What is the danger of freezing rain & nbsp. Freezing rain dead beauty What year was the first freezing rain
Last updated 02/08/2016
On Tuesday, February 9, freezing rain is expected in Moscow. This was reported by forecasters of the weather center "Phobos"
“This week will be marked by a lot of freezing rain. Precipitation will be of an insignificant, weak character, but it will be characterized by a periodic transition from a mixed phase to a freezing rain phase. Moreover, it can be on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and especially strong - on Sunday evening, turning into Monday night, ”the forecaster of the center said.
What is freezing rain?
Freezing rain is an atmospheric phenomenon that occurs due to the difference in temperature at the height of the rain front and at the surface of the earth. It refers to the so-called "oversized" precipitation, which falls out monotonously over a fairly long period of time.
Everything happens like this: below, above the surface of the earth, there is cold air (ice rain traditionally falls at a temperature of -1 to -15 degrees Celsius), and above it is a layer of warmer air. Raindrops, approaching the ground, freeze very quickly - but only outside. It turns out that freezing rain consists of solid transparent balls of ice, inside of which unfrozen water remains.
When falling, the balls break, the liquid pours out and quickly freezes, forming ice on the asphalt and an ice crust on other surfaces (on tree branches, roofs of houses, cars, etc.).
Note! In the science of weather there is also such a thing as “rain showers” - but, unlike prolonged freezing rain, it refers to heavy rainfall, characterized by a sudden onset and a sharp change in intensity. It happens at positive temperatures and is dangerous because it sharply worsens visibility.
At the end of December, the central part of Russia fell under the power of a natural disaster called freezing rain. In St. Petersburg, such a phenomenon is predicted for January 9th. Let's hope the predictions don't come true. And yet, what is freezing rain? The most common and often copied in Runet, even on specialized portals, is the following definition from the Russian Wikipedia: “Freezing rain is solid atmospheric precipitation that falls at negative air temperatures (most often 0 ... -10 °, sometimes up to -15 °) in the form hard transparent ice balls with a diameter of 1-3 mm. There is unfrozen water inside the balls - falling on objects, the balls break into shells, water flows out and ice forms. I don't believe it. Such small balls, inside the water. Ice outside. Too complicated design. Doubt arises. Is it true?
I must say that for Russia, especially its northern part, this phenomenon is not very common. The heaviest freezing rains occur annually in America. There they are called "freezing rain" and they often turn into ice storms "ice storm". Let's look at the American Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org, so to speak, to the experts.
So, freezing rain is formed when a phenomenon occurs in the atmosphere in which a layer of warm air falls between two layers of cold air. The moisture (snow) frozen in the upper cold layer melts, falling into the warm layer. Snow turns into rain in a fairly high layer with a pressure of about 80 kPa. Continuing to fall from a great height and at a decent speed, raindrops near the ground fall into a layer with a temperature below zero, but they do not pass into snow or ice, but into a supercooled state of water. (This condition has been observed by everyone who has tried to freeze the triple point of water using the saline method). This condition is especially dangerous because any shaking leads to an instantaneous solidification of the liquid. Supercooled droplets on impact with the ground, tree branches, etc. immediately turn to ice. Therefore, it is still rain, but freezing. A very serious test for trees, each branch of which is sealed, becomes very fragile, like crystal.
A thick layer of ice can cause serious damage to nature and humans. This phenomenon is also dangerous for power lines, as it leads to their breakage. And in the mountains, as a result of freezing rain, the ice of glaciers can be so compacted that it is difficult to cut it even with an ice ax.
The US National Weather Service classifies a freezing rain as an ice storm if a layer of ice over 0.25 inches (0.64 cm) thick forms on an exposed surface. Meteorologists admit that freezing rain cannot always be predicted in advance.
The thickest layer of ice from a single ice storm was recorded in 1961 in Idaho. He was 8 inches (20.3 cm).
