Scientists target ocean level rise in order to save many years of historical evidence

Prehistoric spend mounds available on a number of Florida's most pristine beaches are vulnerable to washing away because the ocean level increases, wiping away 1000's of many years of historical evidence.

"The biggest risk of these ancient treasure troves of knowledge is ocean level rise," stated Shawn Cruz, a senior research connect using the Center for Sea-Atmospheric Conjecture Studies at Florida Condition College.

But some pot project between Cruz and also the National Park Services are drawing focus on the issue to hopefully minimize the outcome around the state's cultural sites.

Cruz and Margo Schwadron, an archaeologist using the National Park Service, have launched into a task to look at past and future alterations in climate and just how we are able to adjust to individuals changes in order to save regions of shoreline and therefore preserve cultural and ancient evidence.

"We are type of the pioneers in searching in the cultural focus of the problem," Cruz stated, observing that many weather and sea experts are worried about city infrastructure for seaside areas.

To accomplish the work, the nation's Park Service granted Cruz a $30,000 grant. With this money, Cruz and former Florida Condition College undergraduate Marcus Manley spent hrs producing modern, colonial and paleo weather data.

The main focus of the initial scientific studies are the Canaveral National Seashore and Everglades National Park, which have prehistoric spend mounds, about 50 ft to 70 ft high. Scientists believe these spend mounds offered as fundamentals for structures and pay outs and then offered as navigational landmarks throughout European search for the location.

Modern temperature and storm system information was readily available to scientists. But, to visit 100s after which 1000's of in the past required a rather different approach.

Log books from old The spanish language forts in addition to ships that entered the Atlantic needed to be examined to obtain the missing information.

The end result would be a comprehensive data looking for the location, so detailed that modern era conditions are available these days on an hourly basis.

Cruz and Schwadron are attempting to secure more funding to carry on the work they do, but for the time being, they're making their data set open to everyone along with other scientists hoping raising awareness concerning the unpredicted results of ocean level rise.

The Nation's Park Service has additionally released a sales brochure on global warming and also the impact that ocean level rise might have around the spend mounds available at Cape Canaveral.

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2012 was one of the 10 warmest years on record globally

August 6, 2013

The 2012 State of the Climate report is available online.

(Credit: NOAA)

Worldwide, 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record according to the 2012 State of the Climate report released online today by the American Meteorological Society (AMS). The peer-reviewed report, with scientists from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., serving as lead editors, was compiled by 384 scientists from 52 countries (highlights, full report). It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events, and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments on land, sea, ice, and sky. 

“Many of the events that made 2012 such an interesting year are part of the long-term trends we see in a changing and varying climate — carbon levels are climbing, sea levels are rising, Arctic sea ice is melting, and our planet as a whole is becoming a warmer place," said Acting NOAA Administrator Kathryn D. Sullivan, Ph.D. “This annual report is well-researched, well-respected, and well-used; it is a superb example of the timely, actionable climate information that people need from NOAA to help prepare for extremes in our ever-changing environment."

Conditions in the Arctic were a major story of 2012, with the region experiencing unprecedented change and breaking several records. Sea ice shrank to its smallest “summer minimum” extent since satellite records began 34 years ago. In addition, more than 97 percent of the Greenland ice sheet showed some form of melt during the summer, four times greater than the 1981–2010 average melt extent.

Temperature in 2012 compared to the 1981-2010 average. Credit: NOAA Climate.gov, based on NCDC data. See more.

The report used dozens of climate indicators to track and identify changes and overall trends to the global climate system. These indicators include greenhouse gas concentrations, temperature of the lower and upper atmosphere, cloud cover, sea surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean salinity, sea ice extent and snow cover. Each indicator includes thousands of measurements from multiple independent datasets.

