Social media accounts warned of 'exploding trees' this week in the Upper Midwest, but is that true?
Social media accounts warned of "exploding trees" this week in the Upper Midwest, but is that true?when the sun hits the bark on a subzero dayThe bark wounds are naturally closed in most cases in warmer weather, though there can be the equivalent of a scar after the crack heals.
daytime high temperatures will be below zero in the Upper Midwest, something that hasn't happened so far this winter, so frost cracks could form, but most of them likely won't be noticed by humans., soLike most misinformation, it's hard to combat. Unfortunately, even where meteorologists have attempted to debunk this forecast on social media, they've supplied photos of tree damage that don't appear to be from frost cracks. Some of the photos weren't even taken in winter, and the damage was from long ago, likely from wind or lightning.Dec. 10, 2025 10:42 AM EET A vehicle is seen on a collapsed road in Tohoku town in Aomori Prefecture on Dec. 9, 2025, following a 7.5 magnitude earthquake off northern Japan. A big quake off northern Japan left at least 30 injured, authorities said on December 9, damaging roads and leaving thousands without power in freezing temperatures. "Megaquake Warning: 200,000 Dead From 100-Foot Tsunami." While both of those numbers are part of the warning, along with an estimated economic damage of up to $198 billion, and all that sounds quite dire, most of those headlines left out the most important number:At least 30 people were injured in a powerful magnitude 7.5 earthquake that struck northeastern Japan on Monday, as tsunami waves up to 70 centimeters reached the Pacific coast. there is only a 1 percent chanceThe goal of the warning is to trigger evacuation centers to inspect stocks of relief goods and equipment, and to urge residents to sign up for disaster alerts, the government said. Although the science around the warning wasn't explained, the warning included the information that a March 11, 2011, earthquake responsible for killing 20,000 people,Earthquakes generally cannot be predicted, and the government says this wasn't a forecast. A megaquake only has a 1 percent chance of occurring, but it's always good to be prepared.first-ever"snow spout warning" this week? Social Media says yes. However, there's no such warning, and this isn't the first time snow has been forecast with waterspouts.On Nov. 10, 2025, the NWS office in Chicago issued one that said,"At 1207 PM CST, a lake effect snow band capable of producing waterspouts was located near Marina Shores at Dune Harbor, or near Indiana Harbor, moving south at 25 knots." Due to the convective nature of lake-effect snow bands, which can include lightning, waterspouts embedded in the chaotic snow areNWS Buffalo issued a similar alert about waterspouts during a thundersnow event on Dec. 5, 2024, and used language nearly identical to this week's warning on Dec. 16, 2016.There is no"snowspout warning" in the NWS advisory nomenclature, but they have only mentioned"snow" and"waterspout" in a Special Marine Advisory twice in the last 10 years, prior to this event.have invaded the mid-Atlantic this summer , and have become more numerous during the past few weeks, many social media users are saying. Thousands of the invasive pests are showing up from North Carolina to Massachusetts, according toRecently, a number of local TV meteorologists have said because there are so many lanternflies, they can be seen on weather radar, but is that really true?Cornell Lab’s BirdCast project , told AccuWeather that, while insects often dominate the radar screen during the day, at night, birds are the main contributor to radar echoes when there's no precipitation around. Friday night, more than 345.9 million birds were in flight across the United States, estimated by weather radar, a BirdCast map said. While those numbers did decrease by sunrise, more than 45 million birds were still in flight as of Friday morning. While weather radars can identify what they believe to be biological targets, they can't tell if they are groups of insects, birds, or bats. Because birds are bigger and more numerous, they are the most likely to be observed. "To say these echoes, especially at night, are all or even mostly lanternflies is almost certainly incorrect. I have no doubt that there are large numbers of insects aloft, and at altitude, for sure. But many other species of insects are involved in these movements, without question, and likely even in larger numbers and proportions," Farnsworth said. "Separating the biological targets can at times be difficult, but birds — especially small songbirds — dominate the radar data on many nights where and when they are aloft, which they are in large numbers at this time of the year," Farnsworth explained.Insects can be seen on radar, whether drifting, swarming, or migrating wherever radar is sampling