500,000 Lose Power In Brazil Severe Outbreak

I chuckled when I found out that an MCC (Mesoscale Convective Complex) is called a CCM (Complexo Convectivo de Mesoescala) south of the Equator, but this week's storm is no joke there. They had a heck of an MCC in Brazil earlier this week; I recognized the satellite signature of the large, circular, nocturnal complex of thunderstorms (like we often get in the Plains and Midwest of the U.S. during the Spring) on the MetSul Blog. Scott from CIMSS pulled a great animation of it:

Scott says:

It's Spring down there of course (and Reed Timmer from Discovery Channel's "Storm Chasers" is going there chasing in late December). This is a week that will go down in history for the country with severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, flooding and a freak wave (cool movie) that was originally reported as a tsunami. Over 500,000 lost power and 5 were killed according to this article. If you look at the URLs below you can get a feel for the severity of this week's weather with incredible photos (some of this is in Portuguese, you can translate it through Google Translate but it gets problematic).

Blog reader Fernando A. contributed links to this article.