Highlights:

Warm temperature trends continue near Earth’s surface: Four major independent datasets show 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record, ranking either 8th or 9th, depending upon the dataset used. The United States and Argentina had their warmest year on record. La Niña dissipates into neutral conditions:  A weak La Niña dissipated during spring 2012 and, for the first time in several years, neither El Niño nor La Niña, which can dominate regional weather and climate conditions around the globe, prevailed for the majority of the year.  The Arctic continues to warm; sea ice extent reaches record low: The Arctic continued to warm at about twice the rate compared with lower latitudes. Minimum Arctic sea ice extent in September and Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent in June each reached new record lows. Arctic sea ice minimum extent (1.32 million square miles, September 16) was the lowest of the satellite era. This is 18 percent lower than the previous record low extent of 1.61 million square miles that occurred in 2007 and 54 percent lower than the record high minimum ice extent of 2.90 million square miles that occurred in 1980. The temperature of permafrost, or permanently frozen land, reached record-high values in northernmost Alaska. A new melt extent record occurred July 11–12 on the Greenland ice sheet when 97 percent of the ice sheet showed some form of melt, four times greater than the average melt this time of year. Antarctica sea ice extent reaches record high: The Antarctic maximum sea ice extent reached a record high of 7.51 million square miles on September 26. This is 0.5 percent higher than the previous record high extent of 7.47 million square miles that occurred in 2006 and seven percent higher than the record low maximum sea ice extent of 6.96 million square miles that occurred in 1986. Sea surface temperatures increase: Four independent datasets indicate that the globally averaged sea surface temperature for 2012 was among the 11 warmest on record.  After a 30-year period from 1970 to 1999 of rising global sea surface temperatures, the period 2000–2012 exhibited little trend. Part of this difference is linked to the prevalence of La Niña-like conditions during the 21st century, which typically lead to lower global sea surface temperatures. Ocean heat content remains near record levels: Heat content in the upper 2,300 feet, or a little less than one-half mile, of the ocean remained near record high levels in 2012. Overall increases from 2011 to 2012 occurred between depths of 2,300 to 6,600 feet and even in the deep ocean. Sea level reaches record high: Following sharp decreases in global sea level in the first half of 2011 that were linked to the effects of La Niña, sea levels rebounded to reach record highs in 2012. Globally, sea level has been increasing at an average rate of 3.2 ± 0.4 mm per year over the past two decades.

Sea ice concentration reached a new record low in mid-September 2012. Credit: NOAA Climate.gov, based on NSIDC data. See more. 

Ocean salinity trends continue: Continuing a trend that began in 2004, oceans were saltier than average in areas of high evaporation, including the central tropical North Pacific, and fresher than average in areas of high precipitation, including the north central Indian Ocean, suggesting that precipitation is increasing in already rainy areas and evaporation is intensifying in drier locations. Tropical cyclones near average: Global tropical cyclone activity during 2012 was near average, with a total of 84 storms, compared with the 1981–2010 average of 89. Similar to 2010 and 2011, the North Atlantic was the only hurricane basin that experienced above-normal activity. Greenhouse gases climb: Major greenhouse gas concentrations, including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, continued to rise during 2012. Following a slight decline in manmade emissions associated with the global economic downturn, global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production reached a record high in 2011 of 9.5 ± 0.5 petagrams (1,000,000,000,000,000 grams) of carbon , and a new record of 9.7 ± 0.5 petagrams of carbon  is estimated for 2012. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased by 2.1 ppm in 2012, reaching a global average of 392.6 ppm for the year. In spring 2012, for the first time, the atmospheric CO2concentration exceeded 400 ppm at several Arctic observational sites. Cool temperature trends continue in Earth’s lower stratosphere: The average lower stratospheric temperature, about six to ten miles above the Earth’s surface, for 2012 was record to near-record cold, depending on the dataset. Increasing greenhouse gases and decline of stratospheric ozone tend to cool the stratosphere while warming the planet near-surface layers.

The 2012 State of the Climate report is peer-reviewed and published annually as a special supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. This year marks the 23rd edition of the report, which is part of the suite of climate services NOAA provides to government, the business sector, academia, and the public to support informed decision-making. The full report can be viewed online.

NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Join us on Facebook, Twitter and our other social media channels.

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After 10 years of service, GOES-12 satellite retires

August 19, 2013

GOES-12 captured this visible image of Hurricane Katrina on August 28, 2005, at 11:45 a.m. (EDT). At that time, the storm was at Category 5 strength and projected to impact New Orleans.

High resolution (Credit: NOAA)

GOES-12 has seen it all, from Hurricane Katrina that hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, to the Christmas blizzard that crippled the Central United States in 2009. It even traveled south of the equator to provide coverage for South America starting in 2010. Now, after more than 10 years of stellar service, NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-12 spacecraft is being retired.

Launched on July 23, 2001, the satellite lasted well beyond its original operational design life of two years for on-orbit storage and five years of actual operations to support forecasters and scientists in NOAA’s National Weather Service.

