Even though the weather forecast holds rain for today and a slight chance that the showers could turn icy if the temperatures dip, the Opening Night celebrations are planned in the state's capital city. The event's organizers, the Arts Council of Oklahoma City , expect a turnout of at least 70,000 people, reported NewsOK.com .
Opening Night 2013 to Herald in New Year
Opening Night 2013 will be the 27th such family-friendly New Year's Eve celebration in Oklahoma City. With all of the venues indoors, except for the finale stage at Myriad Gardens, Stacy Hawthorne, Communications Director for the Arts Council of Oklahoma City, expects the weather to have little effect on either the planned activities or the anticipated attendees.
Opening Night festivities kick off at 7 p.m. with the countdown beginning at 11:30 p.m. and a fireworks finale at midnight. A warm-up event was held at the Downtown Metro OKC Library from noon to 1 p.m. with Jamie Bramble, acoustic singer and songwriter, providing an early peek into the evening's festivities.
Who, Where and How Much Does It Cost?
Wristbands for Opening Night 2013 are available for $8 if purchased prior to the event; $10 at the event itself. Children age 5 and younger will be admitted free of charge.
Pre-event wristbands can be purchased at a variety of places, including 7-Eleven stores of Oklahoma, MidFirst Bank, Science Museum Oklahoma and Oklahoma City metro Homeland stores. Wristbands purchased at Opening Night can be purchased outside Myriad Gardens, the Cox Business Services Conventions Center, Devon Energy Center, Bank of Oklahoma or at Leadership Square.
Anyone and everyone are invited to attend. Families are welcome and will find that this year's activities, like those of the past, are alcohol-free.
This map , provided by the Arts Council of Oklahoma City, shows the venues, parking, streets that will be closed for the event and more, including where to pick up free party favors. Before driving downtown tonight, you may want to check OKC180.com for up-to-date street closures.
Both the Oklahoma City Barons and the Oklahoma City Thunder have home games tonight, which Opening Night organizers feel certain will boost attendance at the New Year's Eve event. You may want to plan your arrival accordingly.
Family Fun at Opening Night 2013
The Cox Convention Center will again be host to the Children's Area, a place chock full of fun things to see and do such as face painting, an inflatable obstacle course and festive art projects in which the kids can participate. The Scavenger Hunt kicks off the evening at 7 p.m. at the Cox Convention Center. There will be musicians in the streets around the various venues also.
For additional fees, the family can skate outdoors at the Devon Ice Rink located in Myriad Gardens; show your Opening Night wristband and skate for $7, skate rental included. Another option from noon to 10 p.m. is Chesapeake Snow Tubing at the Redhawks field in Bricktown. Cost is $10 for each 90-minute session.
Bottom Line
There's sure to be something for everyone with music and festivities planned throughout the evening. The toughest part of the night may be deciding which show or event to catch next.
This news article is brought to you by GIRLS TEACH DATING - where latest news are our top priority.
Monday, December 31, 2012
In 2013, nothing more important than protecting hopes for democracy
Across the range of international concerns today the one common theme is urgency. Debt. Climate change. The spread of nuclear weapons. These are all serious issues requiring earnest, immediate responses. Yet nothing will be more important to international stability and human progress in 2013 than advancing the aspirations of people who are upending authoritarian rule in the pursuit of self-government and a fair shot at success.
From the Middle East to Asia to Africa to Latin America, people of diverse cultural and religious backgrounds are agitating for change. Although democratization has been going on almost constantly since the end of the cold war, the stakes are different today for three reasons.
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From the Middle East to Asia to Africa to Latin America, people of diverse cultural and religious backgrounds are agitating for change. Although democratization has been going on almost constantly since the end of the cold war, the stakes are different today for three reasons.
OPINION: Arab Spring: now begins the education of Islamist politicians
First, the greater Middle East is faced with burgeoning youth populations and complex regional tensions. Emerging democracies there have little margin for error.
Second, transnational terrorism and insurgency warfare have altered the security conditions in many of the places where democracy is budding - endangering new freedoms and posing an international security threat.
Third, the past three decades of democratization have brought many valuable lessons, but they have also raised expectations.
People do not just wake up one morning as democrats. The norms and practices of democracy, the understanding of rights and how to both act on and protect them, must be cultivated across society. That mainly involves the patient growing of trust between the governing and the governed - a trust that's rooted in good democratic soil (a representative constitution, a free media, a fair court system, etc.) and watered with a continuous, wide stream of public input.
The unfolding experience in three countries - Egypt, Myanmar (Burma), and Malawi - highlights the importance, and difficulty, of getting the right mix of soil and water.
THE MONITOR'S VIEW: Egypt's big lesson in democracy
If the revolution falters in the Arab world's most populous country - Egypt - it may well be because of not enough public buy-in.
Emerging from six decades of authoritarian rule, the country quickly developed a lively discourse in the public square. But the constitutional process, culminating recently in a national referendum, was imbalanced toward the ruling party and its Islamist allies. The Supreme Administrative Court had dissolved the body charged with drafting the new national charter for being unrepresentative. When the panel was reconstituted, similar charges quickly emerged. The constitution passed the popular referendum with 64 percent in favor; but voter turnout was low, only 33 percent, and the run-up to the ballot was marked by boycotts and street protests.
A vital opportunity to engender credibility was needlessly jeopardized.
OPINION: Obama and Myanmar (Burma): 4 points about conflict there
Myanmar, long one of the most sealed-off countries on earth, is making credible strides toward democracy after decades of harsh military rule. Celebrated opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was held under house arrest for 15 of the 20 years prior to her release in 2010, was elected to the national legislature last April. That election was monitored by foreign observers and media enjoying the freest access to the country in years.
But the foundation for a democracy doesn't really exist yet. True, a recent cabinet reshuffle replaced old-guard conservatives with technocrats and the first woman minister. However, the national legislature is still overwhelmingly controlled by the ruling military party, and political rivals cannot reach accord on power-sharing terms in a new draft constitution.
And while a greater diversity of voices is being heard, some are being willfully and dangerously ignored. Human rights abuses and ethnic violence continue almost unimpeded in sensitive areas of the country.
National reconciliation is a prime concern ahead of the 2015 elections, which, if free and fair, would almost certainly elevate Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and her party to power. A truth commission, such as the one that helped South Africa after apartheid, could investigate the history of human rights abuses and underpin a new constitutional system in Myanmar.
THE MONITOR'S VIEW: Africa as muse, not mess
Other than being one of Africa's most persistently impoverished countries, Malawi seldom garners attention, even on the African continent. But last April something significant happened. It began with the sudden death of President Bingu wa Mutharika, an economist and the country's third president. The late leader's brother and supporters saw an opening to take over, but the military stepped in to prevent them from circumventing the Constitution and ensured the legal succession of Joyce Banda.
As political scientists Greg Mills and Jeffrey Herbst observe, simply the operation of the Malawi Constitution under stress is encouraging on a continent once plagued by military coups d'état. They write that Malawi's successful succession during a time of political upheaval shows why 'even the partial liberalization of most African countries, still falling well short of institutionalized democracy, is such an important development.'
In the coming months and years, countries such as Syria, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe will arrive at the threshold of democratic reforms. The choices they make and the processes they follow will be influenced and reinforced by events in neighboring countries and lessons from farther afield.
OPINION: Four things Syria must do after Bashar al-Assad
Building democracies is slow work. It is an imperfect project. But it can be mutually affirming. Twenty-five years ago, strongman rulers dominated Africa. Today no leader can avoid at least the language and motions of democracy. Will similar progress take root in the Middle East? Shortcuts don't pay off. Inclusiveness in building strong institutions and durable constitutions is vital to success.
Kurt Shillinger is a former political reporter for The Christian Science Monitor. He also covered sub-Saharan Africa for The Boston Globe.
ALSO BY THIS WRITER: How civility can come to Washington (+video)
Related stories
- Four things Syria must do after Bashar al-Assad
- Obama and Myanmar (Burma): 4 points about conflict there
- Opinion: Egypt and other Arab democracies will not survive without including more women
- Opinion: Questions about Turkey as a democracy and military model
- Francis Fukuyama: Democracy still rules. But will US catch up in a changing world?
- Arab Spring: now begins the education of Islamist politicians
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Sunday, December 30, 2012
Storms on U.S. Plains stir memories of the "Dust Bowl"
LIBERAL, Kansas (Reuters) - Real estate agent Mark Faulkner recalls a day in early November when he was putting up a sign near Ulysses, Kansas, in 60-miles-per-hour winds that blew up blinding dust clouds.
'There were places you could not see, it was blowing so hard,' Faulkner said.
Residents of the Great Plains over the last year or so have experienced storms reminiscent of the 1930s Dust Bowl. Experts say the new storms have been brought on by a combination of historic drought, a dwindling Ogallala Aquifer underground water supply, climate change and government farm programs.
Nearly 62 percent of the United States was gripped by drought, as of December 25, and 'exceptional' drought enveloped parts of Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
There is no relief in sight for the Great Plains at least through the winter, according to Drought Monitor forecasts, which could portend more dust clouds.
A wave of dust storms during the 1930s crippled agriculture over a vast area of the Great Plains and led to an exodus of people, many to California, dramatized in John Steinbeck's novel 'The Grapes of Wrath.'
While few people believe it could get that bad again, the new storms have some experts worried that similar conditions - if not the catastrophic environmental disaster of the 1930s - are returning to parts of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas and Colorado.
'I hope we don't talk ourselves into complacency with easy assumptions that a Dust Bowl could never happen again,' said Craig Cox, agriculture director for the Environmental Working Group, a national conservation group that supports converting more tilled soil to grassland. 'Instead, we should do what it takes to make sure it doesn't happen again.'
Satellite images on December 19 showed a dust storm stretching over an area of 150 miles from extreme southwestern Oklahoma across the Panhandle of Texas around Lubbock to extreme eastern New Mexico, said Jody James, National Weather Service meteorologist in Lubbock. Visibility was reduced to half a mile in places, stoked by high winds, he said. At least one person was killed and more than a dozen injured in car crashes.
'I definitely think these dust storms will become more common until we get more measurable precipitation,' James said.
'DIRTY 30S'
The Great Plains is a flat, semi-arid, area with few trees, where vast herds of buffalo once thrived on native grasses. Settlers plowed up most of the grassland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to create the wheat-growing breadbasket of the United States, encouraged by high commodity prices and free 'homestead' land from the government.
The era known as the 'Dirty 30s' - chronicled by Ken Burns in a Public Broadcasting Service documentary that aired in November - was when a 1930s drought gripped the Great Plains and winds carried away exposed soil in massive dust clouds.
Bill Fitzgerald, 87, a farmer near Sublette, Kansas, remembers 'Black Sunday' on April 14, 1935, when a clear, sunny day in southwest Kansas turned black as night by mid afternoon because of a massive cloud of dust that swept from Nebraska to the Texas panhandle.
