*** BREAKING *** Sahara meets Deluge

Links to Sahara Rain? Thanks.

yep things are heating up now won't be long

July 9: 2007 SHOCKING satellite photo: ITCZ over southern Sahara
[link to www.godlikeproductions.com]

Is it really raining in the Sahara? I like that thought.

Going to extremes
It may be time to redefine extreme weather events and prepare for changes in their frequency and intensity.
By Karsten Shein
Comm-Inst, Climate Scientist

Storm front moves in quickly at HWO (Hollywood FL) on Apr 12, 2007. While politicians debate the causes of global warming, the added heat in the atmosphere is likely to make severe storms more common and more intense, resulting in disruptions to air traffic.

Since the atmosphere is capable of throwing a lot of adverse conditions at pilots, they should know what exactly they are up against.

Imagine the following tale: “There I was, just descending from the outer marker, when all of a sudden the aircraft felt like a ton of bricks had fallen on it. Lightning illuminated the cockpit and the crack of hailstones hitting the windscreen sounded like gunshots. Within seconds it seemed like every warning light on the console was flashing and, as my copilot was struggling to restart the flamed-out starboard engine, I was trying to coax some altitude from the remaining engine to silence the GPWS without stalling out.

“I looked up just in time to see the windscreen dematerialize into a frosted mess as a hailstone that must have been the size of a grapefruit slammed into it at close to 150 kts. For the first time in 20 years as a pilot, I actually thought we might not make it, but then my copilot called out the runway in sight. And just as quickly as the thunderstorm had hit, it had moved on. Damage to the aircraft was extensive and we were stuck AOG for over a week.”

While the above tale is fictional, every pilot has a “there I was” story about weather they’ve encountered. In that, we are fortunate, because some pilots will never get to tell their scary weather story since the weather they encountered was too extreme. By its nature, extreme weather is rare and difficult to plan for. The atmosphere is not static—obviously, its changes affect our likelihood of running into extreme weather.

Most pilots are confident. They know they can handle most things that the atmosphere can throw at them, or avoid them if need be. But we all belong to a society that routinely underestimates nature’s ability to overwhelm even our greatest feats of engineering. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina, only moderately strong by climatological standards—in fact, a Category 3 storm as it made landfall in Louisiana—easily overwhelmed New Orleans’ man-made defenses. Not to diminish the tragedy that Katrina brought, but the city could have received far worse had the storm maintained its Category 5 (the strongest Saffir-Simpson scale category) status to landfall.

[link to www.propilotmag.com]

Everything is so f'd up!!!

Who can keep up?