State of Emergency Declared in Baltimore

Baltimore Burning: Curfew declared as violence flares

Gov. of Maryland has declared a state of emergency, activating the national guard as violence and looting intensifies.

Meantime, the mayor has declared a curfew following the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died in police custody on April 19 after a week in coma.

The week-long curfew is effective between 22:00 and 05:00, starting on Tuesday.

At least 15 police officers have been injured in clashes with demonstrators, some with broken bones, while dozens of arrests have been made, as of posting.

Gray’s death is the latest in a series of high-profile cases where black men have lost their lives after contact with the police.

Baltimore police have suspended six police officers who were involved in the victim’s arrest.

The shooting of an unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri August last year led to nationwide demonstration after a jury decided not to charge police officer Darren Wilson over the killing.

Several other black men have also been killed fleeing the police, or while being arrested, since last year.

Street Collapses in Baltimore, MD

EXTREME RAIN EVENT
SINKHOLE 
.

Block-long sinkhole swallows cars in Baltimore, MD

The collapse occurred in the Charles Village section of Baltimore  on Wednesday afternoon. Several vehicles were swallowed when the street  collapsed after two days of rain, said to be the equivalent of a month’s precipitation.

The sinkhole has also been described as a “collapse” and a “landslide.”

US Northeast Snow Records Broken

2010 Year One of the Extremes?

In Winter Officially Starts Today! posted on December 20, 2009, Fire-Earth Warned ‘The Heaviest Blanket of Snow in 100 Years Covered Most of the Northeast US Yesterday’ would be

A Dry Run for Climate Chaos Heading Our Way

So far the Moderators’ prediction has proved 100 percent correct!

As the federal offices in the capital remained shut for a fourth day, public transport reduced by up to 95 percent of the services in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, on Thursday, and as thousands of flights canceled throughout the Northeast and many highways closed, due to blizzard conditions, new snow records were set in the area.

• The National Weather Service (NWS) reported that Wednesday’s blizzard had set a new record of 110cm (54.9 inches) in Washington breaking the capital’s 110-year-old record (54.5 inches set in 1898-99).
• Baltimore broke its all-time seasonal record with 183cm (72 inches).
• Philadelphia’s 2009-10 snowfall record of 179cm (70.5 inches) has so far surpassed its previous all-time record of the 65.5-inch total set in 1995-96  winter.

Meanwhile Maryland Governor Martin O’Mally declared a state of emergency, keeping government offices closed in the state.

FIRE-EARTH Forecast for the rest of 2010 (assuming there would be an end to the winter):

Expect soaring temperatures throughout North America and most of Europe. Prepare for primordial, swampy weather!

And this is just Year One for the weather extremes caused by climatic chaos that is heading our way!

• For a weather briefing by NWS click here.
  

Related Links:

• Snow covers 70 pct of the U.S.
• 6 feet of snow blankets the Alps
• 2010 Disaster Calender – January
• The Storms Attack on California
• California: Powerful new storm sails ashore
• Transitory Impact of AO is the ‘Good News’
• December Snowstorm Only a Cat 3 on NESIS Scale
• United Kingdom of Ice
• State of Emergency in Oklahoma, S. Dakota, Texas
• ‘Humongous’ storm spreads across the US
• You Don’t Bring A Gun To A Snowball Fight!
• Winter Officially Starts Today!
• Deadly Winter Storm Paralyzes United States

December Snowstorm Only a Cat 3 on NESIS Scale

NOAA Ranks December Snowstorm a Category 3 on the Northeast Snowfall Impact 5-tier Scale

Snowfall accumulation from the Dec. 18-21, 2009 storm. (Credit: NOAA). [Click image for High Resolution]

NOAA says the Dec. 18-20, 2009 system that dumped heavy snow from the mid-Atlantic to southern New England, was only a Category 3 or “Major” winter storm on its Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale,  NESIS.

NESIS ranking uses data provided by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, which are based on

• How much snow falls in the area (must deposit at least 10 inches)
• Scale of the area impacte
• Population of the impacted area

NESIS ranks these storms on a five-tier scale ranging from Category 1 “Notable” to Category 5 “Extreme.”

“While snowfall from the December storm ranked in the top ten for Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia, the storm only provided a glancing blow to the New York City and Boston metropolitan areas and overall affected a relatively small area. This led to it being classified as a Category 3,” said Louis Uccellini, director of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction – a division of NOAA’s National Weather Service – and co-developer of NESIS with Paul Kocin also with NCEP in Camp Springs, Md. Both Uccellini and Kocin are published winter weather experts.

“Last month’s storm was one of only five in the past decade that ranked Category 3 or higher,” added Kocin. The others being: December, 2002 (Category 3); February, 2003 (Category 4); January, 2005 (Category 4); February, 2006 (Category 3) and February, 2007 (Category 3).

Category 5 storms or  the  ‘Superstorm’ top the NESIS scale the only two storms rated Cat 5 occurred on March, 1993 followed by the ‘Blizzard of ’96‘ in January, 1996. The scale was devised in 2004 and it catalogs storms since 1888, NOAA said.