Blast From The Recent Past: Northeast Philly Tornado

It's already been a month since the Northeast Philly tornado swiped a pair of local businesses and caused some property damage along Red Lion Road.   Philadelphia has not been graced by the presence of powerful tornadoes but some have occurred at odd times of the year.   The last tornado prior to the May 18th event was in January, 1999 in the Marconi Plaza area of South Philadelphia.  That storm injured eighteen.

The strongest tornado within the city of Philadelphia since 1950 were three F2 tornadoes -- July 14, 1958, June 9, 1989, and  June 1, 1998 -- the latter of the three struck in the Bustleton neighborhood.

Regionally, the strongest tornado to hit the Delaware Valley were F3's, most recently in Berks County in 1998 although a F3 tornado struck Limerick in July of 1994, with that tornado having killed three.

Blast From The Past: Twenty Memorial Days Ago

Much like this year, Memorial Day 1991 was a hot and humid one in Philadelphia.   Temperatures topped out in the mid 90's on a sweltering day that was a part of a seven day heat wave in Philadelphia to close out the month of May.   A much younger Monica Malpass and Susanne LaFrankie did a weather update during Good Morning America, with a much younger Charlie Gibson anchoring on GMA as well.

The May '91 heat wave was one of the strongest early season heat events we've seen around here and 1991 was the gold standard year for heat until 2010 knocked that out of the park.

LaFrankie, for those who did not know, is no longer working in the TV realm.   She's a business and communications consultant in a joint partnership firm that is located here in the Delaware Valley after spending some time at WPHT after her Channel 6 career ended.

Blast From The Past: Chris Cimino In Philadelphia

Before my time in Philadelphia and back in the day of "high tech" weather graphics, Chris Cimino worked weather in Philadelphia on Fox 29 on weekends.  Chris now is the morning forecaster on WNBC in New York, the Saturday weatherman on NBC's Today show, and occasionally covers for Al Roker on Today during the week.   The above YouTube clip is from July 1995, showing him gving a rather nasty forecast for the Delaware Valley.   The forecast looked a lot like a low tech version of a few of our days last summer, didn't it?

For those wondering about Chris' time in Philly -- it was brief.  He was only here for a year (January-December of '95) before he moved to WNBC.

A Fine, Thin Line Of Lightning

This picture is really cool and comes by way of Tim Nessler, who captured a photo of a tree after it was hit by lightning during yesterday's storms on the campus of Philadelphia Biblical University in Bucks County.

Lightning doesn't necessarily slice a tree in two, topple trees over, but it does leave its mark as the intense heat generated by lightning will help sear the bark off of a tree in the path of where the lightning travels.   The trees you see on the left managed to survive quite well compared to many other examples of trees that get zapped by Mother Nature.   Trees are more frequent targets for getting struck by lightning, in part due to their height, but in some cases certain types of trees have a higher electrical discharge (pine needles for instance) than others and makes them a more inviting target.  Trees aren't a good spot to be hanging out near during a thunderstorm, especially if you are on a golf course.  


Between 1998 and 2008, Pennsylvania had 13 lightning related deaths, tying it for 10th on the list of most fatalities among the states.   Florida, which is the most lightning prone place in the US, had 74 deaths in that time period while Texas had 28.


More:  Lightning Safety Tips (NWS) | Tree Struck By Lightning (youtube)

Anatomy Of Plains Flood

The Red River of the North floods almost every year...it's hard for it NOT to flood considering that the river flows from south to north, heading into a snowy and icy realm in Canada that takes forever to melt in the Spring. As a result, the slow moving stream floods each Spring, almost like clockwork.

The above video shows a time lapse of the Red River from January 1st through yesterday.   The last 15-20 seconds really hit home as you can see the impact of the flood waters on the river embankments and on the monument in the time lapse.   Crazy stuff!

For those who care, the Red at Grand Forks crested at its third highest level ever a couple of days ago at 49.87 feet.  That is five feet below 1997's high water mark, which is the flood of record for the region and destroyed much of the city.

Blast From The Past: Before Million Watt Dopplers

I love this clip during the Superstorm of '93 -- I stumbled upon it today and got a kick out of it.  The radar technology that Channel 3 was using at the time is hilarious compared to having radars that can zoom in on one's head and talk about the sweat forming on someone's brow, or weather apps that give you time, temperature, sun angle, or nearly whatever your heart desires.  

It makes you wonder where we'll be in the realm of technology within the next 20 years.  iPad's with personalized and built-in doppler radars?

Flooding Along The Delaware River

Thanks to Reilly Sharp and his brother for going on a bike ride along the Delaware River in Bucks County yesterday...and a bigger thank you for providing this video of the flooding along the canal at various points along the river, particularly near New Hope and near the Stockton bridge.   The Delaware did exceed its banks by about a foot at Stockton and grazed flood stage at New Hope but both locations as of this evening are safely under flood stage.  Despite the minor flooding and the tour boat that went downstream, it could have been a lot worse and officials in New Hope and the river townships in Bucks are breathing a sigh of relief.

Probably Worse On The Other Side Of The Pacific, Dude

Best served with audio on...and I'm pretty sure this guy is regretting his choice of words on the video as well as the tsunami generated by the magnitude 9.1 quake splashed into the Oregon coastline yesterday morning.

This would be considered a bigger tragedy as well, I would think, at least on the domestic side instead of the sailboat getting trashed.

I'll cut the guy some slack...when the film is rolling sometimes those talking say things they would in hindsight not say again...look at what's said on television during breaking news coverage of any event and the filter of the teleprompter is not there for the assist.

Still, the below is a tragedy...

Tornado Goes Shopping In Alabama

This video has been making the rounds on the news the last 24 hours but the same storm system that rained on us yesterday and last night brought this tornado to Alabama on Wednesday.  The time lapse video up above shows different vantage points of the tornado shooting through a store and ripping stuff up (for lack of a better term) as the storm system swept through the Deep South a couple of days ago.   These videos are on youtube (search "Alabama tornado hardware store") but I found the first part of the video in slower motion -- pretty awesome stuff from a nature watching standpoint, pretty scary stuff from a shopper's standpoint.