Clouds of aggressive nickel-sized mosquitoes called gallinippers have descended on 27 counties in North Carolina, the result of untold numbers of the insect’s eggs being activated by the catastrophic flooding caused by hurricane Florence. Unlike most mosquitoes, Gallinippers can lay their eggs in dry conditions, of which can lay dormant for months or years, and hatch when wet conditions develop. The females can be particularly aggressive, mobbing large mammals such as humans or even cattle in order to feed.
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We often hear a great deal from weather experts about how extreme weather is being made all the more intense by the rise in climate change, especially when it comes to events such as hurricanes, but we’re rarely given the chance to see just how much global warming is actually contributing to any given weather event. However, using composite maps from resources such as nullschool.net, we’re presented with a visual representation of how storms such as Hurricane Florence can change the temperature of the ocean’s surface as it passes overhead, to give us an idea how much energy is imparted to the storm.read more

Unfortunately, Hurricane Florence is developing according to the same scenario that Unknowncountry has been warning about since the publication of Whitley Strieber and Art Bell’s book Superstorm in 1999. Katrina, Sandy, Harvey and now Florence have all come into contact with unusually warm inshore waters, causing them to strengthen dangerously as they moved onshore. Addiing to this problem, the storms have been slow moving due to the general decline in air circulation and the weight of the water vapor in these very large cloud masses.
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Tropical Storm Florence, presently circulating in the south-central Atlantic Ocean, may move north and east and make landfall somewhere along the US East Coast later this week. If the storm reaches this area of the ocean, unsually warm water will cause it to increase rapidly in strength. This is the same effect that has been present in the Gulf of Mexico since the early part of this century.
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