'Sandy' Retired from Hurricane Name List

'Sandy' Retired from Hurricane Name List - As expected, the name "Sandy" has been retired from the official list of names for hurricanes and tropical storms in the Atlantic Ocean basin, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced today (April 11).

Post-tropical cylcone Sandy made landfall on Oct. 29, 2012 at 8:00 p.m., along the coast of southern New Jersey.

The intensity of the flooding from Sandy knocked many homes off of their foundations. New flood zone regulations aim to prevent this in the future by recommending homes be lifted as high as 10 feet.

The list of hurricane names for the Atlantic basin (which includes the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico) is maintained by the World Meteorological Organization; there are lists going out six years in the future, with each list reused every six years. But when a hurricane or tropical storm causes considerable damage or loss of life, and the re-use of the name of the storm would be considered insensitive to its victims, the WMO can strike the name from the list.

Sandy is the 77th Atlantic storm name to be retired since 1954, NOAA's National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in a statement. Sandy will be replaced by the name "Sara" when the list is used again in 2018.

When Hurricane Sandy approached the U.S. Northeast, it was a huge storm with a large footprint that caused significant storm surge along the coast. That surge, along with Sandy's winds, caused nearly $50 billion in damage in the region, making it the second costliest storm in U.S. history after Hurricane Katrina.

Sandy also caused significant destruction in the Caribbean, where it first formed.

Some 147 deaths could be directly attributed to Sandy across the Atlantic basin, the NHC said. Seventy-two of these deaths occurred in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions of the United States, the greatest number of fatalities from a tropical cyclone outside of the Southern states since Hurricane Agnes in 1972, according to the NHC statement.

Other recently retired hurricane names include: Irene (2012), Charley ­­(2004), Dennis (2005), Dean (2007), Fabian (2003), Frances (2004), Felix (2007), Gustav (2008), Iris (2001), Isidore (2002), Isabel (2003), Ivan (2004), Ike (2008), Igor (2010), Juan (2003), Jeanne (2004), Katrina (2005), Lili (2002), Michelle (2001), Noel (2007), Paloma (2008), Rita (2005), Stan (2005), Tomas (2010) and Wilma (2005). ( LiveScience.com )

Blog : Paying The Highest

Post : 'Sandy' Retired from Hurricane Name List

READ MORE - 'Sandy' Retired from Hurricane Name List

Sandy criticism prompts change in storm warnings

Sandy criticism prompts change in storm warnings — Responding to criticism after Superstorm Sandy, the National Hurricane Center said Thursday it would change the way it warns people about tropical storms that morph into something else.

At the height of Sandy, as the hurricane knocked on the Northeast coast, forecasters at the center stopped issuing advisories and warnings because the storm merged with two cold-weather systems, lost its tropical characteristics and mutated into a hybrid megastorm.

 

Associated Press/Alan Diaz - James Franklin, Branch Chief of Hurricane Forecast Operations, gestures as he talks to a reporter at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Thursday, April 4, 2013. The National Weather Service is now changing how it issues hurricane and tropical storm warnings. Starting June 1, watches and warning will be issued for storms that threaten life and property even after they are no longer hurricanes or tropical storms. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

Sandy lost the hurricane part of its name and the prestige that comes with the hurricane center's constant attention and reliable forecasts, and some people said that caused Northeast residents to underestimate its danger.

Under the new policy, the hurricane center in Miami will continue to put out warnings and advisories if a storm threatens people and land, even if a hurricane or tropical storm becomes something different.

"You don't want to change the flow of information in the middle of an event. And what we had before was a situation in where hurricane information comes from the hurricane center, information on non-tropical system comes from other parts of the National Weather Service," said James Franklin, forecast chief for the National Hurricane Center. "And, so, we didn't want see that kind of break in the flow of information occur, so the changes we're introducing this year will allow that flow of information to be very seamless."

From Maryland to New Hampshire, the hurricane center attributed 72 deaths in the U.S. directly to Sandy, though some estimates were higher. It was the most deaths in the northeastern U.S. since Hurricane Agnes killed 122 people in 1972, according to the center's records, which date back to 1851.

The hurricane center counted at least 87 other deaths that were indirectly tied to Sandy, from causes such as hypothermia due to power outages, carbon monoxide poisoning and accidents during cleanup efforts.

Sandy threatened 60 million Americans in the eastern third of the nation when it brought high winds, drenching rains, extreme tides, flooding and even heavy snow. It wiped out entire neighborhoods, inflicting the worst of its fury on New Jersey and New York, and was one of the nation's costliest natural disasters.

In a February report on Sandy, the hurricane center noted the unprecedented warning challenges Sandy posed due to its massive size and the expectation that it would lose its hurricane status before landfall.

Forecasters didn't have a system ready to issue post-tropical advisories and faced unacceptable options that would have caused widespread confusion and damaged forecasters' credibility, according to the report. So on Oct. 29 at 11 p.m., the hurricane center issued its last advisory on the Sandy, which was still packing hurricane-force winds. The center said the next advisory would come from the National Weather Service's hydrometeorological prediction center, a lesser known entity.

