_______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ The ShieldsWeather Natural Disaster E-zine _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ Publisher: Jerry Shields Date: May 25, 2008 Issue: Volume 1, Number 1 Home Pages: http://www.ShieldsWeather.com Circulation: TBA, as we grow. _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ What's in This Issue 1) Welcome to the ShieldsWeather Natural Disaster E-zine! 2) What to Expect from this Ezine. 3) The Week Ahead. 4) Forest Fire Season 5) Summer Outlook 6) What's New At Shieldsweather.com 7) Steal This E-zine! 8) Reprint Rights _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 1) Welcome to the ShieldsWeahter Natural Disaster E-zine! Those of you who have joined in the past week, welcome to my e-zine! 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: I will introduce a few topics I hope to cover with this E-Zine. I will give a brief description of recent weather events and what to expect for the coming week. A quick look at the start of the Forest Fire Season and where we stand across the province. Finally I will go over the seasonal outlook for the Summer of 2008! 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) I've started this E-Zine for all of you Natural Disaster junkies. Don't worry - you're not alone. Most Canadians are into not only weather but all different types of Natural Disaster Events. I will try to keep this E-Zine on a weekly schedule. It will be sent out every Monday morning. I will cover weather events, forest fires, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes - you name it! This E-Zine will focus mainly on these events as they occur across Ontario but I will also mention major events as the unfold around the world. So enjoy this first issue and please email me any comments or suggestions so I can make it better and better with time! _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 3) If you're like me, you're wondering if this cool spring season will ever show us some warmth? From the end of April until now we have seen cold weather across the province that has even brought flurries to parts of the north. May will certainly come in below average for temperatures and I suspect under the average precip values. This past week saw a blocking pattern setup that held light rain and clouds across much of the province from Monday through until Thursday. Finally this weekend brought some more seasonal values with many locations breaking the +20C mark. A look ahead shows a cold front cross the province on Monday. This will bring a line of storms that will start Sunday night in Northern Ontario and exit the province on Monday afternoon. There is a chance of some severe storms across southern Ontario on Monday as the cold front arrives during the peak warming hours in the afternoon. High pressure arrives Tuesday. The east side of the high will usher in cool air and bring a good chance of frost across Northern Ontario for Tuesday and Wednesday morning. As the high builds in mid-week we will see high temps back in the 20's. The end of the week and weekend looks wet as another low pressure system brings a chance for rain and storms. _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 4) Forest Fire season has started across the North. As of Sunday night there are 6 fires burning out of control across the province. 9 fires are active at this time, with all of them started by human activity (none by lightning.) Fire level preparedness is still at the lowest level, Level 1, across the province. The latest fire was reported just northeast of Lake Nipigon - north of Lake Superior. With the latest cold front and cool temps the fire danger looks to stay low for the next week. _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 5) The La Nina that brought us a harder than normal winter has been weakening this spring. This weakening is expected to continue until we reach a neutral phase between El Nino / La Nina episodes. All of this points to a summer that could be a touch cooler than normal. Regions in extreme Western Ontario may have a more 'normal' summer for temperatures while extreme Eastern Ontario could be colder than the rest of the province. Precipitation is expected to be slightly above average for this coming summer. Regions around James bay could be the exception as they see normal rainfall amounts. The extra precipitation may be attributed to the expectation that the Great Lakes may be inline for more than normal storm activity. The areas that are expected to see the most severe storms are the Thunder Bay region, Eastern Lake Superior Region and Southwestern Ontario. Hurricane season officially starts June 1st and the most recent projections suggest about 15 named storms. This would be similar to the 2007 season. Late summer hurricanes would form over the Atlantic and take aim at Central America, Mexico and possibly Florida. September would bring hurricane development in the Caribbean Sea that would send storms north into the Gulf Coast. Forecasts indicate that 3 Major Hurricanes could develop this season. _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 6) What's New At ShieldsWeather.com I've been busy .... I've taken down the Live Chatroom. I found it too time consuming to police the chatroom for those that like to post inappropriate content. The Blog allows me to post graphics and still allows user feedback and involvement. Check the Blog out at http://www.shieldsweather.com/blog/ Other changes invole the addition of this E-Zine. I know there are many other natural disaster adrenaline junkies like myself that would like to get a weekly update of what's happening across the province. So here it is! I have also fixed a glitch that was shutting down my ShieldsWeather Radar image. The radar was going offline until I manually reset it. That's now fixed and it should be much more reliable. _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 7) 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 _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 8) 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, climatiological 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 us: jerry@shieldsweather.com To update your contact information: jerry@shieldsweather.com