An unusual Pacific storm heads for the Atlantic by Susan Powell
Maintaining its unusual nature, ‘Adrian’ has become the first recorded Pacific hurricane to hit the Central American country of El Salvador. The storm, which strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane before landfall late on Thursday, had already formed very early in the season and taken an unusual track inland. It could get even more unusual if its remnants head into the Atlantic basin and reintensify up to tropical storm strength; it would then become ‘Arlene’, the first named storm of the Atlantic season! This is not currently forecast to happen as Adrian is expected to be rapidly torn apart by the mountains, but not before causing flash flooding and mudslides.
In the United States, California’s Yosemite National Park has had an unusually long, wet winter. Snow packs in the Sierra Nevada mountains are around 180% of their average. This has brought a spectacular spring snowmelt; waterfalls are beyond capacity and are quite a spectacle for tourists.
All that snow melting in a short space of time can bring problems however. This weekend temperatures in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys are set to soar well into the 80s Fahrenheit (late 20s Celsius). This warm weather, combined with rain that is forecast, will accelerate the rate at which the snow is melting. Warnings of flooding have been issued for the Sacramento and Merced rivers, and the Tahoe Basin, all of which are fed from the Sierras. This does mean that California shouldn’t need to worry about drought this summer.
Despite much of Australia being in the grip of long-term drought conditions, in Brisbane on Thursday the weather problems were of a rather colder, wetter type. Forecasters were caught out by a storm which developed in just ten minutes on Thursday, dumping drifts of hail centimetres deep. That and a second storm left streets and gardens looking more like “winter in Europe than late autumn in Queensland”. Temperatures fell by five degrees in a matter of minutes, and up to 50mm of rain fell in some suburbs.
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