The new policy change was first proposed during a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hurricane conference in November. It reflects a post-Sandy collaboration between meteorologists and emergency managers, said Rick Knabb, the hurricane center's director.

A hurricane warning is issued when tropical storm force winds are expected in a coastal area within 36 hours. A hurricane watch is issued when those winds are possible within 48 hours.

Similar watches and warnings also are issued for tropical storms, which have sustained winds between 39 mph and 73 mph. Hurricanes have winds of 74 mph or higher.

The six-month Atlantic hurricane season starts June 1.

Blog : Paying The Highest

Post : Sandy criticism prompts change in storm warnings

READ MORE - Sandy criticism prompts change in storm warnings

Thunderstorms contain ‘dark lightning,’ invisible pulses of powerful radiation

Thunderstorms contain ‘dark lightning,’ invisible pulses of powerful radiation - A lightning bolt is one of nature’s most over-the-top phenomena, rarely failing to elicit at least a ping of awe no matter how many times a person has witnessed one. With his iconic kite-and-key experiments in the mid-18th century, Benjamin Franklin showed that lightning is an electrical phenomenon, and since then the general view has been that lightning bolts are big honking sparks no different in kind from the little ones generated by walking in socks across a carpeted room.

But scientists recently discovered something mind-bending about lightning: Sometimes its flashes are invisible, just sudden pulses of unexpectedly powerful radiation. It’s what Joseph Dwyer, a lightning researcher at the Florida Institute of Technology, has termed dark lightning.

Unknown to Franklin but now clear to a growing roster of lightning researchers and astronomers is that along with bright thunderbolts, thunderstorms unleash sprays of X-rays and even intense bursts of gamma rays, a form of radiation normally associated with such cosmic spectacles as collapsing stars. The radiation in these invisible blasts can carry a million times as much energy as the radiation in visible lightning, but that energy dissipates quickly in all directions rather than remaining in a stiletto-like lightning bolt.

Illustration by Bigstock - People struck by dark lightning, most likely while flying, would not get hurt, but a scientist estimates that they might receive a high dose of dangerous radiation.

Dark lightning appears sometimes to compete with normal lightning as a way for thunderstorms to vent the electrical energy that gets pent up inside their roiling interiors, Dwyer says. Unlike with regular lightning, though, people struck by dark lightning, most likely while flying in an airplane, would not get hurt. But according to Dwyer’s calculations, they might receive in an instant the maximum safe lifetime dose of ionizing radiation — the kind that wreaks the most havoc on the human body.

The only way to determine whether an airplane had been struck by dark lightning, Dwyer says, “would be to use a radiation detector. Right in the middle of [a flash], a very brief bluish-purple glow around the plane might be perceptible. Inside an aircraft, a passenger would probably not be able to feel or hear much of anything, but the radiation dose could be significant.”

However, because there’s only about one dark lightning occurrence for every thousand visible flashes and because pilots take great pains to avoid thunderstorms, Dwyer says, the risk of injury is quite limited. No one knows for sure if anyone has ever been hit by dark lightning.

About 25 million visible thunderbolts hit the United States every year, killing about 30 people and many farm animals, says John Jensenius, a lightning safety specialist with the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine. Worldwide, thunderstorms produce about a billion or so lightning bolts annually.

The conditions for lightning occur when powerful updrafts in cumulonimbus clouds force water droplets and ice crystals to rub against one another, creating massive amounts of positive- and negative-charged particles. The updrafts cause these two types of charged particles to separate, with the top of the thundercloud usually becoming positively charged as the lower part becomes negatively charged.

.The air between the charges normally acts as an insulating layer, which means that no sparks can fly — no lightning — unless something causes that insulation to break down. Scientists have known from lab experiments that super-strong electric fields can temporarily convert the air’s electrically neutral molecules into a conductive pathway.

The trouble is, lightning researchers — despite decades of measurements from balloons, aircraft and rockets — have been unable to locate in thunderclouds electric fields sufficiently strong to trigger this insulator-to-conductor transformation.

To learn what might trigger the transformation, they began measuring radiation of the lightning that thunderstorms routinely emit and discovered something unexpected: the gamma rays and X-rays of dark lightning.

Nuclear explosions and collapsing stars — those are the sorts of extreme events that had been known to spew out gamma rays, not mere thunderstorms.

How is it that some storms produce these unusually strong rays? Dwyer speculates that super-fast electrons — perhaps revved up after being struck by cosmic rays that hit Earth’s atmosphere from deep space — may be the key. The theory is that these energetic electrons collide with atoms inside thunderclouds to create X-rays and gamma rays. These collisions lead to chain reactions that could be the mysterious basis for dark lightning.

Astronomers with access to gamma-ray detectors on satellites will be pivotal to discovering what causes dark lightning.

According to gamma-ray researcher J. Eric Grove of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, the gamma-ray flashes that Dwyer’s model describes match closely the best recent satellite measurements of thunderstorm emissions of these high-energy rays. But he also notes that recent data from an Italian satellite implies that thunderstorms might be producing gamma-ray flashes far more energetic than Dwyer’s theory can account for, adding mystery even as it helps confirm dark lightning’s existence.

Grove hopes additional data from a sensor aboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which he has worked on for years, will provide more information. “We need more gamma-ray and electric-field experiments in and around thunderstorms to really understand this,” Grove says.