the skies. But at night, and especially at this time of the year and after cold fronts, most biological targets you see on radar are birds, not insects.Aug. 22, 2025 10:02 AM EET Have you seen a lot of leaves turning colors or even falling off the trees this August? A lot of people on social media have posted about this subject during the last few weeks, asking,"Is it an early fall?"Well... don't get out the pumpkin spice lattes just yet. Although astronomical autumn doesn't start until Sept. 22, more leaves are falling than usual this time of year due to drought, causing what scientists call"tree stress." Since the beginning of August, drought has developed in areas of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. This area has a large population, which helps explain why you've seen so many people posting on social media. The Northeast's drought has improved markedly in the last week, but it's not just this part of the country where people are seeing leaves fall. Drought isEven overseas, leaves are littering the streets in London, United Kingdom, and Paris, France. Those two areas are also seeing a drought. Until the drought lessens, leaves will continue to fall, but it will be a few more weeks for the color to really blossom in most areas.While you may see some leaves falling, it's not an early fall, just unusually dry conditions. The real leaf-peeping season is still weeks away.Did Hurricane Erin produce 100-foot waves? Several weather enthusiasts have shared a scary-looking map of Hurricane Erin's waves this week, showing predictions of waves more than 100 feet or higher than a 10-story building. Here’s what the science actually shows. The particular map in question uses an obscure method of measuring waves that isn't used by the equipment that measures them in the real world. The map comes from the ECMWF wave model forecast and is called"maximum wave height.", the arm of the government that deploys buoys, uses a different method called"significant wave height." Significant wave height is calculated as the average of the highest one-third of all of the wave heights during a 20-minute sampling period. Because buoys use significant wave height, that's what the record books use. The map of significant wave height from the GFS wave model shows a maximum of over 40 feet, which is in line with observations from NDBC buoys. Buoy #41001 reported 45-feet waves on Thursday morning. Most hurricanes generate significant wave heights between 30 and 50 feet. It is very rare to see numbers over 50. TheUsing the method waves are measured for scientific research, there hasn't been a wave over 45 feet yet from Hurricane Erin, and there likely won't be, as the storm is beginning to lose wind intensity.The Internet was also abuzz on Thursday morning with how"big" Hurricane Erin is. But is it really big compared to other hurricanes? Hurricanes are hard to compare, but we'll take a look. First, many of the claims are approximating the size of Hurricane Erin by measuring the width of the storm on a satellite image. This is a very subjective way to measure storms, and records of previous storms don't exist. In these satellite images, Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Erin appear to be about the same size, but Sandy was nearly twice as big. The one measure that can be used is the size of the hurricane-force and tropical-storm-force winds stated by the National Hurricane Center. For current storms, those change every 3 hours, and it's hard to find maximum, minimum, or average data for those.from the National Hurricane Center, it described Hurricane Erin as a"very large hurricane" -- the first time it had used that term with this storm -- with hurricane-force winds extending out 105 miles from the center and tropical storm-force winds going out 320 miles. Those numbers at this time on Wednesday were 90 and 265 miles, so itAlex DaSilva said in a video on Thursday,"Hurricane Erin has a wind field diameter of about 600 miles. Eighty percent of tropical storms on record are smaller than Erin, so it's big. But it's nothing compared to Superstorm Sandy, which had a wind field of 1,150 miles."Erin is a bigger hurricane than most tropical storms, but there have been plenty that were wider, including Hurricane Helene in 2024.Aug. 11, 2025 10:02 AM EET If you thought the United States was the tornado capital of the world, you'd be wrong, at least by one measure. Although the U.S. gets a lot of tornadoes, more than 1,000 per year on average, the tornado density in the United Kingdom is nearly twice that of the U.S., according to recent research., with the highest likelihood of seeing a tornado east of Reading and west of London.concluded that the density of tornadoes was 2.3 tornadoes per year per 10,000 square kilometers in the U.K., whereas the U.S. has a density of 1.3 twisters. While that seems hard to believe, the U.K. is a small country and there are wide