WEEKLY WATER NEWS

13-17 August 2007

Water in the Earth System will return for Fall 2007 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 27 August 2007. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

Water in the News:

• This week is World Water Week -- The Stockholm International Water Institute is hosting an international meeting as part of what is designated as World Weather Week, for this week of 12-18 August 2007. The theme of this meeting is "Progress and Prospects on Water: Striving for Sustainability in a Changing World."[World Water Week]
• Eye on the tropics ---
  • In the Eastern North Pacific, the sixth named tropical cyclone of the 2007 hurricane season in the Eastern Pacific, Tropical Storm Flossie, formed at midweek well off the Mexican coast. As it traveled to the west, it intensified into a hurricane as it crossed 140 degrees west longitude and into the central Pacific basin. By the weekend, it had further intensified to a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale as it moved along a projected path that should carry south of the Hawaiian Islands. [USA Today] An image from NOAA's GOES 11 satellite shows a characteristic cloud pattern and central eye surrounding Hurricane Flossie. [NOAA OSEI]
  • In the Western North Pacific, Typhoon Pabuk, the fifth typhoon of 2007 in that basin, made landfall in southern Taiwan then continued westward across South China Sea to make another landfall near Hong Kong over last weekend. Another tropical cyclone, Tropical Storm Wutip, developed in the western Pacific east of Philippines then traveled to northwest crossing Taiwan, making a second landfall on mainland China. An image from the Japanese MTSAT-II satellite at the middle of last week shows clouds associated with Tropical Storm Pabuk off the China coast east of Hong Kong and Tropical Storm Wutip approaching southern Taiwan. [NOAA OSEI]
    A new tropical cyclone, Tropical Storm Sepat, the ninth named tropical cyclone of 2007 in the western North Pacific, developed west of the Northern Marianna Islands at the start of this week and was slowly moving west with some strengthening anticipated.
• Another hurricane season outlook update -- NOAA scientists at the National Hurricane Center issued an update to their official NOAA Atlantic Hurricane Outlook late last week. This new NOAA Outlook suggests a season in the North Atlantic Basin (that includes the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico) that would be above the long-term average, but slightly less active than they anticipated in the initial outlook for this season issued in May. The number of forecasted named tropical cyclones (low pressure systems that are tropical storm or hurricane strength) in the new NOAA Outlook was reduced to between 13 and 16 from the 13 to 17 in the original May outlook. The NOAA scientists also predicted that seven to nine of these tropical cyclones could intensify into hurricanes, of which three to five could become "major" hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. For comparison, the earlier outlook had seven to ten hurricanes, with the same number of major hurricanes. The above-average activity could be associated the continuation of atmospheric and oceanic conditions associated with La Niña conditions, an ongoing signal of several decades that suggests increased tropical cyclone activity, along with above average sea surface temperatures across the basin. [NOAA News]
  This outlook follows the previous week's updated hurricane outlook by William Gray and Philip Klotzbach from Colorado State University. These forecasters also lowered the number of anticipated named tropical cyclones (hurricanes and tropical storms) from 17 in their earlier forecasts to 15 named systems, eight of which could become hurricanes with four to be considered major, reaching Category 3 or higher status on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, down from the nine hurricanes and five major hurricanes predicted earlier. [USA Today]
• Monitoring sea surface temperatures across the Pacific -- A map of the distribution of sea-surface temperature anomalies (the arithmetic difference between observed and long-term average temperature values) across the equatorial and subtropical sections of both the North and South Pacific Oceans was obtained at the start of August from data collected by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA's Aqua satellite. This image shows a wide area of below-average sea surface temperatures extending westward from the South American coast, confirming the NOAA report of the development of a La Niña event. [NASA Earth Observatory] [Editor's note: A 30-day animation (QuickTime movie) shows a fine structure of instability waves in the temperature pattern develop and propagate westward across the basin. EJH]
• New water treatment process could downsize treatment plants -- Researchers at the University of Granada have developed new wastewater treatment technologies involving membrane bio-reactors that they claim could reduce the size of current treatment plants by approximately half. [Universidad de Granada]
• The beach sand could be contaminated too -- A team of scientists from Stanford University caution that the high levels of microbes in seawater that result in health advisories and beach closures also are detected in the sand of the adjacent beaches. [EurekAlert!]