'My older brother and I were in my dad's 1927 or '28 Chevy truck a mile north and a mile west of the house and we saw it rolling in,' Fitzgerald said. 'It was about 10 p.m. when it cleared enough for us to go home.'
Farming practices have vastly improved since the 1930s. Farmers now leave plant remnants on the top of the soil and less soil is exposed, to preserve moisture and prevent erosion.
Irrigation beginning in the 1940s from the Ogallala aquifer, a huge network of water under the Great Plains, also made land less vulnerable to dust storms.
DRYING UP
But the Ogallala aquifer is drying up after years of drawing out more water than was replenished.
Many farmers have had to drill deeper wells to find water. Others are giving up on irrigation altogether, which means they can no longer grow crops of high-yielding and lucrative corn. They will instead grow wheat, cotton or grain sorghum on dry land, which depends completely on natural precipitation in an area that typically gets 20 inches of rain a year or less.
Near Sublette, Kansas, farmer Gail Wright said he would probably give up irrigating two square miles of his land and would plant wheat and grain sorghum instead of corn because of the diminishing aquifer. Drilling deeper wells would cost $120,000 each, Wright said.
'When we drilled those wells in the 1960s and 70s, we were doing 1,500 or 1,600 gallons per minute,' said Wright. 'Now, they are down to anywhere from 400 to 600 gallons per minute. We probably pumped out 200 feet of water.'
Another farmer in Sublette, 79-year-old Lawrence Withers, whose family farms land his grandfather settled in 1887, is resigned to a future without irrigation.
'We have pumped 170 feet off the aquifer, that's gone. There's just a little tick of water at the bottom,' he said.
The Ogallala supplies water to 176,000 square miles (456,000 square km) of land in parts of eight states from the Texas panhandle to southern South Dakota. That amounts to about 27 percent of all irrigated land in the nation, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The volume of water in the aquifer stood at about 2.9 billion acre feet in 2009, a decline of about 9 percent since 1950, according to the Geological Survey. About two-and-a-half times as much water was drawn out in the 14 years ended 2009 as during the prior 15-year period, data shows.
The water may run out in 25 years or less in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and southwest Kansas, although in other areas it has 50 to 200 years left, according to the Geological Survey.
Rationing has been imposed on irrigation in the region but it may be too little too late.
'It's a situation where across the Plains the demand far exceeds the annual recharge,' said Mark Rude, executive director of the Southwest Kansas Groundwater Management District.
RECORD DROUGHT
The worst drought in decades has exacerbated the situation. The semi-arid area around Lubbock, which typically gets about 19 inches of rain a year, received less than 6 inches in 2011, the lowest ever recorded. This year was better but still far below normal at 12.5 inches, meteorologist James said.
Climate change is also having an impact on the region, said atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe, co-director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.
'It is definitely hotter in the summer and drier in the summer because of climate change,' she said.
The average annual temperature in Lubbock has increased by one full degree over the last decade, according to National Weather Service data, and the average amount of rainfall has fallen during summer months by about .50 inch over the decade.
Some say government policies are making things worse.
Federal government subsidized crop insurance pays farmers whether they produce a crop or not, encouraging farmers to plant even in a drought year.
Another subsidized U.S. government program that pays farmers to take sensitive marginal land out of crop production and put it into grassland is gradually shrinking.
In a possible case of history repeating itself, high commodity prices are encouraging farmers to break up the land and plant crops when the 10-year conservation contracts with the government expire, said environmentalist Cox. This is similar to what happened in the 1920s when vast areas of grassland were plowed up.
The government also has imposed restrictions on how much land can go into conservation reserves to save money at a time of massive U.S. budget deficits, he said.
The amount of land in conservation reserves has declined by more than 2.3 million acres over the last five years in five states of the Great Plains - Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico, according to U.S. Agriculture Department data.
If most of that land is plowed up for crops it could lead to more dust storms in the future.
'I think you are probably going to see increased erosion if that happens,' said Richard Zartman, Chairman of the Plant and Soil Science Department at Texas Tech, adding that it was unlikely to get as bad as the Dust Bowl days.
(Additional reporting by Greg McCune and Christine Stebbins; Editing by Claudia Parsons)
This news article is brought to you by PERSONAL FINANCE BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
'There were places you could not see, it was blowing so hard,' Faulkner said.
Residents of the Great Plains over the last year or so have experienced storms reminiscent of the 1930s Dust Bowl. Experts say the new storms have been brought on by a combination of historic drought, a dwindling Ogallala Aquifer underground water supply, climate change and government farm programs.
Nearly 62 percent of the United States was gripped by drought, as of December 25, and 'exceptional' drought enveloped parts of Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
There is no relief in sight for the Great Plains at least through the winter, according to Drought Monitor forecasts, which could portend more dust clouds.
A wave of dust storms during the 1930s crippled agriculture over a vast area of the Great Plains and led to an exodus of people, many to California, dramatized in John Steinbeck's novel 'The Grapes of Wrath.'
While few people believe it could get that bad again, the new storms have some experts worried that similar conditions - if not the catastrophic environmental disaster of the 1930s - are returning to parts of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas and Colorado.
'I hope we don't talk ourselves into complacency with easy assumptions that a Dust Bowl could never happen again,' said Craig Cox, agriculture director for the Environmental Working Group, a national conservation group that supports converting more tilled soil to grassland. 'Instead, we should do what it takes to make sure it doesn't happen again.'
Satellite images on December 19 showed a dust storm stretching over an area of 150 miles from extreme southwestern Oklahoma across the Panhandle of Texas around Lubbock to extreme eastern New Mexico, said Jody James, National Weather Service meteorologist in Lubbock. Visibility was reduced to half a mile in places, stoked by high winds, he said. At least one person was killed and more than a dozen injured in car crashes.
'I definitely think these dust storms will become more common until we get more measurable precipitation,' James said.
'DIRTY 30S'
The Great Plains is a flat, semi-arid, area with few trees, where vast herds of buffalo once thrived on native grasses. Settlers plowed up most of the grassland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to create the wheat-growing breadbasket of the United States, encouraged by high commodity prices and free 'homestead' land from the government.
The era known as the 'Dirty 30s' - chronicled by Ken Burns in a Public Broadcasting Service documentary that aired in November - was when a 1930s drought gripped the Great Plains and winds carried away exposed soil in massive dust clouds.
Bill Fitzgerald, 87, a farmer near Sublette, Kansas, remembers 'Black Sunday' on April 14, 1935, when a clear, sunny day in southwest Kansas turned black as night by mid afternoon because of a massive cloud of dust that swept from Nebraska to the Texas panhandle.
'My older brother and I were in my dad's 1927 or '28 Chevy truck a mile north and a mile west of the house and we saw it rolling in,' Fitzgerald said. 'It was about 10 p.m. when it cleared enough for us to go home.'
Farming practices have vastly improved since the 1930s. Farmers now leave plant remnants on the top of the soil and less soil is exposed, to preserve moisture and prevent erosion.
Irrigation beginning in the 1940s from the Ogallala aquifer, a huge network of water under the Great Plains, also made land less vulnerable to dust storms.
DRYING UP
But the Ogallala aquifer is drying up after years of drawing out more water than was replenished.
Many farmers have had to drill deeper wells to find water. Others are giving up on irrigation altogether, which means they can no longer grow crops of high-yielding and lucrative corn. They will instead grow wheat, cotton or grain sorghum on dry land, which depends completely on natural precipitation in an area that typically gets 20 inches of rain a year or less.
Near Sublette, Kansas, farmer Gail Wright said he would probably give up irrigating two square miles of his land and would plant wheat and grain sorghum instead of corn because of the diminishing aquifer. Drilling deeper wells would cost $120,000 each, Wright said.
'When we drilled those wells in the 1960s and 70s, we were doing 1,500 or 1,600 gallons per minute,' said Wright. 'Now, they are down to anywhere from 400 to 600 gallons per minute. We probably pumped out 200 feet of water.'
Another farmer in Sublette, 79-year-old Lawrence Withers, whose family farms land his grandfather settled in 1887, is resigned to a future without irrigation.
'We have pumped 170 feet off the aquifer, that's gone. There's just a little tick of water at the bottom,' he said.
The Ogallala supplies water to 176,000 square miles (456,000 square km) of land in parts of eight states from the Texas panhandle to southern South Dakota. That amounts to about 27 percent of all irrigated land in the nation, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The volume of water in the aquifer stood at about 2.9 billion acre feet in 2009, a decline of about 9 percent since 1950, according to the Geological Survey. About two-and-a-half times as much water was drawn out in the 14 years ended 2009 as during the prior 15-year period, data shows.
The water may run out in 25 years or less in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and southwest Kansas, although in other areas it has 50 to 200 years left, according to the Geological Survey.
Rationing has been imposed on irrigation in the region but it may be too little too late.
'It's a situation where across the Plains the demand far exceeds the annual recharge,' said Mark Rude, executive director of the Southwest Kansas Groundwater Management District.
RECORD DROUGHT
The worst drought in decades has exacerbated the situation. The semi-arid area around Lubbock, which typically gets about 19 inches of rain a year, received less than 6 inches in 2011, the lowest ever recorded. This year was better but still far below normal at 12.5 inches, meteorologist James said.
Climate change is also having an impact on the region, said atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe, co-director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.
'It is definitely hotter in the summer and drier in the summer because of climate change,' she said.
The average annual temperature in Lubbock has increased by one full degree over the last decade, according to National Weather Service data, and the average amount of rainfall has fallen during summer months by about .50 inch over the decade.
Some say government policies are making things worse.
Federal government subsidized crop insurance pays farmers whether they produce a crop or not, encouraging farmers to plant even in a drought year.
Another subsidized U.S. government program that pays farmers to take sensitive marginal land out of crop production and put it into grassland is gradually shrinking.
In a possible case of history repeating itself, high commodity prices are encouraging farmers to break up the land and plant crops when the 10-year conservation contracts with the government expire, said environmentalist Cox. This is similar to what happened in the 1920s when vast areas of grassland were plowed up.
The government also has imposed restrictions on how much land can go into conservation reserves to save money at a time of massive U.S. budget deficits, he said.
The amount of land in conservation reserves has declined by more than 2.3 million acres over the last five years in five states of the Great Plains - Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico, according to U.S. Agriculture Department data.
If most of that land is plowed up for crops it could lead to more dust storms in the future.
'I think you are probably going to see increased erosion if that happens,' said Richard Zartman, Chairman of the Plant and Soil Science Department at Texas Tech, adding that it was unlikely to get as bad as the Dust Bowl days.
(Additional reporting by Greg McCune and Christine Stebbins; Editing by Claudia Parsons)
This news article is brought to you by PERSONAL FINANCE BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
Friday, December 28, 2012
Temple - Detroit-Mercy Basketball Game Postponed Due to Weather
s:fb='http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml' xmlns:addthis='http://www.addthis.com/help/api-spec' > Temple – Detroit-Mercy Basketball Game Postponed Due to Weather « CBS Philly
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Thursday, December 27, 2012
Snow buries parts of Northeast, flights canceled
BUFFALO, New York (Reuters) - A powerful winter storm pushed through the U.S. Northeast on Thursday, forcing the cancellation of hundreds of airline flights while bringing some holiday cheer to families hoping for snow and lifting spirits at ski resorts in the region.
