World weather news foe october 2012

[Bishopdale Weather]

How unusual is early October snow in North Dakota?

However, according to the Grand Forks Herald, on average, the first full inch of snow doesn’t fall until Nov. 11 in Fargo and Nov. 15 in Grand Forks, N.D.

They’re talking about ONE inch. But this storm is expected to dump six inches – or more! – of the white stuff on the area.

According to the National Weather Service, the potential exists for six or more inches of snow across the northern Red River Valley into northwest Minnesota.

So, when was the earliest measurable snowfall?

Records going back to 1940 show that, in the Red River Valley and the Devils Lake Basin, it was 62 years ago, on Oct. 2, 1950. Another notable snowstorm in those areas happened on Oct. 7-8, 1985.

The weather service defines measurable snow as 1 inch in depth or greater.

The earliest measurable snowfall in the broader region was on Sept. 11, 1989, in Hansboro, N.D., a small community near the Canadian border, about 40 miles north of Cando, N.D.

Western North Dakota has seen heavy snows in mid- to late September.

On average, the first full inch of snow isn’t seen until Nov. 11 in Fargo and Nov. 15 in Grand Forks.

In Fargo, at least some snow has fallen in every month of the year except July and August, according to records that date back to 1880, Godon said.

In Grand Forks, July is the only month that hasn’t seen snow, said meteorologist Bill Barrett, according to records that also date back to the late 1800s. However, those events might have been as little as a trace of snow.

“Based on the climatological record available, measurable snow is not all uncommon in early October,” said Mark Ewens, weather service climate forecaster in Grand Forks. “Typically, snow that falls early in the season melts off and may even be followed by a period of much milder weather.”


www.inforum.com/event/article/id/376231/

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The area’s first major snowfall of the year and attending cold snap could harm some late-maturing corn and soybeans crops and delay the harvest, says this article on Reuters.

As of Monday, only 36 percent of North Dakota’s corn crop had been harvested, while 53 percent of Minnesota’s corn crop had been harvested. Some 76 to 80 percent of the soybean crop had been harvested in both states.

Minnesota is the third largest soybean producing state in the United States and the fourth largest corn state. North Dakota ranks number 10 in soybean production.

This storm is “unique for this time of year,” said John Dee, meteorologist for Global Weather Monitoring.

www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/04/us-markets-crops-weather-idUSBRE8930UU20121004

[sky]

October 12, 2012 – BANGLADESH - At least 26 people were killed and an estimated 60 fishermen are missing after tropical storms smashed into Bangladesh’s southern coastal islands and districts early Thursday, police said. Police had feared at least 1,500 mud, tin and straw-built houses were also levelled in the storms that swept Bhola, Hatiya and Sandwip Islands and half a dozen coastal districts after Wednesday midnight. At the worst-hit island of Hatiya, at least seven people were killed after they were buried under their houses or hit by fallen trees, said local police chief Moktar Hossain. More than 1,000 houses were flattened. “More than 100 fishing trawlers, each carrying at least 10 fishermen, have been missing since the storm,” he told AFP, calling it one of the most powerful in decades. Many fishermen are expected to have taken shelter in other remote islands in the Bay of Bengal or in the neighbouring Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest. In the past, many fishermen thought to be missing from storms returned home to coastal villages a week or two later. Four people were killed in Bhola, three each in Sandwip and Companyganj and two at Char Jabbar, police said. The police chief of Bhola district, Bashir Ahmed, told AFP he feared as many as more than 500 fishermen were thought missing from the country’s largest island and at least 500 mud and straw-built houses were levelled by the sudden storm but the figure was later revised downward. Bangladesh’s weather office forecast heavy rain in the coastal region and advised fishermen to take care near the shore, but there was no major storm warning. “We only got the warning signal number three. But the storm was so powerful, the weather office should have hoisted the signal number seven or eight,” said Ahmed, referring to the intensity of the storm on a scale of ten. “It caught the fishermen and coastal people by surprise. Till now we haven’t had any reports from the missing fishermen,’ he said, adding the authorities had sent relief to thousands of affected people

www.terradaily.com/reports/19_killed_1500_fishermen_missing_in_Bangladesh_storm_999.html

[sky]

Once-in-century October snow across SA

« on: October 12, 2012, 08:54:33 AM »

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Updated Thu Oct 11, 2012 3:11pm AEDT

Rare at any time, there has been October snow across some southern areas of South Australia.

