This Week in Green – Oct. 30, 2010
Record weather — Part One
There’s good news and bad news coming on the heels of the strongest storm ever recorded in the Midwest this week.
The storm, which brought tornado watches in Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, a blizzard warning in North Dakota and hurricane-force winds along with huge thunderstorms and torrential rains for most of the upper Midwest, reached its peak on Wednesday.
At that peak, the storm recorded the lowest barometric pressure readings ever in the continental United States, save for those resulting from hurricanes along the Atlantic Coast.
It’s the second storm this year that has broken all-time pressure records and according to meteorologist Jeff Masters, it’s a sign that storms such as these are getting stronger. That’s the bad news. The good news, according to Masters, is that these mega-storms may also be getting less frequent.