The storm dumped a foot of snow on parts of the United States with the heaviest snow falling across northern New York and New England, the National Weather Service reported.
'It feels lovely to have wonderful snow for the kids to play in, and I think it's the kind of snow that's good for making forts and snowmen,' said Katryna Nields, a musician in Conway, Massachusetts, who was outside her home shoveling snow.
'It's just the kind of snow you want for between Christmas and New Year's,' she added.
The National Weather Service issued winter storm warnings for parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and New England and coastal flood advisories from New York's Long Island to southern Maine.
Airlines canceled more than 800 flights on Thursday, according to FlightAware.com, a website that tracks flights.
Some flights into and out of the three major New York City area airports - Newark Liberty International, John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia - were delayed due to the weather, the Federal Aviation Administration reported.
The weather service forecast 12 to 18 inches of snow for northern New England, accompanied by freezing rain and sleet, creating hazards on the highways and at airports.
More snow is headed east, said Alex Sosnowski, senior meteorologist at Accuweather.com.
'A new storm is in the works for portions of New England, the mid-Atlantic and the Ohio Valley,' he said.
The new storm 'will bring more snow to areas that received snow from the post-Christmas storm and will bring snow to some areas that got rain or mostly rain,' he said, adding that it has the potential to strengthen to a strong nor'easter or blizzard in parts of New England.
Tom Olney, a 50-year-old stay-at-home father of two, was making plans to go sledding with his children in their hometown of Wayland, Massachusetts.
'We love snow,' Olney said. 'What else are you going to do when it's this wet and cold out?'
Western Massachusetts, like much of the Northeast, had an uncharacteristically mild winter last year, but residents such as Olney say they are ready for a more typical cold season.
'Mother Nature doesn't usually give you two in a row,' he said. 'We've still got a lot of supplies from last year, so I guess we're ready for it now.'
Heavy snow was falling in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire.
Eleven inches of snow was forecast for Buffalo, where some 8 to 12 inches of snow fell overnight into Thursday. Prior to that, Buffalo was 23 inches below average for this time of year, the weather service said.
'It's just a reminder, winter is here,' said Tom Paone of the National Weather Service in Buffalo.
Daniel Ivancic, of the Buffalo suburb of Tonawanda, said he bought a snowmobile last winter that has sat largely idle with snow totals well below average.
'I waited and waited and, no snow. This winter it seemed like the same thing was going to happen until the storm hit,' Ivancic said. 'I'm just going to take advantage of every minute of it.'
Police patrolling the New York State Thruway from Buffalo to Albany reported dozens of accidents, mostly involving cars that slipped off snowy roads overnight.
Freezing rain - making for treacherous travel conditions - was predicted for parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia while significant rain was likely along the New Jersey, Virginia and Maryland coasts, the weather service said.
The storm system dumped record snow in north Texas and Arkansas before sweeping through the South on Christmas Day and then veering north.
The system triggered tornadoes and left almost 200,000 people in Arkansas and Alabama without power on Wednesday.
Authorities said an 81-year-old man died in Georgiana, Alabama after a tree fell on his home.
(Additional reporting by Betsy Pisik in Wayland, Massachusetts, Zach Howard in Conway, Massachusetts, Kaija Wilkinson in Mobile, Alabama, Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Dan Burns in New York; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Claudia Parsons)
This article is brought to you by ASTROLOGY.
The storm dumped a foot of snow on parts of the United States with the heaviest snow falling across northern New York and New England, the National Weather Service reported.
'It feels lovely to have wonderful snow for the kids to play in, and I think it's the kind of snow that's good for making forts and snowmen,' said Katryna Nields, a musician in Conway, Massachusetts, who was outside her home shoveling snow.
'It's just the kind of snow you want for between Christmas and New Year's,' she added.
The National Weather Service issued winter storm warnings for parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and New England and coastal flood advisories from New York's Long Island to southern Maine.
Airlines canceled more than 800 flights on Thursday, according to FlightAware.com, a website that tracks flights.
Some flights into and out of the three major New York City area airports - Newark Liberty International, John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia - were delayed due to the weather, the Federal Aviation Administration reported.
The weather service forecast 12 to 18 inches of snow for northern New England, accompanied by freezing rain and sleet, creating hazards on the highways and at airports.
More snow is headed east, said Alex Sosnowski, senior meteorologist at Accuweather.com.
'A new storm is in the works for portions of New England, the mid-Atlantic and the Ohio Valley,' he said.
The new storm 'will bring more snow to areas that received snow from the post-Christmas storm and will bring snow to some areas that got rain or mostly rain,' he said, adding that it has the potential to strengthen to a strong nor'easter or blizzard in parts of New England.
Tom Olney, a 50-year-old stay-at-home father of two, was making plans to go sledding with his children in their hometown of Wayland, Massachusetts.
'We love snow,' Olney said. 'What else are you going to do when it's this wet and cold out?'
Western Massachusetts, like much of the Northeast, had an uncharacteristically mild winter last year, but residents such as Olney say they are ready for a more typical cold season.
'Mother Nature doesn't usually give you two in a row,' he said. 'We've still got a lot of supplies from last year, so I guess we're ready for it now.'
Heavy snow was falling in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire.
Eleven inches of snow was forecast for Buffalo, where some 8 to 12 inches of snow fell overnight into Thursday. Prior to that, Buffalo was 23 inches below average for this time of year, the weather service said.
'It's just a reminder, winter is here,' said Tom Paone of the National Weather Service in Buffalo.
Daniel Ivancic, of the Buffalo suburb of Tonawanda, said he bought a snowmobile last winter that has sat largely idle with snow totals well below average.
'I waited and waited and, no snow. This winter it seemed like the same thing was going to happen until the storm hit,' Ivancic said. 'I'm just going to take advantage of every minute of it.'
Police patrolling the New York State Thruway from Buffalo to Albany reported dozens of accidents, mostly involving cars that slipped off snowy roads overnight.
Freezing rain - making for treacherous travel conditions - was predicted for parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia while significant rain was likely along the New Jersey, Virginia and Maryland coasts, the weather service said.
The storm system dumped record snow in north Texas and Arkansas before sweeping through the South on Christmas Day and then veering north.
The system triggered tornadoes and left almost 200,000 people in Arkansas and Alabama without power on Wednesday.
Authorities said an 81-year-old man died in Georgiana, Alabama after a tree fell on his home.
(Additional reporting by Betsy Pisik in Wayland, Massachusetts, Zach Howard in Conway, Massachusetts, Kaija Wilkinson in Mobile, Alabama, Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Dan Burns in New York; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Claudia Parsons)
This article is brought to you by ASTROLOGY.
EPA Administrator Jackson announces resignation
WASHINGTON (AP) - EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, the Obama administration's chief environmental watchdog, is stepping down after a nearly four years marked by high-profile brawls over global warming pollution, the Keystone XL oil pipeline, new controls on coal-fired plants and several other hot-button issues that affect the nation's economy and people's health.
Jackson constantly found herself caught between administration pledges to solve thorny environmental problems and steady resistance from Republicans and industrial groups who complained that the agency's rules destroyed jobs and made it harder for American companies to compete internationally.
The GOP chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, said last year that Jackson would need her own parking spot at the Capitol because he planned to bring her in so frequently for questioning. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney called for her firing, a stance that had little downside during the GOP primary.
Jackson, 50, the agency's first black administrator and a chemical engineer, did not point to any particular reason for her departure. Historically, Cabinet members looking to move on will leave at the beginning of a president's second term.
'I will leave the EPA confident the ship is sailing in the right direction, and ready in my own life for new challenges, time with my family and new opportunities to make a difference,' she said in a statement. Jackson will leave sometime after President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address, typically in late January.
In a separate statement, Obama said Jackson has been 'an important part of my team.' He thanked her for serving and praised her 'unwavering commitment' to the public's health.
'Under her leadership, the EPA has taken sensible and important steps to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink, including implementing the first national standard for harmful mercury pollution, taking important action to combat climate change under the Clean Air Act and playing a key role in establishing historic fuel economy standards that will save the average American family thousands of dollars at the pump, while also slashing carbon pollution,' he said.
Environmental activist groups and other supporters lauded Jackson for the changes she was able to make, but industry representatives said some may have come at an economic cost. Groups also noted that she leaves a large, unfinished agenda.
'There has been no fiercer champion of our health and our environment than Lisa Jackson, and every American is better off today than when she took office nearly four years ago,' said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. But she noted that Jackson's successor will inherit an unfinished agenda, including the need to issue new health protections against carbon pollution from existing power plants.
Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., chairman of the Senate's subcommittee on clean air, called Jackson's tenure a 'breath of fresh air' and credited her for setting historic fuel economy standards for cars and trucks, and for finalizing clean air standards.
But Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, said Jackson presided over some of the most expensive environmental rules in EPA history.
'Agency rules have been used as blunt attempts to marginalize coal and other solid fossil fuels and to make motor fuels more costly at the expense of industrial jobs, energy security, and economic recovery,' Segal said. 'The record of the agency over the same period in overestimating benefits to major rules has not assisted the public in determining whether these rules have been worth it.'
Other environmental groups, however, praised Jackson's clean air efforts.
'Notwithstanding the difficult economic and political challenges EPA faced, her agency was directly responsible for saving the lives of tens of thousands of Americans and improving the health of millions throughout the country,' said S. William Becker of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. 'She will be sorely missed.'
Larry Schweiger, head of the National Wildlife Federation, cited her climate change work and efforts to reduce carbon pollution.
Environmental groups had high expectations for the Obama administration after eight years of President George W. Bush, a Texas oilman who rebuffed agency scientists and refused act on climate change. Jackson came into office promising a more active EPA.
But she soon learned that changes would not occur as quickly as she had hoped. Jackson watched as a Democratic-led effort to reduce global warming emissions passed the House in 2009 but was then abandoned by the Senate as economic concerns became the priority. The concept behind the bill, referred to as cap-and-trade, would have established a system where power companies bought and sold pollution rights.
'That's a revolutionary message for our country,' Jackson said at a Paris conference shortly after accepting the job.
Jackson experienced another big setback last year when the administration scrubbed a clean-air regulation aimed at reducing health-threatening smog. Republican lawmakers had been hammering the president over the proposed rule, accusing him of making it harder for companies to create jobs.
She also vowed to better control toxic coal ash after a massive spill in Tennessee, but that regulation has yet to be finalized more than four years after the spill.
Jackson had some victories, too. During her tenure, the administration finalized a new rule doubling fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks. The requirements will be phased in over 13 years and eventually require all new vehicles to average 54.5 mpg, up from 28.6 mpg at the end of last year.