The weather bureau in Adelaide said the last reports of snowfall in the Adelaide and neighbouring Mount Lofty Ranges region in October were a century ago.

Locals at Hallett in the mid-north of the state, around Crafers, Mount Lofty, Lobethal and Belair in the Adelaide hills, Sevenhill in the Clare Valley and Mount Remarkable in the lower Flinders Ranges have been surprised by snowfalls.

Farmers in the agricultural areas have welcomed rainfall that has boosted their crop prospects.

Some grain growers say the falls have come too late for them, but crops in later districts will get the benefits.

The highest measured falls in the state have included 34mm at Kuitpo in the Mount Lofty Ranges, 27 millimetres at Wilmington in the upper north and 26mm at Melrose.

There have been 21mm at Clare in the mid-north, 19mm at Riverton, 17mm at Auburn, 8mm at Lameroo in the Murray Mallee and 11mm at Keith in the south-east.

Adelaide has had about 18mm.

A maximum wind gust of 91 kilometres per hour was recorded at Edithburg on lower Yorke Peninsula.
Emergency volunteers have been called to dozens of incidents since the rough weather first hit Adelaide late on Wednesday.

Many of the problems were with fallen trees.

At suburban Brighton, a car was crushed when a large shopping centre sign fell in high winds.

Photo: Icy morning at Mount Lofty



Raelene Zanker, from Booleroo Centre, said she had lived in the region for half a century and not seen snow so late in the season.

"Going back I think it was in the '70s some time we had lots and lots of snow, but we haven't had anything like that for years now and we've never seen snow in October before, well not since I've been here anyway," she said.

The October freeze saw Mount Lofty's minimum temperature hit 0.4 degrees Celsius this morning. It got as low at 0.6 at Naracoorte and 1.1 at Mount Crawford.

Senior forecaster Tom Boeck confirmed the rarity of the weather conditions.

"In springtime we do get some quite significant shifts in the weather in terms of temperature, but I must admit it's quite unusual to be getting a snow event in October," he said.
www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-11/snow-falls-across-sa/4306702









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Snow causes havoc across eastern Australia

« Reply #1 on: Today at 08:42:52 AM »

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“The Emergency Services have announced a little while ago that snow is going to close several highways in New South Wales, something that almost never happens,” says reader Oz Steamer.

“The snow is reported as far north as southern Queensland (similar in latitude to mid Florida) so this is spread in an area similar from (say) Hudson Bay to (say) mid Florida. and inland to (say) the Ohio river.

“This is not a “light
dusting”, this is enough to close major roads. The Emergency Services announced a while back that the Hume Highway (the main road link between the two biggest cities in Australia: Sydney and Melbourne) is looking to be closed because of snow. Also the Federal Highway from the Hume Highway to our idiot Federal capital (Canberra) is also looking to be closed due to snow falls
making the road unusable. I don’t know if that is bad news or good news.

“This is almost unprecedented in Spring (it very very occasionally happens in Winter). The snow will melt quickly, of course. Australia is usually a very hot country and that will melt the snowfall within a day or two
www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-12/snow-falling-across-eastern-australia/4308904

[Bishopdale Weather]

October 17, 2012 - 7:31pm By RAF CASERT The Associated Press

From drought to frost, vineyards facing worst year in half-century

BRUSSELS, Belgium — Winemaker Cherie Spriggs had watched the bad weather over southern England’s vineyards all season long. It just wasn’t good enough for Nyetimber, her award-winning sparkling wine.

“I have never seen a situation like this before,” Spriggs said as the grapes failed to deliver. She was left with only one option and the company decided to forego the 2012 harvest.

Few have gone as far as Nyetimber but drought, frost and hail have combined to ravage Europe’s wine grape harvest, which in key regions this year will be the smallest in half a century, vintners say.

Thierry Coste, an expert with the European Union farmers’ union, said Wednesday that France’s grape harvest is expected to slump by almost 20 per cent compared with last year. Italy’s grape crop showed a 7 per cent drop — on top of a decline in 2011.

“Two big producing nations, France and Italy, have not known a harvest so weak in 40 to 50 years,” Coste said. “All the major producing nations have been hurt.”

France’s Champagne and Burgundy regions were hard hit by weather conditions that particularly affected the prevalent Chardonnay grape, used to make the world’s most famous sparkling wine and the luxurious whites from those regions. Nyetimber also depends on Chardonnay.

