Today’s the Day Atlanta Could Lose One-Quarter of Its Trees
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As the first pellets of sleet began pattering against windows in Georgia, new data were gathered overnight during a rare wintertime mission by Air Force Hurricane Hunter aircraft. Much as is typically done in a landfalling major hurricane, these data were fed into early morning weather computer models, in an impromptu experiment to increase forecast accuracy just hours before the storm struck.
The results aren’t pretty. Anticipated ice totals have been bumped up significantly from yesterday’s already dire forecast. Here’s what the forecast looks like now in Georgia, where the biggest impacts are anticipated:
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Indeed, with the added pressure of a warming climate, the city has been doing as much as it can to encourage people to plant more trees, not only for their ability to take in excess carbon dioxide, but also for their profound cooling effect on hot summer days. The urban heat island—a microclimate phenomenon of which Atlanta is literally a case-study (seriously, here’s the NASA satellite images)—can boost temperatures in the urban, treeless core of cities by as much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit. That means this summer’s hottest days might be a degree or two warmer factoring in the tree-crushing impacts of the current ice storm.
Today’s anticipated massive tree loss across the entire Southeast could have lingering impacts for future forest fires as well, as the region is still recovering from a long-term drought.
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http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/02/12/winter_storm_pax_deep_south_facing_crippling_category_5_ice_storm.html
If you believe twitter, it's bad with half a million without power in the south
Hopefully not in the Slovenia range
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017173918
= new reply since forum marked as read
In fact, I would be surprised if it doesn't end up being quite a bit more, considering the population density down there.
Maine is much more sparsely populated, and yet our 1998 ice storm had 700,000 without power in a state w/a population of 1.2 million. And that was just Maine... Other northeastern states as well as Canada had hundreds of thousands of outages from that storm too.
Three weeks after the end of the ice storm, there were still thousands of people without electricity. In Quebec alone, 150,000 people were without electricity as of January 28.[14] Estimates of material damage reached around $2 billion Canadian for Quebec alone. Overall estimates are around $4–6 billion US$ for all the areas affected.[15] Damage to the power grid was so severe that major rebuilding, not repairing, of the electrical grid had to be undertaken.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Ice_Storm_of_1998
Ice storms suck. Here's hoping for the best for the folks down there!
Response to jakeXT (Original post)
Still don't think full extent of ICE damage has been realized especially from a East Atlanta to Charleston to Florence triangle
https://twitter.com/JimCantore