She shepherded another rule that forces power plants to control mercury and other toxic pollutants for the first time. Previously, the nation's coal- and oil-fired power plants had been allowed to run without addressing their full environmental and public health costs.
Jackson also helped persuade the administration to table the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would have brought carbon-heavy tar sands oil from Canada to refineries in Texas.
House Republicans dedicated much of their time this past election year trying to rein in the EPA. They passed a bill seeking to thwart regulation of the coal industry and quash the stricter fuel efficiency standards. In the end, though, the bill made no headway in the Senate. It served mostly as election-year fodder that appeared to have little impact on the presidential race.
___
Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report.
This article is brought to you by HOROSCOPE.
Jackson constantly found herself caught between administration pledges to solve thorny environmental problems and steady resistance from Republicans and industrial groups who complained that the agency's rules destroyed jobs and made it harder for American companies to compete internationally.
The GOP chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, said last year that Jackson would need her own parking spot at the Capitol because he planned to bring her in so frequently for questioning. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney called for her firing, a stance that had little downside during the GOP primary.
Jackson, 50, the agency's first black administrator and a chemical engineer, did not point to any particular reason for her departure. Historically, Cabinet members looking to move on will leave at the beginning of a president's second term.
'I will leave the EPA confident the ship is sailing in the right direction, and ready in my own life for new challenges, time with my family and new opportunities to make a difference,' she said in a statement. Jackson will leave sometime after President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address, typically in late January.
In a separate statement, Obama said Jackson has been 'an important part of my team.' He thanked her for serving and praised her 'unwavering commitment' to the public's health.
'Under her leadership, the EPA has taken sensible and important steps to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink, including implementing the first national standard for harmful mercury pollution, taking important action to combat climate change under the Clean Air Act and playing a key role in establishing historic fuel economy standards that will save the average American family thousands of dollars at the pump, while also slashing carbon pollution,' he said.
Environmental activist groups and other supporters lauded Jackson for the changes she was able to make, but industry representatives said some may have come at an economic cost. Groups also noted that she leaves a large, unfinished agenda.
'There has been no fiercer champion of our health and our environment than Lisa Jackson, and every American is better off today than when she took office nearly four years ago,' said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. But she noted that Jackson's successor will inherit an unfinished agenda, including the need to issue new health protections against carbon pollution from existing power plants.
Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., chairman of the Senate's subcommittee on clean air, called Jackson's tenure a 'breath of fresh air' and credited her for setting historic fuel economy standards for cars and trucks, and for finalizing clean air standards.
But Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, said Jackson presided over some of the most expensive environmental rules in EPA history.
'Agency rules have been used as blunt attempts to marginalize coal and other solid fossil fuels and to make motor fuels more costly at the expense of industrial jobs, energy security, and economic recovery,' Segal said. 'The record of the agency over the same period in overestimating benefits to major rules has not assisted the public in determining whether these rules have been worth it.'
Other environmental groups, however, praised Jackson's clean air efforts.
'Notwithstanding the difficult economic and political challenges EPA faced, her agency was directly responsible for saving the lives of tens of thousands of Americans and improving the health of millions throughout the country,' said S. William Becker of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. 'She will be sorely missed.'
Larry Schweiger, head of the National Wildlife Federation, cited her climate change work and efforts to reduce carbon pollution.
Environmental groups had high expectations for the Obama administration after eight years of President George W. Bush, a Texas oilman who rebuffed agency scientists and refused act on climate change. Jackson came into office promising a more active EPA.
But she soon learned that changes would not occur as quickly as she had hoped. Jackson watched as a Democratic-led effort to reduce global warming emissions passed the House in 2009 but was then abandoned by the Senate as economic concerns became the priority. The concept behind the bill, referred to as cap-and-trade, would have established a system where power companies bought and sold pollution rights.
'That's a revolutionary message for our country,' Jackson said at a Paris conference shortly after accepting the job.
Jackson experienced another big setback last year when the administration scrubbed a clean-air regulation aimed at reducing health-threatening smog. Republican lawmakers had been hammering the president over the proposed rule, accusing him of making it harder for companies to create jobs.
She also vowed to better control toxic coal ash after a massive spill in Tennessee, but that regulation has yet to be finalized more than four years after the spill.
Jackson had some victories, too. During her tenure, the administration finalized a new rule doubling fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks. The requirements will be phased in over 13 years and eventually require all new vehicles to average 54.5 mpg, up from 28.6 mpg at the end of last year.
She shepherded another rule that forces power plants to control mercury and other toxic pollutants for the first time. Previously, the nation's coal- and oil-fired power plants had been allowed to run without addressing their full environmental and public health costs.
Jackson also helped persuade the administration to table the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would have brought carbon-heavy tar sands oil from Canada to refineries in Texas.
House Republicans dedicated much of their time this past election year trying to rein in the EPA. They passed a bill seeking to thwart regulation of the coal industry and quash the stricter fuel efficiency standards. In the end, though, the bill made no headway in the Senate. It served mostly as election-year fodder that appeared to have little impact on the presidential race.
___
Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report.
This article is brought to you by HOROSCOPE.
Britain suspends exploratory drilling of Antarctic lake
LONDON (Reuters) - An ambitious British plan to search for minute forms of life in an ancient lake beneath Antarctica's ice has been suspended because of technical problems, the scientist leading the project said on Thursday.
In a move that clears the way for U.S. and Russian teams to take the lead, Professor Martin Siegert said technical problems and a lack of fuel had forced the closure on Christmas Day of the 7-million-pound ($11 million) project, which was looking for life forms and climate change clues in the lake-bed sediment.
'This is of course, hugely frustrating for us, but we have learned a lot this year,' said Siegert of the University of Bristol, principal investigator for the mission, which was headed by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
'By the end, the equipment was working well, and much of it has now been fully field-tested,' he said on the BAS website.
Experts from Britain's Lake Ellsworth mission had expected to find minute forms of life in the lake three km (two miles) under Antarctica's ice, the most remote and extreme environment known on Earth.
They had also hoped that by dating bits of seashell found in the water they would have been able to ascertain when the ice sheet last broke up and to better understand the risks of it happening again.
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
Scientists from the United States and Russia are hot on Britain's heels when it comes to drilling through Antarctic ice to lakes that have been hidden for thousands of years.
The U.S. team is aiming to start drilling in Lake Whillans, one of 360 known sub-glacial lakes in Antarctica, in January or February 2013.
Russia was the first to pierce 3,769 meters (12,365 ft) of solid ice to reach Lake Vostok early in 2012. But some scientists believe their samples may have been contaminated by drilling fluids.
The British scientists decided to abandon the mission after trying for 20 hours to connect two holes in the ice that were needed for the hot-water drill to work, said a BAS spokeswoman.
Without a connection between the two holes, the hot water would seep into the porous surface layers of ice and be lost, reducing the pressure and rendering the drill ineffective.
The team tried to melt and dig more snow to compensate for the water loss, but without success.
As a result of the extra time taken to fix the problem, fuel stocks had been depleted to such a level as to make the operation unviable.
Asked how long the delay might be before the project could be resumed, Siegert told the BBC: 'It will take a season or two to get all our equipment out of Antarctica and back to the UK, so at a minimum we're looking at three to four, maybe five years I would have thought.'
However, he said he felt this year's mission had not been a complete loss.
The BAS spokeswoman said: 'It's very possible that either the U.S. or Russia may take the lead but I think the one thing we've learned here is that anything can go wrong.'
'We've never depicted this as a race. All sub-glacial lakes would give different information,' she said.
(Editing by Andrew Osborn)
This article is brought to you by ASTROLOGY.
In a move that clears the way for U.S. and Russian teams to take the lead, Professor Martin Siegert said technical problems and a lack of fuel had forced the closure on Christmas Day of the 7-million-pound ($11 million) project, which was looking for life forms and climate change clues in the lake-bed sediment.
'This is of course, hugely frustrating for us, but we have learned a lot this year,' said Siegert of the University of Bristol, principal investigator for the mission, which was headed by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
'By the end, the equipment was working well, and much of it has now been fully field-tested,' he said on the BAS website.
Experts from Britain's Lake Ellsworth mission had expected to find minute forms of life in the lake three km (two miles) under Antarctica's ice, the most remote and extreme environment known on Earth.
They had also hoped that by dating bits of seashell found in the water they would have been able to ascertain when the ice sheet last broke up and to better understand the risks of it happening again.
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
Scientists from the United States and Russia are hot on Britain's heels when it comes to drilling through Antarctic ice to lakes that have been hidden for thousands of years.
The U.S. team is aiming to start drilling in Lake Whillans, one of 360 known sub-glacial lakes in Antarctica, in January or February 2013.
Russia was the first to pierce 3,769 meters (12,365 ft) of solid ice to reach Lake Vostok early in 2012. But some scientists believe their samples may have been contaminated by drilling fluids.
The British scientists decided to abandon the mission after trying for 20 hours to connect two holes in the ice that were needed for the hot-water drill to work, said a BAS spokeswoman.
Without a connection between the two holes, the hot water would seep into the porous surface layers of ice and be lost, reducing the pressure and rendering the drill ineffective.
The team tried to melt and dig more snow to compensate for the water loss, but without success.
As a result of the extra time taken to fix the problem, fuel stocks had been depleted to such a level as to make the operation unviable.
Asked how long the delay might be before the project could be resumed, Siegert told the BBC: 'It will take a season or two to get all our equipment out of Antarctica and back to the UK, so at a minimum we're looking at three to four, maybe five years I would have thought.'
However, he said he felt this year's mission had not been a complete loss.
The BAS spokeswoman said: 'It's very possible that either the U.S. or Russia may take the lead but I think the one thing we've learned here is that anything can go wrong.'
'We've never depicted this as a race. All sub-glacial lakes would give different information,' she said.
(Editing by Andrew Osborn)
This article is brought to you by ASTROLOGY.
Hundreds of flights canceled as storm pounds eastern U.S.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A powerful winter storm forced the cancellation of about 200 U.S. flights on Thursday, snarling holiday travel as heavy snow and high winds pummeled the northeastern United States.
The National Weather Service forecast 12 to 18 inches of snow for northern New England as the storm moved northeast out of the lower Great Lakes, where it dumped more than a foot of snow in parts of Michigan.
The storm front was accompanied by freezing rain and sleet. The Ohio River Valley and the Northeast were under blizzard and winter storm warnings.
Snow will fall in northern New York, Vermont and New Hampshire at up to 2 inches an hour, with winds gusting to 30 mph (48 km per hour), the weather agency said.
About 200 U.S. airline flights scheduled for Thursday were canceled a day ahead of time, according to FlightAware.com, a website that tracks flights.
American Airlines had the most canceled at about 30. A total of about 1,500 U.S. flights were canceled on Wednesday.
New York state activated its Emergency Operations Center late on Wednesday to deal with the first major storm of the season.
Governor Andrew Cuomo warned the heads of seven utilities they would be held accountable for their performances. Utilities near New York City were criticized for lingering outages after Superstorm Sandy devastated the region in October.