In places where vintners were already facing a small margin of profit, many could be facing survival problems, said Coste of the Copa-Cogeca union.

“In certain regions, there will be many vintners in big difficulties because of the collapse of the harvest,” he said.

The European wine harvest automatically has a global impact since it accounts for some 62 per cent of the worldwide wine production.

It won’t mean any immediate drought for consumers since retailers typically offer a wide range of vintages. And taste often wins when yields are small.

In Europe, about 2.5 million families live off the wine sector. It makes the dependency on the vagaries of weather a sometimes cruel business.

Drought hit the Mediterranean rim hard this year, Coste said. As a co-operative leader in southern France’s Herault region, he should know.

“First and foremost, climate change or not, we see that we have ever more dry spells,” he said. Making matters worse is that even winter was dry this time. “It was almost zero (degrees Celsius) in the south.”

In the northern wine regions, it was the inverse, with cold and wet weather wreaking havoc. Hail in particular hurt the crops.

“Natural phenomena happened all at the same time to make sure the harvest is so small,” Coste said.

French figures show that in Champagne the harvest could decline by up to 40 per cent, with Bourgogne Beaujolais expected to decline 30 per cent. Bordeaux would get away lightly with a drop of 10 per cent.

Coste said there may be an upside to the bad harvest — it is not a bitter one when it comes to taste. The quality of the wine produced will be good as it is expected to be more concentrated.

“When it comes to quality, we are looking at a good year,” Coste said.

While some price increases were on the cards, Coste hoped they could be contained along the long chain from hillside picking to supermarket shelves.

About the Author »

By RAF CASERT The Associated Press

thechronicleherald.ca/business/149936-weather-sours-eu-wine-harvest

[sky]

October 25, 2012 – NEW YORK - Much of the U.S. East Coast has a good chance of getting blasted by gale-force winds, flooding, heavy rain and maybe even snow early next week by an unusual hybrid of hurricane and winter storm, federal and private forecasters say. Though still projecting several days ahead of Halloween week, the computer models are spooking meteorologists. Government scientists said Wednesday the storm has a 70 percent chance of smacking the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. Hurricane Sandy in the Caribbean, an early winter storm in the West, and a blast of arctic air from the North are predicted to collide, sloshing and parking over the country’s most populous coastal corridor starting Sunday. The worst of it should peak early Tuesday, but it will stretch into midweek, forecasters say. “It’ll be a rough couple days from Hatteras up to Cape Cod,” said forecaster Jim Cisco of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration prediction center in College Park, Md. “We don’t have many modern precedents for what the models are suggesting.” It is likely to hit during a full moon when tides are near their highest, increasing coastal flooding potential, NOAA forecasts warn. And with some trees still leafy and the potential for snow, power outages could last to Election Day, some meteorologists fear. They say it has all the earmarks of a billion-dollar storm. Some have compared it to the so-called Perfect Storm that struck off the coast of New England in 1991, but Cisco said that one didn’t hit as populated an area and is not comparable to what the East Coast may be facing. Nor is it like last year’s Halloween storm, which was merely an early snowstorm in the Northeast. This has much more mess potential because it is a combination of different storm types that could produce a real whopper of weather problems, meteorologists say. “The Perfect Storm only did $200 million of damage and I’m thinking a billion,” said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the private service Weather Underground. “Yeah, it will be worse.” But this is several days in advance, when weather forecasts are far less accurate. The National Hurricane Center only predicts five days in advance, and on Wednesday their forecasts had what’s left of Sandy off the North Carolina coast on Monday. But the hurricane center’s chief hurricane specialist, James Franklin, said the threat keeps increasing for “a major impact in the Northeast, New York area. In fact it would be such a big storm that it would affect all of the Northeast.” The forecasts keep getting gloomier and more convincing with every day, several experts said. Cisco said the chance of the storm smacking the East jumped from 60 percent to 70 percent on Wednesday. Masters was somewhat skeptical on Tuesday, giving the storm scenario just a 40 percent likelihood, but on Wednesday he also upped that to 70 percent. The remaining computer models that previously hadn’t shown the merger and mega-storm formation now predict a similar scenario. The biggest question mark is snow, and that depends on where the remnants of Sandy turn inland. The computer model that has been leading the pack in predicting the hybrid storm has it hitting around Delaware. But another model has the storm hitting closer to Maine. If it hits Delaware, the chances of snow increase in that region. If it hits farther north, chances for snow in the mid-Atlantic and even up to New York are lessened, Masters said. –Time

[sky]

Fort St John, BC close to snowfall record

“With snowfall nearly four times the October average, few populated areas of the province are more aware of the impact of an early winter than this one,” says this article out of Fort St. John, B.C..

