Flying into the eye of Hurricane Patricia aboard the Lockhead WP-3D
With a minimum central pressure of 878.4 mb, Hurricane Patricia will go into the record books as the most intense storm ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere. It is only the second time that such a powerful storm has struck the Mexican Pacific coast. The last time this happened was in 1959, when almost 2000 people perished in a devastating category 5 hurricane.
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The tranquil pattern that dominated U.S. weather through the Fall was broken abruptly during the first week of October by a catastrophic flood event in the Southeast, South Carolina being the hardest hit. Like many extreme weather events, it can be blamed on a highly improbable combination of separate meteorological factors, any one of which by itself probably wouldn’t have been noteworthy at all.
On Thursday, October 1, a devastating landslide impacted the village of Santa Catarina Pinula, Guatemala. The small suburb of Guatemala City has been virtually wiped off the map and is now uninhabitable. Current estimations show that hundreds of people have died or are still missing. As rescue crews continue searching through rubble to find any survivors, many continue to question why such a community was allowed to be built in a vulnerable location. Unfortunately, Guatemala has a history of experiencing deadly landslides as there have been four in the last fifteen years, mainly towards the end of the rainy season.
The Background of Why Leaves Change Colors
The first subtle sign of fall approaching is the change of color in leaves. Most people assume that the changing of leaves is caused by the cooling weather. However, the longer nights are a main contributor to leaves changing in deciduous trees. During the spring and summer, chlorophyll in plants is broken down by sunlight, through photosynthesis, to provide nutrients to the plant. Throughout these warmer months, the leaves have to produce more chlorophyll to help retain the green coloring and promote photosynthesis. As fall approaches and nightfall increases, the trees goes into hibernation mode, ceasing production of chlorophyll, since there isn’t enough sunlight through the winter months for photosynthesis to effectively take place. As a result, the leaves become more fragile and the color pigments are exposed (USDA, 2014). The common red to blue color pigment found in leaves is called anthocyanins, which is found in flowers, leaves and fruits (The Science of Color in Autumn Leaves, 2015).
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