swaths of the U.S. where tornadoes are rare . If you compare the U.K. density to a state in Tornado Alley closer to the size of the U.K., like Oklahoma or Kansas , the U.S. state wins.The strongest tornado since 1950 hit London on Dec. 8, 1954, with winds between 187 and 212 mph on the TORRO rating scale, which would correspond to an EF3 or EF4 tornado on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. The most expensive twister in the U.K. was the Birmingham tornado in 2005, which caused $54 million in damage.because most of them are not formed from supercell thunderstorms, but rather smaller tornadoes spawned by cold fronts. Research is lacking on tornadoes in the United Kingdom, but scientists believe they may have found a reason why there are so many. It's called"When compared to the U.S., a much larger country, the U.K. has a higher tornado density, but comparing a similar-sized state in Tornado Alley, the U.S. wins.Aug. 6, 2025 10:48 AM EET You may have seen this image, or one like it, making the rounds on social media recently. A weather map showed a major hurricane positioned just off Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, while another swirled near BermudaOne computer forecast model's prediction of what the weather map will look like in 15 days from August 7, 2025. While this is the European computer forecast model, demonstrably more accurate than any other, this particular map shows only one forecast from hundreds of different weather models. Even within the European model, this is only one of 50 different predictions from ensemble members .And that only counts predictions up to seven days in the future; the model map shown above is from 15 days out, a notoriously inaccurate range for hurricanes shown on a computer model.look at all the predictions, not just one. Rather than looking at that viral image, which is just one solution, here's what all 50 of the European ensembles are predicting for that time and date in the Southeast: Each of the ensembles has the low pressure in a different place. It's a lot harder to hype a specific landfall location now, right? To be more specific about time, place, and strength you'd have to look at the other hundreds of models, and how they agree and trend over time. Then, you'd have to look at the overall weather pattern, what it will mean and has meant in the past in similar situations, and how that might affect each model prediction. That's what meteorologists do.Ignoring the weather models crying wolf, yes, there have been several Atlantic hurricane seasons where two or more hurricanes have existed in the Atlantic basin at the same time.Yes, two hurricanes could be in the Atlantic basin two weeks from now, but looking at one model prediction amongst hundreds is highly unlikely to be correct.The water's hot in Florida, but is it unusual? A viral social media post on X talked about a 97-degree water temperature reading at the Everglades National Park in southwest Florida yesterday, and 95 degrees at Tampa. While that sounds hot, it's the peak of summer, so it makes sense that the hottest annual water temperatures would be this time of year. Here's a map of the water temperatures at noon on Wednesday:The East Bay station reached a water temperature peak of 93 degrees last year, on July 20, 94 degrees the year before, on July 15, 2023, and 95 degrees on August 1, 2022. So, this is not a new record.the water at the Bob Allen station in Everglades National Park . According to the NOAA graph, it spiked to around 99 degrees on Monday afternoon. However, all readings over 97 degrees arein the data in the official record, likely because it was flagged by quality control, so it's not an official reading.has also been reporting water temperatures as high as 104 degrees this week, but many observations are missing and this is likely bad data.Secondly, there are few records for water temperature extremes,Each station is at a different depth underwater, and temperatures vary greatly over a few feet. Stations with a sensor closer to the surface will read warmer, for example the Bob Allen station's sensor is at 5 feet below sea level, while the Tampa station is 7.9 feet down.Social media was abuzz yesterday with announcements that the world heat index record had been broken in Iran,The measurement in question came from Dayrestan, Iran, which had a dew point of 97 degrees Fahrenheit with a temperature of 104,Notice how the 182 degree reading stands out as quite a bit higher than surrounding stations, with the next highest reading being 145 F at Lavan Island, Iran, and other stations reporting a heat index in the 130s and 140s. This is one way to quickly check whether a weather observation is legit. You can never rule it out due to extreme localized weather conditions, but there are enough weather stations these days thatAirport weather stations are mostly automated, and operators generally don't question them