_______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ The ShieldsWeather Natural Disaster E-zine _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ Publisher: Jerry Shields Date: June 1, 2008 Issue: Volume 1, Number 2 Home Pages: http://www.ShieldsWeather.com Circulation: Up to 10 in the first week! _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ What's in This Issue 1) Welcome to the ShieldsWeather Natural Disaster E-zine! 2) Ontario's First 2008 Tornadoes. 3) Weather Review and Outlook. 4) Forest Fire Update. 5) Hurricane Season has started. 6) What's New At Shieldsweather.com 7) A Look Ahead to next week's E-Zine. 8) Steal This E-zine! 9) Reprint Rights _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 1) Welcome to the ShieldsWeather Natural Disaster E-zine! Those of you who have joined in the past week, welcome to my E-zine (electronic magazine!) Canadians are not only obsessed with their weather, but with natural phenomena everywhere. I hope to provide a brief look at the highlights of events from Ontario, Canada and sometimes around the world. You should be on this list only if you signed up for it on my web site. If you no longer wish to hear from me, don't be shy -- there's a link at the bottom of this e-mail that will put you out of your misery. If you missed a back issue, remember that all previous issues are archived on my web site at: http://www.ShieldsWeather.com/ezine What's in this issue: First we'll take a look at Ontario's first tornadoes of 2008 - in Northern Ontario! Next we'll look at a crazy weather week and take a peak at the week ahead. Forest fire season has started slow in Ontario but has fired up in Manitoba. We'll take a quick look at Ontario's current wildfire threat. Lastly we will see how this year's Hurricane season is off to a quick start. Are you reading my blog? Recently I've been posting daily weather discussions for my loyal blog readers. Join the fun here: http://www.Shieldsweather.com/blog _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 2) Southern Ontario storm chasers were jealous as the first tornadoes to touch down were in Northern Ontario. Severe thunderstorms passed through the Sudbury - North Bay area on Monday May 26. Two independent reports of tornadoes were received: One at windy lake Provincial Park..Northwest of Sudbury..Around 4:40 PM..And the second in the Redbridge area northeast of North Bay - around 6:30 PM. In the case of the Windy Lake Report - photographic evidence confirms that a tornado occurred over the lake. This tornado was rated f0 (f zero) since no damage reports were received for this event. In the case of the Redbridge Report - A witness reported seeing tornado activity and related tree damage near Reynolds Lake. Environment Canada is classifying this as a confirmed f0 tornado as well. In both cases a severe thunderstorm warning was in effect. _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 3) A crazy week for weather. Monday started out with tornadoes near Sudbury, snow in Wawa and freezing rain in Kapuskasing. Temperatures then recovered to over +20C in some locations by weeks end. Wednesday brought record cold morning temperatures across Ontario. Many locations broke all-time records with a hard frost. Saturday brought tornadic storms over Manitoba that were caught on film. You can go to this location http://www.winnipegsun.com/News/Manitoba/2008/06/01/5735381-sun.html to see pictures of the tornado that touched down in southeastern Manitoba. The week ahead looks unusually uncertain. Forecast models continue to spit out a wide spectrum of possibilities. The only certainty is that temperatures should be near normal. The position of the warm front mid-week is causing some uncertainty as the location of rain and sunshine. Stay tuned to Shieldsweather.com sites for latest updates...as information becomes available. _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 4) As of Sunday, there was one active fire in the Sault region. A fire (name Soo#4) is located north of Elliot Lake and is 2.4ha in size (about 5 acres.) This fire is reported as under control. Elsewhere there were no active fires by the end of the weekend. So far this season there have been 97 fires across Northern Ontario that account for 94ha burned. This compares to just over 33,000 ha by this date last year and a historic average of 39,000has by May 31. From these numbers it is clear that wildfire activity in Ontario is EXTREMELY low! The same can't be said for Manitoba were several thousand hectares of wildfires are burning. The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) requested 12 crews from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources to assist in Manitoba with fire suppression efforts. The East Fire Region is supplying five Fire-Ranger crews and one Agency Representative who departed for Manitoba on May 29. _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 5) Hurricane season officially started June 1st! The first named stomr of the season, Arthur, arrived about 12 hours early on Saturday. A weak Tropical Storm Arthur formed just east of Belize this afternoon, the first named storm of the tropical cyclone season. Arthur is mainly a concern due to heavy rains. As the circulation progresses across the Yucatan Peninsula into the Bay of Campeche and Gulf of Mexico, a steady stream of deep moisture from the equatorial regions will sit and spin over southern Mexico and much of Central America. Arthur may present a problem for energy interests and then the Gulf Coast during the medium range. As the Sonoran heat ridge shifts westward and a weakness opens up over the Deep South, Arthur could reform and then get stuck along the coastline between New Orleans, LA and Panama City, FL. Water temperatures along the probable track of the disturbance are favorable for warm-core cyclogenesis as near as 250 miles from the Interstate 10 corridor. And with weak steering currents in play, the possibility of an extended heavy rain and severe thunderstorms event somewhere in the Cotton Belt remains viable. Hurricane names for the 2008 will be... Arthur, Bertha, Cristobal, Dolly, Edouard, Fay, Gustav, Hanna, Ike, Josephine, Kyle, Laura, Marco, Nana, Omar, Paloma, Rene, Sally, Teddy, Vicky and Wilfred. _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 6) What's New At ShieldsWeather.com The Blog continues to grow and gain popularity. I enjoy the user feedback and involvement. Check the Blog out at http://www.shieldsweather.com/blog/ One minor cosmetic change has been the menu bar, on the SooWeather.com site, which is smaller and now has a drop-down option for the Maps. May's statistics are in and 854,563 pages were viewed this past month. That brings the annual total, for 2008, to 4,639,317 pages viewed. Canadians love their weather! _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 7) A Look Ahead to next week's E-Zine. I had a couple other topics for this week that I will bump into next week's e-zine (due to tornadoes and the start of hurricane season this week.) With the tragic quake in China I have been doing some research on earthquakes in Canada and specifically Ontario. I will provide you with an update on local quakes for 2008. The other topic I want to cover is natural disaster preparedness in North America. We watch people around the world suffer extreme hardships from natural disasters yet fail to prepare for the day that it could happen here. More on that next week... _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 8) Steal This E-zine! This E-zine is free, and I personally guarantee it's worth at least 176 times what you paid for it. I invite you to "steal" it, but only if you do it nicely . . . Distasteful legal babble: This E-zine is copyright Jerry Shields, 2008. Extremely tasteful postscript: I encourage you to email this E-zine to any friends of yours who might benefit from it. I only ask that you email the whole thing, not bits and pieces. Otherwise, you'll be getting desperate calls at midnight from your friends asking where they can get their own free subscription. At the moment, there is one place to subscribe: My site: http://www.ShieldsWeather.com _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 9) Reprint Rights Permission is granted to use any of the articles in this e-zine in your own e-zine or web site, as long as you include the following blurb with it: Jerry Shields publishes the ShieldsWeather Natural Disaster E-zine every week. If you want to learn more about weather, natural disasters, global warming, climatological events, wildland fires, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.ShieldsWeather.com. _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ Jerry Shields Publisher, ShieldsWeather Natural Disaster E-zine _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ Jerry Shields President and CEO of 1531038 ONTARIO LTD. 2932 Hilton Road, Box 122 Hilton Beach, ON P0R 1G0 If you no longer wish to receive communication from me: jerry@shieldsweather.com To update your contact information: jerry@shieldsweather.com