Hurricanes On Our Doorstep Now

Okay, hereabouts they're referred euphemistically as 'cyclones'. It makes them sound like a wind trainer, or some sort of bicycle equipped with a parachute. No, they're just as nasty as hurricanes, and just as vigorous as typhoons. They do dance to a different tune, spinning in a different direction to northern hemisphere cousins.

Here's more: Weather wreaks havoc in Durban

Deadly Tornadoes 'Very Unusual' - 55 dead

Photo: Jonathan Palmer/The Daily via Associated Press
Much of the havoc was wreaked by rare “long-track” tornadoes, which stay on the ground for distances of 30 to 50 miles. One tornado in Arkansas seems to have burned a path through five counties, said Renee Preslar, the public education coordinator for the Arkansas Division of Emergency Management.

“Normally tornadoes touch down and they’re on the ground for 20 minutes and they pop back up,” Ms. Preslar said. “There’s no signs yet of this having ever come off the ground.”

“The wrath of God is the only way I can describe it,” Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee said after a helicopter flight to survey the damage. “I’m used to seeing roofs off houses, houses blown over. These houses were down to their foundations, stripped clean.” - from New York Times

Photo: ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE / EPA Source: New York Times

Midwest Snowstorm

Brad Small, a forecaster with the National Weather Service, called this winter Iowa's "coldest and snowiest" since 2000-01. The harshness has led to shortages of road salt in many cities, including Tipton, in eastern Iowa. - from MSNBC

26 dead in southern Super Tuesday storms

Tornadoes across four Southern states tore through homes, ripped the roof off a shopping mall and blew apart warehouses in a rare spasm of violent winter weather that killed at least 26 people and injured dozens more.

The twisters that slammed Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky were part of a line of storms that raged across the nation's midsection at the end of a day of Super Tuesday primaries in several states.

More from MSNBC.com.

Extreme Weather Lashes US Northwest - Hurricane Force Winds etc. (PICTURES)

NVDL: These incredible pictures are disturbing metaphors for the future. Flooded roads, humanity adrift, the world submerged by the cleansing, flooding waters. This is one of the themes in a new novel I started yesterday titled FIRE AND ICE. Will post the first chapter here tomorrow.

Storms hit the Pacific Northwest killing five
By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles

Severe storms lashed the Pacific Northwest with hurricane-force winds and torrential rain, causing extensive flooding, power cuts, mass evacuations and killing at least five people.

The extreme weather system slammed into Oregon and Washington with 120 mph winds, dumping 13 inches of rain in 30 hours.

Trees were flattened and roads submerged, including a 20-mile stretch of the critical Interstate 5 highway linking Portland and Seattle, which was awash with more than 10 feet of muddy floodwater.

Hundreds of homes were submerged including one flooded Oregon town that was cut off by landslides.
More.

Joburg Storm Fells Trees, Chokes Cars

Heading back from the cycling Expo, we were caught in a violently fierce hailstorm. We knew when we emerged out of the building at around 16:30 and it looked like 18:30 that kak was in the air. Sure enough, when we pulled out of the underground parking, rain, then hail lashed us, quickly turning the roads into rivers. In a remarkably short space of time, trees came down, and cars stalled where they stood.

It is a strange conincidence that in Bloem around another cycling event (2 weeks ago)a storm approached sounding like an express train. It too was a hailstorm, but it was more remarkable not for its ferocity, but for its sudden onset.

Was there a warning? Yes there was, on Weathersa: National Warning - Issued on Friday, 16 November 2007 at 16.00

Weather conditions which may lead to the development and spread of runaway fires are expected in the southern areas of the West Coast District and Cape Town Metropole.
Thunderstorms in the eastern North-West Province, Gauteng and western and central Limpopo may become severe, with a risk of large hail and damaging winds.

Weather Warnings a Hoax?

Were the weather warnings a hoax? Actually, they weren't. To start off they were based on cogent but amorphous information. I received emails from staff at Net Care 911 (I can name names), but these were not official warnings. The weather bureau were also concerned, because some of the atmospheric conditions were, they thought, conducive to extreme weather.

And in fact we've had some incredible storms over the last few days in Lenasia (where someone died), and at a large school - I forget where - which had its roof torn off. The latter story made SABC news, since the school was concerned they might not have a place to right exams. This same school made the news when children were caught in rising flood waters, clutching school furniture.

So I think the internal staff at NetCare for example contacted their pals and issued an 'under-the-radar' warning, and from there, it got exaggerated into tornadoes and what not.

Two things emerged out of this though: on the positive side, there was an extraordinary awareness of WHAT IS GOING ON OUTSIDE THE OFFICE. On the other hand, the people who panicked and went home only to be caught in traffic snarls are going to laugh it off next time, and call it Crying Wolf. This blase attitude is opar for the course in places like the Florida panhandle, where oldies claim to have survived countless storms and false alarms and they aren't about to 'run' now. In reality, we're going to see this sort of thing - potent and destructive forces of nature - happening more and more in our lifetimes.

My own feeling was how the climate change-global warming zeitgeist actually came to the surface. It semed to me a lot of people were repressing the veracity of this, and then to receive emails about having your belongings confiscated by the weather, that just struck very close to home, and brought it to the surface. People verbalised their concerns, and then acted on them. At last.

SA Weather Services STORM Warning!

South African Weather Services has issued a High Importance Warning to Gauteng regarding serious storms TODAY, 08 October 2007. They have advised that motorists avoid travelling between 18:00 and 20:00 today. Please try to get home safely BEFORE the storms begin.

National Warning - Issued on Monday, 8 October 2007 at 06.00

Very cold conditions are expected to persist over the highground areas of Western and Northern Cape, as well as over the northern mountains of Eastern Cape and south-western and western interior of KwaZulu-Natal.

Heavy falls of rain are expected over northern KwaZulu-Natal, north-eastern Free State as well as the eastern highveld of Mpumalanga and Gauteng. Severe thunderstorms, associated with strong, damaging surface winds are expected in late afternoon and evening over the eastern highveld, Gauteng, the southern highveld of Mpumalanga and extreme northern Free State.

2 x 5 CATs

Updated: 8:17 a.m. ET Sept. 4, 2007

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras - Hurricane Felix roared ashore early Tuesday as a fearsome Category 5 storm — the first time in recorded history that two top-scale storms have come ashore in the same season. The storm hit near the swampy Nicaragua-Honduras border, home to thousands of stranded Miskito Indians dependent on canoes to make their way to safety.
Twenty fishermen were missing, and communication to the area was cut off.