The worst is over for the ash clouds from Iceland's volcano
The worst is now over for European air traffic disruptions from the ongoing eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano. The eruptions are currently only throwing ash up to 16,000 feet (4900 meters), according to the latest advisory from the UK Met Office. Lightning images from UK Met Office show no new lightning strikes from the volcano's plume since Sunday. The lower amounts of ash are due, in part, to the fact that the volcano has melted most of the ice and snow covering the crater. This ice had caused the hot magma erupting through it to fragment into fine ash capable of reaching much higher heights of 6 - 11 km (20,000 - 36,000') in the early stages of the eruption. Ash is also reduced because the volcano has entered a phase where it is producing more magma. Although it is possible that the volcano could enter a more explosive eruption phase that would throw ash high into the air once again, the winds are expected to shift over Iceland late this week. The northwest winds that have been "stuck" in place over Iceland over the past week due to a persistent trough of low pressure over northern Europe, will gradually shift to westerly by Friday and southwesterly by Saturday. This means that new eruptive material will blow over the northern British Islands and northern Scandanavia late this week, avoiding the main portion of Europe. Ash should be confined to northern Scandanavia and Greenland through most of next week, since the southwesterly winds are expected to continue through most of next week.
Figure 1. Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano began to ease out of the ash-producing phase of its eruption and started to emit magma on April 19, 2010, said the Icelandic Met Office. The cloud of ash coming from the volcano was lower than it had been in previous days, rising just 4 to 6 kilometers (2 to 3 miles) into the atmosphere. In this photo-like image, taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, the ash extends south in a broad brown plume. Smaller plumes extend from the coast east of the primary plume. These are likely re-suspended ash, fine volcanic ash that had settled on the land, but is now being picked up by the wind. The plume blows south and then curves east over the ocean, blending with the outer bands of a low-pressure system. Image credit: NASA.
I'll have a new post Thursday (Earth Day!)
Jeff Masters
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I think it has been caused by some of my studetns doing a rain dance....... A group of them were supposed to be doing an observing lab out at the observatory tonight!
Cheers
Ozprof
Yea, just looking at that. This may be the first real widespread outbreak of the year. A large portion of the deep south and southeast will be well into the warm sector of this storms and any sunshine will just help to further destabilize the atmosphere. Saturday and Sunday will be rather interesting for sure.
here is latest grapic from my blog of day 2 day 3 severe prop.
That day 3 outlook was issued for Friday, not Saturday. That GFS forecast would coincide with the day 4 outlook, which matches much better (but still not perfectly).
The Local Mets and NWS Slidell are already jabber jawing on that system.
&&
Long term...
current water vapor imagery shows the next system that will affect
the area early this weekend. This upper low is still prognosticated to dig
a little farther south down the state of California before swinging
northeast towards southern Great Lakes by the end of the weekend. A
surface low will develop near the the NE/KS/co borders and move
towards the middle miss valley. Moisture will substantially increase by
Friday with dew point/S in the upper 60s that afternoon. Model soundings
are looking slightly less conducive than previous runs. Question is
whether warm layer depicted on 18z Friday soundings will erode enough
for cape to be realized. May not be very widespread but is plausible
to think so...at least north of I-12. Looking at
instability...favorable conditions increase from east to west. With
that said...looks like northwestern half of County Warning Area will have the best shot for
severe weather.
As the boundary nears the area on Saturday...pressure falls and
cooling in the middle levels bring even more unstable environment into
play. 18-00z looks to be the best time for all modes of severe weather to
develop. Li/S around -7...cape upwards of 2000j/kg and srh/S around
400m2/s2 will be quite sufficient for supercells but would like to
see more directional shear for strong rotating storms. Although
northern half of the area will be in the best setup...dont want to
completely throw out areas south of I-10. More like just less
potential.
With European model (ecmwf) coming in closer line to GFS/S faster solution...have
decided to adjust weather grids to depict a sooner ending to precipitation.
Thinking is that the western edge of the line of storms should be
east of btr/mcb/hum before midnight Sat. Sunday should be quiet weather
wise with clearing skies and slightly above norm temperatures. Similar
setup from this week for early next week. Weak northwest flow will
transition to weak ridging before next trough moves towards the
area.