Until then, a full understanding of the natural phenomenon that Ben Franklin first analyzed will have to wait.

Amato is a freelance science writer and organizer of the monthly DC Science Cafe. ( washingtonpost.com )

Blog : Paying The Highest

Post : Thunderstorms contain ‘dark lightning,’ invisible pulses of powerful radiation

READ MORE - Thunderstorms contain ‘dark lightning,’ invisible pulses of powerful radiation

Solar Storms

Solar Storms - You’ve probably heard of or seen photos of the Aurora Borealis – a natural light show in the northern night sky. But did you know this phenomenon is actually caused by solar storms, happening on the Sun's surface 93 million miles away?

As it happens, the storms aren’t just in the business of putting on a great show. They can also interfere with GPS and satellites, and even cause major power outages.

Later this year, solar activity is expected to increase, and so will the likelihood that these storms will affect our everyday lives on Earth. Travel, communications, phone service and basic power are all vulnerable to solar storms.

So, what causes these solar storms? How do they affect us here on Earth? And what can we do to protect infrastructure and ourselves? That's the topic of today's "Just Explain It."

Let’s start by going straight to the source: the Sun. 

On the Sun’s surface, turbulent magnetic activity creates what are called sunspots. If the sunspots are powerful enough, they can cause bursts of light known as solar flares.

Sunspots and other solar activity can also release charged particles and plasma from the Sun’s surface. The ejection of these particles is known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME.

While solar flares can create some disruptions here on Earth, it’s the CMEs that cause major problems.

The charged particles of a CME typically take about three days to reach Earth. When they do, they usually bounce off the magnetic field surrounding the planet.

Here’s where the pretty lights come in. The aurora in the night sky is actually caused by those particles from the CME bouncing around in Earth’s magnetic field.

But it can turn ugly. If enough particles get trapped in the magnetic field, they can actually cause it to shake. This shaking is called a geomagnetic storm and it can wreak havoc on our electric grids.

It’s happened before. On March 13, 1989, a massive CME created a geomagnetic storm that shut down power in Quebec, Canada for 12 hours.

But the most powerful geomagnetic storm on record was the Carrington Event in 1859. It’s named for astronomer Richard Carrington who first saw the CME’s sunspots. There were worldwide reports of telegraph communications failing, with sparks exploding from machines and even catching papers on fire.

Why is this so important now? Solar activity goes in 11-year cycles. The current cycle is expected to reach its solar maximum, or peak, later this year. That means more CMEs, and more chances for those storms to impact us here on Earth.

With our reliance on electricity, a Carrington-sized CME could be catastrophic. In a worst-case scenario, GPS, communications and power grids could be out for months or longer. One report said a major solar event could cost the country 1-2 trillion dollars in the first year alone. And it could take four-to-ten years to fully bounce back.

While this doomsday situation is unlikely, scientists and power companies monitor solar activity so steps can be taken to protect infrastructure against a CME. Because it takes about three days to get here from the Sun, there would be time to re-route or ground air travel. Some satellites could be switched to a safe mode that protects them from solar particles. And electricity providers could protect their equipment by disconnecting transformers.

The rest of us could prepare for possible blackouts. So, that generator you’ve been thinking about may not a bad idea. ( JustExplainIt )

Blog : Paying The Highest

Post : Solar Storms

READ MORE - Solar Storms

How a Storm Became Big Enough to Span the Atlantic

How a Storm Became Big Enough to Span the Atlantic - There is currently a massive storm churning over the Atlantic that spans the entire ocean basin, stretching all the way from Canada to Europe, and from Greenland to the Caribbean.

It's the same weather system that brought a massive spring blizzard to much of the United States and Canada earlier this week (on Tuesday (March 26), 44 of 50 states had some snow on the ground), and which has now ballooned in size, according to Jason Samenow, chief meteorologist with the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang.

Robert Oszajca, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service's Ocean Prediction Center, explained that the storm got this big by merging with several low-pressure systems that were hanging out over the Atlantic Ocean. The merging weather systems gave it more power, which was accentuated by a gradient between warm moisture from the southeast, delivered by the Gulf Stream, and frigid air from the north. This intensified the storm, causing it to spin, elongate and grow in size, Oszajca told OurAmazingPlanet.

Normally, the system would have drifted into Europe several days ago. However, a high-pressure system over Greenland blocked the low-pressure system's advance, which allowed it to strengthen further, fed by cold air from the north. This created winds (which move from high pressure to low pressure) up to 75 mph (120 km/h), equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane, Oszajca said.

"We're impressed with the size of this storm," he said. Nevertheless, storms this big form about once or twice every winter.

The storm, which looks like a large comma whose tail stretches into the Caribbean, ranges from Eastern Canada all the way to Spain and north to Greenland. It has created waves up to 42 feet (13 meters) high, Oszajca said.