“GOES-12 gave the Western Hemisphere many years of reliable data as the operational eastern GOES for accurate forecasts, from small storms to those of historic proportions,” said Mary Kicza, assistant administrator for NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service.

Built by Space Systems/Loral, GOES-12 became operational April 1, 2003 as the GOES-East satellite, monitoring weather across the U.S. East Coast and part of the Atlantic Ocean. On May 10, 2010, when GOES-12 was no longer able to be maintained to meet the requirements of the National Weather Service, it was shifted to a new position, where it provided coverage of weather conditions affecting South America, including volcanic ash clouds, wildfires, and drought.

When NOAA decommissions a geostationary satellite like GOES-12, it is boosted further into orbit, the remaining fuel is expended, the battery is disabled and the transmitters are turned off. These maneuvers reduce the chances the satellite will collide with other operational spacecraft. Additionally, decommissioning lowers the risk of orbital debris and stops the satellite from transmitting any signals that could interfere with any current or future spacecraft.

NOAA continues to operate GOES-13, which serves as the GOES East satellite for the United States and GOES-15, which is the GOES West satellite - both hovering 22,300 miles above the equator. NOAA also has an orbital backup geostationary satellite, GOES-14, which can be activated if any of the operational satellites experience trouble.

Kicza added: “The NOAA-NASA partnership is making steady progress toward developing and launching the more advanced GOES-R satellite series to position us into the future.”

GOES-R is expected to more than double the clarity of today’s GOES imagery and provide more atmospheric observations than current capabilities with more frequent images.

On January 29, 2010, GOES-12 captured a powerful storm developing in the U.S. mid-west. In the coming days, two blizzards hit the East Coast resulting in historic snowfall totals.

High resolution (Credit: NOAA)

Data from the GOES-R instruments will be used to create many different products that will help NOAA meteorologists and other users monitor the atmosphere, land, ocean and the sun. GOES-R will also carry a new Geostationary Lightning Mapper that will provide for the first time a continuous surveillance of total lightning activity throughout the Americas and adjacent oceans.

In addition to GOES, NOAA also operates the polar operational environmental satellite (POES) program satellites, the Defense Meteorological Satellites Program series satellites and the Suomi NPP spacecraft.

NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Join us on Facebook, Twitter and our other social media channels.

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This year's Harvest Moon rises Sept. 29

NASA/Sean Smith

A full moon captured July 18, 2008.

NASA/Sean Smith

A full moon captured July 18, 2008.

If you've ever wondered what, exactly, a harvest moon looks like, poke your head outside Saturday. That's when this year's harvest moon will rise.

The harvest moon is the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox,

which this year was on Sept. 22.

It's different from the other full moons because it rises at roughly the same time for several nights running, giving more light.

"In the days before tractors with headlights, having moonlight to work by was crucial to getting the harvest in quickly before rain caused it to rot," says Alan MacRobert, an editor at Sky &Telescope magazine.

The harvest moon will rise this year at 11:19 p.m. ET.

On average, the moon rises 50 minutes later each day than it did the day before. However, at this time of year, because of the angle of the moon as it orbits Earth, "the moon is rising at roughly the same time it rose the night before," says Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.

So for about three days in a row, the full moon is coming up just after the sun sets.

"This brings a great deal of light into the early evening sky, which was important for the people harvesting because it extended the period of useful work time they could work in the fields," Krupp says.

The moon may look bigger and seem closer, but it's not, says David DeVorkin, a senior curator at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Generally, photos of harvest moons are taken with telephoto lenses, distorting the size. The harvest moon can appear more reddish, though, because of coloration caused by dust in the atmosphere, but it depends on where you are.

The change in the time of moonrise "has to do with the angle along which the moon is traveling in its orbit," Krupp says. At the fall equinox, "the angle is very shallow, so it doesn't go so far below the horizon and as a result comes up again at about the same time."

The harvest moon isn't the only one to have a name, though few are remembered now. The new moon after the harvest moon was typically called Hunter's moon, because it aided hunters stalking night game as fall deepened.

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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This Year's Tornadoes Some of the Worst

This is the second in a series of articles that seek to quantify just how bad this year's tornadoes were in a historical context. It wasn't just media hype!

In a previous article I wrote that the late April tornado outbreak was so severe that it merited the special name "Superoutbreak 2011." That's just the second time that a tornado outbreak has earned that title, the first being on April 3-4, 1974.

