Earth & Space Weather

~ Space Weather Update~ EARTH-DIRECTED CME:

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DRACONID METEOR SHOWER: The notoroiusly unpredictable Draconid meteor shower peaks this year on the night of Oct. 7-8. In most years, the Draconids come and go with a barely noticable peak of 10 or so meteors per hour. Occasionally, however, Earth passes through a dense clump of debris from parent comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner and a meteor storm erupts. Just last year, Europeans witnessed a faint but furious outburst of 600 per hour. There is no reason to believe that 2012 is a "storm year." Nevertheless, northern hemisphere sky watchers are encouraged to be alert for slow-moving Draconids on Sunday night.

 

EARTH-DIRECTED CME: Magnetic fields near sunspot AR1582 slowly erupted on Oct 5th sparking a B7-class solar flare and hurling a CME toward Earth. The Solar and Heliosphere Observatory (SOHO) captured this image of the expanding cloud:

Drought Update: Mixed Results

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Weather.com - Jon Erdman, 10/4/12

Drought Monitor

The drought improved in some areas, but worsened in others, according to this week's Drought Monitor report, issued by NOAA, the USDA, the National Drought Mitigation Center, and the Western Regional Climate Center.

While areas of wet snow fall in the Red River Valley of N.D. and Minn., and also in parts of the High Plains, any significant precipitation through October 11 is expected to miss the core of the heartland drought.

To watch the video and read the rest of this story, visit Weather.com.

Severe weather warnings as Britain braces for rain and floods

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The Independent - Rob Williams, 10/5/12

Flood waters pours into a residential street after the River Wansbeck broke its banks in Morpeth
 

Forecasters have warned that parts of Britain could be hit by flooding as heavy rain looks set to sweep across the country in the next few days.

People in Wales and south-west England have seen up to 15-20mm of rain overnight, with the wet weather expected to move east through this morning.

To read the rest of this story, visit Independent.co.UK.

Early Fall Snow Cuts Power, Slows Travel in Minn.

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Weather.com - AP, 10/4/12

MOORHEAD, Minn. — An early fall snowstorm plunged residents of northern Minnesota into winter-like conditions Thursday, slowing travel and causing power outages while smothering wildfires in the northwest.

The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for northwestern Minnesota, where more than a foot of snow was expected to fall through Friday.

To watch the video and read the rest of this story, visit Weather.com.

Study finds Southern Hemisphere becoming drier

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Phys.org, 10/3/12

A decline in April-May rainfall over south-east Australia is associated with a southward expansion of the subtropical dry-zone according to research published today in Scientific Reports, a primary research journal from the publishers of Nature.

CSIRO scientists Wenju Cai, Tim Cowan and Marcus Thatcher explored why autumn rainfall has been in decline across south-eastern Australia since the 1970s, a period that included the devastating Millennium drought from 1997-2009.
Previous research into what has been driving the decline in autumn rainfall across regions like southern Australia has pointed the finger at a southward shift in the storm tracks and weather systems during the late 20th century. However, the extent to which these regional rainfall reductions are attributable to the poleward expansion of the subtropical dry-zone has not been clarified before now.

To read the rest of this story, visit Phys.org.

Dry, Hot Weather Set Records in September

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Weather.com - Nick Wiltgen, 10/3/12

September will go down as one of the hottest and driest Septembers on record for many areas of the West. Those hot, dry extremes constituted the vast majority of the monthly records set nationally in the recently-concluded month.

A slew of low-precipitation records were tied or broken from the Pacific Northwest east to the Black Hills of South Dakota. Seattle had its third-driest September, with 0.03 inch, but this followed the driest August on record to make the driest August-September combo ever officially observed there.

To read the rest of this story, visit Weather.com.

~ Space Weather Update~ PLASMA PUFFS TARGET VENUS

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EARTHSONG: A NASA spacecraft has recorded audio-frequency radio emissions coming from Earth. Some say the signals sound like whales; others liken them to the chirping of prairie dogs. What do you think? [audio] [video] [full story]

PLASMA PUFFS TARGET VENUS: Sunspot 1583 is in a near-constant state of eruption. Magnetic instabilities in the sunspot's magnetic canopy are hurling massive "puffs" of magnetized plasma into space. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory caught some of them emerging during the early hours of Oct. 2nd; click to set the scene in motion:

Because AR1583 is on the farside of the sun, Earth is not in the line of fire. Venus, on the other hand, could receive a glancing blow from these clouds. Because Venus has no global magnetic field to protect it from solar storms, the impacts could erode small amounts of gas directly from the top of the planet’s atmosphere. Moreover, incoming plasma clouds can cause explosions in Venus's upper atmosphere called "hot flow anomalies." The space weather forecast for the second planet is stormy.

~ Space Weather Update~ SUBSIDING STORM:

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SUBSIDING STORM: A strong (Kp=7) geomagnetic storm sparked by a CME impact on Sept. 30th is subsiding now. At maximum, during the early hours of Oct. 1st, Northern Lights descended as far south in the United States as Michigan, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, Montana, Minnesota, Washington, Idaho, Illinois and South Dakota. Even California experienced some auroras. Tim Piya Trepetch caught a patch of sky turning purple over the Lassen Volcanic National Park:

"Purple auroras erupted right over Lassen Peak," says Trepetch.

~ Space Weather Update~ INCOMING SOLAR STORM CLOUD

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EERIE EARTHSONG: A NASA spacecraft has recorded eerie-sounding radio emissions coming from our own planet. These beautiful "songs of Earth" could, ironically, be responsible for the proliferation of deadly electrons in the Van Allen Belts. [video] [audio]

INCOMING SOLAR STORM CLOUD: Magnetic fields around sunspot 1577 erupted on Sept. 28th, hurling a coronal mass ejection (CME) almost directly toward Earth. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) recorded the cloud as it raced away from the sun faster than 2.2 million mph:

NOAA forecasters estimate a 50% chance of strong geomagnetic storms around the poles on Sept 30th when the cloud reaches Earth. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras, which might be intense enough to see in spite of the full moonlight. Aurora alerts: text, voice.

Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery

Flooding Kills 10 in Spain, Tornado Hits Fair

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Weather.com - Joseph Wilson, 9/29/12

Spain Flooding

Residents walk by a wrecked car carried away by flash floods after heavy rain in the town of Villanueva del Rosario, Malaga, southern Spain, Friday, Sept. 28, 2012. (AP)

BARCELONA, Spain -- A tornado swept through a fairground in a Spanish town, knocking down a Ferris wheel and injuring 35 people, while the death toll from flooding in the same southern region of the country rose to 10, authorities said Saturday.

Friday's tornado damaged several rides and cut electricity in the temporary fair set up in the main square of Gandia, according to its town hall website. It said 15 of the injured were seriously hurt, all of whom were treated on site.
To read the rest of this story, visit Weather.com.

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