The storm has already begun to weaken, however, as the high-pressure "blocking" system to the north has eased. Oszajca said the central low-pressure system that has powered the storm will soon break up into several separate centers, and the storm will fragment before hitting Portugal in about four days. The storm isn't expected to be very intense by the time it reaches Europe, he added. ( LiveScience.com )

Blog : Paying The Highest

Post : How a Storm Became Big Enough to Span the Atlantic

READ MORE - How a Storm Became Big Enough to Span the Atlantic

2nd major snowstorm paralyzes parts of Midwest

2nd major snowstorm paralyzes parts of Midwest — For the second time in a week, a major winter storm paralyzed parts of the nation's midsection Tuesday, dumping a fresh layer of heavy, wet snow atop cities still choked with piles from the previous system and making travel perilous from the Oklahoma panhandle to the Great Lakes.

The weight of the snow strained power lines and cut electricity to more than 100,000 homes and businesses. At least three deaths were blamed on the blizzard.

Associated Press/Orlin Wagner - An unidentified man carries coffee to his vehicle across an unplowed street in Lawrence, Kan., Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013. The second major snowstorm in a week battered the nation's midsection Tuesday, dropping a half-foot or more of snow across Missouri and Kansas and cutting power to thousands. Gusting winds blew drifts more than 2 feet high and created treacherous driving conditions for those who dared the morning commute. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner) 

The Missouri Department of Transportation issued a rare "no travel" advisory, urging people to stay off highways except in case of a dire emergency. Conditions were so bad that some snowplows slid into ditches, underlining the danger even to well-equipped travelers.

"It's straight hell. It's snowing, blowing, drifting, everything," said Robert Branscecum, a trucker from Campton, Ill., who was hauling Wal-Mart merchandise to Dallas. He had been stranded since Monday evening at Beto Junction, about 80 miles southwest of Kansas City.

"The cars are stuck in the parking lot. Some of the trucks that tried to leave got stuck," he said. "I'm not leaving anytime soon."

Up to 10 inches had fallen in and around Kansas City, Mo., by the time the snow tapered off before midday. Mayor Sly James declared a state of emergency.

For a second straight week, schoolchildren, government workers and others caught a break as most schools and office buildings were closed. Hospitals closed outpatient centers and urgent-care clinics.

Although the amount of snow was not unusual for late February, the snow was so heavy it stressed everything it fell on, especially the electrical grid. Power was slowly being restored as the thick clouds moved on.

In the northwest Oklahoma town of Woodward, a person was killed after 15 inches of snow brought down part of a roof. The storm was also blamed for the deaths of two people who were killed in rollover crashes Monday on Interstate 70 in Kansas.

Heavy snow pulled down large trees and caused roofs to cave in at businesses in Belton and Warrensburg, Mo., where 13 inches of snow piled up. In Columbia, a canopy over gas pumps collapsed at a convenience store.

By noon, the storm had arrived in the Great Lakes with a mixture of blowing snow, sleet and frigid rain that disrupted most forms of travel. Airlines canceled almost 500 flights at Chicago's O'Hare and Midway airports alone.

Elsewhere in Chicago, the heavy weather threatened to hold down voter turnout in a special election to choose the likely replacement for former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. The city deployed extra resources to keep polls accessible. Its full fleet of 284 snowplows was out clearing pavement.

The wintry mix also blew through Iowa, which had been expected to escape any serious snowfall. Parts of the state could now get as much as a foot.

Fueled by a strong low pressure system, the crescent-shaped storm began Sunday in Texas, then headed north. It was expected to drop up to 6 inches of snow on Chicago before crawling east across Michigan toward northern New England.

Schools and major highways in the Texas Panhandle remained closed for a second day Tuesday. Interstate 27 reopened between Amarillo and Lubbock, about 120 miles to the south, but the Texas National Guard was still working to clear much of Interstate 40 from the Oklahoma border to the New Mexico state line.

Some other roads reopened as sunny conditions began to thaw ice and snow-packed surfaces.

Just a day earlier, whiteout conditions had made virtually all Panhandle roads impassable. A hurricane-force gust of 75 mph was recorded in Amarillo, which got 17 inches. The heaviest snowfall was in Follett, Texas, with 21 inches.

In Oklahoma, 600 snowplows and trucks worked to reopen roads.

Because this was the second storm in as many weeks, weary Midwesterners were annoyed that a huge blizzard could so closely follow another major storm.

Climate scientists can't say that man-made global warming is the cause of individual extreme weather events, but they say climate change in general makes such storms more likely because of what it does to the thermodynamics of the air and water.

Warmer air in general holds more moisture, and when temperatures dance around the freezing mark — cold enough to fall as snow, but warm enough to hold lots of moisture — the storms dump more snow, especially if part of the system has been over unusually warm ocean water.

Since 1960, much of the United States has had twice as many extreme snowstorms as it had in the 60 years before, according to a new study by top scientists that will soon appear in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. But global warming is also shortening the snow season, dramatically reducing spring snow in the Northern Hemisphere, the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University found.

"These storms didn't just occur in a vacuum. They are fueled by record amounts of moisture in the atmosphere," Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann said Tuesday in an email.

Mann said the unusual warmth and moisture combine with cold air dipping down from the Arctic to produce heavy snow. He said some computer weather models predict the Midwestern storm may break a record for low-pressure, which is how meteorologists measure the strength of a storm.

