- What is perestroika? - A Siberian hunter was once asked.
- It is like a storm in taiga, - he answered. - Up there you hear
a terrible noise,
and tree tops are all moving, but down here
everything is quiet,
only some heavy cones fall on your head.
Popular Russian joke of late 1980-s.
The giant Asian continent is an area of extreme climatic differences, of Word's most powerful atmospheric events, of endless variety of meteorological conditions. No wonder it is a great place for weather observation, although its enormous size often makes it difficult to get in a right place in a right time.
Tornadoes.
Some areas of Central Asia resemble USA's Midwest climatically, but surprisingly tornadoes are very rare here. Ones in few years local newspapers report a tornado destroying couple of villages in the European part of Russia, but usually this "tornado" appears to be simply a severe thunderstorm. In July 1997 few unusually violent thunderstorms passed above Moscow, and among them was one suspicious supercell hanging just above Kremlin, but luckily nothing serious happened.
Probably the only place in Asia to have tornadoes on a regular basis is a short stretch of Black Sea coast between the city of Anapa and Suhumi (the capital of Abkhazia). In a short period between August 15 and September 20, up to 30 tornadoes form from thunderstorms within watching distance from the popular beachfront resorts. They appear offshore, mostly at night, but sometimes one of them comes to the land, dropping thousands of tons of salt water on vineries and gardens. No one of them has ever penetrated land for more than 1-2 miles. Usually only years with rainy summers have tornadoes. Most of damage occurs in an area north from Sochi city. This part of the coast, covered with dense subtropical forests, is almost unpopulated for this reason.
The summer of 1996 was very rainy, and every day there were one-two thunderstorms, but I had to spend two weeks in Utrish Nature Reserve south from Anapa before I could see one of these nocturnal monsters. It appeared at 5 am, in a middle of nice thunderstorm, which was moving northward along the coast. Although it was also raining in Utrish, most of rain seemed to fall approximately 2-3 miles offshore, and the tornado also formed there. Frequent lightning made it very easy to observe this "classic" tornado, which existed for about 10 minutes, and disappeared just half a mile from the beach. Next day I went back home and missed another tornado, which leveled few blocks in Anapa the very next night.
The only other "tornado" I've seen in 28 years in Eurasia was a strange rope-like thing above Agrahan Bay in Dagestan in 1983. It connected two levels of small cumulus clouds very high above the sea and slowly sucked the smaller lower cloud into the bigger upper one. The weather had nothing to do with thunderstorms - it was a clear post-cold-front day in late March.
Dust Devils.
These funny creatures, which were believed to be real demons by ancient Russians and Turks, dance in thousands over steppes of Kazahstan and Mongolia in summer months. In Russian and most of Central Asian languages they are called by the same word as tornadoes, and this word has the same root as "death". But there is only one particular area in Pamir Mountains where dust devils can be deadly dangerous. Its name in Kyrgyz language is Markansu, which can be translated as "creek of tornadoes" or "creek of death". This broad valley is the only part of Central Pamir Plateau, which opens directly to Takla-Makan Desert in lowland Kashgaria. It is situated at 4200 meters above sea level. It seems to be a typical pebbles-covered Alpine desert, but if you look better, you realize, that there is a solid surface of black rock under the thin layer of small dark stones. In summer days fierce high-altitude sun heats this rock to approximately 60-70oC. But just hundred feet above the ground there is a constant stream of cold air flowing from the vast Pamir Plateau to lowland Xingjang. This temperature inversion results in dust devils capable of lifting a heavily loaded Bactrian camel. The climate of the valley is so dry that the valley is still full of mumificated corpses of camels and sheep dating back to early XX or even XIX century (at this time an important caravan route crossed the area).
Another place famous for dust devils and fierce winds is the "Valley of Demons", on the NW edge of Tarim depression in Jungaria. But here the weather is relatively tame: dust devils never become dangerous, and winds are used for producing electricity.
Monsoon and Typhoons.
Monsoon is probably the most famous feature of Asian weather. It brings rains to all southeastern part of the continent, from Amur River to Pakistan. Sometimes it is so strong that it can cross the Himalayas and spoil weather in Tibet and Kuen-Lun. Spectacular hailstorms occur in Tibet at these years. Usually hail is not big enough to kill sheep, but it provides locals with fresh hare and hamster meat.
