Washington DC was grinding to a halt on Saturday as the US capital prepared for its heaviest snowfall in nearly a century, dubbed “snowpocalypse” and “snowmageddon”.

A winter storm continued its blizzard rage in some parts of the Mid-Atlantic region on Saturday morning, dumping two feet of wet, heavy snow that cut power to nearly 200,000 residents, caused the roof of a private jet hangar to collapse at Washington Dulles International Airport and forced the nation’s capital into quiet hibernation.  – The New York Times

• Snow Measurements
• Weather Underground
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• The Washington Post

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About a week ago, Typhoon Ketsana (known in the Phillippines as “Ondoy”) made landfall, and according to the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), Ketsana dropped 17.9 inches of rain on Metro Manila in a span of 24 hours on Saturday – the most in 42 years.

A month’s worth of rainfall in a single day washed away homes and flooded large areas, stranding thousands on rooftops in the city and elsewhere. Ketsana later crossed over to Vietnam and Cambodia, where it is still active. Over 360 people are known to have been killed, and damage estimates are reaching $100 million.

Unfortunately, another tropical storm may be headed toward the southern Philippines on Wednesday but is still 600 miles off the coast.

Here is a selection of photographs from the affected areas over the past week. (36 photos total)

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A huge outback dust storm – 310 miles wide by 620 miles long – swept across eastern Australia and blanketed Sydney on Wednesday, September 23rd, disrupting flights and ground transportation and forcing people indoors for shelter from the hazardous air, gale-force winds, and in some places hailstorms.

Those few who ventured outside, especially at dawn, were greeted by a Martian sky, familiar landmarks blotted out by the heavy red dust blowing by. Collected here are a few photos of the worst dust storm Sydney has seen in 70 years, three of which you can click to see a before/after fade effect.

26 photos total

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Hurricane Katrina, a huge category 4 storm, made landfall in the continental U.S. on August 29, 2005, on the Gulf Coast with sustained winds of 125 miles per hour.

Louisiana and Mississippi took the brunt of the impact. The monster would prove to be among the deadliest natural disasters in United States history (more than 1,800 confirmed dead and — if possible, even more heartbreaking — more than 700 missing) and certainly the costliest (estimated damage: $100 billion).

LIFE

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Scientists have photographed “upwards lightning”, a rarely-seen phenomenon where electricity from storms flows into the upper atmosphere.

The photo was taken during last year’s Tropical Storm Cristobal.

Also known as “gigantic jets”, these events are just as powerful as cloud-to-ground lightning bolts.

The team from Duke University, also took radio measurements of the electrical charge.

Their work, published in Nature Geoscience, gives scientists a better understanding of this form of lightning.

Gigantic jets do not occur during every storm and scientists do not yet know what types of storm are conducive to their formation.

BBC

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