On December 25, 2010, freezing rain fell in Moscow and the Moscow region. According to the preliminary results, which were summed up by the authorities of Moscow and the region, about 4.6 thousand trees were felled in Moscow, which led to numerous breaks in power lines. More than 400,000 people were left without electricity, and Domodedovo airport was also completely de-energized. Due to falling branches and whole trees, 27 people were injured, one died. As a result of icy conditions, 1,350 people were injured in two days. In 2010, several cases of freezing rain and intense ice were also recorded in the Urals and Volga Federal Districts. In the city of Troitsk (Chelyabinsk region), schools were closed for two days due to ice, in Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg there were many kilometers of traffic jams on the roads. On the M5 highway (Moscow - Chelyabinsk) in the Zlatoust area, a huge traffic jam formed due to the fact that multi-ton trucks could not climb the slope. Breaks in power transmission lines, overhead communication lines and obstruction of vehicle traffic were also observed in a number of districts of the Samara and Ulyanovsk regions, the Republic of Tatarstan. (information from en.wikidpedia.org).
We wish you a good winter so that supercooled water falls to Earth less often. It is better to let the usual Russian fluffy snow fall.
Freezing rain is quite rare. But thousands of people living in different parts of Russia managed to become its witnesses. What causes freezing rain? What are its consequences? Let's figure this out together.
Features of a natural phenomenon
Rain is different: cold and warm, with small raindrops and large drops, straight and oblique. Sometimes it literally rains down from the sky. Scientists are still arguing about the process of occurrence of this natural phenomenon. But they all agree on one thing: freezing rain is a weather anomaly.
After many years of research and observation, experts managed to identify some patterns. Freezing rain, the photo of which is attached to the article, occurs at air temperatures from 0 to -10 ° C. This happens when cold and warm air masses collide. Being in the upper layer, the snowflakes melt, but when they move to the lower layer, they immediately turn into ice floes. If you go outside after a freezing rain and carefully examine the precipitation, you can see hollow balls of water. As they fall to the ground, they break. Water pours out of them and immediately freezes, as a result of which the surface (soil, lawns, roads) is covered with an ice crust.
Freezing rain in Moscow
In December 2010, residents and guests of the capital witnessed the freezing rain. It started suddenly. In the weather forecasts compiled and voiced by weather forecasters, not a word was said about this. People were taken by surprise by the freezing rain at night. Photos of icy roads, buildings, cars and trees were published in print media and on Internet portals the next day.
An unusual natural phenomenon literally paralyzed the transport system of the city. Electricity went out at airports. Several dozen flights were delayed. It took the utilities more than a day to fix the problems that had arisen. The damage amounted to millions of rubles. Owners of cars and buildings with advertising signs suffered. Dozens of trees were also damaged.
Freezing rain in Krasnodar
We observed an unusual natural phenomenon in one of the warmest regions of Russia. We are talking about the Krasnodar Territory. On the night of January 21, 2014, the services of Kubanenergo OJSC were raised on alarm. Freezing rain fell for several hours. At night, experts began to eliminate its consequences.
The south-west of the Krasnodar Territory suffered more than others. These include Anapa and the Crimean region. Thousands of local residents were left without electricity. Repair crews worked in emergency mode and in bad weather. Some consumers have managed to "feed off" backup schemes all this time.
In the daytime, the situation in the Krasnodar Territory improved slightly. But in some places there was severe ice. The Ministry of Emergency Situations in the region declares that there are no victims or injured. The consequences of freezing rain were scratched cars and fallen trees. The work of transport was paralyzed for several hours, because of which municipal transport companies and ordinary taxi drivers suffered considerable damage.
Effects of freezing rain
Many underestimate the seriousness and danger of this natural phenomenon. The ice layer formed on wires and tree branches occupies a large area. Therefore, it is not surprising that there is a break in power lines, damage to cars and plantings.
No less dangerous for people are roads covered with ice crust. In this situation, the number of accidents increases and the traumatism increases.
Additionally
The skin of aircraft and ships suffers most from the effects of freezing rain. Fallouts of this in large quantities can lead to trouble - loss of control of the aircraft or the flooding of the ship.
