Tornado Kills 1, Injures Dozens in Northern Colorado
The News Review:
- Tornado Kills 1, Injures Dozens in Northern Colorado
- Tracking desert dust could help hurricane prediction
- Oil Rises on Forecast of Worse-Than-Average Hurricane Season
Tornado Kills 1, Injures Dozens in Northern Colorado
FOXNews – May 23, 2008
jpg’,'May 23: Diane Cline digs through debris left over from a tornado that passed through her property Thursday in Platteville, Colo. jpg’,'A tornado touches down in Riverside, Calif… Pete Ambrose, caretaker at the Missile Park campground, said Manchester was in a recreational vehicle that was destroyed by the storm. The Red Cross served food to about 130 people in Windsor who were displaced by the storm, but by nightfall only one family was staying at a shelter at a fairground outside town. The tornado overturned 15 railroad cars and destroyed a lumber car on the Great Western Railway of Colorado, said Mike Ogburn, managing director of Denver-based Omnitrax Inc. , which manages the railroad. Fourteen of the overturned cars were tankers, but they were empty. The twister toppled tractor-trailers across Highway 85 and cut power to 60,000 customers. Electricity was restored to all but 15,000 early Friday.
Tracking desert dust could help hurricane prediction
New Scientist – New Scientist (subscription) – May 23, 2008
CHANGE “YOURSERVER” TO VALID LOCATION ON YOUR WEB SERVER (HTTPS IF FROM SECURE SERVER). He is testing a new forecasting tool, and the critical element is dust. Every year, large amounts of Saharan dust are blown off the West African coast and over the North Atlantic. There, they are thought to reflect solar radiation back out into space, cooling the temperature of the surface of the ocean. Given that the North Atlantic is the breeding ground for hurricanes that make landfall in the US and that their formation is triggered by warm sea-surface temperatures, Evan believes studying desert dust could improve the forecasts put out at the beginning of the hurricane season each May… 1°C during the 2008 hurricane season, which is close to the average during the past 27 years. “There is not likely to be an anomalously large warming or cooling [of ocean temperatures] due to dust storms,” he says. Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster for the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, admits that atmospheric dust is not a key element in current forecasts. “There are more dominant factors, like El Niño and La Niña events,” he told New Scientist. However, he says that his colleagues at NOAA’s base in Miami, who predict hurricane tracks five days ahead throughout the season, do consider atmosphere’s dust load. Among other things, the NOAA meteorologists see dust clouds as a sign of very dry air, which is not conducive to hurricane formation. “Dust – and dry air – kills hurricanes,” says Bell.
Oil Rises on Forecast of Worse-Than-Average Hurricane Season
Bloomberg – May 23, 2008
The 2008 season, which begins on June 1, may have as manyas nine hurricanes forming in the Atlantic Ocean, more thanaverage, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationsaid in a report yesterday. Crude prices rose to a recordyesterday spurred by concerns about long-term supply. “The prospect of a more active hurricane season is at theback of people's minds, keeping the market up,' said. Crude oil for July delivery rose as much as $2… “Thehurricane outlook is a bit better than last year but a bitstronger than average. '' Hurricane Katrina Oil prices surged in the summer of 2005 after hurricanesKatrina and Rita destroyed Gulf Coast oil platforms and refiningfacilities. Together, the storms caused more than 109 millionbarrels of crude oil, about a fifth of annual Gulf of Mexico oilproduction. The agency predicted 10 hurricanes last year, and only sixformed. In 2006, NOAA forecast as many as nine hurricanes andonly five were recorded.