unless there's a big reason to. Other nations may not have the same strict quality control rules that we do in the United States. Places that collect extreme weather data, like NOAA's NCEI or the WMO, might not look at the data for weeks, months or years to disqualify it.dew point sensors are the most likely to malfunction or read incorrectly.above the world record, when the Persian Gulf International Airport in Asaluyeh, Iran, spiked to an AccuWeather RealFeel® Temperature of 149 degrees, even though RealFeel takes wind speed and other factors into account. The 140s shown on the map above are probably real. Just not the 182 degrees.Jul. 31, 2025 1:35 PM EET The second and final total lunar eclipse of the year will turn the moon a deep red on Sept. 7, and it’s already generating buzz online. Some are calling it one of the most widely visible eclipses in recent history, with the potential to be seen by up toA super blue blood moon rises behind the 2,500-year-old Parthenon temple on the Acropolis of Athens, Greece, on Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2018. Unlike total solar eclipses, which are only visible along a narrow path, total lunar eclipses can be seen from entire continents at once. This one will unfold over the most densely populated parts of the planet, including Asia, Europe, Africa and Australia. Skywatchers in North America will have to wait until March 2–3, 2026, for their next glimpse of a blood moon.Yes, 7 billion people live in areas where the next total lunar eclipse will be visible, but North America is not in the viewing area.The numbers haven't changed much, with the rest of the July data now in. San Francisco is now up to number 18 from the previous rank of 25th coolest summer. Fremont has risen to number one, but they only have records going back 28 years; Napa fell to the number two coolest summer. Oakland, with records going back 46 years, jumped up one notch to number one., paint staff for the Golden Gate Bridge have had to use heaters on the bridge to bring it up to painting temperature, which is something they haven't done"for a long time." Grapes in the Napa Valley softened and changed color later than in previous years, vintners say.As of July 21, the average temperature at the San Francisco's downtown station so far this summer was 58.2 degrees, making it the 25th coldest since reliable record-keeping began 131 years ago and the coolest since the summer of 1999. However, nearby stations that have shorter periods of record, such as Napa, are experiencing its top 3 coldest summers. Records in Napa go back 28 years. Oakland, Hayward and Fremont are the second coldest so far, with 45, 27 and 28 years of records, respectively. Ranking of average mean temperature for Jun 1 to July 21, 2025, compared to the station's previous period of record. "The cooler-than-historical-average summer in San Francisco can be attributed to a persistent trough of low pressure over California much of the summer," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Chad Merrill says, and it's been more about cool days than cool nights. "It has allowed the marine layer to come inland into the Bay Area on more occasions than historical average, leading to much lower daytime high temperatures. The high temperatures at San Francisco's downtown station have been about 4 degrees below average this summer while the low temperatures have only been 1 degree below average."Climate Mapper tool at Climate Toolbox. While the map does show a zero percentile, i.e. number one ranking for some areas of the central California Coast, San Francisco is not included. The time range of the data is 60 days, instead of starting on June 1, andA total solar eclipse is coming, and it's going to be the longest one until 2114, lasting up to 6 minutes and 23 seconds. But as spectacular as this sounds, and contrary to some posts circulating on social media, there is still plenty of time to prepare for the event. The moon partially blocks out the sun as a solar eclipse is seen through the clouds over the Gateway Arch Monday, Aug. 21, 2017, in St. Louis. The Gateway Arch was just a few miles outside of the path of totality. Several viral posts on Instagram, X and Facebook have touted the eclipse on Aug. 2 but leave out the important part -- that it's not until 2027. Additionally, it will require some travel to see as the path of totality will cross northern Africa, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.similar to that on Aug. 2, 2027. On Aug. 12, 2045, a coast-to-coast total solar eclipse will plunge part of the United States into darkness. It will follow a similar track as the 2017"Great American Eclipse" but will be significantly longer, lasting 6 minutes and 6 seconds.There is a total solar eclipse in two years that will be the longest event of its kind anywhere on Earth for 87 years.Weather News
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