I would have posted this earlier, but I was attending the Northeast Storm conference, where I was presenting my Oklahoma Research for the last time.
Friday night around 1:40Z, a possible tornado touched down in the downtown Atlanta area. It caused some damage to the Georgia Dome and the CNN building (Source: SPC).
Looking at the 00Z sounding for Atlanta (KFFC) to the left, there appears to be little support for tornadoes. The surface based CAPE is low, and there is very limited low level wind shear. However, the helicity and thermodynamic values (SW, LI, SI) were strong enough to possibly produce a tornado in the downtown area.
Saturday however was the bigger event day, as 41 tornadoes and 75 hail events were reported in the southeastern part of the United States.
One of the classes I am taking this semester is Air Quality. It is a fairly interesting class, except for the fact it is at 8am. With the whole “go green” standard going on across the country, pollution has become a big factor in forecasting. While the National Weather Service only provides “guidance” for ozone and smoke at this time, they hope to forecast for both ozone and particulate matter in the upcoming years.
Another orginization trying to “go green” is the catholic church. A couple of days ago, the vatican’s second highest ranked officer, Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, was asked about what new concepts could be sinful, and one of the items he mentioned was environmental pollution (source). Very interesting I have to say. While the EPA has definitely helped to lower pollutants in the atmosphere since the Clean Air Act, we can do better.
And do better we shall, yesterday the EPA reduced the NAAQS of ozone (8-hour standard) from 80 parts per billion to 75. While 5 ppb doesn’t seem a lot, it is geared to better protect the health of unsensitive groups. The setback is that it would cost about $7.6 billion to $8.5 billion to help maintain this standard each year. Not only that, the amount of counties that are in non-attainment (meaning that they have gone over the standard for ozone) would quadruple. (source)
Of course the long term effects should outweigh the costs, but don’t tell that to the industrial power plants and politics in D.C.
Friday night around 1:40Z, a possible tornado touched down in the downtown Atlanta area. It caused some damage to the Georgia Dome and the CNN building (Source: SPC).