This article focuses on three of the individual tornadoes from the spring of 2011 that rank among the worst on record in the United States. Two of them came on April 27 during that Superoutbreak 2011: an EF4 tornado that hit Tuscaloosa and Birmingham AL along an 80-mile path, and an EF5 tornado that hit Phil Campbell and Hackleburg AL along a path that was over 106 miles long and continued into Tennessee. The third was an EF5 tornado that hit Joplin Missouri on May 22.

These were the three deadliest tornadoes in the United States since 1957, when radars began to be widely used for storm detection in the United States. At that time the National Weather Service was called the Weather Bureau, and the radars did not have any Doppler wind information. The Joplin tornado caused at least 159 deaths. The Hackleburg tornado killed at least 72, and the Tuscaloosa tornado killed at least 64. The Joplin tornado was the deadliest since a tornado hit Woodward, Oklahoma in 1947.The table below lists the 20 deadliest tornadoes on record in the United States. Joplin stands as the only tornado on the list since 1953, the year that the Weather Bureau began to issue tornado forecasts. The worst was the Tri-State (MO, IL, IN) tornado on March 18, 1925 that killed 695 along a 219-mile path, the longest on record.

In raw dollars (i.e., costs at the time that they occurred), these were also the three costliest tornadoes on record in the United States. Estimated costs from the Joplin tornado are $2.8 B (billion), $2.2 B from the Tuscaloosa tornado and $1.25B from the Hackleburg tornado. The previous record holder in raw dollars (not adjusted for inflation), was the F5 tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma and Oklahoma City on May 3, 1999, with loss of $1 B.

Of course, because of inflation it isn't fair to compare raw costs from a tornado today to one that occurred decades ago. For that reason, I've attempted to "normalize" the costs into 2011 dollars. To do that I've used economic statistical measures called "Fixed Reproducible Tangible Wealth" or "wealth" from 1929 to 1995, and "Gross Domestic Product" for years when "wealth" data weren't available. This is just one way to do it, but follows in the tracks of a
http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/users/brooks/public_html/papers/damage.pdf previous study by colleagues Harold Brooks and Chuck Doswell. Results are in the table below.

Even with the adjustment for inflation of older tornadoes, Joplin still ranks as the costliest tornado. With the dramatic effects of the adjustment for inflation, the St. Louis tornado of 1896 zooms from a raw cost of $12 million to $2.558 billion to take second place. The Tuscaloosa and Hackleburg tornadoes from Superoutbreak 2011 take third and thirteenth places, respectively. From the 1974 Superoutbreak, only the F5 Xenia, Ohio tornado cracks the top 25.

Combining deaths and damage to come up with a ranking of worst tornadoes is definitely a very subjective and arbitrary process. What I've done is to give the deadliest tornado (Tri-State tornado of 1925) 50 points and then scale other tornadoes on their percentage of that tornado's death toll. Similarly, I've given 50 points to the Joplin tornado for its 2.8 billion dollars in damage, and then scaled other tornadoes based on their adjusted damage cost values. There would be a maximum score of 100 if a single tornado had highest values in each category, which wasn't the case. Values and rankings are shown in the table below.

Using that ranking scheme, the Joplin tornado of 2011 winds up third-worst tornado on record in the United States. It follows the Tri-State tornado of 1925 and the St. Louis tornado of 1896. The Tuscaloosa tornado comes in fourth and the Hackleburg tornado comes in eighth.

An interesting result is that, despite earning the first classification as a "Superoutbreak", none of its tornadoes on April 3-4, 1974 ranked in the top 25 individual worst ones. By contrast, the 2011 Superoutbreak had two of the top 25 worst tornadoes. The 1974 Superoutbreak had more killer tornadoes, but the most deaths from an individual tornado were 34 from the Xenia, OH tornado. That death toll was so far down on the list (and not on the top table) that it kept it (and other tornadoes from 1974) off the "worst tornado" list.

In summary, 2011 brought one of the two worst tornado outbreaks on record in the United States and three of the worst individual tornadoes. It also brought six tornadoes (thus far) given the top rating of EF5. The only other year which had that many was 1974. 2011 truly was a remarkable year!

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This year's Harvest Moon rises Sept. 29

NASA/Sean Smith

A full moon captured July 18, 2008.

