Extreme 111° heat hits Texas; floods kill 9 in Haiti
Another round of unprecedented April heat hit the U.S. yesterday, and this time it was Texas' turn to see large sections of the state with the hottest April temperatures in over a century of record keeping. Seven major airports in Texas set all-time April high temperatures yesterday:
Amarillo, TX: 99° (old April record 98° on 4/22/1989 and 4/22/1965)
Lubbock, TX: 101° (old April record 100° on 4/16/1925 and /22/1989)
Dalhart, TX: 96° (old April record 94° on 4/22/1989)
Borger, TX: 99° (tied April record set on 4/22/1965)
Midland, TX: 104° (old April record 101° on 4/21/1989)
Abilene, TX: 104° (old April record 102° on 4/16/1925)
Childress, TX: 106° (old April record 102° on three occasions, most recently on 4/3/2011)
According to wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt, both Texas and Oklahoma came within 2°F of their all-time April state high temperature record yesterday. Altus, Oklahoma hit 104°, falling 2° short of the April state record of 106° set at the Magnum Research Station in 1972. In the Texas Mesonet, it hit 111° at Knox City 3NW, which is just 2° short of the Texas April state record of 113° set at Catarina in 1984. According to Mr. Burt, What is amazing is that Knox City is in the north-central part of the state, not down in the Rio Grande region like Catarina. The 111° would probably be pretty close to whatever the all-time hottest temp for ANY month might be in that location (probably around 115°). On Sunday this week, Nevada just missed setting their April state high temperature record, when the mercury hit 105° in Laughlin (April state record: 106° in 1989.)
Figure 1. At least 36 of the roughly 400 major U.S. cities that maintain automated weather sensors at their local airports (8%) have set or tied all-time April high temperature records so far this month. The records set yesterday in Texas are not yet in the database, and are not included on this map. Image taken from our new Record Extremes page.
Earlier this week, all-time record April heat hit large portions of Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. At least 36 of the roughly 400 major U.S. cities that maintain automated weather sensors at their local airports (8%) have set or tied all-time April high temperature records so far this month; no all-time April cold records have been set. The U.S. has been on an extraordinary pace of setting high temperature records so far in 2012. During March 2012, an astonishing 32% of all the major airports in the U.S. set all-time March high temperature records. For the year-to-date, there have been 184 new all-time monthly high temperature records set at the major airports, and 6 all-time monthly low temperature records. Not surprisingly, the period January - March this year has been the warmest such period in the U.S. since record keeping began in 1895.
Figure 2. Total precipitable water (in mm) for this morning shows a surge of moisture moving westwards though the Caribbean. Precipitable water values in excess of 51 mm (2 inches, orange colors) are capable of generating heavy flooding rains. Image credit: University of Wisconsin CIMSS.
Heavy rains kill nine in Haiti
The rainy season has begun on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, where heavy rains that began on Monday have triggered mudslides and floods that killed nine people. Nearly 500,000 people are still homeless in Haiti from the January 2010 earthquake, making the country highly vulnerable to flooding disasters. Heavy flooding was also a problem this week in the neighboring Dominican Republic, where 11,000 people were evacuated; no deaths were reported there, however. Precipitation forecasts from the GFS model suggest that the worst is over for Hispaniola, with the axis of greatest moisture expected to move west of the island today. This surge of moisture will bring heavy rains to Jamaica, Cuba, the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, and South Florida during the remainder of the week.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Watched Secrets of the Sun last night, the sun's magnetic field switches about every 11 years. Why would this one be special from all the previous ones?
What did one tornado say to the other?
"Toto... I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
Wow, quite the tale of the school children! I couldn't imagine. Glad you posted this. Rare though they might be, they do hit that part of Florida. The more awareness the better.
That's what I think happened. Some comet with bacteria on it went in the ocean and some survived and thrived. Now here we are today.
They would still cut these down for firewood. They need alternative energy sources and a lot fewer people before they will quit stripping the environment.
Where did the life on the comet come from?
blog280comment273 Xyrus2000: Post links please. [emphasis mine]
Just based on your post, I would say at least some of the info is incorrect :
The sun doesn't really have any fixed poles. It has many poles and they move about quite frequently.
The poles on Earth are always moving as well. They don't change nearly as quickly as the sun, but they poles don't really stay fixed.
Pole reversals on Earth do happen but the take a long time to occur. They don't happen in the span of a year.
Also, even during a pole reversal sequence the Earth still has plenty of magnetic field. It's weakened to be sure, but it is still there, and it is more than enough to keep the planet adequately shielded.
And even if it went away entirely the Earth's relatively thick atmosphere would still provide protection.