• Summer lake surface temperatures on Lake Superior -- An image generated from data collected by the MODIS sensor on NASA's Terra satellite shows the lake surface temperature distribution across Lake Superior, highlighting some of the variations in water temperature caused by prevailing winds from the west that cause areas of upwelling of cold water along Minnesota's North Shore of the lake. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• More protection in the waters around California's Channel Islands -- NOAA officials recently have completed a network of federal water marine zones in those coastal waters of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary off the southwestern California coastline that are under federal control so as to protect marine habitats and sensitive species. [NOAA News]
• A hot decade foreseen -- Climate modelers at the United Kingdom's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research report that the output from their model indicates the next decade will be hot. Their model, which incorporates more data from the world's oceans, has indicated that cool ocean waters in the eastern and southern Pacific have retarded the large-scale increases in temperature during the recent decade. [USA Today]
• Sunspots and African rain -- Based upon their analysis of nearly 100 years of African precipitation data, a team of scientists from the US and the United Kingdom claim that they have found unusually heavy precipitation events in East Africa preceding peak sunspot activity by approximately one year. They also note a correlation between water levels of Lake Victoria and the solar variability. [EurekAlert!] The researchers hope that the correlation between solar activity and rainfall could be used by public health officials to be proactive in instituting measures that would protect the public against insect-borne diseases. [EurekAlert!]
• Can ancient life survive the glacial ice of the Ice Age? -- Scientists at Rutgers University and Boston University believe that DNA from ancient microorganisms that were frozen within the glaciers during the last million years could possibly remain viable when the glaciers melt. [EurekAlert!]
• Inspecting a sooty footprint in the Arctic -- A team of researchers from the University of Nevada's Desert Research Institute, the University of California, the University of Wisconsin, and Droplet Measurement Technologies has developed a new method for identifying the source of black carbon (soot) levels in ice cores extracted from Greenland ice sheet in the Arctic. The researchers have concluded that since 1850 the amount of soot that has accumulated across the Arctic has increased seven-fold, with human activity replacing wildfires as the primary source of this soot. This soot can reduce the reflectivity, resulting in increased absorption of solar radiation and an accompanying increase in regional temperatures. [Desert Research Institute]
• Changes in climate and permafrost alter greenhouse gas emissions from the tundra -- Researchers at Michigan State University, Southern Illinois University, Villanova University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory argue that permafrost under the boreal forests and wetlands of North America has been thawing because of elevated air temperatures across the Arctic, resulting in a variety of changes in the emission of carbon-based greenhouse gases, some of which were unexpected. [Michigan State University]
• July weather extremes -- The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) is complying a list of extreme weather events that have produced all-time records of temperature and precipitation across the nation in "Selected U.S. City and State Extremes for July 2007". Note that this site may be updated during the following several weeks as more data are received and analyzed.
• Global and US Hazards/Climate Extremes -- A review and analysis of the global impacts of various weather-related events, including drought, floods and storms during the current month. [NCDC]
• Global Water News Watch -- Other water news sources can be obtained through the SAHRA Project at the University of Arizona [SAHRA Project]
• Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

• 13 August 1923...A flash flood with a crest up to 100 feet high and 200 feet wide swept down Farmington Canyon in Utah. A family of six camping in the canyon were swept away and two women died at Willard when their house was demolished. Some flood survivors were rescued from trees and rooftops. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 13 August 1979...Fifteen yachtsmen died and 23 boats sank or were abandoned as storm-force winds, along with high seas, raked a fleet of yachts participating in an annual race between southwestern England and Fastnet Rock off southwestern Ireland. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 13 August 1987...Thunderstorms deluged the Central Gulf Coast States with torrential rains. Thunderstorms in Mississippi drenched Marion County with up to 15 inches of rain during the morning hours, with 12.2 inches reported at Columbia. Floodwaters swept cars away in the Lakeview subdivision of Columbia when the Lakeview Dam broke. Flash flooding caused more than three million dollars damage in Marion County. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
