 DISCUSSION: Throughout the past few decades, rapid and unusual warming of Pacific Ocean waters off the coast of Peru has been known to unleash deadly downpours on the country. This year was no exception. A local El Niño phenomenon has produced record rainfall and dangerous landslides in March. Deemed to Peruvians as the worst series of floods in living memory, the destruction has amounted to approximately $3.1 billion, as of April 13, 2017.
According to Peru’s emergency operations center, more than 100 people have lost their lives, 158,000 have been displaced, and 210,000 homes have been destroyed. The country’s infrastructure has taken a major hit as well; nearly 3000 kilometers (1864 miles) of roads are unusable and 260 bridges have collapsed, cutting off entire towns and villages. At the start of the year, the nation was preparing for a drought. Yet this year during its rainy season, Peru received ten times the amount of rain than normal. The floodwater was able to run off the arid land, triggering landslides in flood-prone areas. Known as the “landslide season,” Peru’s rainy season falls mainly in the first quarter of every year. Now many Peruvians will spend the remainder of their lives rebuilding from the nation’s natural destruction. To learn more about other high-impact weather events occurring across Central and South America, be sure to click here! ©2017 Meteorologist Nicholas Quaglieri
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DISCUSSION: Earlier in the day on Monday, there were fairly strong storms which formed along a sea breeze front on the western coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in this visible imagery captured by GOES-16 on April 3, 2017. This was a result of efficient air mass collision across western sections of the Yucatan Peninsula in central Mexico. As clearly shown in the animated visible satellite imagery (attached above), there was rapid convective development with the associated updrafts across the western Yucatan Peninsula which was enhanced by strong air parcel buoyancy courtesy of more-than-sufficient convective available potential energy.
This animation, which was created with the Advanced Baseline Imager's (ABI) visible-red band (Band 2), clearly shows the "over-shooting tops" and rough texture of the tops of the storm clouds, which is indicative of strong vertical updrafts. In doing so, it provides a glimpse of how GOES-16 will enhance weather forecasting by providing meteorologists with high-resolution imagery of developing storms that they can use to analyze atmospheric or meteorological phenomena in near-real time. This animation appears courtesy of our partners at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA). To see more animations, visit their website at goo.gl/faexRt. To learn more about other high-impact weather events occurring across Central and South America, be sure to click here! ©2017 Meteorologist Jordan Rabinowitz |
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