[About the only modifier I would add is that if the magnetic field were to collapse completely for an extended period of time, atmospheric hydrogen (ionization-stripped out of water vapor) would be lost to space relatively quickly in terms of geological time, then the oxygen and nitrogen components would follow much more slowly.]
Yes, yes, but where did the life on the asteroid come from? Random fragments of amino acids (from an asteroid or wherever) joining together, replicating, then making something as complex as friggin DNA to replicate itself perpetually is a pretty profound idea worthy of intense scrutiny. How did this happen? Why haven't other asteroids hit the earth with a different scheme for life? Is life innate in the universe (like the laws of physics in our galaxy)? IE- is this an inevitable occurance on life supporting planets with enough time or is this unique to our planet? This is THE profound question IMO though I have my "religious" ideas.
This raises a few questions. Where did it come from? How did it get on the asteroid?
In my opinion life was created on earth due to a random sequence of events. Water was necessary to carry the formed amino acids and other building blocks of life. I like to think that this random sequencing has probably happened thousands of times in our galaxy. Bacterial life is probably abundant but intelligent life? I'd have to say it's extremely scarce at best. So many events must come together to allow life to thrive like it does here on the earth.
The secret service is out and about.
The governments of the world could cover up aliens.
You would never know a thing.
They would probably have secret monitoring systems on all people who knew about the programs related to extraterrestrial life and would probably also be authorized to use lethal force to prevent the dissemination of information.
there are so many places in the universe beyond where we know.
You never would know what is how may chances a random event would have.
An extremely rare event could still happen countless times if it gets enough chances.
(my religion aside)
That, I can't tell you. Probably sore random combination of amino acids and proteins in a collision. I don't know.
I want to be a meteorologist, not a microbiologist...
And in related news, sales of aluminum foil have skyrocketed, apparently in connection with the latest fashion trend only known as "tin foil hats".
Honestly tho... while it is good to contemplate the origins of life, without proof (EITHER WAY), what is the point?
Also, bear in mind that while DNA (or RNA) is required for life as we know it, who is to say there are not alternative methods of genetic storage? Or even genetic metabolism? Sulfur-based or Silicon-based metabolism, for example, instead of carbon-based. Look at the variety of what we know as "life" around us... who is to say that in a different environment, such as an ammonia atmosphere, an equally complex biosphere could form?
Is that the blob of the day?
Hey, it's the best I could come up with at the moment. I am now contemplating where life came from. Right now I am looking at a bunch of jets flying over my house. I think they are getting ready for the air show. I really hate those things. Anyone else in Broward hearing them? They are really flying low.
The truth is.........nobody is allowed and will ever know.....ever, until your dead, when you cross into the next dimension, and we go there.....is a mystery that no one knows either. It's as if all life forms are on planet earth, think about it, from people to bacteria all on one planet. We may just be the first living things in the universe and it's up to us to move out into the cosmos to spread life. If we don't, then the whole process starts over, until that intelligent species succeeds.
Yep, there is a little shear in the area. But it still could drop a lot of rain over the Bahamas.
A cookie to the first person who writes "a copious amount of rain"
Just got tested for appendicitis, Having some major stomach issues this week, So what we got there?
* I do distinguish between good and bad fundamentalism: a bad version doesn't make any sense, sometimes especially doesn't make any sense, even if one were to accept all of its tenets.
Apr. 26, 2012 - 16:24 UTC
Sorry, you were second
From your description, I would assume some serious pain?
LOL. It's still early. This will be good practice for us to look up our old maps.
My theory: Alien visitors had lunch on a barren earth, and didn't clean up their mess. All life on earth originated from a moldy alien tuna fish sandwich.
The sun reversing poles doesn't have too much affect on us (aside from massive solar flares), but if the Earth were to reverse poles in your lifetime, it would not be too fun.
Strange Bacteria Thriving Two Miles Underground
Strange Bacteria Thriving Two Miles Underground
A Princeton-led research group has discovered an isolated community of bacteria nearly two miles underground that derives all of its energy from the decay of radioactive rocks rather than from sunlight. As per members of the team, the finding suggests life might exist in similarly extreme conditions even on other worlds.
The self-sustaining bacterial community, which thrives in nutrient-rich groundwater found near a South African gold mine, has been isolated from the Earth's surface for several million years. It represents the first group of microbes known to depend exclusively on geologically produced hydrogen and sulfur compounds for nourishment. The extreme conditions under which the bacteria live bear a resemblance to those of early Earth, potentially offering insights into the nature of organisms that lived long before our planet had an oxygen atmosphere.
