Looks like Macau took direct hit from Cat 4 Storm

Intense typhoon Vicente slamming Hong Kong

By Jason Samenow

Radar image of typhoon Vicente passing just southwest of Hong Kong at 2:24 a.m. local time (July 24) or 2:24 p.m. EDT (July 23). (Hong Kong Observatory)After rapidly intensifying earlier today, typhoon Vicente is battering Hong Kong and locations in Southern China.

Maximum sustained winds have reached almost 140 mph (120 knots), the equivalent of a category 4 hurricane.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center predicts the storm, moving over very warm waters (30-32 degrees C or 86-90 F) and beneath favorable upper level winds, will maintain intensity until coming ashore in Southern China at 8 a.m. Tuesday morning (Hong Kong time), the equivalent of 8 p.m. tonight in the eastern United States.

Live radar plainly shows Vicente’s intense outer bands lashing Hong Kong with a well-defined eye just to its southwest. The storm’s strongest winds and most severe tidal surge are likely to occur southwest of the city in southern mainland China, but squally, hurricane-type conditions are possible in the city itself.

Satellite view and track forecast for typhoon Vicente (University of Wisconsin-Madison,Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies)The government of Hong Kong has issued its highest level typhoon warning for the city - known as the number 10 signal. Such a designation is reserved for storms expected to produce hurricane-force winds.

Reuters provided the following information about actions that go into effect when a typhoon of this severity moves into the city:

Financial markets, schools, businesses and non-essential government services close when any No. 8 or above signal is hoisted, posing a disruption to business in the capitalist hub and former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

The Hong Kong Observatory said it expected the No. 10 signal to remain in force overnight, meaning markets could be shut down in the morning.

Activation of the No. 10 signal is a rare occurrence according to the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO).

TS Khanun Causes Mostly Minor Damage in Korea

Khanun Causes Korea Flooding, Damage

By Jim Andrews, Senior Meteorologist

Jul 19, 2012; 9:26 PM ET

More Sharing ServicesShare|Share on facebookShare on myspaceShare on googleShare on twitter

This was Tropical Storm Khanun bearing down on the southwest coast of South Korea on Wednesday, July 18, 2012. By Thursday, Khanun was downgraded to a tropical depression over land. (Image credit: Navy Research Lab Monterey)

Some flooding and damage has been reported on the Korean Peninsula in the wake of Tropical Storm Khanun.

One person was killed in South Korea when parts of a house collapsed amid heavy rain and high wind, the Korea Times website said on Thursday.

By late Thursday, local time, Khanun was a weakening tropical depression aimed for the east coast of North Korea.

Hundreds of flights were grounded as Khanun made its way northward, passing over the city of Seoul. City streets saw some flooding, the Times said.

Rainfall in the area was at least 3 to 5 inches, according to weather data available to AccuWeather.com.

Even higher rainfall was observed in North Korea, where Sariwon registered more than 8 inches.

Water releases from the Hwangang Dam along the North-South border prompted campers in the south to evacuate, the Times said.

Khanun will dissipate over the western Sea of Japan

- Accuweather

T.C. Khunan

Looks like most of Korea will get a good soaking, at least!

"NATURE" reports globe has been COOLING for past 2 thousand years!

Two Millennia of Global Cooling?

Andrew Bostom

Notwithstanding the latest hysterical claims from the sadly politicized climate scientologists of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), insisting 2011 was somehow "a year of extreme weather," serious investigators at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz have just published a sobering analysis in Nature Climate Change  which reconstructs 2000 years of climate within northern Europe.

Utilizing tree-ring density measurements from sub-fossil pine trees in northern Scandinavia, the investigators created a sequence dating back to 138 BC. The density measurements are closely correlated with the summer temperatures in a targeted region on the edge of the Nordic taiga, enabling them to create a temperature reconstruction of unprecedented quality. Their high-resolution representation confirmed temperature patterns in the Roman and Medieval Warm periods, but also demonstrated the cold phases that occurred during the Migration Period and the later Little Ice Age. (See image, below)

In addition to depicting these cold and warm phases which were not influenced at all by anthropogenic warming, but rather "by solar output and (grouped) volcanic activity changes" - the new climate reconstruction curve also reveals a striking if unexpected phenomenon. Professor Dr. Jan Esper of the investigative team provided this apt summary assessment of the main findings:

We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low. Such findings are also significant with regard to climate policy, as they will influence the way today's climate changes are seen in context of historical warm periods.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/07/two_millennia_of_global_cooling.html#ixzz20MwMe3gP

Strongest East Coast Derecho in Recent Memory

Derecho

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A shelf cloud along the leading edge of a derecho photographed in Minnesota

A derecho ( /dəˈreɪtʃoʊ/; Spanish pronunciation: [deˈɾetʃo]) is a widespread and long-lived, straight-line windstorm that is associated with a fast-moving band of severe thunderstorms. Generally, derechos are convection-induced and take on a bow echo form of squall line, forming in an area of divergence in the upper levels of the troposphere, within a region of low-level warm air advection and rich low-level moisture. They travel quickly in the direction of movement of their associated storms, similar to an outflow boundary (gust front), except that the windis sustained and increases in strength behind the front, generally exceeding hurricane-force. A warm-weather phenomenon, derechos occur mostly in summer, especially during June and July in the Northern Hemisphere, within areas of moderately strong instability and moderately strong vertical wind shear. They may occur at any time of the year and occur as frequently at night as during the daylight hours.

Very Wide and Large Scale Power Outages from Weekend Wind Storm

The amazingly powerful, and long-lasting straight-line windstorm over the past weekend has left millions without power, most will be for days, if not weeks. - HLG