In southeasternmost Siberia, in E Mongolia and in northern parts of China, monsoon season is short, only from early May to mid-July. In August and September the weather is mostly sunny here, with only short periods of rains when agonizing typhoon manages to crawl here from SE. But August and September is also time for thunderstorms. They travel in packs, shoulder to shoulder, hitchhiking on cold fronts from Siberia. Ulan-Bator, the Mongolian capital, sometimes has up to 25 brief thunderstorms in one day, separated with tiny breaks of hot sunny weather.
Twice I was lucky to see unusually severe thunderstorms in this part of the world, one on Hanka Lake north from Vladivostok (in August 1986), and another on the plain NW from Nanpin in Eastern China (September 1993). Both were spectacular supercells with strong rain, but what was unusual was their lightning activity. During more than 45 minutes, lighting was so intensive that there were no breaks more than a second long. Almost all of the time you could see few thunderbolts at the same time. Some of them, probably more high voltaged than others, seemed to be dark blue. While coming closer, these storms looked like black centipedes with a fringe of moving lightning-legs below. The first storm was accompanied with strong wind, and this wind forced Lake Hanka to move and flood its flat shores more than one mile deep.
Typhoons usually strike Asian coast from August to October. Some of them manage to get as far north as to Kamchatka, and still be strong cyclones while arriving there. If they break through the island chains and reach the mainland, their main effect is flooding, seldom wind. In taiga forests of Northern Korea, Ussuriland, Sakhalin and Southern Kuril Islands some narrow river valleys are filled with giant logs from numerous typhoons. Trekking along such valleys is not easy: sometimes you have to jump from one moss-covered log to another for miles, never touching or even seeing the ground. To be caught by typhoon in taiga is not a pleasant surprise, especially if the wind is still strong: you have to avoid valleys, and on higher places any tree can fall on your head any moment.
Bora.
The port of Novorossiisk on the NE coast of Black Sea is famous for bora, the cold "avalanche" wind. In winter, cold fronts from the Arctic Ocean sometimes come as far south as to the Caucasus, filling the plains of Southern Russia with moist cold air. When this tide reaches the mountain range, the only place for it to cross the high wall is the lowest part of the Caucasus just above Novorossiisk. Cold stream falls from the mountains on the city, sometimes carrying entire houses into the sea. Immediately the condensation of ice starts, breaking electric lines and sometimes covering ships in the harbor with ice cover so thick that they sink.
Bora-like winds also occur at any time of the year on Baikal Lake in Southern Siberia. This lake, the deepest in the world, lies in a deep rift valley, surrounded with high mountain chains. The weather in this area is so unique and complex that meteorologists have to use dozens of special names for local effects, mostly taking them from local people. Inhabitants of Baikal coast have names for 32 kinds of wind. To tell what kind of wind is currently blowing, they don't have to go out: it is enough to see the lake from the window, because each wind creates a unique wave pattern on lake surface. The most feared of winds is sarma, local variety of bora. Sarma does not create regular waves, because it blows downward. Instead, it turns the lake to "boiling bowl", looking exactly like a center of a hurricane. In 1979, the lake's biggest passenger boat with 270 people on board was turned over and sent to the bottom one mile below. It took sarma only 3 seconds from the moment of its beginning. Luckily, sarma is more common in winter, when it sometimes manages to shift all 10-feet strong ice cover of the lake to one side.
Dust storms. This is a beautiful event of Asian deserts. The best place to see it is the southern edge of Karakum ("black sand") desert in Turkmenistan, few miles from the foothills of Iran-bordering Kopetdag mountains. Dust storms look like usual thunderstorms, but rain mostly dries before reaching the ground. Instead of rain, this storms carry sand. Their season starts in early May and lasts for about a month. They move slowly, so you generally have almost half an hour to prepare since the coal-black wall appears on the horizon. If you are riding a horse, the most important thing to do is to wrap some piece of clothes around its head. Like Arabian horses, ahalteke of Turkmen have big tender eyes, easily damaged by flying sand.
Dust storms also occur in the Middle East, mostly in January and February. But in this case you never can be sure what does this black cloud mean. In Arabia or Jordan, most of them are pure dust storms, but in Israel or Sinai it can instantly turn to a real rain, flooding vadis and damaging coastal coral reefs in the Red Sea by dirty fresh water from land.
Snowstorms.
In winter months, cyclone after cyclone crosses Eastern Europe, moving from Atlantic in desperate attempts to break through Siberian Anticyclone. Most of them drop their load of vapor by heavy snowfalls over the Urals or West Siberian Plain, but some get really far. The line at that half of precipitation comes from Atlantic runs only 100 miles from the Pacific Coast in some areas. Everywhere between Poland and Enisey River, winter is and endless chain of week-long sunny-frosty periods and 3-10 days waves of snowfalls with temperatures just below or (in recent years) slightly above freezing.
