Thursday, July 08, 2010

She's Back, Right on Time

It seems as though we just got rid of El Nino or, as scientists called the latest one, El Nino Modokai (same, but different). Now we're told El Nino's ugly stepsister, La Nina, has moved in bringing her own basket of global grief. From the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office, Irin:

The La Niña phenomenon has officially arrived and disaster response teams around the world might need to brace themselves for heavier monsoons, bigger and more frequent hurricanes, and angrier cyclones.

...The National Hurricane Centre at the US government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been expecting a La Niña to occur, and by May 2010 predicted a 70 percent chance that there would be 14 to 23 named storms, with wind speeds of more than 62km per hour. This is far more than the average of 11 named storms during the hurricane season in the Atlantic region, which began in June.

In Canada, La Nina generally brings cold, snowy winters.

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