Wunderground.com - 12/31/12, Angela Fritz
Wunderphoto taken in Croatia on February 5, 2012 from antoniomise, who wrote, "snow in Dalmatia, frozen streets....sounds impossible but it happened! Snow is still present. In this part of world this is phenomena."
Another extreme year in weather has passed, the most extreme year in record-keeping, according to the National Climatic Data Center. The U.S. saw 11 billion-dollar weather disasters in 2012, including drought, wildfire, 2 hurricanes, and severe weather events. Though climate extremes are increasing across the globe—in Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia—no country topped the U.S. in extremes in 2012, and an increase in extreme weather is an impact expected in a warming world. There are more direct changes being seen, too, in the Arctic, and Greenland, and in our jet stream. Below are what I consider the top climate events of 2012.
Superstorm Sandy
Superstorm Sandy was truly astounding in its size and power. At its peak size, twenty hours before landfall, Hurricane Sandy had tropical storm-force winds that covered an area nearly one-fifth the area of the contiguous United States. Most incredibly, ten hours before landfall, the total energy of Sandy's winds of tropical storm-force and higher peaked at 329 terrajoules--the highest value for any Atlantic hurricane since at least 1969, and equivalent to five Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs. At landfall, Sandy's tropical storm-force winds spanned 943 miles of the the U.S. coast. No hurricane on record has been larger. Over 130 fatalities were reported and over 8.5 million customers lost power--the second largest weather-related power outage in U.S. history, behind the 10 million that lost power during the Blizzard of 1993. Damage from Sandy is estimated at $62 billion.
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