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Harold Brooks, a senior research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, said Derechos are “essentially a summer phenomenon.” “The more summer you make, the more you can expect them to increase.”
Dr. “What hurts Derechos is that although their winds are often not strong enough to destroy buildings, they destroy a large area of power lines and trees,” Brooks added. “There can be extensive destruction in the middle of tornado roads. In a derecho it covers a much larger area.”
The week’s ominous weather shocked even professional weather watchers. President Zach Sharpe, Iowa Storm Tracking NetworkHe said he had never experienced such strange weather in December.
Most of Wednesday was unseasonably hot – “It was like spring; there were people wearing shorts,” he said – but as the storm front approached, a burst of cold air brought instantly freezing temperatures and winds of 80 miles per hour. “It was scary chasing hurricanes 10 days before Christmas,” said Mr. Sharpe. “We were getting in our cars and listening to Jingle Bells while the hurricane sirens were ringing.”
Still, scientists said this week’s storm is very unusual and has many different forces behind it, including a strong jet stream moving between central states, and it can be difficult to work out the impact of global warming compared to other factors like that. La NinaAn intermittent climatic phenomenon that can affect winter storms in the Pacific Ocean.
Dr. Brooks said this storm was “as messy an event as can be.” “Is this a weird one-time event? Or maybe it won’t repeat for a long time? Will seasonality change a lot? I don’t think we know.”
Victor Gensini, professor of meteorology at Northern Illinois University, pointed out that all extreme weather events now take place against the backdrop of an atmosphere deeply shaped by humans burning fossil fuels. “Assume that all extreme weather events are affected by climate change,” he said.
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