The first of many topics to be expounded upon from the Recon Success! post.
So Thursday, less than half an hour after arriving in Charlottesville, we were hit with a what is known in the meteorological world as a wet microburst. This picture from the Wikipedia page pretty much sums it up:
Imagine you are standing in the middle of this.
It's an intense downward wind focused in an area of less than 4 sq km. Basically it was sunny, and within about 2 minutes there was horizontal rain, hail, and wind strong enough to pull full grown trees up by the roots. It was over in a matter of minutes. Power was out in half the town, roads were blocked all over, and this morning I had to carefully drive under the edge of a drooping powerline to get out of the neighborhood I was staying in. For the safety of all involved it was festooned with streamers of bright yellow caution tape.
This afternoon there were still about 3700 people without power, and that's after crews were being pulled in from other parts of the state and working around the clock for 2 days straight. The tree damage was worse than what I remember after Hugo. Cars were sliced in half, as were some houses. This person's Flickr stream really shows the extent and variety of the damage.
They had another such storm on June 3rd that caused about as much of a mess, although that time I suppose there were more weak tree branches because power was out in some areas for 4 or 5 days. I think these microbursts are acting as a serious culling force for the old trees in the Charlottesville area, so this time was a little better. I haven't been able to find any information about when the last one occurred in Cville before the 3rd, but my impression from talking to people is that they are supposedly fairly rare - no one could remember another one.
So in the past year, Charlottesville has had one of its worst winters ever, followed by one of its hottest summers ever, with 2 microbursts (rare meteorological events) in 3 weeks. I hate to say it kids, but that sounds like climate change to me.
So Thursday, less than half an hour after arriving in Charlottesville, we were hit with a what is known in the meteorological world as a wet microburst. This picture from the Wikipedia page pretty much sums it up:
It's an intense downward wind focused in an area of less than 4 sq km. Basically it was sunny, and within about 2 minutes there was horizontal rain, hail, and wind strong enough to pull full grown trees up by the roots. It was over in a matter of minutes. Power was out in half the town, roads were blocked all over, and this morning I had to carefully drive under the edge of a drooping powerline to get out of the neighborhood I was staying in. For the safety of all involved it was festooned with streamers of bright yellow caution tape.
This afternoon there were still about 3700 people without power, and that's after crews were being pulled in from other parts of the state and working around the clock for 2 days straight. The tree damage was worse than what I remember after Hugo. Cars were sliced in half, as were some houses. This person's Flickr stream really shows the extent and variety of the damage.
They had another such storm on June 3rd that caused about as much of a mess, although that time I suppose there were more weak tree branches because power was out in some areas for 4 or 5 days. I think these microbursts are acting as a serious culling force for the old trees in the Charlottesville area, so this time was a little better. I haven't been able to find any information about when the last one occurred in Cville before the 3rd, but my impression from talking to people is that they are supposedly fairly rare - no one could remember another one.
So in the past year, Charlottesville has had one of its worst winters ever, followed by one of its hottest summers ever, with 2 microbursts (rare meteorological events) in 3 weeks. I hate to say it kids, but that sounds like climate change to me.
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