Meffer
&&
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LUBBOCK TX
515 PM CDT WED APR 21 2010
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN LUBBOCK HAS ISSUED A
* SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING FOR...
SOUTHEASTERN HALE COUNTY IN NORTHWEST TEXAS.
* UNTIL 600 PM CDT
* AT 513 PM CDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM CAPABLE OF PRODUCING QUARTER SIZE HAIL...AND
DAMAGING WINDS IN EXCESS OF 60 MPH. THIS STORM WAS LOCATED 6 MILES
NORTHEAST OF ABERNATHY...AND MOVING NORTHEAST AT 20 MPH.
* SOME LOCATIONS NEAR THE PATH OF THIS STORM INCLUDE PETERSBURG.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
LARGE HAIL...DAMAGING WINDS...AND VERY HEAVY RAINS ARE EXPECTED WITH
THIS STORM. TAKE COVER IN A SUBSTANTIAL SHELTER.
A TORNADO WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 1100 PM CDT WEDNESDAY EVENING
FOR THE PANHANDLE AND NORTHWEST TEXAS.
Oh thanks my bad....didn't check update time.
Its just like an NWS forecast or what we use here in the StormCenter - 30% of the forecast area or in this case the "hatched" or "drawn" area WILL see a certain weather event - in this case severe thunderstorms.
TORNADO WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PUEBLO CO
441 PM MDT WED APR 21 2010
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN PUEBLO HAS ISSUED A
* TORNADO WARNING FOR...
NORTH CENTRAL LAS ANIMAS COUNTY IN SOUTHEAST COLORADO...
* UNTIL 545 PM MDT
* AT 439 PM MDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM CAPABLE OF PRODUCING A TORNADO. THIS DANGEROUS
STORM WAS LOCATED 11 MILES WEST OF TYRONE...OR 25 MILES NORTH OF
TRINIDAD...AND MOVING NORTHEAST AT 15 MPH.
* LOCATIONS IMPACTED INCLUDE...
MAINLY RURAL AREAS OF NORTHERN LAS ANIMAS COUNTY.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
THIS TORNADO WARNING REPLACES THE SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING THAT
WAS IN EFFECT FOR THE SAME AREA. GO TO A BASEMENT OR SMALL INTERIOR
ROOM ON THE LOWEST FLOOR!
TAKE COVER NOW. MOVE TO AN INTERIOR ROOM ON THE LOWEST FLOOR OF A
STURDY BUILDING. AVOID WINDOWS. IF IN A MOBILE HOME...A VEHICLE OR
OUTDOORS...MOVE TO THE CLOSEST SUBSTANTIAL SHELTER AND PROTECT
YOURSELF FROM FLYING DEBRIS.
The last few runs of the models have been shifting the most favorable conditions for tropical development westward into the EPAC more than the SW Caribbean, but they are still expecting a significant reversal from the current troughing over the Caribbean to more of a strong equatorial ridge during the 10-15 day period. This will, at the very least, start to warm up the NW Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico SSTs painfully fast during the beginning of May, and may also set the stage for potential tropical mischief at some point during the month.
Really hard to say, we have had the quietest Severe Weather Season on record so far.
The next several days, Th-Su will be very, very busy, we're looking at our first real "widespread severe weather" outbreak. Most of the Spring storms so far has been high winds/hail producers. The emphasis of this next outbreak will be leaning towards higher tornado production.
My understanding is that El Nino spring produce fewer tornadoes, La Nina spring produces more tornadoes.
That's true.
Hello Alex, did you receive my e-mail? We're going to see "Mother Nature" put on one "heckuva" show over the next 3-4 days.
Thats pretty bad... go figure that southern Georgia would be that much dryer then here... January and February were pretty normal rainfall wise, we had frequent systems due to El Nino, but too cold and dry to pick up anything really heavy. But when the warmer air and humidity arrived in March, we had an amazing 9 inches of rain for the month. April was completely dry here up until this past sunday, which we had over 4 inches of rain! Which all came in torrential rain bursts, as it often does in Florida. Now up to about 5.21 for the month since additional rain on monday and tuesday after that. April is usually the one month we count on not getting any huge rain events, but we've pulled well out of the long term drought in central Florida, so I guess even April can't be counted out for torrential downpours!
