The year 2014 had many spectacular extreme weather events caught on video; the most remarkable were of flash flooding in Serbia and a tornado in Russia. Two artistic videos that were favorites of mine included beautiful time-lapse pieces set to music taken of monsoon thunderstorms in Arizona and the sunset/aurora on top of Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. Here, then, are my choices for 2014's top 10 weather videos:
#1. A Russian man pulls out of his garage just as a tornado arrives. He tries to go back in the garage, but it is destroyed before he can. Note: The dash cam date is incorrect; the tornado occurred on August 29, 2014 in Bashkiria, Russia. According to
http://www.extremestorms.com.au/tornado-bashkiria-russia/, the tornado was an EF-3 that killed two people and injured 80.
#2. Nicolaus Wegner's
Stormscapes 2 video is the most impressive collection of time-lapse severe storm footage I've ever seen. His 7-minute time-lapse compilation of his May - September 2014 adventures in Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Colorado feature an impressive rainbow at 0:40, an incredible orange cumulonimbus at 4:00, a sequence of spectacular funnel clouds and tornadoes beginning at 5:10, and some stunning mammatus clouds at 6:04. Highly recommended.
#3. Torrential rains in Serbia in September 2014 caused flash floods that killed one person and swept way cars.
#4. New surveillance camera video released on October 23, 2014, of Hurricane Odile in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, on September 14, 2014, as violent winds in the back eyewall destroyed the hotel lobby where the
iCyclone chase team was sheltering.
#5. Futuristic and creative 3-D weather graphics like you've never seen before light up the screen in this
forecast for September 23, 2050 video released by the Weather Channel. The video was made in response to an appeal by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to television weather presenters world-wide to imagine a “weather report from the year 2050,” based on the best science we have as summarized in the 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. If humanity’s current "business as usual" approach to emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide continues, the average temperature of the Earth’s lower atmosphere could rise more than 4°C (7.2°F) by the end of the 21st century. But what does a global average temperature rise really mean? How would we experience it on a daily basis? The video imagines a future when it wouldn't take a landfalling hurricane to push water levels two feet above normal in Miami Beach--the onshore winds of a hurricane passing 400 miles offshore could cause that level of flooding, due to sea level rise. The report also envisions that the current 15-year drought affecting the Southwest U.S. will continue into 2050, becoming a decades-long "megadrought". On the lighter side, we hear about a new baseball team called the "Alberta Clippers" (named after a type of fast-moving snowstorm that originates in Alberta), and see Jim Cantore calling up hurricane tracking charts on his outstretched hand.
#6. Spectacular sunset, aurora, and sunrise from the top of Mt. Washington, New Hampshire on September 12 - 13, 2014.
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#7. Official trailer for the 2014 Hollywood tornado disasters movie, "Into the Storm". The most impressive special effects are shown here, so save yourself the painful melodrama of the movie and just watch the trailer. My review of this disaster of a movie is
here.#8. A Low-Precipitation (LP) supercell thunderstorm on May 18, 2014, between Wright and Newcastle, WY. The best footage begins about 0:50 into the clip. The rotation of the thunderstorm is beautifully captured. LP supercells usually form in dry regions, where there might be just enough moisture to form the storm, but not enough moisture to rain very hard. You can usually find the updraft on the rear flank (back) of the storm. On radar, an LP will not show up as a hook echo because there's not enough precipitation within the storm to provide the reflectivity. These storms might not look that strong, but they can pack a punch. LP supercells often produce tornadoes and large hail.
#9. An EF-2 tornado with 120 mph winds hit this camp for oil workers just south of Watford City, North Dakota, on May 27, 2014. The tornado injured nine people and damaged or destroyed 15 trailers. Dan Yorgason, who lives in a neighboring workers camp to the one destroyed, filmed the tornado from inside his truck. "The tornado was coming down the hill along our only escape route. There was nowhere for us to go. It was crazy," he said. The contrast of the brown of the lower part of the funnel with the white portion of the upper funnel is particularly striking 2:00 into the video.
#10. Rare twin tornadoes near Pilger and Wisner, Nebraska as caught by
iowachase.com (AKA StormChasingVideo.com.)
Steve Gregory will be covering my blog for me from Sunday December 28 until January 2. Have a Happy New Year, everyone!
Jeff Masters