Lightning researchers work to improve hurricane forecasts
The News Review:
- Lightning researchers work to improve hurricane forecasts
- Storm knocks out power to 40000 in Md.; tornado spotted
- Mexico closes Cancún beach; hotel accused of stealing sand
- Tornado confirmed in northwest New Jersey
Lightning researchers work to improve hurricane forecasts
Dallas Morning News
– They’re deceptively simple-looking detectors: one an antenna with built-in GPS the other electronic sensors inside a large upside-down metal salad bowl. The sensors are the basis of a Los Alamos National Laboratory project studying lightning inside a hurricane to improve the accuracy and timeliness of forecasts for people in a storm’s path. The effort is in the second of three years of research. The team is gearing up for the Atlantic hurricane season that peaks this month and in September. Hurricane watchers use satellite images and computer simulations to forecast a storm’s trajectory but it’s a challenge to predict how a hurricane will strengthen or weaken as it approaches land said lightning and radio scientist Xuan-Min Shao. Predictions of where a hurricane will hit have improved by 50 percent in the last two decades said Robert Atlas director of the National ceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Atlantic ceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory near Miami.
Storm knocks out power to 40000 in Md.; tornado spotted
Baltimore Sun
Sinai took no new patients and postponed the start of surgeries until receiving the go-ahead from BGE Bloom said. National Weather Service meterologists are still working to determine whether the winds that damaged the Finksburg homes were a tornado. Surveyors investigating Friday night declared that a tornado did strike Ijamsville and New Market in Frederick County including part of the Whiskey Creek Golf Course. Copyright © 2009.
Mexico closes Cancún beach; hotel accused of stealing sand
Dallas Morning News
Environmental enforcement officers backed by navy personnel closed hundreds of feet of powder-white coastline Thursday in front of a hotel accused of illegally accumulating sand on its beach. Mexico spent $19 million to replace Cancún beaches washed away by Hurricane Wilma in 2005. But much of the sand pumped from the sea floor has since washed away leading some property owners to build breakwaters in a bid to retain sand. The practice often shifts sand loss to beaches below the breakwaters. “Today we made the decision to close this stretch of ill-gotten illegally accumulated sand” said Patricio Patrón Mexico’s attorney general for environmental protection. “This hotel was telling its tourists ‘Come here I have sand.
Related from Ko-ox: Woman seeks answers in husband’s Mexico death
Tornado confirmed in northwest New Jersey
Philadelphia Inquirer
31 2009 Tornado confirmed in northwest New Jersey WANTAGE TWNSHIP N. – The National Weather Service has determined that a tornado touched down in the northwest tip of New Jersey on Wednesday. No injuries were reported in the rural Sussex County community of Wantage but the winds ripped roofs off several barns took down a silo and uprooted trees. The tornado’s winds reached 120 m.