April 11, 2016 - DELAWARE, UNITED STATES - A double rainbow is an awesome meteorological phenomenon on its own.
But
when mammatus clouds appear at the same time... It becomes epic.
This
is what happened in the sky of Newark, Delaware on April 7, 2016.
In a double rainbow, a second arc is seen outside the primary arc, and
has the order of its colours reversed, with red on the inner side of the
arc.
Mammatus are pouch-like cloud structures and a rare example of clouds in
sinking air.
Sometimes very ominous in appearance, mammatus clouds are
harmless and do not mean that a tornado is about to form.
In fact, mammatus are usually seen after the worst of a thunderstorm has
passed.
Mammatus are long lived if the sinking air contains large drops
and snow crystals since larger particles require greater amounts of
energy for evaporation to occur.
Mammatus typically develop on the underside of a thunderstorm's anvil
and can be a remarkable sight, especially when sunlight is reflected off
of them. - Strange Sounds.
July 21, 2013 - UNITED STATES - Fifty firefighters were overcome by high temperatures Friday while
battling a huge blaze in New Jersey, officials said, amid a heat wave
suspected in the deaths of at least 13 people across the country in the
last week.
A
Jersey City firefighter sits at the bottom of the stairs of a building
adjacent to a building where firefighters battled a four-alarm fire, on
Friday, in Jersey City, N.J. Photo: Julio Cortez / AP
Firefighter after firefighter wilted under heavy gear
in temperatures that soared near 100 degrees as they battled the blaze,
which was tearing through several buildings — including three homes —
early Friday afternoon, NBC New York reported.
Twenty-three
firefighters were transported to hospitals with heat-related
conditions, emergency management officials told NBC New York.
Twenty-seven more firefighters were treated on the scene for heat
exhaustion.
Two other firefighters were taken to the hospital with back and ankle injuries. All 52 firefighters were reported as stable.
The
fire erupted as temperatures soared into the upper 90s across the
Northeast and to near-record highs across much of the rest of the
country. New York City (100); Newark, N.J. (100); Boston (99); and
Islip, N.Y. (93), all set or tied records Friday.
"The cities have excessive heat warnings in effect. ... Some people
don't have air conditioning, so that's going to be an issue, especially
for the elderly and younger children, as well," said Michael Palmer, a
meteorologist for The Weather Channel, who called conditions "dangerous."
The
extreme heat has been blamed for at least 13 deaths, including that of a
2-year-old boy found in the trunk of a car in Wisconsin, an autopsy
showed.
The boy, identified as Isaiah Theis, was found late
Wednesday locked inside the trunk of a car parked outside his father's
auto shop in Centuria, in western Wisconsin about 60 miles northwest of
Minneapolis.
Isaiah was last seen playing with his brother on the family's farmstead Tuesday evening, NBC station KBJR of Duluth, Minn., reported. Temperatures during the period he was missing were in the 90s.
Investigators said they were still trying to figure out how Isaiah ended up in the locked trunk.
Also in Wisconsin, the Milwaukee County medical examiner's office was investigating three other suspected heat-related deaths, NBC station WTMJ of Milwaukee reported:
that of a 71-year-old man found in his home, which was sealed with no
fans or air conditioning running; that of a 79-year-old man found in his
home, which was likewise sealed and uncooled; and that of a 44-year-old
man who died at a hospital after having been found unresponsive in an
alley with a body temperature of 108 degrees.
At least five people have died because of the heat this week in Maryland, authorities told NBC station WBAL of Baltimore:
a middle-age man in Howard County, a toddler in Baltimore County, two
women older than 65 in Wicomico County and a man older than 65 in
Baltimore County.
A 57-year-old man in Philadelphia who had an air conditioner that
wasn't operating died from chronic obstructive lung disease and heat
exposure, city officials told NBC Philadelphia.
An autopsy concluded that heat stress contributed to the heart
disease-related death of Annie Spears, 71, on Thursday afternoon in her
home in Washington Heights on the South Side of Chicago, NBC Chicago reported Friday.