The storm comes as New York state has seen little snow during autumn and winter. Buffalo, New York, was 23 inches below normal for the season before the storm, said Bill Hibbert, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
'We're short and even this big snow isn't going to make it up for us,' he said.
The storm dumped record snow in north Texas and Arkansas before it swept through the U.S. South on Christmas Day and then veered north. The system spawned tornadoes and left almost 200,000 people in Arkansas and Alabama without power on Wednesday.
At least five people were killed in road accidents related to the bad weather, police said.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson and Neale Gulley; Editing by Paul Simao)
This article is brought to you by HOROSCOPE.
The National Weather Service forecast 12 to 18 inches of snow for northern New England as the storm moved northeast out of the lower Great Lakes, where it dumped more than a foot of snow in parts of Michigan.
The storm front was accompanied by freezing rain and sleet. The Ohio River Valley and the Northeast were under blizzard and winter storm warnings.
Snow will fall in northern New York, Vermont and New Hampshire at up to 2 inches an hour, with winds gusting to 30 mph (48 km per hour), the weather agency said.
About 200 U.S. airline flights scheduled for Thursday were canceled a day ahead of time, according to FlightAware.com, a website that tracks flights.
American Airlines had the most canceled at about 30. A total of about 1,500 U.S. flights were canceled on Wednesday.
New York state activated its Emergency Operations Center late on Wednesday to deal with the first major storm of the season.
Governor Andrew Cuomo warned the heads of seven utilities they would be held accountable for their performances. Utilities near New York City were criticized for lingering outages after Superstorm Sandy devastated the region in October.
The storm comes as New York state has seen little snow during autumn and winter. Buffalo, New York, was 23 inches below normal for the season before the storm, said Bill Hibbert, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
'We're short and even this big snow isn't going to make it up for us,' he said.
The storm dumped record snow in north Texas and Arkansas before it swept through the U.S. South on Christmas Day and then veered north. The system spawned tornadoes and left almost 200,000 people in Arkansas and Alabama without power on Wednesday.
At least five people were killed in road accidents related to the bad weather, police said.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson and Neale Gulley; Editing by Paul Simao)
This article is brought to you by HOROSCOPE.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
UK on track to hit 2020 green energy targets - DECC
LONDON (Reuters) - The UK is on track to meet its 2020 renewable energy targets after low-carbon electricity generation grew more than a quarter in the year to end-June 2012, thanks largely to new solar and offshore wind projects, a government report said.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said renewable energy accounted for over 10 percent of total electricity supplied in the 12 months to end-June.
Renewable power output grew 27 percent from July 2011, according to the UK's latest Renewable Energy Roadmap status report released on Thursday.
'Renewable energy is increasingly powering the UK's grid, and the economy too,' Energy Secretary Edward Davey, who heads DECC, said in a statement that accompanied the report.
'It's a fantastic achievement that more than 10 percent of our power now comes from renewables, given the point from which we started,' he said.
Britain has a target to produce 15 percent of its energy, including electricity, heat and transport, from renewable sources by 2020 in a bid to cut climate-warming emissions.
This means that 30 percent of the UK's electricity must come from renewables by the end of the decade, the government said, with wind playing a leading role.
'Right now, getting new infrastructure investment into the economy is crucial to driving growth and supporting jobs across the country ... I am determined that we get ahead in the global race on renewables and build on the big-money investments we've seen this year,' Davey said.
DECC has identified around 12.7 billion pounds ($20.6 billion) of confirmed and planned renewable investment by companies between April 1, 2011 and July 31, 2012, potentially creating around 22,800 jobs.
The department, which expects the growth in renewables to continue or accelerate, predicts the industry will support 400,000 direct jobs by 2020, up from around 110,000 jobs currently.
Government subsidies have played a key role in encouraging investment, however, and economic difficulties have put pressure on support schemes.
Government departments have reined in spending, though officials say the falling costs of the technology mean that less support is required to encourage take-up.
Offshore wind power capacity grew by 60 percent to 2.5 gigawatts (GW), while onshore wind grew by 24 percent to 5.3 GW, according to figures in the Renewable Energy Roadmap report.
Solar photovoltaics recorded the highest growth with an increase of five and a half times to 1.4 GW in capacity by the end of June 2012, the report said.
Industry group RenewableUK welcomed the findings of the report.
'The update is spot on. It highlights the sector's dynamic growth and the healthy pipeline of wind, wave and tidal projects to come,' RenewableUK Deputy Chief Executive Maf Smith said.
'It's right to note that costs are falling steadily, so renewables will continue to offer even better value for money for all of us,' he said, adding that it will help stabilise the price of energy.
In November, Britain set out plans to triple support for low-carbon power generation by 2020 in order to help replace ageing fossil fuel power plants with less polluting alternatives.
The outlay will be clawed back through higher energy bills.
Under the agreed Levy Control Framework, spending on low-carbon power generation will increase to 7.6 billion pounds a year in real terms by 2020, from the current 2.35 billion pounds, to reduce dependence on gas.
($1 = 0.6180 British pounds)
(Reporting by Oleg Vukmanovic; editing by Jane Baird)
This article is brought to you by ASTROLOGY.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said renewable energy accounted for over 10 percent of total electricity supplied in the 12 months to end-June.
Renewable power output grew 27 percent from July 2011, according to the UK's latest Renewable Energy Roadmap status report released on Thursday.
'Renewable energy is increasingly powering the UK's grid, and the economy too,' Energy Secretary Edward Davey, who heads DECC, said in a statement that accompanied the report.
'It's a fantastic achievement that more than 10 percent of our power now comes from renewables, given the point from which we started,' he said.
Britain has a target to produce 15 percent of its energy, including electricity, heat and transport, from renewable sources by 2020 in a bid to cut climate-warming emissions.
This means that 30 percent of the UK's electricity must come from renewables by the end of the decade, the government said, with wind playing a leading role.
'Right now, getting new infrastructure investment into the economy is crucial to driving growth and supporting jobs across the country ... I am determined that we get ahead in the global race on renewables and build on the big-money investments we've seen this year,' Davey said.
DECC has identified around 12.7 billion pounds ($20.6 billion) of confirmed and planned renewable investment by companies between April 1, 2011 and July 31, 2012, potentially creating around 22,800 jobs.
The department, which expects the growth in renewables to continue or accelerate, predicts the industry will support 400,000 direct jobs by 2020, up from around 110,000 jobs currently.
Government subsidies have played a key role in encouraging investment, however, and economic difficulties have put pressure on support schemes.
Government departments have reined in spending, though officials say the falling costs of the technology mean that less support is required to encourage take-up.
Offshore wind power capacity grew by 60 percent to 2.5 gigawatts (GW), while onshore wind grew by 24 percent to 5.3 GW, according to figures in the Renewable Energy Roadmap report.
Solar photovoltaics recorded the highest growth with an increase of five and a half times to 1.4 GW in capacity by the end of June 2012, the report said.
Industry group RenewableUK welcomed the findings of the report.
'The update is spot on. It highlights the sector's dynamic growth and the healthy pipeline of wind, wave and tidal projects to come,' RenewableUK Deputy Chief Executive Maf Smith said.
'It's right to note that costs are falling steadily, so renewables will continue to offer even better value for money for all of us,' he said, adding that it will help stabilise the price of energy.
In November, Britain set out plans to triple support for low-carbon power generation by 2020 in order to help replace ageing fossil fuel power plants with less polluting alternatives.
The outlay will be clawed back through higher energy bills.
Under the agreed Levy Control Framework, spending on low-carbon power generation will increase to 7.6 billion pounds a year in real terms by 2020, from the current 2.35 billion pounds, to reduce dependence on gas.
($1 = 0.6180 British pounds)
(Reporting by Oleg Vukmanovic; editing by Jane Baird)
This article is brought to you by ASTROLOGY.
Winter storms hit eastern U.S., snarl post-holiday travel
WINSTON-SALEM, North Carolina (Reuters) - The severe winter weather that hit parts of the central and southern United States on Christmas Day moved eastward on Wednesday, causing flight delays and dangerous road conditions for holiday travelers in the Northeast and Ohio Valley.
Some flights headed for New York, Philadelphia and Newark, New Jersey, experienced delays averaging one to four hours due to the inclement weather, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
About 1,300 U.S. flights had been canceled on Wednesday, according to FlightAware.com. Several airlines waived ticket change fees for affected customers.
All four runways at Philadelphia International Airport were open on Wednesday, but that didn't prevent cancellation of physical therapist Mindy Bartscherer's flight to Minneapolis.
She and her son Zachary Bartscherer, 24, a lobbyist from Washington D.C., had planned to visit family but instead waited forlornly in the baggage claim area for a ride back home. They expected to return to the airport early on Thursday to try again.
'We were going to have dinner and see my 2-year-old niece,' Mindy Bartscherer said of their thwarted plans for Wednesday night.
The National Weather Service issued blizzard and winter storm warnings in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, as well as much of the Northeast, and cautioned that the wintry weather would create 'treacherous' driving conditions.
More than six inches of snow might fall in those regions, while the area from western New York up into central Maine could get from 12 to 18 inches, the NWS said.
As of Wednesday morning, Bloomington, Indiana, already had nearly a foot of snow and Indianapolis had about seven inches, according to AccuWeather.com.
Severe thunderstorms and widespread rain were expected from southeast Virginia to Florida, the NWS said, and the eastern counties in North Carolina and South Carolina were under tornado watches or warnings for much of the day.
The wet and snowy conditions follow a major winter storm system that swept through the southern United States on Tuesday, spawning tornadoes in several states and causing the deaths of at least five people in weather-related road accidents.
Twisters struck in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana, flattening houses and causing injuries, according to the weather service. The storm also dumped record snowfalls in North Texas and Arkansas.
Nearly 200,000 homes and businesses remained without electricity in Arkansas and Alabama on Wednesday.
Damage assessments were conducted in the 11 Alabama counties that reported varying degrees of property destruction from Tuesday's storms.
The city of Mobile appeared to be hardest hit, with damage to as many as 100 structures, including the historic Trinity Episcopal Church, according to the Alabama Emergency Management Agency.
Governor Phil Bryant declared a state of emergency in Mississippi, where a dozen counties reported damage and more than 25 people were injured on Tuesday.
The severe holiday weather also contributed to a 21-vehicle pile-up that shut Interstate 40 in downtown Oklahoma City on Tuesday and caused power outages for tens of thousands of residents.
A Texas man died after an accident involving a toppled tree in the road, and icy roads contributed to the deaths of four people in auto crashes in Oklahoma and Arkansas, according to police.
About 1,000 people spent the night on cots at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport after some 400 flights were canceled there on Tuesday due to weather, said Cynthia Vega, media relations manager at the airport.
On Wednesday morning, some 50 more flights were canceled, she said.
'We're hoping to get passengers back on track,' Vega said. 'It's probably going to be a little hectic at the airport.'