NASA/Sean Smith

A full moon captured July 18, 2008.

If you've ever wondered what, exactly, a harvest moon looks like, poke your head outside Saturday. That's when this year's harvest moon will rise.

The harvest moon is the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox,

which this year was on Sept. 22.

It's different from the other full moons because it rises at roughly the same time for several nights running, giving more light.

"In the days before tractors with headlights, having moonlight to work by was crucial to getting the harvest in quickly before rain caused it to rot," says Alan MacRobert, an editor at Sky &Telescope magazine.

The harvest moon will rise this year at 11:19 p.m. ET.

On average, the moon rises 50 minutes later each day than it did the day before. However, at this time of year, because of the angle of the moon as it orbits Earth, "the moon is rising at roughly the same time it rose the night before," says Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.

So for about three days in a row, the full moon is coming up just after the sun sets.

"This brings a great deal of light into the early evening sky, which was important for the people harvesting because it extended the period of useful work time they could work in the fields," Krupp says.

The moon may look bigger and seem closer, but it's not, says David DeVorkin, a senior curator at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Generally, photos of harvest moons are taken with telephoto lenses, distorting the size. The harvest moon can appear more reddish, though, because of coloration caused by dust in the atmosphere, but it depends on where you are.

The change in the time of moonrise "has to do with the angle along which the moon is traveling in its orbit," Krupp says. At the fall equinox, "the angle is very shallow, so it doesn't go so far below the horizon and as a result comes up again at about the same time."

The harvest moon isn't the only one to have a name, though few are remembered now. The new moon after the harvest moon was typically called Hunter's moon, because it aided hunters stalking night game as fall deepened.

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Airlines have one of their best years for arriving on time

The nation's largest airlines ended 2011 with one of their best records for getting passengers and their bags to their destinations on time.

By Ben Mutzabaugh, USA TODAY

A Hawaiian Airlines jet sits at Oakland International Airport on April 8, 2011.

By Ben Mutzabaugh, USA TODAY

A Hawaiian Airlines jet sits at Oakland International Airport on April 8, 2011.

Data released Tuesday by the Transportation Department's Bureau of Transportation Statistics on the 16 biggest U.S. airlines show that:

•Nearly eight in 10 flights, 79.6%, arrived at gates within 15 minutes of their scheduled time during 2011. That's down slightly from 79.8% the previous year, but still the fourth highest for any year in the 17 years with comparable numbers.

•Airlines had their best December in 17 years. Flights arrived on time 84.4% of the time, and 0.8% of flights were canceled. In December 2010, 72% of flights were on time, and 3.7% were canceled.

•There was less chance that bags went awry, with 99.7% of fliers getting bags on time. Overall, the rate of mishandled baggage fell to the lowest on record in 2011, falling to 3.39 per 1,000 passengers from 3.51 the previous year.

•Fewer passengers were bumped from their flights last year. The rate for bumping passengers was 0.81 per 10,000 passengers, down from the 1.09 rate in 2010. That's the lowest since 2002.

Despite the performance, the Transportation Department got 3% more complaints against U.S. airlines in 2011 than the year before. Fliers lodged 9,425 complaints about service, which some analysts attribute to fewer flights and more crowded planes.

Crowded planes can mean greater competition for storing carry-on luggage or passengers having to pay extra fees to check their bags.

"Since you have fewer flights, the flights going out have much higher load factors than people are used to," says Addison Schonland, partner in AirInsight.com, which tracks the airline industry. "Everything is more constrained."

December is typically full of delays and cancellations because of weather and a high number of fliers. But it was calm by most standards. Winter weather was milder, and there were fewer service complaints than the year before.

Aware of the damage flight disruptions can do to their reputations, airlines have stepped up efforts to improve performance. Delta, for instance, went from eighth-most-on-time airline in 2010 to third last year, thanks to improved customer service training, expanded maintenance stations at key airports and updated technology, the airline says.

But flight cutbacks because fewer are traveling may have contributed to fewer delays, analysts say. "The air-traffic control system was busting at the seams in 2005 and 2006," says Rick Seaney, co-founder of FareCompare.com. "It's sort of like having tollways with 90% the previous traffic. You are going to have fewer traffic jams."

No domestic flights stayed on tarmacs longer than three hours in December, and no international flight stayed on the tarmac for more than four hours. Federal law prohibits airlines from keeping passengers in planes on tarmacs for longer than that, which some analysts say makes airlines more likely to cancel flights. Year over year, flight cancellations were up slightly in 2011.