Don't blame meteorologists for everything. They argue that it is almost impossible to predict this natural phenomenon.
Safety regulations
Each of us knows that during the ice should be extremely careful and attentive. When moving on a slippery road surface, you need to look under your feet. One wrong step - and the injury is guaranteed. After the freezing rain is over, wear shoes with ribbed soles. Try to avoid frozen trees. It is not uncommon for branches to break under the weight of the ice crust and fall on passers-by.
To release your car from snow captivity, perform the following steps:
1. Gently open the door and get inside. Many in this situation begin to pour boiling water over the doors. But this is a huge mistake. Due to exposure to boiling water, the paint will crack, and after a while corrosion will begin. If you do not want to get a similar result, then listen to the advice of experts. They recommend using a heating pad filled with hot water. We apply it to the castle for a couple of minutes. Then slightly swing the door. The ice at the junction should crack. And then the door will open freely.
2. If you managed to get into the salon, then immediately start the engine, turn on the stove and headlights. All this will contribute to the warming of the car.
3. When the windows get warmer, try to clear them of ice using a scraper. Until this point, the wipers should not be turned on.
4. When the car is more or less thawed, you can go to the nearest car wash, where professionals will knock down the remaining ice with a pressure of water.
Finally
Now you know what freezing rain is. We also examined in detail the features of its appearance and consequences.
Falling out of the clouds at negative air temperatures (most often 0 ... -10 °, sometimes up to -15 °) in the form of transparent ice balls with a diameter of 1-3 mm. There is unfrozen water inside the balls - falling on objects, the balls break into shells, water flows out and ice forms.
see also
Write a review on the article "Freezing rain"
Notes
Links
- Weather review from 12/26/2010
- (Russian). IA "Meteonovosti" (December 12, 2013). Retrieved December 12, 2013.
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An excerpt characterizing Freezing Rain
Princess Mary interrupted him.“Oh, that would be so awful…” she began, and without finishing from excitement, with a graceful movement (like everything she did in his presence), bowing her head and looking gratefully at him, she went after her aunt.
On the evening of that day, Nikolai did not go anywhere to visit and stayed at home in order to settle some accounts with the horse sellers. When he finished his business, it was already late to go somewhere, but it was still early to go to bed, and Nikolai walked up and down the room alone for a long time, pondering his life, which rarely happened to him.
Princess Mary made a good impression on him near Smolensk. The fact that he met her then in such special circumstances, and the fact that it was precisely her at one time that his mother pointed out to him as a rich party, made him pay special attention to her. In Voronezh, during his visit, the impression was not only pleasant, but strong. Nikolai was struck by the special, moral beauty that he noticed in her this time. However, he was about to leave, and it never occurred to him to regret that, leaving Voronezh, he was deprived of the opportunity to see the princess. But the current meeting with Princess Mary in the church (Nikolai felt this) sank deeper into his heart than he foresaw it, and deeper than he wished for his peace of mind. This pale, thin, sad face, this radiant look, these quiet, graceful movements, and most importantly, this deep and tender sadness, expressed in all her features, disturbed him and demanded his participation. In men, Rostov could not stand to see the expression of a higher, spiritual life (that's why he did not like Prince Andrei), he contemptuously called it philosophy, daydreaming; but in Princess Mary, it was in this sadness, which showed the whole depth of this spiritual world alien to Nicholas, that he felt an irresistible attraction.
“A wonderful girl must be! That's the angel! he said to himself. “Why am I not free, why did I hurry with Sonya?” And involuntarily he imagined a comparison between the two: poverty in one and wealth in the other of those spiritual gifts that Nicholas did not have and which therefore he valued so highly. He tried to imagine what it would be like if he were free. How would he propose to her and she would become his wife? No, he couldn't imagine it. He felt terrified, and no clear images presented themselves to him. With Sonya, he had long ago formed a future picture for himself, and all this was simple and clear, precisely because it was all invented, and he knew everything that was in Sonya; but with Princess Mary it was impossible to imagine a future life, because he did not understand her, but only loved her.
