The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the first part of its latest report on manmade climate change Friday prompting one meteorologist to take to Twitter and make a number of dramatic pronouncements. Read the rest of this story on Examiner.com
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the first part of its latest report on manmade climate change Friday prompting one meteorologist to take to Twitter and make a number of dramatic pronouncements.Eric…
Read the rest of this story on Examiner.com
To be sure, the flooding that northeastern Colorado has seen in the past two weeks is serious business. However sometimes, as one Boulder County Sheriff’s deputy shows, humor can provide a bit of relief.
Helicopters have proven to be invaluable in rendering aid in the wake of the devastating floods. The operation has been called the largest aerial rescue since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
With roads destroyed, many locations in the foothills have only been able to be reached by air. Helicopters from the Colorado and Wyoming National Guard and the U.S. Army have flown thousands of sorties and rescued hundreds of people.
This week images showed up on Reddit showing a ticket one deputy wrote as a joke to a Black Hawk pilot for parking on an area highway.
Posted under the chopper’s windshield wiper, the ticket ostensibly cites the U.S. Army for ‘Parking in a no parking zone’ and ‘Parking facing the wrong way.’
As we say, we are glad to find something with the floods we can smile about.
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This morning’s satellite imagery runs are showing some interesting white cover on Colorado’s landscape and it isn’t clouds. In fact, we see virtually entirely cloudless skies across the state.
That white stuff is in fact snow, the first covering of the season at higher elevations. Some locations Sunday night / Monday morning received up to six inches of the white stuff.
Satellite imagery clearly shows the snow in parts of the San Juan Mountains to the southwest as well as the Elk and Sawatch ranges, the Flat Tops and even the western parts of the Front Range mountain areas.
It likely won’t be long before the Front Range sees its own snowfall. Denver’s first freeze on average occurs on October 7th. Its first snowfall on October 19th.
More Denver cold weather statistics can be found here.
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Overnight showers that lasted into the morning set a daily rainfall record in Denver. Even more notable, the rain added to the monthly total making this the wettest September ever recorded in the Mile High City.
As measured at Denver International Airport, Denver recorded 0.64 inches of rain today. This is a new daily record for September 23, beating the old record of 0.52 inches set in 2000.
Today’s rain, coupled with rainfall before midnight, brought Denver’s September monthly total to 5.47 inches. With that, September 2013 will go into the record books as the wettest September on record. The old monthly record was 4.67 inches set in 1961.
Denver’s rainfall total, while impressive, hardly compares to what has been seen in other locations. It also once again highlights how the station at DIA hardly represents the weather conditions seen in the metro area and makes historical comparisons somewhat invalid.
At the CO-OP station at Stapleton where Denver’s official weather measurements were taken from 1950 to 1995, the monthly total is at 9.08 inches. The difference in rainfall totals between the old location and DIA showcases how the station move to a different microclimate has skewed the Mile High City’s climate records.
Boulder, where some of the heaviest rains fell this month, was at 17.24 inches for the month before last night’s rain. Monthly rainfall totals in many locations across the Denver metro area are pushing the 10 inch mark.
There are of course still seven days left in the month and with showers in the forecast later this week, that record-setting total may increase.
Colorado’s record-setting floods devastated the landscape from the mountains to the plains. From their perch thousands of miles above the Earth’s surface, NASA’s and DigitalGlobe’s satellites captured astonishing imagery of the devastation. Read the rest of this story on Examiner.com
Colorado’s September 2013 floods have been absolutely devastating with over 1,500 homes destroyed and a death toll yet to be finalized. NASA satellites flew over the area near Greeley in recent days and the before and after pictures provide a stunning view from above of the devastation.
Using the ‘sliders’ on the two image sets below you can compare how the area looks normally versus how it looked in the days immediately after the flooding.
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[wpw_ba_img src=”http://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-EHZnr2QxwDo/UjxBTiFTICI/AAAAAAAAArY/lN8SZl9OGLs/s600/greeley-before.jpg” data_second=”http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Afkp7QnthD8/UjxBTnDEMrI/AAAAAAAAArU/QsAh-2SWRkw/s600/greeley-after.jpg” title=”Satellite imagery comparison of the area near Greeley, Colorado before and after the September 2013 flooding. (NASA EO)” data_info=”Satellite imagery comparison of the area near Greeley, Colorado before and after the September 2013 flooding. (NASA EO)”]
[/wpw_ba_viewer]Satellite Imagery of Flooding Near Greeley, Colorado – “Though water levels on the South Platte River were receding, muddy brown waters were still out of the river’s banks near Greeley, Colorado, on September 17, 2013, when the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite acquired this image. At the time, the river was more than six feet above flood stage, down from more than eight feet above flood stage.” The before image was acquired on June 29, 2013 and shows the area as it normally appears. (NASA EO)
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[wpw_ba_img src=”http://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-4P17RwE0yJ4/UjxBUXq6AEI/AAAAAAAAArc/jf6eRTTMaeQ/s600/platte-before.jpg” data_second=”http://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-oFx1h0x653Y/UjxBTgBj2KI/AAAAAAAAArM/-rgcmbR2otk/s600/platte-after.jpg” title=”Satellite imagery comparison of the area near Greeley, Colorado before and after the September 2013 flooding. (NASA EO)” data_info=”Satellite imagery comparison of the area near Greeley, Colorado before and after the September 2013 flooding. (NASA EO)”]
[/wpw_ba_viewer]Infrared Satellite Imagery of Flooded South Platte River – “Intense rainfall in northern and eastern Colorado brought widespread, destructive flooding in mid-September 2013. Local citizens reported as much as 18 inches (46 centimeters) of rain from September 9 to 15, with some of the heaviest accumulation along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. A break in the precipitation allowed the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite to acquire the top image of the floods on September 14. The second image, taken by Terra MODIS on September 7, 2013, shows the region before the rains began. The images were made from infrared light to increase the contrast between water and land.” (NASA EO)
The full toll from Colorado’s floods won’t be known for months but for one local Denver area non-profit, the devastation of the waters hit home – nine of them in fact.
The flood waters from Colorado’s floods have destroyed homes and taken lives. In one case, nine homes crucial to serving the needs of the most vulnerable among us were part of the toll.
By the numbers, the rainfall experienced across northeastern Colorado since Monday, September 9 has been nothing short of extraordinary. Over the span of a week, many locations received half of what they normally receive in an entire year. Some received more than what they expect annually.
We have created and interactive map (below) that shows precipitation totals from Monday, September 9, 2013 to Monday, September 16, 2013. The numbers are totals as reported by CoCoRaHS volunteers – the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network.
Looking at the map, it is clear that the Boulder area received the most with one station recording an astonishing 21.13” over the 7 day timespan. The official station in Boulder has recorded 16.69” inches this month and 29.65” for the year. These numbers break Boulder’s monthly record and its annual precipitation record.
Denver’s official station at Denver International Airport (DIA) has recorded 4.65 inches this month, enough to put September 2013 in the books as the 2nd wettest on record. However, that total hardly reflects what locations closer to the city’s center received with many recording over 7” this month.
Here in Thornton we have seen 8.85” of rain so far this month, an extraordinary total that brings our total for 2013 to 18.81”. This is clearly the biggest month and year for precipitation since ThorntonWeather.com came online in 2007 and likely the biggest month ever in Thornton.
If you have a hard time viewing the map in the window below, click here to launch a larger version.