The scientists, who hail from nine collaborating institutions, had to burrow 2.8 kilometers beneath our world's surface to find these unusual microbes, leading the researchers to their speculations that life could exist in similar circumstances elsewhere in the solar system.
"What really gets my juices flowing is the possibility of life below the surface of Mars," said Tullis Onstott, a Princeton University professor of geosciences and leader of the research team. "These bacteria have been cut off from the surface of the Earth for a number of millions of years, but have thrived in conditions most organisms would consider to be inhospitable to life. Could these bacterial communities sustain themselves no matter what happened on the surface? If so, it raises the possibility that organisms could survive even on planets whose surfaces have long since become lifeless."
Onstott's team published its results in the Oct. 20 issue of the journal Science. The research group includes first author Li-Hung Lin, who performed a number of of the analyses as a doctoral student at Princeton and then as a postdoctoral researcher at the Carnegie Institution.
"These bacteria are truly unique, in the purest sense of the word," said Lin, now at National Taiwan University. "We know how isolated the bacteria have been because analyses of the water that they live in showed that it's very old and hasn't been diluted by surface water. In addition, we observed that the hydrocarbons in the environment did not come from living organisms, as is usual, and that the source of the hydrogen needed for their respiration comes from the decomposition of water by radioactive decay of uranium, thorium and potassium".
Because the groundwater the team sampled to find the bacteria comes from several different sources, it remains difficult to determine specifically how long the bacteria have been isolated. The team estimates the time frame to be somewhere between three and 25 million years, implying that living things are even more adaptable than once thought.
"We know surprisingly little about the origin, evolution and limits for life on Earth," said biogeochemist Lisa Pratt, who led Indiana University Bloomington's contribution to the project. "Researchers are just beginning to study the diverse organisms living in the deepest parts of the ocean, and the rocky crust on Earth is virtually unexplored at depths more than half a kilometer below the surface. The organisms we describe in this paper live in a completely different world than the one we know at the surface".
That subterranean world, Onstott said, is a lightless pool of hot, pressurized salt water that stinks of sulfur and noxious gases humans would find unbreathable. But the newly discovered bacteria, which are distantly correlation to the Firmicutes division of microbes that exist near undersea hydrothermal vents, flourish there.
"The radiation allows for the production of lots of sulfur compounds that these bacteria can use as a high-energy source of food," Onstott said. "For them, it's like eating potato chips."
But the arrival of the research team brought one substance into the underground world that, though vital to human survival, proved fatal to the microbes -- air from the surface.
"These critters seems to have a real problem with being exposed to oxygen," Onstott said. "We can't seem to keep them alive after we sample them. But because this environment is so much like the early Earth, it gives us a handle on what kind of creatures might have existed before we had an oxygen atmosphere".
Onstott said that a number of hundreds of millions of years ago, some of the first bacteria on the planet may have thrived in similar conditions, and that the newly discovered microbes could shed light on research into the origins of life on Earth.
"These bacteria are probably close to the base of the tree for the bacterial domain of life," he said. "They might be genealogically quite ancient. To find out, we will need to compare them to other organisms such as Firmicutes and other such heat-loving creatures from deep sea vents or hot springs."
The research team is building a small laboratory 3.8 kilometers beneath the surface in the Witwatersrand region of South Africa to conduct further study of the newly discovered ecosystem, said Onstott, who hopes the findings will be of use when future space probes are sent to seek life on other planets.
"A big question for me is, how do these creatures sustain themselves?" Onstott said. "Has this one strain of bacteria evolved to possess all the characteristics it needs to survive on its own, or are they working with other species of bacteria? I'm sure they will have more surprises for us, and they may show us one day how and where to look for microbes elsewhere".
Other authors of this work include Johanna Lipmann-Pipke of GeoForschungsZentrum, Potsdam, Gera number of; Erik Boice of Indiana University; Barbara Sherwood Lollar of the University of Toronto; Eoin L. Brodie, Terry C. Hazen, Gary L. Andersen and Todd Z. DeSantis of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif.; Duane P. Moser of the Desert Research Institute, Las Vegas; and Dave Kershaw of the Mponeng Mine, Anglo Gold, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Pratt and Onstott have collaborated for years as part of the Indiana-Princeton-Tennessee Astrobiology Institute (IPTAI), a NASA-funded research center focused on designing instruments and probes for life detection in rocks and deep groundwater on Earth during planning for subsurface exploration of Mars. IPTAI's recommendations to NASA will draw on findings discussed in the Science report.
Posted by: Janet Source
I notice that Grothar has been around a lot last two days.
I wonder if there is a Connection.... or a Presence, even.
I'm always here.
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