The back-to-back storms have raised hopes that the moisture might ease the drought conditions that have gripped the Midwest for more than a year. The snowpack now resting on the Plains will help, but it's no drought-buster, experts say.

"If we get one more storm like this, with widespread 2 inches of moisture, we will continue to chip away at the drought," said meteorologist Mike Umscheid of the National Weather Service office in Dodge City. "But to claim the drought is over or ending is way too premature." ( Associated Press )

Blog : Paying The Highest

Post : 2nd major snowstorm paralyzes parts of Midwest

READ MORE - 2nd major snowstorm paralyzes parts of Midwest

Storm that buried Plains slams Great Lakes region

Storm that buried Plains slams Great Lakes region - A powerful winter storm that buried the U.S. Plains and left at least three people dead moved into the southern Great Lakes region on Tuesday, where it snarled the evening commute in Chicago and Milwaukee, created near-whiteout conditions in some areas and forced hundreds of flight cancellations.

Much of the region was under either a winter storm warning or a winter weather advisory, according to the National Weather Service, as the system's potent blend of wet snow, sleet and strong winds bore down on north central Illinois, southern Wisconsin and northern Indiana and Ohio.

The most intense snowfall and greatest accumulations were expected through Tuesday night, the NWS said. With winds gusting up to 35 mph, near-whiteout conditions were reported in some rural areas, the agency said.

More than 500 flights were canceled at Chicago's O'Hare International and Midway airports alone, according to the Chicago Department of Aviation. Those flights that managed to take off or land faced delays of up to an hour.

The Illinois Tollway agency, which maintains nearly 300 miles of highway around Chicago, had its fleet of more than 180 snowplows working to keep the roads clear.

As the afternoon rush hour began in Chicago, blowing snow reduced visibility and created treacherous driving conditions, doubling average travel times in and out of the city on major expressways, according to Traffic.com.

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation warned that much of Interstate 94 between the Illinois state line and Milwaukee was ice covered.

In Chicago, the city's public school system, the third-largest school district in the country, canceled all after-school sporting events, including six state regional basketball games.

Forecasters with the National Weather Service said the storm would continue to move eastward, dumping 3 to 5 inches of wet snow on Detroit overnight and into Wednesday morning.

In Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas, where the storm hit earlier, residents were digging out.

Highways in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles and parts of Kansas remained closed because of heavy and drifting snow.

The storm contributed to at least three deaths, two in Kansas and one in Oklahoma.

A woman died and three passengers were injured Monday night on Interstate 70 when their pickup truck rolled off the icy roadway in Ellis County, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback said. Earlier Monday, a man was killed when his car veered off the interstate in Sherman County near the Colorado border, he said.

"We urge everyone to avoid travel and be extremely cautious if you must be on the roads," said Ernest Garcia, superintendent of the Kansas Highway Patrol.

In northern Oklahoma, one person died when the roof of a home partially collapsed in the city of Woodward, said Matt Lehenbauer, the city's emergency management director.

"We have roofs collapsing all over town," said Woodward Mayor Roscoe Hill Jr. "We really have a mess on our hands."

Kansas City was also hard hit by the storm, which left snowfalls of 7 to 13 inches in the metro region on Tuesday, said Chris Bowman, meteorologist for the National Weather Service. Another 1 to 3 inches is forecast for Tuesday evening and nearly two-thirds of the flights at Kansas City International Airport Tuesday afternoon were canceled.

In addition to the winter storm, National Weather Service forecasters on Tuesday issued tornado watches across central Florida and up the eastern coast to South Carolina. ( Reuters )

Blog : Paying The Highest
Post : Storm that buried Plains slams Great Lakes region

READ MORE - Storm that buried Plains slams Great Lakes region

Ice storm encases Midwest, heads east for start of work week

Ice storm encases Midwest, heads east for start of work week - A storm encased the U.S. Midwest in glistening ice on Sunday, forcing officials to cancel flights and closing roadways and threatening to tangle the start of the work week as freezing rains headed east.

\Hundreds of churches across Iowa called off Sunday services as sidewalks were turned to sheets of ice by the storm that meteorologists said had covered the Midwest in about a half-inch (13mm) of ice by midday.

Flights in and out of Chicago, Minneapolis and St. Louis were grounded on icy runways.

The National Weather Service issued a freezing rain advisory for Chicago and the surrounding area for Sunday until 9 p.m. CST (0300 GMT Monday), when temperatures were expected to warm up enough to make it just rain. Until then, the NWS warned of dangerous conditions for driving and even walking.

"Pockets of sleet, freezing rain and freezing drizzle are possible farther east late tonight into Monday morning from Buffalo, New York, to New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Roanoke, Virginia," meteorologist Brian Edwards said on Accuweather.com.

Slick roadways were reported from South Sioux City, Nebraska, to Iowa, where numerous crashes were reported, according to the Iowa Department of Transportation. In Franklin County, Iowa, Interstate 35 was blocked by tractor trailers struggling to get a grip on treacherous surfaces.

"Instant icing of windshields and roadway surfaces (as well as driveways, sidewalks and parking lots) can be expected in the areas with freezing temperatures," the Iowa DOT said.

