Pages

Friday 7 September 2012

WEATHER GONE WILD: MORE STUNNING IMAGES OF EXTREME WEATHER AROUND THE WORLD


New Picture (23)
We know the world’s weather has been kind of crazy this year, and my previous post showed spectacular and scary images of extreme weather around the world. The September 2012 edition of National Geographic Magazine carried a cover story titled "Weather Gone Wild," accompanied by a gallery of stunning images of the extreme weather. Here’s a selection of those images.

Weather Gone Wild
By
National Geographic Magazine, September 2012.

Rains that are almost biblical, heat waves that don't end, tornadoes that strike in savage swarms - there's been a change in the weather lately. What's going on?


1. MONTANA, USA
New PictureA deluge falls from the core of a thunderstorm near Glasgow in July 2010. “I felt like if you could stand in the middle and look up, you'd see straight into the heavens,” says photographer Sean Heavey.


2. ARIZONA, USA
New Picture (1)The biggest dust storm in living memory rolls into Phoenix on July 5, 2011, reducing visibility to zero. Desert thunderstorms kicked up the mile-high wall of dust and sand.


3. SWITZERLAND
New Picture (3)Frozen spray from Lake Geneva entombs cars, trees, and a promenade during a severe cold spell in February 2012. An unusual dip in the polar jet stream, which looped as far south as Africa, brought Arctic air and deep snows to Europe, killing several hundred people.


4. MISSISSIPPI, USA
New Picture (5)Fortified by a levee, a house near Vicksburg survives a Yazoo River flood in May 2011. Snowmelt and intense rains - eight times as much rainfall as usual in parts of the Mississippi River watershed - triggered floods that caused three to four billion dollars in damages.


5. NEBRASKA, USA
New Picture (7)“It was really cranking,” photographer Mike Hollingshead says of this 130-mile-an-hour twister. But to him, that was not a clue to run the other way. A dedicated storm chaser, he shot this funnel on June 20, 2011, outside Bradshaw, where it derailed freight-train cars.


6. CHINA
New Picture (8)Rainwater cascades onto a Chengdu resident rushing up a flight of stairs from an underground garage. An unusually severe downpour on July 3, 2011, flooded streets and knocked out electricity in the city, which is the capital of Sichuan Province in central China.


7. TEXAS, USA
New Picture (10)Photograph by Robb Kendrick
Tumbleweeds catch in the furrows of an unplanted cotton field near Brownfield, southwest of Lubbock. High winds and a record-breaking heat wave led to damaging erosion, says Buzz Cooper, who runs a cotton gin nearby. “It was just like a hot fan in an oven,” he says. (Robb Kendrick)


[Source: National Geographic Magazine. Edited. Top image added.]


No comments:

Post a Comment

Please adhere to proper blog etiquette when posting your comments. This blog owner will exercise his absolution discretion in allowing or rejecting any comments that are deemed seditious, defamatory, libelous, racist, vulgar, insulting, and other remarks that exhibit similar characteristics. If you insist on using anonymous comments, please write your name or other IDs at the end of your message.