Maleny Weather

Oil seems elusive for skimmers and clean up workers along the Gulf of Mexico. It has been just over 10 days since BP successfully capped the well on July 15th, stopping the flow of oil for the first time in 3 months. It has been just days after a fading Tropical Storm Bonnie passed directly over the site of the oil spill. Instead up churning up more oil and pushing it onshore, it is hard to find.
Before the well was capped, 800 skimmers were collecting an average of 85,000 barrels of oil each day. Since then, the take has been 56 barrels.
The latest information from the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) indicated only seven sizeable patches of surface oil, all light sheen.
Instead of the worse case scenario, is it possible that nature healed itself faster than we ever expected? Decades after the Exxon Valdez, oil can still be found under rocks on the shore, but this is a different situation. The Gulf of Mexico is semi-tropical. Frequent storms, high sun angle, and warm water temperatures between 85F and 90F all contribute to the natural breakdown of oil.

Residents of Papua New Guinea’s sinking Carteret Islands are known as the world’s first climate change refugees but international attention has not translated into relief from their plight.
A relocation process started several years ago but only a handful of islanders have moved to nearby Bougainville.
They are pleading for help to save their relatives from their sinking island homes.
The isolated islands are slowly disappearing under the Pacific Ocean, with rising water inundating crops and spoiling water supplies.

The season’s first tropical storm, named Agatha, has killed 12 people in Guatemala.

Drenching rain, mudslides and floods also left 11 people missing and forced 3,000 to flee their homes.

The fatalities included four children who were buried alive when a mudslide crushed their home in San Jose Pinula, 17 kilometres east of the capital, the National Disaster Agency said.

Four other people were also killed by a mudslide inside their home on Saturday (local time) as the storm front’s outer fringes lashed western Guatemala with rainfall which the US National Weather Service has estimated could total as much as 50-75 centimetres in some areas.

Agatha is also drenching neighbouring El Salvador, where one death has been reported so far by authorities.

Hundreds of Guatemalans were in shelters on Friday (local time) after a powerful eruption at the southern Pacaya volcano killed two people, left three missing and thousands homeless.

On 5^th September 1883 the people of Hawaii were amazed to see their sun turned green with rings of pink, red, orange-rose and brown. This phenomenon was observed and accurately recorded at the time by Sereno Bishop of Honolulu and is now known as Bishop’s Ring.

Ten days earlier and more than a thousand miles away a small island in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra blew itself apart with the loudest bang on earth. The blast was heard across 4500 kilometres, and even in London instruments registered the concussion and continued to do so up to nine days later, when the echoes of the report were making their seventh circuit of the world!

A sea wave 100 metres high swept aside lighthouses like matchsticks, left a Dutch warship three kilometres up a Sumatran valley and drowning over 36,000 people

This was Krakatau.  The explosion pushed a gigantic column of smoke and dust through the ceiling of the troposphere up to a height of 50 kilometres.

Something that made Krakatoa different from other major events in the 19th century was the introduction of the transoceanic telegraph cables. The news of Lincoln’s assassination less than 20 years earlier had taken nearly two weeks to reach Europe, as it had to be carried by ship. But when Krakatoa erupted, a telegraph station at Batavia (present day Jakarta, Indonesia) was able to send the news to Singapore. Dispatches were relayed quickly and literally within hour’s newspaper readers in London, Paris, Boston, and New York were being informed of the colossal events in the distant Sunda Straits.

Climatologists started to study the effect of volcanic dust in the atmosphere using Krakatoa as the baseline and today we have the International Airways Volcano Watch (IAVW) system for the safety of air transport following volcano eruptions.

Since volcanic ash is composed of very abrasive silica materials, it can damage the airframe and flight surfaces, clog different systems, abrade cockpit windows and flame-out jet engines constituting a serious safety hazard. Volcanic ash can also have a serious effect on aerodromes located downwind of a volcanic ash plume since it contaminates runways, ground equipment and aircraft parked or taxiing around the aerodrome.

The IAVW system is designed to detect and track the movement of volcanic ash in the atmosphere and to warn aircraft in flight about this hazard. There are nine Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres responsible for the provision of information related to areas affected by volcanic ash and its future movement. The centres are located at Anchorage, Buenos Aires, Darwin, London, Montreal, Tokyo, Toulouse, Washington and Wellington.

Deep underground, Vulcan, the blacksmith to the gods, keeps his forge going constantly building up enough heat and pressure in readiness for the time to  ‘blow its top’ and throw debris and dust into the atmosphere

The influence of meteorological and climate conditions in the transmission patterns of influenza and its possible seasonality are as yet not adequately understood and are the subject of ongoing research.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) works on aspects of weather, climate and health with the World Health Organization (WHO). While there are some indications that influenza epidemics may be associated with weather conditions, non-climatic factors, including virus type, existing levels of immunity in the population and human behaviour are generally considered to be more closely related to epidemics.

2nd

At least 20 people have been killed in central Peru after heavy rains sparked a mudslide that engulfed a small village. The mudslide struck the village in the Huanuco region. At least another 25 people are reportedly missing. At least 120 homes had been damaged or destroyed. The deadly mudslide was the second in as many days in Peru. On Thursday, five people were killed in the town of Cancejos.

4th

Scotland’s ski resorts are enjoying one of their busiest Easter seasons on record and – weather permitting – some centres could stay open into May.

7th

Rains began pelting Rio de Janeiro again early Wednesday, hours after the heaviest deluge on record sent killer mudslides cascading down hillsides and turned streets into raging torrents in Brazil’s second-biggest city. Authorities feared the added water could dislodge more saturated ground and raise the death toll from 95 in Rio and the neighbouring city of Niteroi. Most of the deaths came when landslides smashed over shacks in slums built precariously on steep slopes. Rio ground to a near halt as Mayor Eduardo Paes urged workers to stay home and ordered all schools closed. Most businesses were closed. 28cm of rain drenched Rio in less than 24 hours on the 6th, and the forecast called for more rain through the weekend, though it was expected to lessen.