In Missouri, ramps to connecting Interstate 270, which circles the St. Louis area, to Interstate 70 were closed early Sunday morning because of ice, but were later reopened, said Marie Elliott, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Transportation. ( Reuters )

Blog : Paying The Highest

Post : Ice storm encases Midwest, heads east for start of work week

READ MORE - Ice storm encases Midwest, heads east for start of work week

Storm's high winds, snow, sleet lash Northeast

A powerful winter storm system that pounded the nation's midsection, wrecking holiday travel plans and dumping a record snowfall in Arkansas, began lashing the Northeast on Wednesday with high winds, snow and sleet.

The storm, which knocked out power to thousands of utility customersm mainly in Arkansas, was blamed in at least six deaths.

Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed, scores of motorists got stuck on icy roads or slid into drifts and blizzard warnings were issued amid snowy gusts of 30 mph that blanketed roads and windshields, at times causing whiteout conditions.

Associated Press/The Gleaner, Mike Lawrence - Traffic moves in the U.S. 41 By-Pass in Henderson, Ky., Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2012 as a snow storm moves through the area making travel treacherous. (AP Photo/The Gleaner, Mike Lawrence)

"The way I've been describing it is as a low-end blizzard, but that's sort of like saying a small Tyrannosaurus rex," said John Kwiatkowski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Indianapolis.

The system, which spawned Gulf Coast region tornadoes on Christmas Day, pushed through the Upper Ohio Valley and headed into the Northeast Wednesday night. High winds, snow and sleet slickened roads in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, causing dozens of minor accidents and spinouts. Forecasts called for 12 to 18 inches of snow inland from western New York to Maine into Thursday.

The National Weather Service said early Thursday that snow was falling heavily in Pennsylvania, upstate New York and some New England states. Among the highest snow totals were 2 to five inches in southeastern Massachusetts, 3 to 6 inches in Connecticut, up to a foot in some Pennsylvania counties and 10 to 11 inches in some parts of western New York.

The system was expected to taper off into a mix of rain and snow closer to the coast, where little or no accumulation was expected in such cities as Philadelphia, Boston and New York.

The storm left freezing temperatures in its aftermath, and forecasters also said parts of the Southeast from Virginia to Florida would see severe thunderstorms.

Schools on break and workers taking holiday vacations meant that many people could avoid messy commutes, but those who had to travel were implored to avoid it. Snow was blamed for scores of vehicle accidents as far east as Maryland, and about two dozen counties in Indiana and Ohio issued snow emergency travel alerts, urging people to go out on the roads only if necessary.

About 40 vehicles got bogged down trying to make it up a slick hill in central Indiana, and four state snowplows slid off roads as snow fell at the rate of 3 inches an hour in some places.

Two passengers in a car on a sleet-slickened Arkansas highway were killed Wednesday in a head-on collision, and two people, including a 76-year-old Milwaukee woman, were killed Tuesday on Oklahoma highways. Deaths from wind-toppled trees were reported in Texas and Louisiana.

The day after Christmas wasn't expected to be particularly busy for AAA, but its Cincinnati-area branch had its busiest Wednesday of the year. By mid-afternoon, nearly 400 members had been helped with tows, jump starts and other aid, with calls still coming in, spokesman Mike Mills said.

Jennifer Miller was taking a bus Wednesday from Cincinnati to visit family in Columbus.

"I wish this had come yesterday and was gone today," she said, struggling with a rolling suitcase and three smaller bags on a slushy sidewalk near the station. "I'm glad I don't have to drive in this."

Traffic crawled at 25 mph on Interstate 81 in Maryland, where authorities reported scores of accidents.

"We're going to try to go down south and get below" the storm, said Richard Power, traveling from home in Levittown, N.Y., to Kentucky with his wife, two children and their beagle, Lucky.

He said they were well on their way until they hit snow in Pennsylvania, then 15-mph traffic on I-81 at Hagerstown, Md.

"We're going to go as far as we can go. ... If it doesn't get better, we're going to just get a hotel," he said.

More than 1,600 flights were canceled, according to the aviation tracking website FlightAware.com, and some airlines said they would waive change fees. Lengthy delays were reported Wednesday at the three major New York City-area airports, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

In Arkansas, some of the nearly 200,000 people who lost power could be without it for as long as a week because of snapped poles and wires after ice and 10 inches of snow coated power lines, said the state's largest utility, Entergy Arkansas.

Gov. Mike Beebe, who declared a statewide emergency, sent out National Guard teams, and Humvees transported medical workers and patients. Snow hadn't fallen in Little Rock on Christmas since 1926, but the capital ended Tuesday with 10.3 inches of it.

Other states also had scattered outages. Duke Energy said it had nearly 300 outages in Indiana, with few left in Ohio by early afternoon after scores were reported in the morning.

As the storm moved east, New England state highway departments were treating roads and getting ready to mobilize with snowfall forecasts of a foot or more.

"People are picking up salt and a lot of shovels today," said Andy Greenwood, an assistant manager at Aubuchon Hardware in Keene, N.H.

As usual, winter-sports enthusiasts welcomed the snow. At Smiling Hill Farm in Maine, Warren Knight was hoping for enough snow to allow the opening of trails.

