Tag: weather

Environment News Science

Looking Forward To The January Thaw

The January thaw is coming. The term describes unusually warm weather for the time of year–and many people in Canada and the United States should experience it around the end of this month.

Many cities in Canada and the U.S. have been hit with blizzards and extremely cold temperatures, as well as high winds and lots of snow.

Many cities in Canada had snow and temperatures of -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit) or colder. With the “wind chill factor,” -20 degrees Celsius feels like -35 degrees Celsius.

Environment News Science

Scientists Working To Save Arctic Ice Cap

A team of scientists has come up with a plan they say could help rebuild the Arctic ice cap. The ice cap is a huge area of sea ice that covers most of the Arctic Ocean all year round.
Usually, the sea ice gets thicker and spreads further each winter, but this hasn’t happened for the past few years.
Last month, the ice cap had shrunk to its smallest size since scientists began keeping records of it 38 years ago. The weather in the Arctic has been unusually warm this winter. Some days, temperatures have been 20 degrees Celsius higher than is normal for this time of year. This month, the temperature was above 0°C at least one day.

News Science

Hurricane Matthew Downgraded To Category 1

Hurricane Matthew has been downgraded to a Category 1 Hurricane, according to The Weather Channel’s website.

That means that weather experts believe that much of its destructive power is lessening.

That’s good news for more than a million people in Florida, Georgia and North and South Carolina, who were forced to flee the storm.

News Sports

Heatwave In Australia Affects Major Tennis Tournament

How hot was it?

It was so hot, you could fry an egg on the tennis court at the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne.

And in fact, someone did.

Tennis player Novak Djokovic sent around a picture of an actual egg on a tennis court, frying in the heat. The picture quickly went viral, meaning that many people saw it.

If it was that hot for an egg, imagine people playing top-level tennis in that heat.

Some of the players took baths in ice water to offset the effects of the heat, as the temperature climbed to 43-degrees Celsius.

Canadian tennis player Eugenie Bouchard is emerging as a rising star, advancing to the fourth round of the tournament.

She is the first Canadian in 22 years to reach the quarter-finals in a major tennis tournament.

News

Extreme Weather In Many Cities Over The Holidays

Many cities in North America experienced extreme weather during the 2013 holiday season.

On Dec. 22, Toronto was struck by an ice storm which caused trees to become covered with large amounts of ice.

Although it was often beautiful, it was also destructive.

Many of the trees couldn’t support the weight of the ice and branches came crashing down.

Some of the branches took out power lines, so hundreds of thousands of people in the city were without power for hours or days.

Environment News

NBA Star Donates $1-Million To Oklahoma Relief Efforts

To help his home city “bounce back” after a terrible storm, NBA player Kevin Durant has donated $1-million.

The number of people harmed by a recent tornado in the U.S. state of Oklahoma was greatly reduced, thanks to a special early-warning system.

On Monday, a major tornado hit Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City.

A tornado is a violent storm that usually looks like a whirling funnel.

Residents were warned there was a big storm coming, and possibly a tornado, days before it arrived.

When it actually hit, sirens blared, giving people a 16-minute head start to find shelter.

Environment News Science

City Services Gearing Up To Battle Climate Change

Cities need to watch the weather closely in the future to make sure that city services are always in good working order, according to a new report being studied by the City of Toronto.

That’s because the changing climate–including severe weather and warmer temperatures–may affect cities’ infrastructure. In this case, “infrastructure” refers to services that support the city, such as roads, public transit and energy plants.

The report, requested by the Toronto Environment Office, summed up the past 10 years of serious weather events in and around Toronto.

In the last decade, several records were broken due to the weather. For instance, there was one day in which there was an unusually high demand for power during a very hot summer. This kind of high demand can put a strain on the city’s ability to provide power.

An all-time record 409 mm (millimetres) of rainfall was set at Trent University during this time. Four hundred and nine millimetres is equivalent to 14 billion litres of water in five hours.

Also, in the past 10 years, Toronto had its earliest ever official heat wave.

These kinds of weather events will likely continue and could affect the infrastructure of Toronto and other cities.

News

Dramatic Rescue In Pacific Ocean For Three Canadians

Nine-year-old West James was sailing to Hawaii with his father, Brad, and his uncle, Mitchell last week.

The boy had permission from his mother and teacher to take the trip if he documented (wrote about) the voyage.

The three were in the Pacific Ocean on their way to Mexico when they ran into a series of squalls, sudden storms with high winds and waves.

The storms flooded the sailboat’s engine and damaged their boat’s mast. They tried to rig a new sail, but it blew away.

When Mitchell James tried to fix the mast, he fell into the cold, choppy water. The others got him back in the boat but they feared he had a concussion (head injury).