“As of yesterday, the October snowfall total was 64 centimeters in a month when the average is 16.5.

“Environment Canada confirms, it is the second highest October total on record, for Fort St. John, exceeded only by the 97.5 in 1957.

“Our region has already established a new precipitation record, with the month-to-date total, through yesterday, up to 128.3 millimeters, nearly five times the October norm of 25.8.”

energeticcity.ca/article/news/2012/10/26/fort-st-john-close-snowfall-record

[sky]

Earliest opening of a ski resort in Canada ever

Nakiska ski resort owes earliest open ever to massive early snowfall (Alberta).


Photo Courtesy Nakiska Resort

“In fact it’s never happened before in Canada,” said Matt Mosteler, a spokesman for the resort. “It’s the earliest opening of a ski resort in Canada ever.”

“Iit’s mid-winter like,” he added. ”It’s incredibly amazing because it feels like January. You look around and the surrounding mountains are all white, the trees are loaded with snow — it’s just really cool.”

This is the second season in a row that Nakiska has been able to open its ski runs for the Halloween weekend, and the second year in a row that it was the first resort in Canada to open. This year’s announcement beat last year’s by just one day.

Alberta residents are digging out from 12 cm of snow reported at Calgary airport, between 5 and 15 cm of snow across all of Southern Alberta, and locally higher accumulations in some areas, around 20-25 cm.
ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/geekquinox/nakiska-ski-resort-owes-earliest-open-ever-massive-164301096.html

[sky]

Heavy Snowfall Catches Muscovites Unprepared

28 October 2012 | Issue 5002

The Moscow Times

Abnormally heavy snowfall left Muscovites squelching through slush Sunday morning, and meteorologists forecast rainfall for the rest of the day, compounding the capital's weather woes.

"Over the course of three hours, between 5 and 6 centimeters of snow fell in Moscow, which is atypical for the end of October," a weather forecaster from the capital's Fobos Weather Center told RIA-Novosti.

"What we are seeing now is characteristic of the snow covering in November."

The forecaster explained Sunday's heavy snowfall by a southern cyclone bringing dense rainclouds to Russia, adding that there would be no further snow Sunday due to rising temperatures.

"By the middle of the day, the air temperature will start to rise and reach between 5 and 7 degrees Celsius. The rising temperatures will continue into the evening," the meteorologist said.

Rain had already started to fall in northern Moscow by mid-morning.

By nighttime Sunday, forecasters expect the temperature to dip once more, and Muscovites trudging into work Monday morning can expect to be dealing with slippery conditions as Sunday's slush turns to ice.

"The slush formed from snow and rain will freeze, turning into black ice," the forecaster told the news agency.


Read more: www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/heavy-snowfall-catches-muscovites-unprepared/470525.html#ixzz2AerY1JkW
The Moscow Times

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Winter comes early to Europe

Published on Oct 28, 2012


www.euronews.com/ Winter has come early to parts of Europe as snow and freezing temperatures surprised many. The earlier than usual wintry weather was greeted stoically by some while the slippery conditions caught others out. Road Traffic organisations reported a rise

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Surprise October snow hits central Germany

Published: 27 Oct 12 15:55 CET

Winter appeared overnight in many parts of Germany on Saturday with unseasonal heavy snow fall and subzero temperatures hitting central and southern areas

"This happens maybe once every 30 or 40 years," meteorologist Christoph Hartmann of the German weather service (DWD) told Die Welt newspaper on Saturday, referring to the unusual snowfall in October.

The severe drop in temperature - by 20 degrees within a week - also occurs “very, very seldom,” he added.

And with winter's first onslaught came the first disruption to transport, as fallen trees blocked train lines between Leipzig and Munich, causing delays and diversions to the ICE high speed rail network.

The first taste of winter will be felt elsewhere this weekend as the cold front brings frost and subzero temperatures, which are expected to plummet to between minus one and minus six on Saturday night, excluding only coastal areas, said DWD.

A further 10-15 cm of snow is expected overnight in the Alps and in the Ore Mountains in Saxony, where DWD said temperatures could fall as low as minus ten.

The Local/jlb

www.thelocal.de/national/20121027-45813.html