"We watch the weather more carefully for cross-country skiing than we do for farming. And we're pretty diligent about farming. We're glued to the weather radio," said Knight, who described the weather at the 500-acre farm in Westbrook as being akin to the prizes in "Cracker Jacks — we don't know what we're going to get."

Behind the storm, Mississippi's governor declared states of emergency in eight counties with more than 25 people reported injured and 70 homes left damaged.

Cindy Williams stood near a home in McNeill, Miss., where its front had collapsed into a pile of wood and brick, a balcony and the porch ripped apart. Large oak trees were uprooted and winds sheared off treetops in a nearby grove. But she focused instead on the fact that all her family members had escaped harm.

"We are so thankful," she said. "God took care of us." ( Associated Press)

Blog : Paying The Highest

Post : Storm's high winds, snow, sleet lash Northeast

READ MORE - Storm's high winds, snow, sleet lash Northeast

Storm brings tornadoes, snow to South; two dead

Storm brings tornadoes, snow to South; two dead - A major winter storm system swept through the southern United States on Tuesday, spawning tornadoes in several states and killing two people in weather-related road accidents.

The National Weather Service (NWS) said a tornado struck Mobile, Alabama, home to about 200,000 people, at about 5 p.m. local time (2300 GMT). There were reports of damage to trees and widespread power outages, along with some structural damage, but no injuries or fatalities.

Tornadoes also touched down in Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana, flattening houses and causing some injuries, according to the NWS.

Reuters/Reuters - Downed trees and power lines caused by a Christmas Day tornado are seen along Dauphin Street in Mobile, Alabama December 25, 2012. The National Weather Service said a tornado struck Mobile, a U.S. city with a population of about 200,000, at about 5 p.m. local time (2300 GMT). There were reports of damage to trees and widespread power outages, along with some structural damage. REUTERS/Marvin Gentry

The wild Christmas weather was expected to continue into early Wednesday - the NWS' Storm Prediction Center forecasted the development of "a few strong tornadoes and thunderstorm wind damage over parts of the southeast" this evening and overnight.

It warned that tornadoes at night at this time of year can be particularly dangerous because they are usually fast-moving and obscured by rain and darkness. Areas mostly likely to be hit by strong storms include southern and eastern Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and southwest Georgia, the NWS warned.

Tuesday's storms also contributed to a 21-vehicle pile-up that shut down a major highway in Oklahoma City and tens of thousands of power outages.

A Texas man died after an accident involving a tree in the road, and another person died in a weather-related accident on I-44 in Oklahoma, according to local authorities.

The storm was expected to evolve into a blizzard from Arkansas to southern Illinois on Tuesday night, with snowfall of up to a foot in some areas, according to Accuweather.com.

Accuweather.com senior meteorologist Kristina Pydynowski warned on the website that travel will be "extremely treacherous, if not impossible, as the snow clogs roads, such as interstates 24, 55 and 57, and the blowing snow severely lowers visibility."

The Indiana governor's office issued an advisory Tuesday evening that "non-essential employees" who live in areas where snow emergencies have been declared do not have to come to work.

The snowstorm will shift on Wednesday to the eastern Great Lakes and northeastern region, with a blizzard warning in effect for Cleveland starting at 7 a.m. on Wednesday (1200 GMT), forecasters said. Cleveland could get up to a foot of snow, according to the NWS.

Southern Indiana is under a blizzard warning starting early Wednesday morning, according to NWS meteorologist Crystal Pettet. Indianapolis could see its biggest snowfall in four years, with a possibility of 10 to 12 inches of snow.

"Conditions should be pretty bad in time for rush hour," Pettet said.

CHRISTMAS SNOWFALL

In the town of McNeill in southern Mississippi, an apparent tornado destroyed 12 homes and injured eight people, though none of the injuries appear life-threatening, said Danny Manley, director of the Pearl River County Emergency Management Agency.

Manley said the homes could not be rebuilt, as some had lost roofs and their top stories and one was smashed by a tree.

Another apparent tornado hit Centreville, Mississippi, in the southwestern part of the state, injuring one person, destroying a trailer and heavily damaging other homes and buildings, according to Tim Destri, a NWS meteorologist in New Orleans.

A tornado destroyed a building 13 miles southeast of Crockett, Texas, and a bank lost a section of its roof, according to Accuweather.com.

Freezing drizzle overnight led to 10 separate collisions on Interstate 40 in Oklahoma City early on Tuesday, said Betsy Randolph, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. The city also got a rare Christmas snowfall.

The 21-vehicle pile-up included three tractor-trailers and shut down the westbound lanes for about five hours, she said. Twelve people were taken to hospitals, and troopers were checking on the severity of their injuries.

Ahead of the storm's path, parts of eastern West Virginia are under a winter storm warning. Ice accumulations of up to half an inch are expected in higher elevations, the NWS said. ( Reuters )

Blog : Paying The Highest

Post : Storm brings tornadoes, snow to South; two dead

READ MORE - Storm brings tornadoes, snow to South; two dead

Enduring an endless post-Sandy darkness

Enduring an endless post-Sandy darkness — New Yorkers railed Sunday against a utility that has lagged behind others in restoring power two weeks after the superstorm that socked the region, criticizing its slow pace as well as a dearth of information.