At the same time, fewer passengers were bumped from their flights last year. The rate for bumping passengers was 0.81 per 10,000 passengers, down from the 1.09 rate in 2010.

In December, the airlines with the best on-time performance were AirTran Airways, which is merging with Southwest Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, which benefits from favorable weather, and Delta. The carriers with the worst were Frontier Airlines, ExpressJet Airlines and Continental Airlines, which is merging with United Airlines.

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Northeast to post warmest November in 10 years (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Northeastern United States, the world's largest heating oil market, is set to post its warmest November in a decade, and the mildest for some cities like Boston in over 30 years, forecasters said this week.

The Northeast and East North Central regions, including Chicago, Cleveland and St. Louis, had their warmest November since 2001, Pennsylvania-based forecaster Planalytics said.

Boston was the warmest since 1975, while Indianapolis was the warmest in over 50 years.

Overall, forecasters expect this November to be the fifth-warmest since records began in 1950.

The mild weather was a result of "autumn being autumn" and not a sign of a weakening La Nina weather pattern - expected to continue through winter - or a harbinger of what's to come this winter, according to New York-based Weather 2000 meteorologist Michael Schlacter.

While November's mild weather aided U.S. retailers as shoppers took to the streets, it pressured demand for natural gas to fire furnaces and power plants.

Cash gas prices slid to their lowest levels in more than two years, while gas futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange slid to 11-month lows.

Heating oil prices, meanwhile, were weaker, but concerns about supply disruptions due to recent refinery closures limited the downside, market sources said.

The Southwest coast was the coolest since 2004, with Los Angeles the coolest since 2000, the forecaster said.

Weather 2000's Schlacter noted that while New York City had a "warm" November, it was not "off the charts" or historic in nature.

"Even just this past decade we've had some tremendous swings in weather in November temperatures. We're not that much warmer than 2009 or 2006. We are going to top those, but we're still in the same ballpark as the last five years," Schlacter said.

Overall this November will fall behind November 2001, and will likely be the fifth-warmest on recent record, Schlacter said. MDA EarthSat meteorologist Rick Groh agreed.

All the forecasters noted that cooler weather in the U.S. West would likely skew the overall national average.

"The tremendous cool in the West will likely dilute the impressiveness of the warmth for the nation as a whole," Schlacter said.

NOVEMBER VERSUS THE WINTER

Forecasters were quick to note that November weather patterns were not necessarily indicative of how the entire winter will turn out.

Forecaster WSI has called for the mildest winter in five years, lowering heating demand expectations.

U.S. government forecasters said a strengthening La Nina would grip the country for a second straight winter, causing colder and wetter weather in the most northern states and drier, warmer conditions throughout the drought-ravaged South.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said it expects the La Nina weather phenomenon that results in cooler ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific, to become the most dominant factor influencing weather across the country, but added that a change in pressure called the Arctic Oscillation could make it difficult for forecasters to predict more than a week or two in advance.

The volatile condition could produce dramatic short-term swings in temperatures. Arctic Oscillation can generate strong shifts in the climate patterns that could overwhelm or amplify La Nina's typical impacts, NOAA said.

Weather 2000 was calling for a below-normal period from December through March for the nation as a whole, with the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes area the focal points of the coolest weather.

"Last year was very impressive. It's probably not going to be as cold as last year, but could be similar to the 2008-2009 winter for the nation as a whole. The winters the last four years have been in that slightly cool direction and that's where we're leaning this year," Schlacter said.

"Chicago, which had a very, very warm November, just like New York, is already starting this new transition. It's a very slow progress and the Interstate-95 corridor on the East Coast is going to have to wait about six or seven days into December until we catch up with that," he said.

"Everything between the Rockies and the Appalachians are doing a 180 flip starting today or yesterday, compared to what was going on in November, which just shows how quickly things can change," Schlacter added.

MDA EarthSat said the December through February winter period would be normal to slightly above-normal for the Northeast and near to slightly-below normal for the Midwest, above-normal in Texas and below-normal on the West Coast and in the Rockies.

(Editing by Andrea Evans)

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Extreme weather in the Bay Area through the years (ContributorNetwork)

On the West Coast, San Francisco Bay Area residents enjoy mild days with temperatures in the 60s and 70s. We aren't always this lucky, however. Records show more than 60 years of bad weather for Bay Area residents, including droughts, floods, tornadoes, and snowstorms.

