World Weather Update
Jan 1999
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School Weather News 1999
EXCITING WEATHER AROUND THE WORLD -
15-29 Jan 1999
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 09:53:22 -0000
Dear MetLink friends
Roger Brugge has sent the following information about weather around
the world during January, 1999. It's not only northern Scandinavia
that's been having severe weather.
INFORMATION >>>>>
A snowstorm dropped up to 18 inches of snow in New England, USA.
Boston's Logan International Airport was forced to close because of
icing conditions. Ice coated the northeastern United States, due to
frozen rain caused by moisture forced on top of Arctic air.
(15th)
\item Heavy snow and frigid temperatures continued to grip
Eastern and Central Canada Friday, forcing authorities to close
schools and offices and call out the military. More than 26 cm of
snow fell on Toronto since Tuesday and 111.2 cm fell since the
beginning of the month. That accumulation beat historic records for
the city dating back to 1871. (15th)
\item Adventurer Peter Hillary narrowly escaped death in a
snap blizzard, the ice trekkers across Antarctica said. Australian
Eric Philips described the panic felt by himself and fellow trekker
Jon Muir when Hillary, who had fallen a short distance behind, "just
disappeared." The trekkers are attempting to retrace the exploits of
Robert Falcon Scott in 1912. "We were hit by this horrendous ground
blizzard," Philips said. "The wind blew up to about 50 knots, we had
less than 10 metres visibility." The extreme conditions faced by the
trekkers on the polar plateau above the Shackleton Glacier included
temperatures ranging down to -50C. (17th)
\item Heavy fog and black ice are blamed for dozens of
accidents that closed a stretch of Interstate 94 southwest of
Detroit, USA. Michigan State Police say about 50 cars were involved
in the early morning pile-up near Oakwood Blvd., in the city of Allen
Park, Mich. (17th)
\item At least 11 people were killed and 20 were injured in
four road accidents caused by foggy weather in Syria. (17th)
\item Up to ten tornadoes ripped through the state of
Tennessee Sunday night, killing nine people and injuring 60. About 30
homes were damaged or destroyed in Henderson County. (18th)
Driven by powerful winds, snow and rain pounded the Midwest and
Northeast (USA) , knocking out power to thousands of people and
causing accidents from Illinois to New England. U.S. Coast Guard
officials were trying to determine if bad weather played a role in
the apparent sinking of a 74-foot fishing boat off the waters of
Barnegat Light, about 35 miles north of Atlantic City. Farther west,
blowing snow caused whiteout conditions in Minnesota and Illinois.
The storms knocked out power to at least 23,500 customers in
Pennsylvania 24,000 in Connecticut and 18,000 in New
Jersey. (19th)
\item The densely populated regions of North America and
Europe could face the threat of increased ultraviolet radiation if
ozone loss over the Arctic, such as occurred in 1996 and 1997,
resumes. This threatens to ``allow the penetration of enhanced UV
radiation at northern mid-high latitudes,'' warn researchers in the
latest issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research, published by the
American Geophysical Union. Georg Hansen of the Norwegian Institute
for Air Research in Tromso, Norway, and Martyn P. Chipperfield of
Cambridge University studied the northern ozone layer. (19th)
\item At least 21 people were killed and 309 injured in the
tornado that ripped through the rural areas around the small town of
Mount Ayliff in South Africa's Eastern Cape province. (19th)
\item Rainstorms packing gusts of more than 100 km/h disrupted
air traffic at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv. The first showers of
winter came to Israel only this week in what is so far the driest
winter here in 58 years. (19th)
\item Severe fog in central Europe has disrupted air traffic
at major airports in Germany, Poland and Italy for a second day. The
fog, caused by a sharp change in temperature, produced unexpected
problems at Germany's Frankfurt airport Wednesday night, when an Air
India Boeing-747 miscalculated its landing and smashed into runway
equipment. Meanwhile, the blanket of fog over Poland closed Warsaw's
Okecie international airport for three days, causing chaos and
forcing Delta Air Lines to divert a New York-Warsaw flight to
northern Germany after an attempt to land in Warsaw was aborted.
(21st)
Seven people have been confirmed killed in a series of tornadoes that
raked Arkansas and Tennessee (USA) overnight. At least 20 tornadoes
were reported in Arkansas. (22nd)
The bodies of an Indiana woman and her child have been found, one day
after the woman's car was swept into a rain-swollen branch of the
Whitewater River (USA). A number of the state's major rivers,
including portions of the White, Wabash, Tippecanoe and Mississinewa,
swelled to flood-stage levels. (23rd)
One man was drowned and another is missing after rescuing two
youngsters from a flood-swollen river as tropical storms sweep the
French Pacific territory of New Caledonia. Two tropical storms,
Olinda and Pete, have brought heavy rains to the islands, which
Sunday remained on cyclone alert. (23rd)
Very low temperatures are in the northern part of Europe and Russia.