About 120,000 customers in New York and New Jersey remained without power Sunday, including tens of thousands of homes and businesses that were too damaged to connect to power even if it was running in their neighborhood. More than 8 million lost power during the storm, and some during a later nor'easter.

Separately, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano visited with disaster-relief workers Sunday in Staten Island's Midland Beach neighborhood, which is still devastated two weeks after Sandy hit.

The lack of power restoration for a relative few in the densely populated region at the heart of the storm reinforced Sandy's fractured effect on the area: tragic and vicious to some, merely a nuisance to others.

Perhaps none of the utilities have drawn criticism as widespread, or as harsh, as the Long Island Power Authority. Nearly 50,000 of the homes and businesses it serves were still without power Sunday evening, and 55,000 more couldn't safely connect even though their local grids were back online because their wiring and other equipment had been flooded. It would need to be repaired or inspected before those homes could regain power, LIPA said.

"We certainly understand the frustration that's out there," LIPA's chief operating officer, Michael Hervey, said in a conference call late Sunday. But, he said, the storm had been worse than expected, no utility had as many workers in place beforehand as it would have liked, and the power was coming back rapidly "compared to the damage that's been incurred."

Customers told of calling LIPA multiple times a day for updates and getting no answer, or contradictory advice.

"I was so disgusted the other night," said Carrie Baram of Baldwin Harbor, who said she calls the utility three times a day. "I was up till midnight, but nobody bothered to answer the telephone."

Baram, 56, said she and her husband, Bob, go to the mall to charge their cellphones, and Bob, a sales manager, goes there to work. They trekked to her parents' house to shower. At night, they huddle under a pile of blankets and listen to the sound of fire engines, which Baram assumes are blaring because people have been accidentally setting blazes with their generators.

"It's dark," said an exasperated Baram, "it's frightening, and it's freezing."

LIPA has said it knows that customers aren't getting the information they need, partly because of an outdated information technology system that it is updating. Sunday, executives said they were working on setting up information centers near the most heavily damaged areas. The company also said it had deployed 6,400 linemen to work on restoring power, compared to 200 on a normal day.

"'They're working on it, they're working on it' — that would be their common response," Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano said Sunday, describing LIPA's interaction with his office.

He said LIPA had failed to answer even simple questions from its customers and that Sandy's magnitude wasn't an excuse.

"How could a utility of that size, with the financial support that it receives, fail to communicate with its residents?" he said. "Its basic logistics seem to have failed."

Mangano and other lawmakers have called for the federal government to step in and assist with restoring power to Long Island, saying LIPA could not be trusted to get the job done.

On Sunday, LIPA said it had restored power to 95 percent of homes and businesses where it was safe to receive power and that that figure would be 99 percent by the end of Tuesday. It didn't give an estimate for the remaining customers.

"When we're done, we will look at any improvements we need to make in the process," Hervey said. "My appeal to those customers is once the crews arrive, stand back and let them get their work done."

Phillip Jones, 43, a parole officer in Uniondale, said he had called LIPA about 10 times a day before his power was turned on Saturday and usually just got a busy signal. A few times he got a recording saying the company was aware of the problems and would call if it needed to speak to him.

"Which was kind of strange," Jones said, "because most of the phones were not working that well."

Jones also criticized LIPA's failure to find a way to tell people how long to expect to be without electricity.

"If they had said the lights won't be on until two weeks from now, I could have made a two-week plan," he said. Instead, he and his wife and two children had been sleeping in one bed to try to stay warm, and he missed two weeks of work. "All you could do was hope that today would be the day."

On Staten Island, Napolitano said "a lot of progress" had been made since the storm hit and especially since her last visit 10 days earlier.

"It seems like a different place," she said. "You can really tell the difference."

But, she added, there was a lot more to do. "The last big chunk" to solve, she said, is the question of how quickly power can be returned to thousands of homes without it.

If homes are not inhabitable even after power returns, she said, the government is finding temporary apartments and hotels where evacuees can stay — preferably in the same community so kids can continue going to the same schools.

In New York City, the mayor's office said about 6,000 residents of low-income housing were still without power in 30 buildings. Ahead of a Veterans Day wreath-laying ceremony, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city was "getting more generators in" and added, "It's a question of how quickly the electricians can set things up."

He said heating is "a more complex problem, but that's coming along as well."

Police raised the city's death toll from the storm to 43, after the death of a 77-year-old retired custodian who apparently fell down the stairs of his apartment building in the Rockaways, when it was dark and without power. Family members found him on Oct. 31; he died at a hospital Saturday.

Though New York and New Jersey bore the brunt of the destruction, at its peak, the storm reached 1,000 miles across, killed more than 100 people in 10 states, knocked out power to 8.5 million and canceled nearly 20,000 flights. More than 12 inches of rain fell in Easton, Md., and 34 inches of snow fell in Gatlinburg, Tenn. Damage has been estimated at $50 billion, making Sandy the second most expensive storm in U.S. history, behind Katrina. ( Associated Press )

Blog : Paying The Highest

Post : Enduring an endless post-Sandy darkness

READ MORE - Enduring an endless post-Sandy darkness