Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog

Super Bowl Game weather:

http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=zmw:85305.1.99999

Link

Later I found out roof is closed so weather won't matter...

MichaelSTL,

Your last statement about drier than normal south of I80/Tahoe, I thought it has been very wet through out California, LA basin, San Diego, go a little east, AZ, NM...

My overall point of my initial post was to point out there is a lot of coldness going on.

And the question about this being caused by la nina, ok, sure, let's say it is...what caused la nina...? since is a cooling of the equatorial waters of the Pacific...folds into my initial post about the sun being quiet (less output=more cold)

hi

Strong quake in Africa kills at least 40: officials, hospitals
03/02/2008



KIGALI (AFP) - A strong earthquake shook the African Great Lakes region on Sunday, killing at least 34 people in Rwanda and six in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to officials and hospital sources.

Houses crumbled and deep cracks spread up the walls of buildings in the centre of Bukavu in DR Congo, near the epicentre of the quake which measured 6.0 on the open-ended Richter scale.

People ran out of churches packed for Sunday mass as the walls shook.

"According to the figures I have at the moment, 34 people are dead," said Rwandan local government minister Protais Musoni on Sunday afternoon.

The quake struck at 0735 GMT some 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the DR Congo town of Bukavu.

Across the border to the east, Radio Rwanda said 10 people were killed "straight away when a church collapsed" in the Rusizi district of Western Province and 13 others died in Rusizi and Nyamesheke districts.

Local authorities in the DR Congo said six people had died in the Sud-Kivu region, according to UN-sponsored Okapi radio.

Provincial health officer Manou Burole said 55 people had been wounded there.

Several dozen injured were admitted to the city's general hospital and at least 12 casualties to the Panzi hospital, medical sources said.

Radio Rwanda said 250 wounded were transported to various regional hospitals, and a witness in Rusizi district said public buses were used to transport the casualties.

Rwandan minister Musoni said that the provincial governor was on site and that the police and army were helping with rescue operations.

"Rescue operations are continuing to try to pull people out of the ruins of their houses," he said.

In the DR Congo town of Kabare, north of Bukavu, the walls of a church collapsed on the congregation during the mass, injuring 37, including five seriously, priest Leon Shamavu told AFP by telephone.

A first shock, which lasted around 15 seconds, was followed by two lesser aftershocks, residents of DR Congo and Rusizi said.

"People are panicking so much they're afraid to return home. They're afraid of being surprised by aftershocks and prefer to stay outside," a Rusizi resident told AFP.

The quake was also strongly felt in neighbouring Burundi, south of Rwanda, Francois Lukaya, a scientist at the Goma observatory in North Kivu told AFP.

All Burundian hydroelectric dams stopped, causing a half-hour power cut, a water authority official said.

The quake also shook the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, around 120 kilometres south of its epicentre.

"I felt a very strong shock shake my house. The walls shook really hard," a resident told AFP.

It was one of the "biggest earthquakes ever recorded in the Kivu region," Lukaya told AFP.

For anyone living in the New Orleans Metro I have a question. I heard that the MRGO is going to be dammed up. Is work progressing on this, and if it is, how close to done are they?

Tropical Cyclone Gene.....dry air intrusion broke down the core of the storm earlier but has since then rebuild back the northern (northeast to be specific) "eyewall".

MODIS TERRA high resolution image of the center of Gene at 2208 UTC 3 FEB 2008.
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/3172/eyeofgenemr5.png





12.5 km resolution quikscat

Gene looks alot like wilma appraching s fl.

Oh dang, Wilma was horrid, I Mean, every single Hurricane that i have been hit by were eaither near CAT-5 or CAT-5 (Floyd, Isabel, Wilma) Isabel was the scariest, because it was so watch, and it was so scary to see that it was maintaning CAT-5, I was so scared that it might ram into my house with 175 mph winds. Wilma being tied with Isabel, not only the fact that it was the strongest Atlantic hurricane to ever form in the Atlantic, it was like a 3 hour fly to were it was. I was scared that it going to hit us directly, (GFDL said this, oh boy scary)
Floyd bing the fact for no apparent reason, turned from hitting Florida, strait into me. (Yes i know why it turned, but this scared me into beyond scared.)

It has been a La Nina but indeed January was wet for most of California including LA.

Feb. isn't looking quite as wet but we'll see!

I think we need a more indepth Groundhog Oscilation report on April 1st.

Hope everybody had a great weekend.

Out here in Washington we call them Marmots.

Puerto Rico had a 5.0 quake this morning!

How are all our peeps down there?

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/prp0803501.php
(Sorry...the "Link" button is not functioning for me today. It's worth a cut and paste.)

Thanks, Dr. Masters.

Usually I say,
If the groundhog sees his shadow we'll have six more weeks of winter
if not, it's just another month and a half. Ha!

But ONE more week? That would be unprecedented here in Vermont.

Candlemas is not only a holiday that was observed in England,
it is still observed by several denominations today.
It was when a lot of people made their last batch of candles for the winter.
So they needed some idea of how hard to work that day! Ha!
I still hand-dip candles each year on Candlemas.
(A tradition we started while studying the American Revolution, home schooling.)
They make great Valentines or Easter gifts.

One more week? Can't wrap my mind around that. Nosirree.

magnitude9...

Do you have a celebration and call it Marmot Day?

Groundhog Oscillation, LMBO!!

{ { { Hope you're feeling better soon Storm! } } }

Take care. ♥

mobal...

Yeah, that is a rather, er, playful term, isn't it? LOL!

VERMONT: The New Connecticut

We would truly miss the sugar maples.
And with the level of unexplained bat deaths this year,
the mosquito population would explode.

EEK!

I want my sub-zeros back!!

Excellent point, MichaelSTL.
The current La Nina is still quite strong (certainly the strongest we've seen in years). It is also notable for the odd distrbution of SST anomalies, especially over the western half of the Pacific. That 1988 vs. 2008 map is very telling--the range of strong negative anomalies is actually quite staggering when one sees them over the entire basin. Because, as you mentioned, cold ENSO events (La Ninas) store heat in the deeper reaches of the ocean, the upswing of the thermodynamic pendulum has the potential to be extremely impressive (imagine those negative SST anomalies translating into positive anomalies of a similar magnitude over a similar area. Wow.) If we do get an El Nino of that magnitude, well, let's just say that it would be an interesting 18 months to come...

I'll have a new seasonal forecast up on Weather West at some point in the next 2 weeks, and it'll consider the influence of the ongoing La Nina regime...
Link