In the grasslands and sagebrush deserts of Kazahstan and SW Siberia, the cyclones bring disasters. It starts with unusual and beautiful sunset, with solar disk dark red and 3-5 times larger than it should be. Next day there will be no sunrise, only weak dawn: you are on the bottom of the sea of rapidly flying snow. In all local languages this is cold buran. People of the area are tough, they survive burans with few frostbites. But sometimes during burans the temperature exceeds melting point for few hours. When the cold air takes its place, jut - thick ice crust covers the snow. Saiga antelopes migrate southward in these cases, but domestic livestock mostly dies.
Snowstorms (purga) also roll across endless tundra of the Arctic Coast, but here they are welcomed: they blow away snow from hill slopes, making it easier for reindeer to get food. In March, snow becomes so hard here that you can easily walk across or even ride a bicycle.
But the worst snowstorms can be seen in early spring on the Pacific Coast, where the World's largest continent borders the largest ocean, and the most powerful Siberian Anticyclone clashes with deepest cyclones of Northern Pacific. Kamchatka and Northern Kuril Islands are the best places to see these beautiful storms. In the city called Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky it is not unusual for buildings to be buried in snow up to the third floor in one night. On Kamchatka's southern tip, 60-80 feet of snow accumulate during winter. People of Paramushir Island still remember purga of 1985, which blew two heavy T-72 tanks from local military base over the cliff and into the Sea of Okhotsk. Even in summer, all streets in island villages are paralleled with ropes - it is easy to get lost during bad weather!
In 1987, unusually heavy snowfalls set off avalanches all across the Western Caucasus, destroying some 700-year old tower-villages in Georgian mountains. On Pseashkho ridge, the place that gets more snow than any other in the World, 150 feet of snow fell instead of usual 70-100. At this time I happened to be there in an amateur mountaineering trip, and we enjoyed walking among the treetops of snow-buried forests, climbing snow hills instead of rocks and watching dozens of avalanches every day. Ones I fall from 100-feet rock face, and the snow below stopped my flight so softly that I almost didn't feel it!
Monsoon-generated snowstorms in the Himalayas are also famous, because they are so dangerous for mountaineering expeditions in the area.
Between the storms.
Anticyclones are usually thought to be boring lay-on-the-beach weather, but there are also things to see. On the northern border of Siberian Anticyclone, in intermontane valleys of NE Siberia, winter is quite, sunny, windless and frosty. Most of time it is -50-60oC, but sometimes below -70. Such temperature creates unusual effects. Air is full of tiny ice crystals, so light is sometimes very strange: mountains are bright blue, sky purple or green, and snow silver-blue or golden-yellow. Rivers get frozen to the bottom, so they have to break ice cover in geyser-like fountains, immediately forming vast areas of dark-blue "skating rings". There is almost no snow, but beautiful ice dendrites cover houses, trees and tussocks. People, some birds and mammals manage to survive this frost, but travelling here is dangerous: you can get frostbite in few minutes, especially if you will not learn immediately to keep your eyes half-closed all the time. Local truck drivers sometimes have to keep engines running October to April. But in summer this area is hot, up to +35oC in some years.
In February 1992, I hitchhiked along the Kolyma Highway, the only road in the area. This 2500 miles-long dirt road connects Magadan on the Sea of Okhotsk with Kolyma Valley gold mines and Yakutsk on Lena River. In the small village called Oymyakon, two helicopter pilots suggested to drop me in an isolated valley in Suntar-Hayata ("Misty Mountains"), unusually rich with wildlife, and pick me up a week later. We landed near the small cabin, but as they flew away, I came to the cabin and discovered that it had only two walls. I had to walk more than 50 miles to the road, but I was lucky to get only tops of lungs frostbitten. During this trip I made some interesting observations, among them the discovery of dippers (small diving birds) wintering there on warm springs.
Hot anticyclonic winds from Southwest are called hamsin in the Middle East and afgani in Central Asia. Together with still, very hot air they bring lot of dust. In the Middle East they occur in spring (Days of Set in ancient Egypt religion), in Central Asia - in late summer. It is especially interest to see them in Western China. Here they are not so hot, but they carry so much fair dust that it lays on everything - leaves, ground, and houses. So you can see the process of loess formation - creating of soft dry ground, of which most of this part of the country consists.