A Journal & News Site Of The Aftermath Of Deadly Storms – Hurricanes, Tropical Cyclones, Typhoons, and Tropical Storms from around the World!
Severe storms lit up the skies with lightning and caused tens of thousands of power outages Thursday night.
Oncor Electric Delivery reported that outages in the Dallas and Fort Worth metro service areas were down to about 10,245 shortly before 5 a.m. By 9 a.m., that numbered had dropped to just over 5,000.
Oncor had reported 38,925 power outages at about 10:30 p.m. Continue reading →
Tropical storms Irene and Lee have caused tremendous amounts of damage throughout upstate New York, Vermont and other parts of the Northeast — there is no getting around that.
Many communities are still in the preliminary stages of recovery; nothing is normal. Just as communities in the eastern part of the state were cleaning up from Irene, Lee came along, delivering severe blows in the form of flooding damage to this area as well as throughout the Southern Tier, including the Binghamton area.
But it’s also remarkable how many places have picked themselves up rather quickly. Here in the mid-Hudson Valley and throughout the Catskill and Adirondack regions, the end of summer and into fall are big tourism seasons. And many farms throughout our area, while dealing with storm damage, are still open for berry-picking, wine tastings, and other activities that make them such a strong draw. Continue reading →
For the second straight morning, a band of heavy storms moved through the Tampa Bay Area.
They brought heavy rain, winds and even caused damage and flooding early Wednesday, though the bulk of the system is moving to northeast of the area, meteorologist Dave Osterberg said.
“Most of these storms are continuing to move to the northeast,” he said. “We’re going to continue to stay cloudy, and rain chances will continue to stay high throughout the day.”
Pinellas County authorities reported significant roof damage to two buildings in Madeira Beach. Continue reading →
Hurricane Irene may heap billions of dollars of extra costs on the already fragile U.S. economy, but insurance companies are likely to emerge relatively unscathed.
Most of Irene’s damage was from flooding, which the government insures, instead of wind, which insurance companies cover, meaning insurers could pay out as little as $1.5 billion by some early estimates.
That’s just a fraction of the $10 billion to $12 billion of economic damage that Irene likely caused, according to estimates from catastrophe modelers and ratings agencies. Moody’s Analytics said the storm might take a tenth of a percentage point off third-quarter gross domestic product.
The question now for insurers is whether the insured losses are bad enough to eat up third-quarter earnings, which some analysts believe is the case, and whether the losses are enough to let insurers raise rates, which many analysts doubt.
“Obviously we’re still early in a process. For the third quarter we build pretty substantial catastrophe loads into our estimates. While there’s a wide range we feel like we’ve got some conservatism built into our numbers,” said Larry Greenberg, an analyst at Janney Capital Markets unit Langen McAlenney who covers insurers.
Insurers have already suffered big blows from other disasters this year, and their disaster losses for the first half of 2011 are well above total levels for 2010.
But figuring out how Irene will affect earnings is difficult because modeling hurricane losses is so tricky, on top of the usual challenge of forecasting insurance earnings.
For example, Dow industrials component Travelers Companies Inc has reported results that are at least 20 cents different from Wall Street’s estimates for four quarters running, sometimes to the upside and sometimes to the downside.
What is clear, though, is that insurance stocks are rallying after Irene. Last week, as the storm approached and worst-case scenarios were bandied about, the insurance sector underperformed the broader market by half. This week, with the relief of a more moderate hit from Irene, insurers are at least a third better than the market in general.
“At the end of the day, last week the underperformance was the result of fear that Irene could be the storm that CNN and Weather Channel were talking about, a worst-case scenario for New York and the northeast,” said Matthew Carletti, an analyst at JMP Securities. “The fact is, the storm weakened. You still had damage, but it was pretty modest.”
Carletti said it appeared investors had been more concerned about the downside pressure a major storm could cause on earnings than the upside pressure it would exert on insurance pricing across the sector.
BAD FOR THE ECONOMY
By many standards, Irene could have been much worse. The economic damage it wreaked was just a fraction of the damage from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or Andrew in 1992. Continue reading →
Severe storms are prompting Environment Canada to warn people in Saskatchewan to keep an eye on the sky.
Disturbances carrying hail swept through southern parts of the province Sunday and were expected again Monday.
Meteorologist Dave Carlson said they were expected to hit eastern areas along the Manitoba boundary from Hudson Bay down to Yorkton. Continue reading →
The violent thunderstorm that struck early Wednesday morning caused an estimated $50,000 in damage to the Edmond Public Schools’ athletic facilities, district athletic director Mike Nunley said.
Of the damages, an estimated $30,000 came at Edmond North High School, where the play clock on the school’s football field was at a 45-degree angle, trees were down, track equipment was destroyed and tennis facilities were also damaged.
“We lost a tremendous amount of wind screens at our tennis courts, and those are super expensive,” Nunley said. “The pole vault pit (at Edmond North) is $15,000. Continue reading →
Portions of western and central Massachusetts were cleaning up on Wednesday from powerful storms that prompted a tornado warning in a region still recovering from deadly twisters last month.
Tuesday’s storms toppled trees and power lines, knocking out power to thousands. Hail, some of its the size of ping pong balls, damaged homes and cars and drenching rain left some streets impassable.
There were no confirmed tornado touchdowns, but the National Weather Service plans to survey the area on Wednesday to make a final determination.
Officials from the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency also planned to tour the affected region. Continue reading →
Last week’s storms ended Minnesota’s longest stretch of dry weather this summer, and it’s having an impact on Minnesota agriculture.
In its weekly crop weather report for the state, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says topsoil moisture supplies are rated 31 surplus, up from 21 percent the previous week. A statewide average of 3.8 days were suitable for fieldwork. Continue reading →
There are pockets of rain racing around the NE, MW, and into the South. There are a few frontal boundaries draped across the region that will fire again this afternoon, but I think the main area for concern today will be the MW. Plenty of heat and humidity are getting transported northward this morning towards IA, IL, NE, KS, and MO. This will set the stage for storms in the afternoon that should produce damaging winds and large hail. I’ll have the outlook for you, and show you the where the heavier rain will be located this weekend.
Fire weather is back in the SW, with red flag warnings all over AZ, NM, UT and CO. Winds up to 40 mph and humidity falling to 5% will be fuel for these fires today.
As for the get-away-Friday air travel forecast, it appears that we’ll get the typical volume delays in the NYC area, but rain and storms will also add to the time. You can get the latest on those during the show, and if they get too long I’ll tweet them for you.
Military officials say about 24 soldiers are recovering after being hurt when high winds slammed into their tents during thunderstorms at Fort Gordon.
The soldiers, all Army reservists visiting the base for two weeks of training exercises, were taken to Dwight D. Eisenhower Army Medical Center for treatment after the Wednesday night storm.
Fort Gordon officials say there were no major injuries.
Lt. Col. Shawn Daugherty of a reserve unit in Washington said that all the injured soldiers were released from the hospital after being treated for bumps, bruises and other injuries after tent poles fell during the storm.
Fort Gordon authorities said the soldiers were participating in Reserve Component Annual Training and the Red Dragon exercise. Daugherty said soldiers in the training came from several states including Georgia and South Carolina.