Polish president dies in plane crash during heavy fog
Always obey your air traffic controllers. That's the cardinal rule of of aviation, and one apparently violated by the pilot of the aircraft carrying the Polish president and dozens of the country's top political and military leaders, which crashed in heavy fog this morning near Smolensk, Russia. All 96 people aboard perished. According to the New York Times, air traffic controllers had recommended the president's jet land in nearby Minsk because of bad visibility, but the crew decided to land anyway. The Polish news channel TVN24 reported that moments before the crash, air traffic controllers had refused a Russian military aircraft permission to land, but that they could not refuse permission to the Polish plane. Russian media reported that the airplane's crew made several attempts to land before a wing hit the treetops and the plane crashed about half a mile from the runway.
Figure 1. a large patch of fog covers the Russian city of Smolensk and regions to the east in this visible light image captured by NASA's Terra satellite between 08:00 - 11:15 UTC Saturday, April 10, 2010. Image credit: NASA MODIS Rapid Response System, visualized using Google Earth.
At 10 am local time, near the time of the crash, the Smolensk airport reported heavy fog with visibility 0.5 km (3/10 of a mile). As seen in the satellite image taken near this time (Figure 1), a large bank of fog covered Smolensk and neighboring regions of Russia and Belarus.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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The Bermuda High is not strong right now. It's still weaker than normal. The NAO is positive because of a strong Icelandic Low during the past week, but pressures are still low across most of the Atlantic and the A/B High is certainly not stronger than normal.
MSLP Anomalies for the last 30 days:
MSLP Anomalies for the last 7 days:
That's one of the reasons I asked about getting stuck in a pattern. I have been hearing about the potentially negative NAO coming up. And like Keeper's graphics showing a ridge over the eastern U.S. Not a pattern we would want to get stuck in.
It's an oscillation in the difference of sea-level pressures between Tahiti and Darwin. It is a good atmospheric indicator of what the ENSO is doing, and how the atmosphere is behaving over the equatorial pacific.
An El Nino features negative values of the SOI, which means pressures are lower around Tahiti in the central-eastern Pacific, and pressures are higher near Darwin in Australia and the western Pacific.
The picture Levi posted tells the story, here's a radar loop I have saved
No need to be sorry, I'm just helping to clarify things.
is it typical for radar stations to survive whole hurricanes?
Still not dropping at all
the movement of the cyclones normally are from east to west that is why the strongest winds are in the east side, on the other hand when willma moved from west ocurrs the opposite
i think
My mind started wandering down this path too when I first read the news this morning. Always fun to play war games in your head over the first cup of coffee :) Never know where you might end up...
I am not sure how to answer that except perhaps that I have landfall radar loops of quite a few hurricanes and cannot recall any stations dropping of line. Pat has me hooked on relative velocity, so I've started saving them also
the animation of hotspots during el Niño
1/3/98-6/6/98
look that el Niño said bye quickly in may
I don't know how typical it is for radars to survive. Off the top of my head I can think of 2 that didn't survive. Rita knocked out the Lake Charles radar when she went over it. But they were able to get it back on line after she had moved away some. And probably no surprise Andrew destroyed the radar I'm assuming out of Miami.
Link
several thousand pounds of other supplies...mostly medical related stuff...
I find this very interesting, as the ENSO still continues to show Neutral in a few weeks. I think its pretty likely we'll see a substantial dropoff in El Nino very soon, because years its gotten the El Nino / La Nina generally right in terms of whether or not its going to be an El Nino or a La Nina year.
There's a name for that.
It's in my public administration organization vocabulary which is inside the notebooks I'd better start studying for a final exam in two weeks.
Challenger redux.
Link
Something other than reason going on there.
Not for a bit of time though.
Rescuers painstakingly pulled bodies from the thick mound of dirt and debris in the Niteroi shantytown of Morro do Bumba late Friday and Saturday, bringing the death toll to 223.
Another 200 people were feared to have been buried alive in the slum, itself precariously perched atop a garbage dump in this city just east of Rio de Janeiro.
Some 60 hours after the heaviest rains in half a century unleashed floods and mudslides, rescue workers still were far from having finished the work of recovering bodies from beneath tonnes of rocks, rubble and earth.
The floods tore through the metropolitan area's precarious hillside slums, or favelas.
Niteroi was hardest hit, with at least 141 dead, according to the civil defense authorities. Across the bay, another 63 were found in Rio de Janeiro.
The heavy rain forced some 5 0,000 people to leave their homes, officials said, either because their homes were damaged or because they were ordered to leave due to fear of fresh landslides.
Geologist Marcelo Motta, who participated in an investigation of the mudslide, told Globo News television that two cracks in the rocky soil made the mound move and pushed down the hill a huge amount of trash saturated with water that had trapped methane gas. MORE....
Rainfall accumulation 0-180h
Notice the little "red ball" near the Northern Leewards indicating over 400mm of rain (16")! I doubt such amounts will be recored, but the trend is for a much wetter pattern, otherwise welcomed rain...
Cool, thanks for posting Paul.
It's already going back down. It will take a couple days to reflect in the 30-day moving average.
In looking at recent computer model runs and the current pattern developing across Florida, it seems we're entering a transition into possibly the rainy season as moisture begins to work in from the east across the area and humidity begins to rise. With a disturbance coming across the Gulf of Mexico tonight, there will be scattered showers and storms throughout the day tomorrow over Florida, especially South-Central Florida. After this, a pretty persistent and strong easterly flow develops over Florida bringing in daily shower and even storm chances starting overnight and the morning across eastern portions and spreading inland and in the western portions in the afternoon. This weather pattern typically heralds the imminent arrival of the rainy season to Florida.
Yup's looks that way.
Daily's:
-----------------------------------------
28-Mar-2010 1009.89 1006.40 -2.97 -11.03 -12.13
29-Mar-2010 1011.51 1006.20 5.74 -11.52 -12.23
30-Mar-2010 1012.15 1006.40 7.85 -11.41 -12.17
31-Mar-2010 1011.69 1005.95 7.80 -10.93 -12.23
1-Apr-2010 1011.05 1006.55 15.21 -10.01 -12.19
2-Apr-2010 1012.24 1006.65 23.07 -8.39 -12.03
3-Apr-2010 1013.20 1007.65 22.78 -6.87 -11.83
4-Apr-2010 1013.58 1007.60 25.88 -4.83 -11.70
5-Apr-2010 1013.01 1006.85 27.18 -2.82 -11.52
6-Apr-2010 1013.40 1007.05 28.55 -1.10 -11.17
7-Apr-2010 1013.93 1008.40 22.64 0.17 -10.85
8-Apr-2010 1013.90 1009.80 12.33 1.07 -10.60
9-Apr-2010 1012.91 1009.70 5.91 1.82 -10.28
Atloop
taking his spot on The Weather
replacement
Lyons
Umhum.
T'anks god the pilots I have ridden with so far did not make the choice this pilot did. I'll be happy to ride a bus from Moscow (or wait for weather on this coast)
Best ride:
Float plane out of Loughbourough Inlet went north and ground his way up through a pass to Bute (this plane augered in a week or so later)
Worst ride:
London Luten coming in from Istanbul. Rough air and I'm looking at the tarmac - wheels down
Wham! the boys up front put the hammer down and pulled out (Boing 737 so STOAL) Pilot comes on the intercom and says calmly:
"We are going to fly around for a while and when things calm down we will get you to the Gate"
Next time we came in the brakes were on before we touched down.
I like that in an aircrew
Although I'm just checking in to check radars
and see what or when the rain will be coming....
Taco :0)
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