(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Additional reporting by Corrie MacLaggan, Eileen O'Grady, Steve Olafson and Dave Warner; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Gunna Dickson)
This article is brought to you by HOROSCOPE.
Some flights headed for New York, Philadelphia and Newark, New Jersey, experienced delays averaging one to four hours due to the inclement weather, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
About 1,300 U.S. flights had been canceled on Wednesday, according to FlightAware.com. Several airlines waived ticket change fees for affected customers.
All four runways at Philadelphia International Airport were open on Wednesday, but that didn't prevent cancellation of physical therapist Mindy Bartscherer's flight to Minneapolis.
She and her son Zachary Bartscherer, 24, a lobbyist from Washington D.C., had planned to visit family but instead waited forlornly in the baggage claim area for a ride back home. They expected to return to the airport early on Thursday to try again.
'We were going to have dinner and see my 2-year-old niece,' Mindy Bartscherer said of their thwarted plans for Wednesday night.
The National Weather Service issued blizzard and winter storm warnings in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, as well as much of the Northeast, and cautioned that the wintry weather would create 'treacherous' driving conditions.
More than six inches of snow might fall in those regions, while the area from western New York up into central Maine could get from 12 to 18 inches, the NWS said.
As of Wednesday morning, Bloomington, Indiana, already had nearly a foot of snow and Indianapolis had about seven inches, according to AccuWeather.com.
Severe thunderstorms and widespread rain were expected from southeast Virginia to Florida, the NWS said, and the eastern counties in North Carolina and South Carolina were under tornado watches or warnings for much of the day.
The wet and snowy conditions follow a major winter storm system that swept through the southern United States on Tuesday, spawning tornadoes in several states and causing the deaths of at least five people in weather-related road accidents.
Twisters struck in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana, flattening houses and causing injuries, according to the weather service. The storm also dumped record snowfalls in North Texas and Arkansas.
Nearly 200,000 homes and businesses remained without electricity in Arkansas and Alabama on Wednesday.
Damage assessments were conducted in the 11 Alabama counties that reported varying degrees of property destruction from Tuesday's storms.
The city of Mobile appeared to be hardest hit, with damage to as many as 100 structures, including the historic Trinity Episcopal Church, according to the Alabama Emergency Management Agency.
Governor Phil Bryant declared a state of emergency in Mississippi, where a dozen counties reported damage and more than 25 people were injured on Tuesday.
The severe holiday weather also contributed to a 21-vehicle pile-up that shut Interstate 40 in downtown Oklahoma City on Tuesday and caused power outages for tens of thousands of residents.
A Texas man died after an accident involving a toppled tree in the road, and icy roads contributed to the deaths of four people in auto crashes in Oklahoma and Arkansas, according to police.
About 1,000 people spent the night on cots at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport after some 400 flights were canceled there on Tuesday due to weather, said Cynthia Vega, media relations manager at the airport.
On Wednesday morning, some 50 more flights were canceled, she said.
'We're hoping to get passengers back on track,' Vega said. 'It's probably going to be a little hectic at the airport.'
(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Additional reporting by Corrie MacLaggan, Eileen O'Grady, Steve Olafson and Dave Warner; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Gunna Dickson)
This article is brought to you by HOROSCOPE.
Snow, rain soak eastern U.S. in post-Christmas storms
WINSTON-SALEM, North Carolina (Reuters) - The severe winter weather that hit parts of the central and southern United States on Christmas Day moved eastward on Wednesday, causing flight delays and dangerous road conditions in the Northeast and Ohio Valley.
Flights headed for New York, Philadelphia and Newark, New Jersey, were experiencing delays of more than an hour due to the inclement weather, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
Nearly 900 U.S. flights had been canceled on Wednesday, according to FlightAware.com.
The National Weather Service issued blizzard and winter storm warnings in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, as well as much of the Northeast, and warned that the wintry weather would make for 'treacherous' driving conditions for holiday travelers.
More than six inches of snow might fall in those regions, while the area from western New York up into central Maine could get from 12 to 18 inches, the NWS said.
As of Wednesday morning, Bloomington, Indiana, already had nearly a foot of snow and Indianapolis had about seven inches, according to AccuWeather.com.
Severe thunderstorms and widespread rain were expected from southeast Virginia to Florida, with the eastern counties in North Carolina and South Carolina under tornado watches or warnings, the NWS said.
The wet and snowy conditions follow a major winter storm system that swept through the southern United States on Tuesday, spawning tornadoes in several states and causing the deaths of at least two people in weather-related road accidents.
Twisters struck in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana, flattening houses and causing injuries, according to the weather service.
Declaring a state of emergency, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant deployed resources to the multiple counties in that state that reported damaged homes and businesses, power outages and flooding.
Tuesday's storms also contributed to a 21-vehicle pile-up that shut Interstate 40 in downtown Oklahoma City and caused power outages for tens of thousands of residents.
A Texas man died after an accident involving a toppled tree in the road, and there was another weather-related fatality on I-44 in Oklahoma, according to local authorities.
In the U.S. southeast, nearly 200,000 homes and businesses remained without electricity on Wednesday following a Christmas Day winter storm packing snow, high winds and tornadoes.
The storm dumped record snowfalls in North Texas and Arkansas.
About 1,000 people spent the night on cots at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport after some 400 flights were canceled there on Tuesday due to weather, said Cynthia Vega, media relations manager at the airport.
On Wednesday morning, about 50 more flights were canceled, she said.
'We're hoping to get passengers back on track,' Vega said. 'It's probably going to be a little hectic at the airport.'
(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Additional reporting by Corrie MacLaggan; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Gunna Dickson)
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Flights headed for New York, Philadelphia and Newark, New Jersey, were experiencing delays of more than an hour due to the inclement weather, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
Nearly 900 U.S. flights had been canceled on Wednesday, according to FlightAware.com.
The National Weather Service issued blizzard and winter storm warnings in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, as well as much of the Northeast, and warned that the wintry weather would make for 'treacherous' driving conditions for holiday travelers.
More than six inches of snow might fall in those regions, while the area from western New York up into central Maine could get from 12 to 18 inches, the NWS said.
As of Wednesday morning, Bloomington, Indiana, already had nearly a foot of snow and Indianapolis had about seven inches, according to AccuWeather.com.
Severe thunderstorms and widespread rain were expected from southeast Virginia to Florida, with the eastern counties in North Carolina and South Carolina under tornado watches or warnings, the NWS said.
The wet and snowy conditions follow a major winter storm system that swept through the southern United States on Tuesday, spawning tornadoes in several states and causing the deaths of at least two people in weather-related road accidents.
Twisters struck in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana, flattening houses and causing injuries, according to the weather service.
Declaring a state of emergency, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant deployed resources to the multiple counties in that state that reported damaged homes and businesses, power outages and flooding.
Tuesday's storms also contributed to a 21-vehicle pile-up that shut Interstate 40 in downtown Oklahoma City and caused power outages for tens of thousands of residents.
A Texas man died after an accident involving a toppled tree in the road, and there was another weather-related fatality on I-44 in Oklahoma, according to local authorities.
In the U.S. southeast, nearly 200,000 homes and businesses remained without electricity on Wednesday following a Christmas Day winter storm packing snow, high winds and tornadoes.
The storm dumped record snowfalls in North Texas and Arkansas.
About 1,000 people spent the night on cots at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport after some 400 flights were canceled there on Tuesday due to weather, said Cynthia Vega, media relations manager at the airport.
On Wednesday morning, about 50 more flights were canceled, she said.
'We're hoping to get passengers back on track,' Vega said. 'It's probably going to be a little hectic at the airport.'
(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Additional reporting by Corrie MacLaggan; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Gunna Dickson)
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Heavy Snow Blankets Southern Illinois
FIRST PERSON | WEST FRANKFORT, Ill. -- In a year of severe weather, including a drought that left the local area devastated, a winter storm has so far dumped six inches of snow with more still falling here in southern Illinois.
As of 8 a.m. local time, there was still a blizzard watch for the area until noon with snow in the forecast until at least 4 p.m. Authorities are advising everyone except for emergency workers to stay off of the roads until the storm passes.
The snow began falling locally a little after 10 p.m., though the winds, gusting up to 35mph, had begun in the early evening. The heaviest snow began to fall at 2 a.m. Visibility was so poor that venturing away from the house would leave you in a swirling haze of snow with winds inhibiting your ability to find your way back.
While visibility has improved considerably, the blowing snow alone makes for hazardous driving conditions. I live on a normally busy street and there are no signs anyone has attempted to venture out thus far.
There are currently no reports of power outages or downed limbs. The best course of action at this point is to stay inside and allow nature to take its course and then allow clean-up workers to do their jobs.
Local message boards have been speculating that the local area is in for a winter with far more snow than usual. The National Weather Service has projected that the winter will be colder than normal and that the area should be out of the drought before the farmers start spring planting. This doesn't bode well in an area that is 29 inches low on precipitation due to the drought but only averages eight inches of snow each winter!
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PHL Reporting Delays Due To Weather
s:fb='http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml' xmlns:addthis='http://www.addthis.com/help/api-spec' > PHL Reporting Delays Due To Weather « CBS Philly
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Severe Weather Will Cause Delays
As the Gulf Coast struggles to recover from an outbreak of tornadoes, millions across the nation are waking up this morning on the busiest travel day of the Christmas season to cope with more severe weather that promises to upset the travel plans of millions.
'Traveling will definitely be affected as people go home for the holidays,' Bob Oravec, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service, told ABC News. 'Anywhere from the Mississippi Valley into the Ohio Valley and the Northeast, there's definitely going to be travel issues as we have heavy snow and some very high winds.'
That large storm has been pounding not just the Gulf Coast but most of the South from Oklahoma to Arkansas, and Texas, where Dallas had a rare white Christmas.
In Lubbock, Texas, more than an inch of snow fell, making it difficult for some drivers to stay on the road. At Dallas Fort Worth airport, flights have been delayed as crews worked to de-ice planes.
Oklahoma got about 7 inches of snow across the state, making for treacherous road conditions. A 21-car pile-up in Oklahoma City temporarily shut down a major roadway through the state. No one was seriously injured.
Arkansas also got a rare Christmas Day snow storm, with an estimated 10 inches falling on Fayetteville, Ark., limiting roadway visibility.
All of that snowy weather in the South left a white trail everywhere it went, and today it's expected to bring at least six to eight inches to the lower Midwest. Today's severe weather could cause potential delays at airports in St. Louis, Louisville, Ky., Indianapolis and Cincinnati.
In Northern California, residents were socked with the third storm in three days. Wet weather spread from the Bay area through the Sierras and delayed inbound flights at San Francisco International airport, and caused a landslide in Oakland, almost crushing one driver to death.
'I heard the thing bounce kind of directly right off my roof and I feel pretty lucky,' storm damage victim John Monaghan told ABC News.
The severe weather system in the South has been pushing overnight, and a front with heavy rain and wind is forecast for the Northeastern corridor late tonight and into Thursday morning.
