Derecho

• A derecho (/dəˈreɪtʃoʊ/, from Spanish: derecho [deˈɾetʃo], “straight” as in direction) is a widespread, long-lived, straight-line wind storm that is associated with a fast-moving group of severe thunderstorms known as a mesoscale convective system and potentially rivaling hurricanic and tornadic forces.
• Derechos may not be as well-known as hurricanes or tornadoes, but these rare storms can be just as powerful and destructive. Primarily seen in late spring and summer in the central and eastern United States, derechos produce walls of strong wind that streak across the landscape, leaving hundreds of miles of damage in their wake. The term derecho—which means “straight ahead” in Spanish—was coined in 1888 by Gustavus Hinrichs, a physics professor at the University of Iowa who sought to distinguish these straight-moving winds from the swirling gusts of a tornado. NOAA officially defines a derecho as “a widespread, long-lived windstorm that is associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms.
• Normal thunderstorms occur when warm air rises from the surface of Earth into colder air in the upper atmosphere. This cools the air to its dew point, the temperature at which water vapor condenses into droplets, which causes clouds to form. The cooled air drops back to the surface, where it warms up again and starts the process over, generating further convection and ultimately causing a thunderstorm.
• Derechos are a global phenomenon, but they primarily occur across the central and eastern United States, which see an average of one to two of these storms per year, compared to more than a thousand tornadoes that churn across the country each year. These straight-ahead storms most commonly form in the late spring and summer, when high pressure weather systems—whirling masses of descending air—move north from the tropics into the U.S. Some derechos, however, occur during cooler weather and are most likely to form in the region stretching from Texas across the Southeast.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/natural-disasters/what-is-a-derecho-and-why-is-it-so-destructive/

(Images/video taken from google/IE)

Climate fires (smoke) meet hurricanes

• During middle of Sept 2020, two weather catastrophes directly interacting, as churning winds from Hurricane Paulette literally block wildfire smoke in the upper atmosphere from flowing further into the Atlantic Ocean. Meanwhile, Hurricane Sally — bearing down on the Gulf Coast at the time — pushes the smoke plume further north. When Paulette dissipated the following day, the smoke continued its eastward journey over the ocean.

(Images taken from google/IE)

Beautiful weather

• “What beautiful weather!” is correct? “What a beautiful weather” is incorrect. It has to do with which words are “countable” or “uncountable” nouns.
  • Weather quotes (a few)
• For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.
• Love shall be our token; love be yours and love be mine – Christina Rossetti
• I love the rain. It’s my favorite weather – (Kristen Wiig)
• There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather – John Ruskin
• It is only in sorrow bad weather masters us; in joy we face the storm and defy it – Amelia Barr
• Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it – Charles Dudley Warner
• I like anywhere with a beach. A beach and warm weather is all I really need – Rob Gronkowski
• Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get – Mark Twain
• Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative – Oscar Wilde
• Who cares about the clouds when we’re together? Just sing a song and bring the sunny weather –   Dale Evans
• Most floods are caused by man, not weather; deforestation, levee construction, erosion, and overgrazing all result in the loss of ecosystem services –  Paul Hawken

(Images/video taken from google/IE)

What makes hurricanes stall, and hard to forecast

• Research shows that stalling has become more common for tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic since the mid-20th century and that their average forward speed has also slowed.
• Hurricanes are steered by the winds around them. We call this the atmospheric flow. If those winds are moving fast, they’ll move the storm fast. You can picture it as a leaf floating on a stream. If the stream moves slower, the leaf moves slower. When the flow turns, the leaf turns.
• A warmer atmosphere also means storms can tap into more moisture. As temperature increases, it’s easier for water to evaporate into vapor. In a hurricane, the opposite happens – water vapor reverts to liquid as cloud droplets, which means energy gets released, and that energy powers the storm.
• When a hurricane approaches land, there are multiple possible effects: the wind from the hurricane itself, the rainfall the hurricane produces and the storm surge that’s pushed by the hurricane.
• To forecast a storm, we look at what we call “dynamical guidance” – computer models that simulate the atmosphere and make a prediction based on our knowledge of physics. Forecasters put in variables such as the current wind, temperature and pressure, and the computer uses that starting point to simulate what the weather could be hours or days into the future. But our initial picture of the atmosphere is not perfect, and the computer can work only with what we give it. Each computer model is also a little different. They’re all based in the laws of physics, but the assumptions they make and how they take in data can vary from model to model.

https://youtu.be/-s7zOubwXmc

(Images/video taken from google/IE)

Ghostly ‘UFO cloud’ hovering over mountains

• A ghostly white saucer hovers over the peaks of El Chaltén in southern Argentina. As wind thrashes the nearby clouds, the saucer remains fixed above the craggy summit, anchored in the sky like a mothership surveying the hills below. It’s just a friendly neighborhood “UFO cloud” (unidentified flying object)— better known in meteorological circles as a standing lenticular cloud.
• This eerie weather phenomenon is relatively common in mountainous regions like El Chaltén, or the Rocky Mountains in the U.S., where high-speed winds ricochet over a tall peak, creating a distinct lens- or saucer-shaped cloud formation high in the sky.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/video/watch/spooky-ufo-cloud-hovers-over-bali-mountain/vi-BB14HuO9

(Images/video taken from google/IE)