Rain, frost. Individually, these words are simply weather phenomena. But when they happen at the same time ... Everything is covered with a layer of ice and life stops.
Can stop life in vast areas. Entire cities can go days and weeks without electricity and slowly freeze. And people have nothing left to do but watch the amazingly beautiful ice landscapes.
One such ice storm occurred in Quebec, Canada in 1998. More than 50 high-voltage power transmission towers collapsed due to the weight of the ice.
About 1.7 million people were left without electricity. In some cases, people spent without light for 6 weeks. It was the most devastating natural disaster in Canadian history.
Fields where grass grows turn into icy seas.
This is what an electrical wire looks like under a 5 cm layer of ice
And the car can't be filled.
And this is what the ice storm left behind in Switzerland
An even more fun version of an ice storm is ice flood as happened in Newfoundland in 2003. First, the river overflowed its banks and flooded the entire district. Then the water froze. The ice that covered the cars in Switzerland melted quickly, but these cars spent several months in the ice.
Snow disaster cleanup can also cause some inconvenience
The sailors get it too. In especially severe cases, ships simply sink
Here's a frozen waterfall
Is it possible to save yourself from freezing rain?
Freezing rain that hit Central Russia on December 26 has already been called a rare weather event.
It can be expected that for many officials this will become an excuse to justify their inaction, although in general this failure could well have been avoided: the phenomenon is sufficiently studied and regularly repeated. In Canada and the USA, on the east coast, due to special geographical and climatic conditions, it is repeated more often, but still there is no reason for us to shrug: such elemental strikes occur regularly. For example, after a freezing rain in Leningrad on March 9, 1981, a natural disaster of a regional scale occurred.
In fact, there are two phenomena that are mirror images of each other: “freezing rain” and “black ice”. The first is the curse of power engineers and aviators, the second is the nightmare of car drivers and pedestrians.
What is "freezing rain"? This is a rain of water, the temperature of which dropped below zero, but it did not have time to freeze, turn into ice. These are miniature ice balls, inside of which there is a drop of such water. When they hit the ground, wires, tree branches, they split with a characteristic crack and the water instantly freezes.
For this to happen, you need a negative temperature near the surface of the earth, and above - a positive one. The whole game goes around the zero mark, and therefore, weather forecasters cannot say that it will definitely be freezing rain: it can just rain with snow, or maybe just snow pellets.
At first, this crust is almost invisible. But soon it begins to manifest itself: a strong fractional sound is heard on the windshield, the roof and hood of the car, on the window glass. In the car, the wipers stop working and it is rapidly covered with a translucent ice film. For a while, the winter washer helps, but it soon ends, and it becomes completely impossible to drive. Well, when you try to get out of the car, you feel like a cow on ice.
Further - worse. You can park your car, but what about power lines? Dozens of kilograms of ice per linear meter of wires tear them like threads. But most insidious of all this phenomenon is manifested on the hulls of aircraft.
I remember a terrible story that happened on February 6, 1958 with the plane of the British airline British European Airlines - BEA. An Airspeed Ambassador aircraft was preparing to take off from Munich Airport. The Manchester United football team was on board. The British were preparing to fly home, but the plane was icy and, in addition, it was necessary to clean the runway, because after the freezing rain came sleet.
Twice the commander of the ship, James Thain, took the plane to the runway, and both times canceled the takeoff due to engine vibration. He had no idea that the fuselage of the plane and the planes were covered with a crust of ice, making the car heavier. And when he went to acceleration on the third attempt, the mass of the aircraft was several tons more. The pilots felt that the plane was accelerating poorly, but still they managed to get close to the take-off speed, and then their car began to slow down: it entered the part of the runway that was not cleared of snow. As a result, the plane flew off the runway at a speed of more than 150 kilometers per hour and crashed into a house. 21 out of 44 people died instantly. The Manchester United team has practically ceased to exist.