• 13-14 August 1987...Slow-moving thunderstorms deluged northern and western suburbs of Chicago, IL with torrential rains. O'Hare Airport reported 9.35 inches in 18 hours, easily exceeding the previous 24-hour record of 6.24 inches. The airport was closed due to extensive flooding, the first time ever for a non-winter event. Flooding over a five-day period resulted in 221 million dollars damage. It was Chicago's worst flash flood event, particularly for northern and western sections of the city. Kennedy Expressway became a footpath for thousands of travelers to O'Hare Airport as roads were closed. The heavy rains swelled the Des Plaines River above flood stage, and many persons had to be rescued from stalled vehicles on flooded roads. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data) (The Weather Channel) (Intellicast)
• 13 August 2004...Hurricane Charley, a Category 4 tropical low-pressure system on the Saffir-Simpson scale, struck the Gulf Coast of southwest Florida, making landfall north of Captiva, FL. At landfall, sustained winds of 145 mph, along with an unofficial gust of 173 mph on a medical building tower in Punta Gorda near Fort Myers. The greatest destruction occurring at Punta Gorda. Fifteen fatalities were directly attributed to the hurricane, with another 20 indirect deaths. Damage estimates were approximately $14 billion. A gust of 104 mph hit Arcadia, where a storm shelter with 1200 people inside lost a wall and part of a roof. (Wikipedia) (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 14 August 1919...Approximately one million tons of ice broke off the leading edge of a glacier near Mont Blanc in France. The ice mixed with rocks downhill. Nine people were buried under the ensuing cataract of ice and rock. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 14 August 2004...Flash floods in California's Spring Valley Lake and East Victorville trapped many vehicles in "rock deep" water, and a $100,000 white sand beach was washed away. Water eight-foot deep covered BNSF railroad tracks and caused a 60-train backup that extended well back into Cajon Pass. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 15 August 1281...The Divine Wind, the Kamikaze, struck down the Chinese fleet attempting an invasion of Japan at Kyushu. This wind was likely due to a typhoon crossing the Sea of Japan. (The Weather Doctor)
• 15 August 1946...Saint Louis, MO was deluged with a record 8.78 inches of rain in 24 hours. (The Weather Channel)
• 15 August 1952...Nine inches of rain fell on already soaked terrain rising 1000 feet above Lynmouth, England. Floodwater and debris containing approximately 200,000 tons of rocks cascaded down the East and West Lyn Rivers. Cars were swept out into the Bristol Channel. As many as 34 deaths were attributed to this flooding, along with the destruction of 34 bridges. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 15 August 1971...Hurricane Beth soaked Nova Scotia with up to 12 inches of rain. The deluge caused considerable crop damage and swamped highways and bridges, temporarily isolating communities on the eastern mainland of Nova Scotia. (The Weather Doctor)
• 16 August 1909...A dry spell began in San Bernardino County of southern California that lasted until the 6th of May in 1912, a stretch of 994 days! Another dry spell, lasting 767 days, then began in October of 1912. (The Weather Channel)
• 17 August 1915...A hurricane hit Galveston, TX with wind gusts to 120 mph and a twelve-foot storm surge which inundated the city. The storm claimed 275 lives, including forty-two on Galveston Island, with most deaths due to drowning. Of 250 homes built outside the seawall (which was constructed after the catastrophic hurricane of 1900), just ten percent were left standing. (The Weather Channel)
• 17 August 1969...Camille, the second worst hurricane in U.S. history, smashed into the Mississippi coast, making landfall at Pass Christian, MS with sustained winds of 190 mph and gusts well over 200 mph. Winds gusted to 172 mph at Main Pass Block, LA, and to 190 mph near Bay Saint Louis, MS. The hurricane claimed 256 lives, and caused 1.3 billion dollars damage. Several ocean going ships were carried over seven miles inland by the hurricane. The hurricane produced winds to 200 mph, and a storm surge of 24.6 feet. Complete destruction occurred in some coastal areas near the eye of the hurricane. (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
• 18 August 1925...During the late morning hours a severe hailstorm struck southeastern Iowa completely destroying crops along a path six to ten miles wide and 75 miles long. The hail also injured and killed poultry and livestock, and caused a total of 2.5 million dollars damage. The hailstorm flattened fields of corn to such an extent that many had to leave their farms in search of other work. It was one of the worst hailstorms of record for the nation. (The Weather Channel)