The Southern Jet will load the atmosphere with plenty of moist, warm air. The Upper Level L will add shear/dry. cool air, makings for a widespread severe weather event.
TORNADO WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AMARILLO TX
620 PM CDT WED APR 21 2010
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN AMARILLO HAS ISSUED A
* TORNADO WARNING FOR...
CENTRAL OLDHAM COUNTY IN THE PANHANDLE OF TEXAS.
* UNTIL 645 PM CDT
* AT 615 PM CDT...TRAINED WEATHER SPOTTERS REPORTED A FUNNEL CLOUD
NEAR ADRIAN...OR ABOUT 16 MILES NORTHWEST OF VEGA...MOVING
NORTHEAST AT 10 MPH.
* SOME LOCATIONS NEAR THE PATH OF THIS STORM INCLUDE ADRIAN.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
A TORNADO MAY FORM AT ANY TIME...TAKE COVER NOW! ABANDON MOBILE HOMES
AND VEHICLES FOR MORE SUBSTANTIAL SHELTER. AVOID WINDOWS.
TO REPORT SEVERE WEATHER...PLEASE CALL THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
AT 8 0 6 3 3 5 1 1 2 1.
Thats true for the rest of the country.
But usually the opposite for Florida, weather in Florida is in a different league then the rest of the United States. What drives the weather here is different, and much harder to forecast in most cases, then the rest of the U.S. Normally EL Nino means lots of tornados and other severe weather in the spring for Florida. But we haven't had much of either this year yet, we have had plenty of heavy downpours as far as the dry season standards go, but not severe weather that usually comes with El Nino as well.
Yup, and La Nina sets up much more of a battle-ground between cold and warm airmasses over the country.
That's true too, since Florida is so far south. El Nino favors a more southerly jetstream which brings more of the severe weather your way instead of all off to the north.
If La Nina does in fact develop, next Spring will be brutal concerning severe weather.
Oil rig explodes off Louisiana coast; 11 missing
Rescuers in helicopters and boats searched the Gulf of Mexico for 11 missing workers Wednesday after a thunderous explosion rocked a huge oil drilling platform and lit up the night sky with a pillar of flame. Seventeen people were injured, four critically.
The blast Tuesday night aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig 50 miles off the Louisiana coast could prove to be one of the nation's deadliest offshore drilling accidents of the past half-century.
The Coast Guard held out hope that the missing workers escaped in one of the platform's covered lifeboats.
Nearly 24 hours after the explosion, the roughly 400-by-250-foot rig continued to burn, and authorities could not say when the flames might die out. A column of boiling black smoke rose hundreds of feet over the Gulf of Mexico as fireboats shot streams of water at the blaze.
"We're hoping everyone's in a life raft," Coast Guard Senior Chief Petty Officer Mike O'Berry said.
Adrian Rose, vice president of rig owner Transocean Ltd., said the explosion appeared to be a blowout, in which natural gas or oil forces its way up a well pipe and smashes the equipment. But precisely what went wrong was under investigation.
Crews were doing routine work before the explosion and there were no signs of trouble, Rose said.
A total of 126 workers were aboard the rig when it blew up. The Coast Guard said 17 were taken by air or sea to hospitals. Four were reported in critical condition with severe burns. Others suffered burns, broken legs and smoke inhalation.
Nearly 100 other workers made it aboard a supply boat and were expected to reach the Louisiana shore by evening.
Kelly Eugene waited with nine family members for husband Kevin Eugene, 46, a cook on the Deepwater Horizon. A catering company operating on the rig notified her he was safe.
"He's on the boat. That's all we know. And that's all we need to know," she said.
The rig was tilting as much as 10 degrees after the blast, but earlier fears that it might topple over appeared unfounded. Coast Guard environmental teams were on standby, though officials said the damage to the environment appeared minimal so far.
The rig, which was under contract to the oil giant BP, was doing exploratory drilling but was not in production, Transocean spokesman Greg Panagos said. Seventy-nine Transocean workers, six BP employees and 41 contract workers were aboard.
Ted Bourgoyne, a retired professor of petroleum engineering at Louisiana State University, said the explosion was probably caused by natural gas or a mixture of oil and gas coming up through the well, combined with some kind of ignition source.