The football club then decided that white, black and red - symbols of snow, burning and blood - would remain their signature colors forever. Well, BEA and Munich Airport started a lawsuit, figuring out what was the root cause of the disaster. Only after many years of deliberations did it become clear that the ice itself could not be the cause of the disaster, but could contribute to it. Snow slush on the runway was the second critical factor. Of course, planes have fallen from icing before, but this case with the famous team caused a huge resonance. Since then, flight directors and aircraft commanders themselves do not risk taking off in such conditions: the life of passengers is more expensive.
The flip side of "freezing rain" is "black ice". If in the first case the case is in supercooled water, then in the second case the surface of the earth is supercooled. This often happens when, after a frost, a wave of warm, moist air suddenly comes. The moisture in the air (maybe even drizzle or light raindrops) starts to freeze. This phenomenon is much more common than freezing rain. And if for power lines and tree branches, as well as aircraft, it does not pose a particular danger (“the cold reserve” in them quickly ends, and the moisture ceases to freeze, and then melts itself), then on freeways it can cause numerous unexpected and often inexplicable car accidents.
Black ice patches on a freeway can appear anywhere. Not only that, black ice looks like a regular wet road in the headlights. The thermometer in the car will show a positive temperature, and quite significant: up to 4-6 degrees. When you get out of the car, you will not even believe that ice can form somewhere in such a warm atmosphere. It can melt just as quickly - and then the police will have to rack their brains: why did the driver suddenly jump out of his lane into the oncoming lane? Well, if he can tell himself about what happened ...
In Finland, where I am writing this post, both freezing rain and black ice are taken seriously and considered to be typical of our latitudes. According to Finnish meteorologists, from November to the end of March, you need to be prepared for such manifestations. Of course, most often this occurs in the transition zone from maritime to continental climate. In Russia, these are Karelia, Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Leningrad, Pskov, Novgorod regions, Primorye, Sakhalin, Kamchatka, Khabarovsk Territory. But taking into account climate change, the zone of sharp temperature jumps is moving further to the east and southeast. So Finnish lessons will, I think, not be superfluous.
For example, the onset of freezing rain can be predicted by the change in the sound of water drops hitting glass; a strange shine of tree branches appears in the light of lanterns or headlights, and the thermometer shows minus temperatures in the presence of rain. If you observe this, then the need to get flashlights and the cancellation of flights at airports is a matter of time. It is clear as daylight that soon the road will become extremely slippery, and there will be no visibility due to ice on the windshield. The process can develop quite quickly and lead to numerous accidents.
To prevent drivers from getting stuck on the road (more precisely, not frozen), the Finnish Meteorological Institute regularly publishes road hazard warnings on its website. Well, in order to see firsthand what is happening on the road, drivers turn to the website of the Finnish Road Administration, where you can look at the route through video cameras on the road. These frames provide not only a photograph (with an interval of 10-20 minutes), but also data on the temperature of the air, the road surface, the condition of the road surface (dry, icy, wet, etc.) and the presence of precipitation. Finnish road workers believe that installing simple video cameras with elementary sensors will quickly pay off: someone will definitely take this information into account, and there will be fewer accidents. They say that women drivers were the first to use this data: they are more concerned about what the weather is like where they are going, and how they should dress.
But it is even easier to inform drivers about problems in advance with the help of printed publications. The Finns distribute winter driving instructions, even in Russian, hoping that this will somehow help improve the situation on the roads. The hope is that all this combined should make drivers, farmers, builders, fishermen - everyone who works outdoors - more environmentally aware.
As for the specific case in Moscow, at the capital's airports, massive flight cancellations happen in Northern Europe as well. And it all depends on the experience and elementary human qualities of employees and airline policies. A year ago, in the city of Tampere, Finland, due to snowfall, one airline simply washed its hands of it by refusing to take people to their destination on the eve of the holiday. Another airline took passengers to their destination in a roundabout way through Stockholm. The first one won financially. Reputational - the second. And my friends, who were flown at Christmas, now fly only on planes of the second one. So attention to people is the best advertisement.