Bay Area drought

Many remember a few short years ago when the Bay Area had one of the worst single drought years on record. The 2009 drought caused unprecedented water rationing with reservoir levels at all-time lows.

Other drought years include:

- 1975-1977: 1976 was recorded by the California Department of Water Resources as "one of the driest years on record." The drought then continued into 1977. This drought had significant impacts on agriculture, recreation, and rangeland herds.

- 1987-1993: This longest-running drought was the most severe in California history. The drought actually began breaking in December of 1992. It was officially declared "over" when flooding from December 1992 to February 1993 brought almost 200 percnet of annual rainfall, according to a 1993 report by the California Department of Water Resources.

Bay Area floods

The California Office of Emergency Services recorded many significant years of heavy rainfall and flooding between 1950 and 2010. Two of the most deadly were reported in 1955 and 1969, when a combined total of 121 lives were lost.

Other significant floods reported:

- 1982-1983: This was the year of El Nino. The flood caused levee failure in several northern counties.

- 1992-1993: Severe flooding preceded a drought.

- 1995 to 1996: These years brought heavy winter storms and unprecedented damages. 1995 alone cost nearly $2 billion in damage.

- 1997: Another El Nino year. This flood year cost $1.8 billion.

- 1998: Flooding continues, costing $550 million.

Tornadoes hit the Bay Area

Of the 379 California tornadoes recorded by The Tornado History Project between 1951 and 2010, 17 appeared in seven of the nine counties in the Bay Area. During that time, Napa and San Francisco County remained unaffected until 2011. San Francisco County's historic tornado clocked in as No. 18 in the Bay Area.

Other tornadoes recorded:

- 1958: The California tornado with the longest path during 1951-2010 started near Bodega Bay and ran 15 miles towards Santa Rosa.

- 1998: An F-2 tornado in Sunnyvale "was the first anticyclonic supercell and anticyclonic tornado to be documented with the WSR-88D NEXRAD radar," according to USA Today.

- 2011: An EF 1 tornado touched down in Santa Rosa, leaving a block-long debris trail and demolishing the roof of a local business. That same day, a waterspout was recorded off Ocean Beach.

Snowstorms in the Bay Area

While snow is a rare event at sea level in the Bay Area, we've had a few decent storms over the years. Snowstorms in the Bay Area have been recorded as early as 1882.

Other snowstorms include:

- 1951: Based on photos, this snowstorm appeared to be the "heaviest of the 20th century in San Francisco," according to SFGate.

- 1962: A snowstorm closed local schools and roads. "I remember we got out of school and spent the day playing in the snow," recalled Brian Wrede, a student in 1962 at Noddin Elementary in San Jose.

- 1976: A freak snowstorm hits the Bay Area, closing local roads and schools.

- 2011: We all remember last year when freezing temperatures and a light sprinkling of snow fell in the Bay Area, including Morgan Hill and Gilroy. It melted quickly, however, and wasn't enough to make a snowball.

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Tropical Storm Allison, 10 Years Later (ContributorNetwork)

Hurricane season 2011 is in full swing as Tropical Storm Adrian is expected to become a hurricane in the Pacific Ocean south of Acapulco, Mexico. Ten years previously, Tropical Storm Allison formed on the Atlantic side of Mexico and dumped huge amounts of rain in the United States.

The historic storm was the costliest on record to not reach hurricane strength and make landfall in the United States.

Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf of Mexico saw a quick start to hurricane season in 2001. Tropical Storm Allison began forming June 5 about 120 nautical miles south of Galveston, Texas. Once it hit Texas, the storm weakened into a tropical depression but not before dumping 30 inches of rain east of Houston and more than 20 inches of rain in other areas.

The storm moved ashore and weakened before blowing back out to sea and strengthened again. Tropical Storm Allison made landfall in Louisiana and moved through Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina before going to North Atlantic and brushing Cape Cod.

Damage

There were 23 tornadoes spawned by Tropical Storm Allison and coastal flooding inundated Texas and Louisiana. South Carolina had 10 tornadoes alone as the storm disintegrated a week after Allison made landfall.

Flooding was so widespread in southeastern Texas, 14,000 homes were destroyed or suffered major damage. Another 34,000 buildings suffered minor damage from water runoff and heavy rains that leaked into houses.