• 18 August 1924...Record United Kingdom August rainfall of 9.4 inches deluged Cannington (Somerset) England. (The Weather Doctor)
• 18-19 August 1972...Heavy rains led to disastrous flooding on the lower Han River Basin in South Korea. Seoul received 17.36 inches in 22 hours, which represents approximately one-third of its annual average. As many as 500 people were killed and more than 10,000 buildings were washed away. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 18 August 1983...Hurricane Alicia (a category 3 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) ravaged southeastern Texas. The hurricane caused more than three billion dollars property damage, making it one of the costliest hurricanes in the history of the U.S. Just thirteen persons were killed, but 1800 others were injured. The hurricane packed winds to 130 mph as it crossed Galveston Island, created a storm surge of 12 feet and spawned twenty-two tornadoes in less than 24 hours as it made landfall. (The Weather Channel) (Storm Data) (Intellicast)
• 18 August 1989...Thunderstorms over the Middle Atlantic Coast Region and the Upper Ohio Valley produced torrential rains in eastern Virginia during the late morning and afternoon hours. Totals ranged up to twelve inches at Yorktown. Williamsburg, VA was deluged with 10.78 inches of rain between 6 AM and 10 AM, with 6.72 inches reported in just two hours. Southern sections of Maryland's Eastern Shore received between 6 to 10 inches of rain, while unofficial reports of 13 to 20 inches were made from southern Delaware. Flash flooding caused nearly twelve million dollars damage in Accomack County, VA. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data) (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 19 August 1559...First recorded U.S. hurricane drove five Spanish ships ashore in Pensacola Harbor along the Florida coast. (Intellicast)
• 19 August 1788...A small but powerful hurricane inflicted great havoc upon forests along a narrow track from Delaware Bay northeastward across New Jersey along the coast to Maine. A similar storm track today would cause extreme disaster in the now populated area. (David Ludlum)
• 19 August 1939...Tuckerton, NJ received 14.81 inches of rain, which established a 24-hour maximum precipitation record for the Garden State. (NCDC)
• 19 August 1955...Rains from tropical Storm Diane fell on ground saturated from Tropical Storm Connie a week before. Westfield, MA recorded 18.15 inches in 24 hours, to set a statewide record for the Bay State, while the 24-hour precipitation record for the Nutmeg State was set at Burlington, CT with 12.77 inches. Extreme flooding occurred in all of New England. At one point, over 40% of Worcester, MA was underwater. Woonsocket, RI was hit hard as the Blackstone River, normally only 70 feet wide, swelled to over 1.5 miles in width. Eighty-two people died and damage topped $800,000,000. (Intellicast)
• 19 August 1960...The heaviest recorded 24-hour precipitation accumulation to date for the Arctic drenched Mould Bay, Northwest Territories with 1.88 inches of rain. (The Weather Doctor)
• 19-20 August 1969...'Never say die' Camille, an exceptionally strong hurricane that had weakened to a tropical depression as it drifted slowly across the mid-Atlantic states, let loose a cloudburst in Virginia resulting in flash floods and landslides that killed 151 persons and caused 140 million dollars damage. Massies Hill in Nelson County, Virginia received an estimated 27 inches of rain in 24 hours. This amount is an unofficial record for the state, while the official 24-hour maximum precipitation record is 14.28 inches at Williamsburg on 16 September 1999. It was said to rain so hard that birds drowned while perched on tree branches. The James and York River basins in Virginia were especially hard hit. (Intellicast) (David Ludlum) (NCDC) (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 19 August 1989...Early morning thunderstorms deluged southeastern Delaware with six to ten inches of rain in four to six hours, with local reports of 13 to 20 inches of rain. Twenty-six major roads were closed or damaged, and fourteen bridges were washed out. Flooding caused nearly four million dollars damage to local businesses. (Storm Data) (The National Weather Summary)
• 19 August 1991...Hurricane Bob slammed into New England with 90 mph sustained winds and gusts of 125 mph (at Block Island, RI) and 105 mph (at Newport, RI). It made landfall first at Newport, RI and then final US landfall as a tropical storm at Rockland, ME. A storm surge of 15 feet occurred in Upper Buzzards Bay. Portland, ME had a 24-hour record rainfall of 7.83 inches. Total damage exceeded $1.5 billion dollars and 17 people were killed. This was the worst Hurricane in the Northeast since Donna in 1960. (Intellicast) (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)

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Prepared by AMS WES Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
ã Copyright, 2007, The American Meteorological Society.