He said there are numerous defenses on a modern rig to prevent something like that from happening. For instance, fluids used in drilling are weighted with barium sulfite to prevent gas from traveling up the well, and there are alarms to alert workers to gas. Machinery is built to prevent sparking and is placed as far away as possible from places where gas might leak.
"In almost all of these things, there's not one thing that happens; it's a series of things," Bourgoyne said.
Rose said the crew had drilled the well to its final depth, more than 18,000 feet, and was cementing the steel casing at the time of the explosion.
"They did not have a lot of time to evacuate. This would have happened very rapidly," he said.
According to Transocean's website, the Deepwater Horizon is about twice the size of a football field. Built in 2001 in South Korea, it is designed to operate in water up to 8,000 feet deep, drill 5 1/2 miles down, and accommodate a crew of 130. It floats on pontoons and is moored to the sea floor by several large anchors.
The site of the accident is known as the Macondo prospect, in 5,000 feet of water.
Workers typically spend two weeks on the rig at a time, followed by two weeks off. Offshore oil workers are typically well paid, earning $40,000 to $60,000 a year _ more if they have special skills.
Last September, the Deepwater Horizon set a world deepwater record when it drilled down just over 35,000 feet at another BP site in the Gulf of Mexico, Panagos said.
"It's one of the more advanced rigs out there," he said. Panagos did not know how much the rig cost to build but said a similar one today would run $600 million to $700 million.
Kelly Eugene said her husband flew to work on the rig, and until Tuesday's explosion, that was the part of his job that scared her most. Kevin Eugene has worked in the offshore industry about 12 years and had been on the Deepwater Horizon about a month. Until now, she said, hurricane evacuations were the worst he had been through.
"My biggest fear is the helicopter ride," she said.
Working on offshore oil rigs is a dangerous job but has become safer in recent years thanks to improved training, safety systems and maintenance, said Joe Hurt, regional vice president for the International Association of Drilling Contractors.
Since 2001, there have been 69 offshore deaths, 1,349 injuries and 858 fires and explosions in the Gulf, according to the federal Minerals Management Service.
There are 42 rigs either drilling or doing upgrades and maintenance in depths of 1,000 feet or greater in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the agency. They employ an estimated 35,000 people. Transocean has 14 rigs in the Gulf and 140 worldwide.
In 1964, a catamaran-type drilling barge operated by Pan American Petroleum Corp. near Eugene Island, about 80 miles off Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico, suffered a blowout and explosion while drilling a well. Twenty-one crew members died.
The deadliest offshore drilling accident took place in 1988, when an Occidental Petroleum platform about 120 miles off Aberdeen, Scotland, was rocked by explosions and fire. A total of 167 men were killed.
Yeah, down here, cold dry air is never a good thing, when it comes to severe weather, Florida storm outbreaks are always worse as long as there's always more humidity and more warmth. Dynamic systems rarely play as much of a role down here as they do further north.
Generally what El Nino does is allow systems traveling further south, providing a low level jet, which provides a summer like feed for deep convection, its the key to spring time severe weather in Florida.
Thats why we normally do not get much of any hail, or long lived super cells. Severe weather in Florida is more tropical based. Breakouts of high precipitation pulse-severe thunderstorms that occur in massive squalls or large multi-cellular complexes. This type of severe weather often produces massive lightning shows, extremely heavy rain in blinding bursts, lots of wet micro burst damage, and numerous weak and and hard to predict tornados.
Generally large long lived lone super cells with huge hail and monster tornados do not occur in Florida weather
Link
Yeah, amazing isn't it. It refuses to go back down.
Hey Taz I have to say 1 oil rig out of over 2000 want make gas go higher but let 1 "Hurricane" come into the gulf then we have "Higher Gas"....
:0)
The search for 11 missing workers from a Gulf of Mexico rig that exploded late Tuesday continued into Wednesday evening even as the Coast Guard Commander confirmed that they "have no idea where they are.”
It means the trade winds in the WestCentral Pacific are more stronger right?
Yes, the trades have been getting stronger over the last couple weeks, which has cooled SSTs in the Nino 3.4 region.
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