Storm surges of up to three feet eroded beaches near Galveston and then again in southwestern Louisiana. Flooding due to rain in coastal Texas caused about $5 billion worth of damage, making it the worst tropical storm to hit the United States in history.

Deaths

Flooding caused 23 deaths in Texas alone because the rain was intense within just a few short days. A total of 41 deaths nationwide were attributed to the storm from freshwater flooding, tornadoes and car accidents due to extreme rainfall.

A tornado killed only one person in rural Louisiana. Amazingly, Tropical Storm Allison killed seven people in Pennsylvania and heavy rains flooded out a railroad bridge. Even though Allison wasn't a tropical storm very long over land, the heavy rains caused by the tropical wave threatened dozens of states and caused widespread damage.

As the 2011 hurricane season begins, the 10th anniversary of Tropical Storm Allison can still be felt in Texas. Beaches and lives that were worn away were never the same afterward.

William Browning is a research librarian.

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2011 is deadliest US tornado season in 75 years (AFP)

CHICAGO (AFP) – The deadliest US tornado season in 75 years has ripped babies from their mother's arms and transformed entire towns into apocalyptic scenes of destruction as the toll hit 523.

And it isn't over yet.

While warmer summer weather should hopefully reduce their intensity, the peak tornado season runs through July and twisters can strike at any time.

The damage is as unimaginable as it is unpredictable.

Funnel clouds drop out of a darkened sky, tossing cars and mobile homes up into the air, pulling huge trees out of the ground and tearing buildings apart.

The smaller ones touch down so briefly that one side of a street is flattened while the other is largely unscathed.

The bigger ones stay on the ground for miles, destroying everything for blocks on either side of their random path.

Two bad days accounted for nearly all the deaths: an outbreak of dozens of tornados that killed 314 people in five states on April 27 and a massive twister that killed 138 in Joplin, Missouri on May 22.

It was the deadliest day and the deadliest single tornado strike since modern record keeping began in 1950. 2011 now ranks as the fifth deadliest year in US tornado history.

"We're still trying to wrap our heads around this one," said Greg Carbin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's storm center.

It's not clear whether climate change is playing a role, Carbin said.

Tornadoes are formed when two weather fronts of different temperatures create wind sheer.

The warmer temperatures caused by global warming should reduce wind sheer, but they have also led to more precipitation and could be breeding the thunderstorms that spawn twisters.

It is clear, however, that steady growth in the number of people living in "tornado alley" - the huge area between the Rocky and Appalachian Mountains - has led to higher tolls, particularly since so many are living in mobile homes and houses lacking storm cellars.

"We've spread out on the landscape," Carbin told AFP. "It's easier for a tornado to hit something in this day and age."

While warning systems have improved dramatically in recent years, sirens can be little help against a twister powerful enough to knock a nine story hospital off its foundation and reduce brick buildings to rubble.

That's what happened in Joplin, where a nearly mile-wide twister packing winds of more than 200 miles per hour cut a six-mile (nearly 10 kilometer) swath of destruction through the town of 50,000 people.

"I don't know if man could build something strong enough to handle what came through," Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said after surveying the damage.

President Barack Obama called it a "national tragedy" and recalled stories of heroism at a memorial service Sunday.

One such hero was pizza shop manager Christopher Lucas, a father of two, who ushered more than a dozen people into a walk-in freezer as the tornado approached.

The freezer door wouldn't close from the inside, so Lucas found rope and closed it from the outside.

"Christopher held it as long as he could. Until he was pulled away by the incredible force of the storm," Obama said.

"He died saving more than a dozen people in that freezer."

The damage was so extensive that it took officials 10 days to identify all the bodies and reunite hundreds of people separated from their loved ones.

For many, days of frantic searching ended in despair.

Like the family of 16-month Skyular Logsdon, who was pulled from his mother's arms after she was knocked unconscious when the twister ripped apart their home.

Another series of deadly twisters struck just two days after the Joplin tornado, killing 16 people in Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

A pregnant Catherine Hamil cowered in a bathtub with her three young children in Piedmont, Oklahoma that night.

When the storm passed, her 15-month-old son was dead, Hamil and her five-year-old daughter were in serious condition and her three-year-old son was gone.

It took two days to find his body.

Officials predict it will cost billions to repair the physical damage caused by the deadly twisters and months for life to return to normal.

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