'The big cities from Washington up to Philadelphia and New York City will mostly be in the form of rain,' Oravec said. 'There may be a brief period of snow from the nation's capitol this morning up into Philadelphia and then to New York City. But the track of the storm currently suggests that the precipitation will definitely change over to rain.'
ABC News Radio contributed to this report
Also Read
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'Traveling will definitely be affected as people go home for the holidays,' Bob Oravec, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service, told ABC News. 'Anywhere from the Mississippi Valley into the Ohio Valley and the Northeast, there's definitely going to be travel issues as we have heavy snow and some very high winds.'
That large storm has been pounding not just the Gulf Coast but most of the South from Oklahoma to Arkansas, and Texas, where Dallas had a rare white Christmas.
In Lubbock, Texas, more than an inch of snow fell, making it difficult for some drivers to stay on the road. At Dallas Fort Worth airport, flights have been delayed as crews worked to de-ice planes.
Oklahoma got about 7 inches of snow across the state, making for treacherous road conditions. A 21-car pile-up in Oklahoma City temporarily shut down a major roadway through the state. No one was seriously injured.
Arkansas also got a rare Christmas Day snow storm, with an estimated 10 inches falling on Fayetteville, Ark., limiting roadway visibility.
All of that snowy weather in the South left a white trail everywhere it went, and today it's expected to bring at least six to eight inches to the lower Midwest. Today's severe weather could cause potential delays at airports in St. Louis, Louisville, Ky., Indianapolis and Cincinnati.
In Northern California, residents were socked with the third storm in three days. Wet weather spread from the Bay area through the Sierras and delayed inbound flights at San Francisco International airport, and caused a landslide in Oakland, almost crushing one driver to death.
'I heard the thing bounce kind of directly right off my roof and I feel pretty lucky,' storm damage victim John Monaghan told ABC News.
The severe weather system in the South has been pushing overnight, and a front with heavy rain and wind is forecast for the Northeastern corridor late tonight and into Thursday morning.
'The big cities from Washington up to Philadelphia and New York City will mostly be in the form of rain,' Oravec said. 'There may be a brief period of snow from the nation's capitol this morning up into Philadelphia and then to New York City. But the track of the storm currently suggests that the precipitation will definitely change over to rain.'
ABC News Radio contributed to this report
Also Read
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Severe Weather Will Cause Travel Delays
As the Gulf Coast struggles to recover from an outbreak of tornadoes, millions across the nation are waking up this morning on the busiest travel day of the Christmas season to cope with more severe weather that promises to upset the travel plans of millions.
'Traveling will definitely be affected as people go home for the holidays,' Bob Oravec, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service, told ABC News. 'Anywhere from the Mississippi Valley into the Ohio Valley and the Northeast, there's definitely going to be travel issues as we have heavy snow and some very high winds.'
That large storm has been pounding not just the Gulf Coast but most of the South from Oklahoma to Arkansas, and Texas, where Dallas had a rare white Christmas.
In Lubbock, Texas, more than an inch of snow fell, making it difficult for some drivers to stay on the road. At Dallas Fort Worth airport, flights have been delayed as crews worked to de-ice planes.
Oklahoma got about 7 inches of snow across the state, making for treacherous road conditions. A 21-car pile-up in Oklahoma City temporarily shut down a major roadway through the state. No one was seriously injured.
Arkansas also got a rare Christmas Day snow storm, with an estimated 10 inches falling on Fayetteville, Ark., limiting roadway visibility.
All of that snowy weather in the South left a white trail everywhere it went, and today it's expected to bring at least six to eight inches to the lower Midwest. Today's severe weather could cause potential delays at airports in St. Louis, Louisville, Ky., Indianapolis and Cincinnati.
In Northern California, residents were socked with the third storm in three days. Wet weather spread from the Bay area through the Sierras and delayed inbound flights at San Francisco International airport, and caused a landslide in Oakland, almost crushing one driver to death.
'I heard the thing bounce kind of directly right off my roof and I feel pretty lucky,' storm damage victim John Monaghan told ABC News.
The severe weather system in the South has been pushing overnight, and a front with heavy rain and wind is forecast for the Northeastern corridor late tonight and into Thursday morning.
'The big cities from Washington up to Philadelphia and New York City will mostly be in the form of rain,' Oravec said. 'There may be a brief period of snow from the nation's capitol this morning up into Philadelphia and then to New York City. But the track of the storm currently suggests that the precipitation will definitely change over to rain.'
ABC News Radio contributed to this report
Also Read
This article is brought to you by ASTROLOGY.
'Traveling will definitely be affected as people go home for the holidays,' Bob Oravec, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service, told ABC News. 'Anywhere from the Mississippi Valley into the Ohio Valley and the Northeast, there's definitely going to be travel issues as we have heavy snow and some very high winds.'
That large storm has been pounding not just the Gulf Coast but most of the South from Oklahoma to Arkansas, and Texas, where Dallas had a rare white Christmas.
In Lubbock, Texas, more than an inch of snow fell, making it difficult for some drivers to stay on the road. At Dallas Fort Worth airport, flights have been delayed as crews worked to de-ice planes.
Oklahoma got about 7 inches of snow across the state, making for treacherous road conditions. A 21-car pile-up in Oklahoma City temporarily shut down a major roadway through the state. No one was seriously injured.
Arkansas also got a rare Christmas Day snow storm, with an estimated 10 inches falling on Fayetteville, Ark., limiting roadway visibility.
All of that snowy weather in the South left a white trail everywhere it went, and today it's expected to bring at least six to eight inches to the lower Midwest. Today's severe weather could cause potential delays at airports in St. Louis, Louisville, Ky., Indianapolis and Cincinnati.
In Northern California, residents were socked with the third storm in three days. Wet weather spread from the Bay area through the Sierras and delayed inbound flights at San Francisco International airport, and caused a landslide in Oakland, almost crushing one driver to death.
'I heard the thing bounce kind of directly right off my roof and I feel pretty lucky,' storm damage victim John Monaghan told ABC News.
The severe weather system in the South has been pushing overnight, and a front with heavy rain and wind is forecast for the Northeastern corridor late tonight and into Thursday morning.
'The big cities from Washington up to Philadelphia and New York City will mostly be in the form of rain,' Oravec said. 'There may be a brief period of snow from the nation's capitol this morning up into Philadelphia and then to New York City. But the track of the storm currently suggests that the precipitation will definitely change over to rain.'
ABC News Radio contributed to this report
Also Read
This article is brought to you by ASTROLOGY.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Christmas tornadoes past
From the National Weather Service in Washington, DC
Notable U.S. tornado events with at least one F2 (minimum 113-mph) tornado between Dec. 24 and Dec. 26:
-Dec. 24-25, 1964: 14 tornadoes (three of them F3), Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia. Two deaths in Georgia; about 30 people injured.
-Dec. 25, 1969: 12 tornadoes (two F3) in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana One death in Louisiana, 17 injuries.
-Dec. 25-26, 1973: 7 tornadoes, two of them F2, in Alabama, Florida, Georgia. Two injuries.
-Dec. 24, 1975: 3 tornadoes (one F3) in Texas and Florida. No injuries or deaths.
-Dec. 24-25, 1977: 3 tornadoes (1 F3) in Mississippi and Florida. Seven injuries.
-Dec. 24-26, 1982: 29 tornadoes (one F4, two F3), in Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi. Three deaths in Arkansas and Missouri; 32 injuries.
-Dec. 24, 1988; 1 tornado (F4) in Tennessee. One death; seven injuries.
-Dec. 24, 1997: 3 tornadoes (one F2) in Alabama. Five injured.
-Dec. 25, 2006: 6 tornadoes (four F2) in Georgia and Florida. 14 injured.
-Dec. 24, 2009: 22 tornadoes (three F2) in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Four injured.
Other statistics:
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida are the most likely states to have tornado events around this time of year.
The last time a number of tornadoes impacted the Gulf Coast area around Christmas Day was in 2009, when 22 tornadoes occurred during the morning of December 24th.
In over 60 years there have been two EF4-rated tornadoes on Christmas Eve, one in 1982 in Arkansas, the other in 1988 in Tennessee.
The last killer tornado around Christmas was a Christmas Eve F4 in Tennessee in 1988, killing one person and injuring 7.
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Notable U.S. tornado events with at least one F2 (minimum 113-mph) tornado between Dec. 24 and Dec. 26:
-Dec. 24-25, 1964: 14 tornadoes (three of them F3), Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia. Two deaths in Georgia; about 30 people injured.
-Dec. 25, 1969: 12 tornadoes (two F3) in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana One death in Louisiana, 17 injuries.
-Dec. 25-26, 1973: 7 tornadoes, two of them F2, in Alabama, Florida, Georgia. Two injuries.
-Dec. 24, 1975: 3 tornadoes (one F3) in Texas and Florida. No injuries or deaths.
-Dec. 24-25, 1977: 3 tornadoes (1 F3) in Mississippi and Florida. Seven injuries.
-Dec. 24-26, 1982: 29 tornadoes (one F4, two F3), in Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi. Three deaths in Arkansas and Missouri; 32 injuries.
-Dec. 24, 1988; 1 tornado (F4) in Tennessee. One death; seven injuries.
-Dec. 24, 1997: 3 tornadoes (one F2) in Alabama. Five injured.
-Dec. 25, 2006: 6 tornadoes (four F2) in Georgia and Florida. 14 injured.
-Dec. 24, 2009: 22 tornadoes (three F2) in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Four injured.
Other statistics:
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida are the most likely states to have tornado events around this time of year.
The last time a number of tornadoes impacted the Gulf Coast area around Christmas Day was in 2009, when 22 tornadoes occurred during the morning of December 24th.
In over 60 years there have been two EF4-rated tornadoes on Christmas Eve, one in 1982 in Arkansas, the other in 1988 in Tennessee.
The last killer tornado around Christmas was a Christmas Eve F4 in Tennessee in 1988, killing one person and injuring 7.
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Storm brings white Christmas, tornado threat to central U.S.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A major winter storm brought a rare white Christmas to the southern U.S. plains on Tuesday, contributing to a 21-vehicle pile-up that shut down a major highway in Oklahoma, thousands of power outages and the death of a Texas man.
The storm system surging east from Kansas and the Texas Panhandle included tornados and severe thunderstorms along its southern fringe, from southeastern Texas to Alabama, the National Weather Service said.
The service reported a tornado warning for the Mobile, Alabama area late Tuesday afternoon.
CenterPoint Energy reported more than 20,000 customers without power in the Houston area Tuesday afternoon.
The storm is expected to expected to evolve into a blizzard from Arkansas to southern Illinois Tuesday night, with snowfall of up to a foot in some areas, according to Accuweather.com.
Accuweather.com senior meteorologist Kristina Pydynowski warned on the website that travel will be 'extremely treacherous, if not impossible, as the snow clogs roads, such as interstates 24, 55 and 57, and the blowing snow severely lowers visibility.'
