• Super Cyclone Amphan became the strongest storm ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal on Monday night
• #Amphan is expected to make landfall on Tuesday, May 20
• Storm surge of up to 15 feet on anticipated landfall in West Bengal forecast Wednesday
In India and Bangladesh, millions of people are trapped in the path of an oncoming super cyclone that is expected to make landfall in under 36 hours. Read the rest
Venice, Italy was hit with a storm that put three-quarters of the city under water. Read the rest
People flock to Japan in the spring in hopes of catching the cherry blossom season, which, in full bloom, lasts only about a week. This usually happens in April (although a bit earlier or later depending on the region and climate of the year). But never has there been a widespread cherry blossom season in the fall – until now.
Most likely because of Japan's recent two typhoons followed by warm weather, people have spotted cherry blossoms from "Kyushu, in western Japan, to Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s main islands," according to Smithsonian.
Hiroyuki Wada of the Flower Association of Japan tells NHK that the Yoshino cherry tree, which puts on a particularly lovely display of blossoms, buds in the summer, but hormones in the trees’ leaves stop the buds from opening until spring. This year, however, typhoons whipped the leaves from the cherry blossom trees, or otherwise exposed the trees to salt that caused their leaves to wither. The lack of hormones to keep the buds in check, coupled with warm temperatures that followed the storms, prompted the buds to blossom.
“This has happened in the past,” Wada tells NHK, “but I don’t remember seeing anything on this scale.”
Over the last 150 years, the season for cherry blossoms has been slowly moving its start time to an earlier date. "In Kyoto in 1850, for instance, the average bloom date was April 17. Today, the average date is around April 6." Unless, that is, it's an autumn blossom we're talking about. Read the rest
Hurricane Hermine is making landfall at the time of this blog post, in the early hours of Friday morning in Florida. Millions of people are in its path, and there are related tornado watches throughout the state through mid-day Friday. A NOAA update at 1:55AM shows 2-3 inches of rain have fallen in Tallahassee, where some 70,000 people are without power already. Flash flooding is reported, and more is expected. Isolated gusts of 45-50mph have been recorded in the first two hours of landfall in the “Big Bend” of Florida's West Coast. Read the rest
Tropical Storm Hermine officially reached hurricane status on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2016, reported NASA and NOAA's National Hurricane Center earlier today. When it makes landfall, it will be the first hurricane to hit Florida since Wilma in 2005. Hermine will probably touch down along the state's eastern Panhandle in the wee hours of Friday morning, and NOAA predicts that its force and the associated water surges will be “life-threatening.” Read the rest
Officials shut down Denver International Airport on Wednesday, canceling over 1,000 flights after a mega snowstorm temporarily knocked out power and created conditions unsafe for plane takeoffs and landings unsafe. Read the rest