Christopher J. Todd, 30, of Rochester, N.Y., died Wednesday after
having hiked about 4 miles to the summit of Mount Whiteface in the White
Mountains, the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department
said. The department said the cause of death hadn't yet been
determined, but it cautioned hikers to stay well hydrated while
outdoors.
Relief is in sight, however, with cool breezes from the north
expected to blast a dome of high pressure that has parked itself over
the Ohio Valley, causing the near-record highs.
But the break will
come at a price, as severe thunderstorms and hail sweep in late Friday.
The National Weather Service said the storms could break over areas of
the Midwest, the Great Lakes region, New York State and parts of New
England on Friday afternoon and into the evening, bringing strong winds.
"We'll
see a line of storms that will produce some winds that could gust at
least 60 miles per hour, we could see some golf ball-size hail in
spots," Palmer said.
WATCH: Power crews rushed to repair problems in the searing sun while firefighters battled blazes in the scorching heat that has lingered over the East Coast for days. NBC's Stephanie Gosk reports.
The worst of the storms — including damaging
straight-line winds, hail and perhaps a tornado — will come in Michigan,
eastern Wisconsin, northeast Illinois, far northern Indiana and Upstate
New York.
Electricity use soared to an all-time high in New York City as the
work week closed out, provider Con Edison announced, with a service peak
of 13,214 megawatts about 2 p.m. ET. The previous record was 13,189
megawatts on July 22, 2011, according to the company.
The heat wave has flummoxed meteorologists, because it has moved backward across America, something that rarely happens.
Normally,
U.S. weather systems move west to east. The western Atlantic
high-pressure system behind the hot dry weather started moving east to
west last week and by Tuesday was centered over lower Michigan, said Jon
Gottschalck, operations chief at the National Weather Service's
prediction branch.
"It's definitely unusual and going the wrong way," Gottschalck said Thursday. "This is pretty rare." - NBC News.
November 19, 2012 - UNITED STATES - It has now been three weeks since Hurricane Sandy hit New York, New Jersey, and many other northeast locations in the United States. Still, the debris is still piling up and many people have no electricity or wont have back their power until Christmas.
Superstorm Sandy debris is seen in the parking lot of Jacob Riis Park in the Rockaway section
of Queens on Wednesday. Mark Lennihan / AP.
Sandy Debris Piles Up At NY Site - 4,500 Tons (9 Million Pounds) And Counting.
Last summer it was packed with beachgoers, a parking lot where New Yorkers stashed their cars, applied sunscreen and dragged lawn chairs, coolers and umbrellas across the blacktop toward the shore. Today it's an enormous waste collection site half a mile long and a quarter-mile wide, piled high with debris from the flooding caused by Superstorm Sandy. Though the flow of debris has slowed a little, the cleanup job is far from over. New York City officials have determined that around 350 homes in the city are beyond salvation, including 80 in Breezy Point alone, said Fred Strickland, the resident engineer from the Army Corps of Engineers, which is helping the New York Department of Sanitation with the cleanup.If all goes according to plan, the city will condemn the houses and demolish them, and Strickland's team will help haul away the rubble. Twisted steel, waterlogged wood, broken furniture and countless mattresses already fill the parking lot that normally serves one of New York's most popular ocean beaches. Hundreds of trucks come and go around the clock bringing material collected from the streets of the Far Rockaways and Breezy Point, where water from Sandy's storm surge tore apart homes and buildings. Residents are still digging out. The temporary garbage dump at Jacob Riis Park in Queens is one of several sites around the city being used this way. The size of the dump reflects the enormity of the damage caused by the storm. The debris just keeps coming. - NBC.
In this Oct. 31, 2012 photo, a tree in Jersey City, N.J., lies tangled in power lines after being brought
down by high winds from Superstorm Sandy.
Sandy Uprooted Trees By The Thousands In New York And New Jersey.
