Polish president dies in plane crash during heavy fog
Always obey your air traffic controllers. That's the cardinal rule of of aviation, and one apparently violated by the pilot of the aircraft carrying the Polish president and dozens of the country's top political and military leaders, which crashed in heavy fog this morning near Smolensk, Russia. All 96 people aboard perished. According to the New York Times, air traffic controllers had recommended the president's jet land in nearby Minsk because of bad visibility, but the crew decided to land anyway. The Polish news channel TVN24 reported that moments before the crash, air traffic controllers had refused a Russian military aircraft permission to land, but that they could not refuse permission to the Polish plane. Russian media reported that the airplane's crew made several attempts to land before a wing hit the treetops and the plane crashed about half a mile from the runway.
Figure 1. a large patch of fog covers the Russian city of Smolensk and regions to the east in this visible light image captured by NASA's Terra satellite between 08:00 - 11:15 UTC Saturday, April 10, 2010. Image credit: NASA MODIS Rapid Response System, visualized using Google Earth.
At 10 am local time, near the time of the crash, the Smolensk airport reported heavy fog with visibility 0.5 km (3/10 of a mile). As seen in the satellite image taken near this time (Figure 1), a large bank of fog covered Smolensk and neighboring regions of Russia and Belarus.
Jeff Masters
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Good Morning..........Went fishing in the Gulf on Saturday, 15 miles out of St. Marks, and caught our limit of Gag Grouper (Yum). Water temp out there, in about 40 feet of water, was 69 degrees........
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11 degrees below theshold good if it rise 1 degree a week for 12 weeks it will be july before ya get to 80 degree mark
Morning.
LOL...I was thinking that too.
Someone should start a contest soon on when the first named storm will be?
I'll say in June. There will be no 0-0-0 this year until August. If I'm wrong...that crow in the freezer looks eatable. With A1 sauce:)
We'll have to see how it goes; if the current frontal pattern dies down, and we get some settled high pressure (think heat wave) over the next two months, we could get there by June me thinks....
The very warm feed from the Caribbean going into the loop current will raise the GOM pretty fast. The warmer waters spread out pretty quick. I'm seeing already 81 degree temp waters feeding into the loop current.
The function of air traffic controllers is to provide safe orderly separation between aircraft and to provide advisory information. Controllers, like pilots, make mistakes. Professional pilots are very much aware of this. A good pilot will be constantly aware of the situation around him and be alert to refuse instructions or request an alternate clearance.
I have done this many times.
Captain Bill
Yes,apart from the rising SOI, CPC in todays update has El Nino 3.4 at 0.8C.
Link
If it was a perfect world and I was NASA administrator.. I'd send up a QuickSCAT the size of a bus by the Space Shuttle, then let the QuickSCAT fly off to Geo-Synch orbit. We could get some great images of forming LLC's out of that!
Predictions will be a bit more challenging now since we won't have 2 SCAT Satellites available for cross referencing, but the ASCAT tends to be a bit better in my opinion although is coverage was not as large as the QuickScat as well as other features.
Won't be surprised to see NHC hesitate more than ever on bumping speed(s) and/or categorizing disturbances until SFC and/or Hunter data verifies it.
That's my take on it.
The New South Wales High Country received its first evidence that winter is on its way with a light dusting of snow covering the alpine areas.
While the Far South Coast baked in near 30 degree temperatures yesterday, about 1cm of snow fell in the alpine villages.
But The Weather Bureau's Sean Carson says it was short lived.
"About a centimetre of snow fell above 1500m," he said.
You can certainly feel the chill in the air with those south-westerly winds, which are still fairly strong out to sea and are pretty strong throughout the Monaro and the highlands.
"It is going to be another 24 hours before they gradually ease.
"We are left with an air mass that will give us some beautiful autumn days."
Big summer rains that saturated large parts of central Australia have transformed the usually arid bush landscape in Alice Springs.
The city received more than its average yearly rainfall in just one week earlier this year, and the Red Centre now has a carpet of green.
In the first two months of this year more than 400 millimetres of rain fell in the centre of Alice Springs, and Alice Springs Desert Park curator of botany Scott Pullyblank says it is an exciting time.
"It's just a total transformation, it's like the whole country has put on a different coat," he said.
Lea Laughton, an Indigenous woman from the Alice Springs area, works as a guide at the park, and says the rain has produced an abundance of bush foods and medicine.
"All of the grass is just starting to shoot, like the kangaroo grasses and the native mullet grasses, which were used traditionally to make damper and bread and stuff like that," she said.
"The native apple bush is starting to come up, that's used for colds and stuff ... and a lot of that limestone rock fuchsia is starting to come up. That's used for washing your body if you've got sores on your body and stuff like that."
But Ms Laughton says just as soon as the plants shoot up, they are ravaged by insects and the birds which are now flourishing in the desert.
"You've got to beat all the birds ... not only that [but] all the grasshoppers are out, so they've stripped a few of our ... bush bananas, so that's really unfortunate," she said.
This year's rain came after Alice Springs recorded its driest year on record in 2009, and the downpour was a huge relief for pastoralists.
The executive director of the Northern Territory Cattlemen's Association, Luke Bowen, says some cattle stations in the centre had been in drought for up to eight years, and many had been forced to de-stock their properties.
"It's great to see the country in central Australia now, it's really rebounded and it looks fantastic," he said.
"The spirits of people there have significantly improved. It's amazing to see the difference - the looks on people's faces, the smiles, the general optimism that follows rain."
If the rain continues, Mr Pullyblank from the Desert Park says it will add even more colours to the landscape.
"If this rain keeps going on into autumn and spring we'll end up with carpets of wildflowers," he said.
He says it has been almost 10 years since the last major wildflower event in the area.
"So it just tells you how remarkable those species are that the seed can remain in the soil for that long, just waiting for the right climatic conditions at the right time of year," he said.
© ABC 2010
Snow has made an Autumnal appearance, albeit briefly, across parts of Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales.
The first major cold front of Autumn delivered a chilly blast of cold air over the southeast during Sunday and Monday. The air, with origins in the deep Southern Ocean, sent some bitingly cold air over Tasmania and Victoria.
As the summer sun deserts us to the Northern Hemisphere, it is not that unusual for such an event at this time of year.
Snow has been reported through the Victorian and New South Wales alps, down to around 1500 metres. Generally, little has accumulated and most has subsequently melted, so keep the skis in the garage.
For those that remember last April, we also saw a cold blast bring snow. Around the 25th/26th decent falls were taken as the mercury plunged to a record minus 10(Thredbo), making last night's minus three seem quite tropical, well almost.
The coldest air is now exiting east and a huge high pressure system is moving in. Some of the cold air will hang around though, and with the shortening nights and calm conditions cold mornings will prevail.
With the chill, fog and frost patches will develop, horticulturalists and motorists beware!
© Weatherzone 2010
President was always known to push pilots to just go ahead and do it. Heard that on Good Morning America. Was pushy about arriving on time to events and orders to follow his commands.
I like mine baked with tomato ketchup and a side serve of fries.
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