Month: December 2021

2013: Climate Denier Predicts Global Cooling. How Did He Do?

It’s probably unfair picking on Joe Bastardi. But he’s been out there for a decade and a half predicting imminent global cooling to anyone that would listen. Above, he addressed the Christian Broadcasting Network, which seems to have become a regular outlet for him, in April of 2013, predicting imminent global cooling.
Anytime now.
Pretty soon.

Now we’re having Christmas Tornadoes in Minnesota. How does that work, exactly?

Per Wiki –

“Fox Weather is the new weather service launched by Fox Weather is a streaming channel operated by Fox Corporation which launched on October 25, 2021 to provide weather forecasts and information for the United States.”

Just in time for the eye popping weather disasters of the last 2 weeks, which probably accounts for the deer-in-headlights looks on the young weathercaster’s faces.

Why Parking is Worse than You Imagined

Daniel Moser on Twitter:

Above, area in LA dedicated to parking.

Below, parking areas mapped in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Firstly, parking requirements are random. They are neither based in research, nor data. Parking minimums are random government mandates to allocate a proportion of space on privately owned land for cars – no matter if necessary or not.

The building 🏢 below ? All lower floors are parking. 

Why? Because. 

Cities don’t survey existing parking to see if their requirements are rational, and they often are not.

Continue reading “Why Parking is Worse than You Imagined”

Security Cam: When the Tornado Struck Mayfield

Description:

On December 10th, 2021, the Quad State Tornado forever changed the lives of many of our neighbors, friends, customers and community members. The following video footage was captured by security cameras at our Mayfield Main Office. Although many lives were spared, we grieve with those who lost loved ones. Buildings and possessions can be replaced and now we will focus on rebuilding Mayfield together. #growwithfnb #MayfieldSTRONG

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For over 140 years, FNB has taken pride in being locally owned, locally operated and committed to the communities we serve. FNB has developed a rich tradition in banking wherein it remains as the 10th oldest bank in the state of Kentucky. As of today, FNB operates eight offices located in four counties in Western Kentucky.

Unprecedented: Weather Extremes Bring Shock, Dread

Washington Post:

It unleashed the most hurricane-force wind gusts of any storm since at least 2014. Tornadoes carved paths in places they never had before in a December, like western Iowa and Minnesota. Fires erupted. Walls of dust turned day to night.

Wednesday’s wind storm, which blasted areas from New Mexico to Michigan, was the second historic extreme weather event to wallop the Lower 48 states this week, among an onslaught this year.

2021′s various extreme weather events have featured record-crushing heat, wind, fire, snow, tornadoes and deluges. This one had it all, if you consider this storm had its roots in an atmospheric river that dumped flooding rain and massive amounts of snow in California a few days ago.

In particular, this storm stands out for the record-setting warmth that fueled it, the number of reports of destructive winds it generated and for spreading severe thunderstorms, including tornadoes, farther north than previously observed in December.

Headlined by a violent complex of thunderstorms, known as a derecho, it unleashed damage in seven states along a 665 mile path. It charged ahead at breakneck speeds averaging over 60 mph; individual thunderstorms progressed as fast as 110 mph.

The National Weather Service received reports of 23 tornadoes and over 500 instances of severe winds, mostly generated by the derecho. But even before the derecho formed, ferocious winds over 90 mph blasted the Rockies and western Plains. Several gusts over 100 mph were clocked in Colorado. Gusts over 60 mph affected 16 states.

The winds sheared off roofs, overturned vehicles and toppled trees. More than 600,000 customers in the Central United States were without power on Thursday morning in the storm’s wake. The winds also triggered blinding dust storms in southeast Colorado and western Kansas and fanned fires in the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma and central Kansas. Remarkably, the storm has been blamed for only one death so far.

The wind storm came just five days after the devastating tornado outbreak in the Mid-South on Friday night, the deadliest on record during December. Between the two events, few areas of the Central United States have been left untouched amid 222 tornado warnings and 357 severe thunderstorm warnings issued by the National Weather Service.

“[T]his single past week is unprecedented in U.S. meteorological history for most of the central U.S.,” wrote Christopher Burt, an expert on weather extremes, in an email.

Iowa Sets Tornado Record

https://twitter.com/WxLiz/status/1471438199352438788?s=20

December Storm Smashes Records

Bob Henson in Yale Climate Connections:

One of the most spectacular and unseasonable U.S. storm systems in memory barreled through the center of the country on Wednesday at dizzying speed. The springlike cyclone left a trail of damage that was startlingly widespread, though fortunately not nearly as catastrophic as the Mississippi Valley tornadoes of Friday, December 10 (see below for an update).

Unlike most such rapidly intensifying cyclones over the Great Plains, there wasn’t much extreme precipitation with this one. Instead, wind, warmth, and dust were the chief features, all playing out in panoramic fashion.

The storm system fed off the large-scale contrast in place during much of this autumn and early winter between frigid air toward northwest North America and recurrent unusual warmth across much of the United States. An upper-atmosphere disturbance flowing along the powerful jet stream between these areas intensified as it rolled across the Great Plains on Wednesday.

The broad contours of the setup weren’t all that unusual. Instead, it was their almost-ludicrous intensity that made Wednesday such a memorable day for weather watchers around the world, not to mention forecasters and everyday people in the midst of it all.

Winds gusted to 107 mph at Lamar, Colorado, and to 100 mph at Russell, Kansas. All in all, Wednesday produced more reports of wind gusts topping 75 mph than any day on record, according to the NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center (SPC).