They fell by the thousands, like soldiers in some vast battle of giants, dropping to the earth in submission to a greater force. The winds of Superstorm Sandy took out more trees in the neighborhoods, parks and forests of New York and New Jersey than any previous storm on record, experts say. Nearly 10,000 were lost in New York City alone, and "thousands upon thousands" went down on Long Island, a state parks spokesman said. New Jersey utilities reported more than 113,000 destroyed or damaged trees. "These are perfectly healthy trees, some more than 120 years old, that have survived hurricanes, ice storms, nor'easters, anything Mother Nature could throw their way," said Todd Forrest, a vice president at the New York Botanical Garden. "Sandy was just too much." As oaks, spruces and sycamores buckled, many became Sandy's agents, contributing to the destruction by crashing through houses or tearing through electric wires. They caused several deaths, including those of two boys playing in a suburban family room. They left hundreds of thousands of people without power for more than a week. - The Weather Channel.
Some New Yorkers May Not Have Electricity Until Christmas.
In the following excerpt taken from the transcript of an interview between CNN's Anderson Cooper and New York City Councilman James Sanders, it is revealed that many citizens in New York will not have their power restored until Christmas.
COOPER: With us now is New York City councilman and senator-elect James Sanders. He calls the power failure, the LIPA failure, in his words a powder keg.Councilman, you met with LIPA officials today. They said some people here on Long Island may not have power until Christmas? Is that true?
JAMES SANDERS, NEW YORK CITY COUNCILMAN: When I raised the question to the man and said, how soon will everyone have power, they wouldn't give me an answer, and I said, well, can we say November? Can we say December? How about Christmas? At that point they said, it is possible.
COOPER: What do you make of this? I mean, I know you called for the president of LIPA to resign if power isn't restored by Monday. But you also said the buck stops with Governor Cuomo since he appoints LIPA board members. Who do you call responsible in here?
SANDERS: Well, the first people held accountable of course has to be the LIPA. LIPA has the responsibility of making sure that this area is powered. And that responsibility is a dismal failure.What hasn't been mentioned is some people are freezing out here, and we are absolutely -- there are people who are dying thanks to this cold. And we can't -- as an elected official, I can't sit by quietly. LIPA must go, and the person who has the power to make this happen is our good governor.
COOPER: And you know, it's not the first time that LIPA has come under fire. It's had a bad reputation when it comes to getting power restored after storms, right?
SANDERS: LIPA is historically one of the worst-performing authorities that New York State has, and why we allow this to continue, I don't know. At a minimum, the captain needs to go down with the ship. The ship went down 12 days ago, and yet the captain is still skating away. The captain needs to go down with the ship.
November 16, 2012 - UNITED STATES - Human waste has been pouring into New York Harbor from the fifth largest sewage treatment plant in the nation since it was hit by Sandy, and the operator of the plant cannot predict when it will stop. A 12-foot surge of water swamped the Newark plant that serves some three million people when Sandy struck on Oct. 29.
The plant has pumped more than three billion gallons of untreated or partially treated wastewater into local waterways since then. Mike DeFrancisci, executive director of the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission, would only say "ASAP" when asked when repairs to the sprawling facility could be made. Until then, the main outfall will continue dumping millions of gallons of partially treated human waste a day at a point close to the Statue of Liberty across from Manhattan. "We've never had the facility flood like this," he said.
Pathogens in partially treated waste are a health hazard and public safety threat, officials said. Fishing, crabbing and shellfishing bans in the New Jersey waters of the harbor will remain in effect, said Larry Ragonese, a Department of Environmental Protection spokesman. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection also issued an advisory to residents to avoid contact with the water. While no target date has been set for repairs at the plant to be completed, DeFrancisci said he expected the facility, which has miles of underground chambers and pipes, to be redesigned to withstand the new reality of storms like Sandy. "Underneath it would be no different than being in a battleship, making sure the doors are watertight," DeFrancisci said. - NBC.
WATCH: Human waste has been pouring into New York Harbor.
