recovery center in Friendswood.

Hot line and rescue workers hope that many people, especially on Galveston Island, will be reunited with family and friends as hurricane recovery efforts continue. More than 145 already have been located through blogs, media Web sites, Red Cross shelter lists, endless phone calls, welfare checks and sometimes dramatic rescues led by the Galveston County Sheriff's Office and other agencies.

Yet disturbing tales told by survivors from Bolivar communities like Gilchrist, Crystal Beach and Port Bolivar suggest some may never return.

"There's still lots of people who are not accounted for," said Capt. Rod Ousley, of the State Parks & Wildlife Service, which is helping to search for survivors or bodies in remote corners of several coastal counties. "We don't know if they got washed out to sea, or buried in the sand or in debris piles. We just keep looking until they come up ... we're just going to keep trying."

Gail Ettenger made her last phone call at 10:10 p.m. She was trapped in her Bolivar Peninsula bungalow with her Great Dane, Reba.... more

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1 month ago

Hurricane Kyle spreads rain, wind

State hit by glancing blow before storm makes landfall in Nova Scotia MACHIAS, Maine - Fishermen moved boats to shelter from a... more

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1 month ago

Kyle spreads rain, wind in Maine on way to Canada

MACHIAS, Maine (AP) -- Fishermen moved boats to shelter from a rare burst of tropical weather along Maine's rugged eastern coast Sunday as a weakening Hurricane Kyle spun past on its way to Canada, delivering a glancing blow equivalent to a classic nor'easter that made locals yawn.
As darkness fell, the storm produced winds hard enough to jiggle road signs, cause scattered power outages and rip early-autumn leaves from trees while lashing the Maine coast with a third straight day of heavy rain. Flooding closed roads as the storm sped up the Bay of Fundy, which separates Maine and the Canadian province of New Brunswick from Nova Scotia.
Kyle made landfall Sunday night in southern Nova Scotia as a marginal Category 1 hurricane and was later downgraded to a tropical storm by the Canadian Hurricane Centre. Some 12,000 power outages were reported in the province.
Maine emergency responders had braced for wind gusts as high as 60 mph and waves up to 20 feet, but as the storm edged eastward it became clear that the state had escaped a direct hit.
"This was a run-of-the-mill storm. It had the potential to be a real problem and it all sort of went away. That shift to the east did wonders for Maine," said Michael Hinerman, director of the Washington County Emergency Management Agency.
Earlier Sunday, a hurricane watch for Maine was discontinued, but a tropical storm warning remained in effect from Stonington, on the central Maine coast at the mouth of Penobscot Bay, to Eastport on the Canadian border, the National Hurricane Center said.
Officials had once expected the eye to hit at the Maine-New Brunswick border, but with the storm fading to the east, the state closed its emergency operations center in Augusta Sunday night. There were no evacuations in Maine, but more than 500 customers lost power because of the gusty winds.
Still, as much as 7 inches of rain had fallen in three days along some coastal areas. Flood watches were lifted for the southern two-thirds of New Hampshire and southern Maine but remained in effect for the Down East coast.MACHIAS, Maine (AP) -- Fishermen moved boats to shelter from a rare burst of tropical weather along Maine's rugged eastern... more