In the north-west of the Russian Federation and in Lapland -- Russian
Federation: Pecora -49.4C, Chosedachard -48.5C, Kojnas -47.5C, Ust-
Cilma -46.9C, Sura -46.7C, Narjan-Mar -45.7C and Ust-Usa -45.4C.
Lapland: Ivalo, Finland -45.5C, Karasjok, Norway -44.2C. (24th)
Ivalo, in northern Finland, they had a reading last night of -48C,
about 3degC above the national low record for January. (25th)
Bad weather has caused a second day of commuter nightmares in
Northern and Southern California as heavy snow and rain continued to
affect the state. The winter storm also brought snowflakes for the
first time in nearly 25 years to Bakersfield, which is about 100
miles north of Los Angeles. (26th)
Later in the day a line of heavy (in places thundery) rain crossed
the south of England, with reports of ball lightning near Winchester
around 1630 GMT and heavy hail in Reading during the passage of an
active cold front. Gusts reached 60kn at Shoreham. It is also
reported that something `just like a tornado' removed the roof from a
house near Petersfield with trees and power lines being brought down,
while sleet fell around Birmingham. (26th)
0600 GMT SYNOP minimum temperatures showed at least ten stations with
below -40C. In Norway, Kautokeino had -50.3C and Karasjok -50.0C. In
Sweden, Karesuando, a willage situated on the border with Finland, -
49.0C was reported. The official record low for Sweden is -52.6C at
Arjeplog in February 1966. (27th)
The lowest lowest temperature of the century in Finland was
registered in a village in northern Finland called Kittila: -51C.
(27th)
There was a new Finnish national low record temperature overnight of
-51.5C in Kittila. (28th)
Some of Russia's Arctic regions have been gripped this week by the
coldest temperatures this century, the Russian Weather Service said.
The deep chill is also unusually long. ``It's one thing to cope for a
day when it's minus 50 outside, but it's a different thing altogether
to spend several days in a row like that,'' a meteorologist said. In
some parts of the Kola Peninsula near Russia's border with Norway,
such as the Khanty- Mansiisk area, the thermometer fell at night to
almost -56C in one village this week -- the lowest for more than 100
years. In the Komi region it reached -53C in some places, the lowest
since 1936.(28th) The temperature there was about 23degC below the
average for the last 10 days of January. (28th)
EXCITING WEATHER AROUND THE WORLD 1-5
FEB 1999>>>>>
Sicily has had its first snow since 1981 - Palermo had six inches of
snow. Mt Etna looked like a 'wedding cake'. Snow also fell in
northern cities on the Algerian coast. In Bizerte snow was heavy at
times with visibilities down to 200 m. Locally temperatures during
daylight time didn't exceed 2 or 3C - very low indeed for this area.
In Tamanrasset in the south, near the Sahara, temperatures hardly
reached 19C. (Feb 1st)
Spring will come early this year in Pennsylvania (USA) -- or so it is
believed, since groundhog Phil from Punxsutawney failed to see his
shadow when he was yanked from his winter slumber. The furry
forecaster, whose shadow is believed to herald another six weeks of
winter, woke up before 8 this morning for his annual weather
prediction. If the groundhog had seen his shadow, legend has it,
winter would last another six weeks. Since he didn't see his shadow,
spring will be early this year. (Feb 2nd)
Wind gusts as powerful as 125 mph howled through the Colorado
foothills, knocking out power, downing trees and sending debris
flying every which way. Two airplanes parked at the Jefferson County
Airport south of Boulder were overturned and buildings under
construction at the facility sufferedsome \$100,000 in damages. Two
schools were closed for the day. (Feb 3rd)
The New Zealand radiation laboratory informed the country that this
summer has seen the highest ultra violet readings on record. Index
levels have been up to 14 over the whole North Island while levels of
13 have occurred well down into Southland. 10 is regarded as
dangerous. Levels this year were/are 5\% greater than last year. It
is interesting that high priority has been given in NZ to research on
the effects of UV on grass and clover growth in particular. In
particular wintersweet and magnolias suffered severely from leafburn
(following summer pruning) this year with almost complete defoliation
following sudden exposure. (Feb 4th)
In Moscow, three people died of hypothermia Wednesday night as
temperatures plunged below -28C, bringing the death toll from cold in
the capital to 93 this winter. The arctic weather has broken
century-old records in many northern Russian towns and forced the
evacuation of hundreds of people from one settlement where heating
pipes burst. (Feb 4th)
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