The snowstorm will shift Wednesday to the eastern Great Lakes and northeast, she said.
Southern Indiana is under a blizzard warning starting early Wednesday morning, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Crystal Pettet. Indianapolis could see its biggest snowfall in four years, with a possibility of 10-12 inches of snow.
'Conditions should be pretty bad in time for rush hour,' said Pettet.
A 25-year-old Texas man was killed Tuesday when a tree fell across a road in Harris County, in the Houston metropolitan area, according to Thomas Gilliland of the county's sheriff's office.
A tornado destroyed a building 13 miles southeast of Crockett, Texas, and a bank lost a section of its roof, according to Accuweather.com.
Freezing drizzle overnight led to 10 separate collisions on Interstate 40 at Oklahoma City just before 3 a.m., said Trooper Betsy Randolph, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.
The 21-vehicle pile-up included three tractor-trailers and shut down the westbound lanes for about five hours, she said. Twelve people were taken to hospitals, and troopers are checking on the severity of their injuries.
In a rare taste of Christmas snow, Oklahoma City was forecast to get 3 to 6 inches of the white stuff on Tuesday. The city's biggest Christmas snowfall was 6.5 inches in 1914, and measurable amounts have been recorded only a handful of times on the date.
The FlightAware website, which tracks flight delays, reported departure delays of 40 minutes from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport at 5 p.m. local time and 32 minutes from Chicago/O'Hare International Airport.
San Francisco International Airport had delays for inbound flights of over an hour due to low clouds.
Ahead of the storm's path, parts of eastern West Virginia are under a winter storm warning. Ice accumulations of up to half an inch are expected in higher elevations, the National Weather Service said.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson and Mary Wisniewski; Editing by Sandra Maler and Todd Eastham)
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The storm system surging east from Kansas and the Texas Panhandle included tornados and severe thunderstorms along its southern fringe, from southeastern Texas to Alabama, the National Weather Service said.
The service reported a tornado warning for the Mobile, Alabama area late Tuesday afternoon.
CenterPoint Energy reported more than 20,000 customers without power in the Houston area Tuesday afternoon.
The storm is expected to expected to evolve into a blizzard from Arkansas to southern Illinois Tuesday night, with snowfall of up to a foot in some areas, according to Accuweather.com.
Accuweather.com senior meteorologist Kristina Pydynowski warned on the website that travel will be 'extremely treacherous, if not impossible, as the snow clogs roads, such as interstates 24, 55 and 57, and the blowing snow severely lowers visibility.'
The snowstorm will shift Wednesday to the eastern Great Lakes and northeast, she said.
Southern Indiana is under a blizzard warning starting early Wednesday morning, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Crystal Pettet. Indianapolis could see its biggest snowfall in four years, with a possibility of 10-12 inches of snow.
'Conditions should be pretty bad in time for rush hour,' said Pettet.
A 25-year-old Texas man was killed Tuesday when a tree fell across a road in Harris County, in the Houston metropolitan area, according to Thomas Gilliland of the county's sheriff's office.
A tornado destroyed a building 13 miles southeast of Crockett, Texas, and a bank lost a section of its roof, according to Accuweather.com.
Freezing drizzle overnight led to 10 separate collisions on Interstate 40 at Oklahoma City just before 3 a.m., said Trooper Betsy Randolph, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.
The 21-vehicle pile-up included three tractor-trailers and shut down the westbound lanes for about five hours, she said. Twelve people were taken to hospitals, and troopers are checking on the severity of their injuries.
In a rare taste of Christmas snow, Oklahoma City was forecast to get 3 to 6 inches of the white stuff on Tuesday. The city's biggest Christmas snowfall was 6.5 inches in 1914, and measurable amounts have been recorded only a handful of times on the date.
The FlightAware website, which tracks flight delays, reported departure delays of 40 minutes from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport at 5 p.m. local time and 32 minutes from Chicago/O'Hare International Airport.
San Francisco International Airport had delays for inbound flights of over an hour due to low clouds.
Ahead of the storm's path, parts of eastern West Virginia are under a winter storm warning. Ice accumulations of up to half an inch are expected in higher elevations, the National Weather Service said.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson and Mary Wisniewski; Editing by Sandra Maler and Todd Eastham)
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Authorities: Storm blamed for man's death in Texas
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Freezing rain and sleet made for a sloppy Christmas morning trek in parts of the nation's midsection on Tuesday, while residents along the Gulf Coast braced for thunderstorms, high winds and tornadoes.
Winds toppled a tree onto a pickup truck in the Houston area, killing the driver. Icy roads already were blamed for a 21-vehicle pileup in Oklahoma, where authorities warned would-be travelers to stay home. Fog blanketed highways, including arteries in the Atlanta area where motorists slowed as a precaution. In New Mexico, drivers across the eastern plains had to fight through snow, ice and low visibility.
At least two tornadoes were reported in Texas, though only one building was damaged, according to the National Weather Service. More than 180 flights nationwide were canceled by midday, according to the flight tracker FlightAware.com. More than half were canceled by American Airlines and its regional affiliate, American Eagle.
American is headquartered and has its biggest hub at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.
Meanwhile, a blizzard watch was posted for parts of Indiana and western Kentucky for storms expected to unfold Tuesday amid predictions of up to 4 to 7 inches of snow in coming hours. Much of Oklahoma and Arkansas braced under a winter storm warning of an early mix of rain and sleet forecast to eventually turn to snow.
Some mountainous areas of Arkansas' Ozark Mountains could get up to 10 inches of snow, which would make travel 'very hazardous or impossible' in the northern tier of the state from near whiteout conditions, the National Weather Service said.
Elsewhere, areas of east Texas and Louisiana braced for possible thunderstorms as forecasters eyed a developing storm front expected to spread across the Gulf Coast to the Florida Panhandle.
The holiday may conjure visions of snow and ice, but twisters this time of year are not unheard of. Ten storm systems in the last 50 years have spawned at least one Christmastime tornado with winds of 113 mph or more in the South, said Chris Vaccaro, a National Weather Service spokesman in Washington, via email.
The most lethal were the storms of Dec. 24-26, 1982, when 29 tornadoes in Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi killed three people and injured 32; and those of Dec. 24-25, 1964, when two people were killed and about 30 people injured by 14 tornadoes in seven states.
Quarter-sized hail reported early Tuesday in western Louisiana was expected to be just the start of a severe weather threat on the Gulf Coast, said meteorologist Mike Efferson at the weather service office in Slidell, La. Tornado watches were in effect across southeastern Texas and southern Louisiana.
Storms along the Gulf Coast could bring winds up to 70 mph, heavy rain, more large hail and dangerous lightning in Louisiana and Mississippi, Efferson said. Furthermore, warm, moist air colliding with a cold front could produce dangerous straight-line winds.
The storm was moving quickly as it headed into northeast Louisiana and Mississippi into the late afternoon and early evening, said Bill Adams at the weather service's Shreveport, La., office.
In Mississippi, Gov. Phil Bryant urged residents to have a plan for any severe weather.
'It only takes a few minutes, and it will help everyone have a safe Christmas,' Bryant said.
In Alabama, the director of the Emergency Management Agency, Art Faulkner, said he has briefed both local officials and Gov. Robert Bentley on plans for dealing with a possible outbreak of storms.
No day is good for severe weather, but Faulkner said Christmas adds extra challenges because people are visiting unfamiliar areas and often thinking more of snow than possible twisters.
In California, after a brief reprieve across the northern half of the state on Monday, wet weather was expected to make another appearance on Christmas Day. Flooding and snarled holiday traffic were expected in Southern California.
___
AP Business Writer Daniel Wagner in Washington and Associated Press Writer Ramit Plushnick-Masti in Houston contributed to this report.
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Winds toppled a tree onto a pickup truck in the Houston area, killing the driver. Icy roads already were blamed for a 21-vehicle pileup in Oklahoma, where authorities warned would-be travelers to stay home. Fog blanketed highways, including arteries in the Atlanta area where motorists slowed as a precaution. In New Mexico, drivers across the eastern plains had to fight through snow, ice and low visibility.
At least two tornadoes were reported in Texas, though only one building was damaged, according to the National Weather Service. More than 180 flights nationwide were canceled by midday, according to the flight tracker FlightAware.com. More than half were canceled by American Airlines and its regional affiliate, American Eagle.
American is headquartered and has its biggest hub at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.
Meanwhile, a blizzard watch was posted for parts of Indiana and western Kentucky for storms expected to unfold Tuesday amid predictions of up to 4 to 7 inches of snow in coming hours. Much of Oklahoma and Arkansas braced under a winter storm warning of an early mix of rain and sleet forecast to eventually turn to snow.
Some mountainous areas of Arkansas' Ozark Mountains could get up to 10 inches of snow, which would make travel 'very hazardous or impossible' in the northern tier of the state from near whiteout conditions, the National Weather Service said.
Elsewhere, areas of east Texas and Louisiana braced for possible thunderstorms as forecasters eyed a developing storm front expected to spread across the Gulf Coast to the Florida Panhandle.
The holiday may conjure visions of snow and ice, but twisters this time of year are not unheard of. Ten storm systems in the last 50 years have spawned at least one Christmastime tornado with winds of 113 mph or more in the South, said Chris Vaccaro, a National Weather Service spokesman in Washington, via email.
The most lethal were the storms of Dec. 24-26, 1982, when 29 tornadoes in Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi killed three people and injured 32; and those of Dec. 24-25, 1964, when two people were killed and about 30 people injured by 14 tornadoes in seven states.
Quarter-sized hail reported early Tuesday in western Louisiana was expected to be just the start of a severe weather threat on the Gulf Coast, said meteorologist Mike Efferson at the weather service office in Slidell, La. Tornado watches were in effect across southeastern Texas and southern Louisiana.
Storms along the Gulf Coast could bring winds up to 70 mph, heavy rain, more large hail and dangerous lightning in Louisiana and Mississippi, Efferson said. Furthermore, warm, moist air colliding with a cold front could produce dangerous straight-line winds.
The storm was moving quickly as it headed into northeast Louisiana and Mississippi into the late afternoon and early evening, said Bill Adams at the weather service's Shreveport, La., office.
In Mississippi, Gov. Phil Bryant urged residents to have a plan for any severe weather.
'It only takes a few minutes, and it will help everyone have a safe Christmas,' Bryant said.
In Alabama, the director of the Emergency Management Agency, Art Faulkner, said he has briefed both local officials and Gov. Robert Bentley on plans for dealing with a possible outbreak of storms.
No day is good for severe weather, but Faulkner said Christmas adds extra challenges because people are visiting unfamiliar areas and often thinking more of snow than possible twisters.
In California, after a brief reprieve across the northern half of the state on Monday, wet weather was expected to make another appearance on Christmas Day. Flooding and snarled holiday traffic were expected in Southern California.
___
AP Business Writer Daniel Wagner in Washington and Associated Press Writer Ramit Plushnick-Masti in Houston contributed to this report.
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