... and various prairie towns clean upfrom wild weather over the last 24 hours, I would like to thank whoever it is responsible for the global warming that is restoring our traditional weather patterns here on the prairies.
Three years ago, we went an entire summer without a thunderstorm. It looked like this.
Thunderheads glowering in the west at the end of a day baked by an unrelenting sun, the sudden gust as the storm front hits, moving the vehicles to shelter and securing buildings as the dust swirls and raindrops begin to pelt - that's the weather I remember.
So far, it's just a watch. If things start to look really good, I'll go storm chasing with my camera tonight.
I'm glad. There's is nothing better than a thunderstorm appearing on the horizon and sweeping toward you in all it's fierceness. Mother Nature intending to wash her face vigorously. Best is the flashes of lightning and following thunder, closer and clloser, the flashes spectacular and the thunder pounding and the wind chasing the heat and anything under five pounds before it.
That's here in Pennsylvania. I envy you if you live on prarieland, it has to be more exhilirating and scary there. I don't know if that's what you meant but it's what I like of them.
Cmon Kate... clearly this is all the result of nafarious human activity. It is much harder to think weather is a product of "traditional weather patterns", as opposed to anything else.
I say let it rain let it rain. Water is our most plentiful and renewable resourse. That is until, of course, when I have to go back to work and face those rain soaked gravel roads...
Kate, you know how to have fun!
Will we get to see some of the photos?
Just remember, Kate, that the twisters move in a north easterly direction. It's ENORMOUSLY exciting and gratifying to get up close and personal, you can dine out on the experience for eons (plus piss off your family because it's like winning a lottery...if you did it, they never will). And keep your sandals off because if the action gets too close you'll need to be able to boogie into a ditch!
Good Luck!
Paul of York said: "That's here in Pennsylvania. I envy you if you live on prarieland, it has to be more exhilirating and scary there.
Aha! Obvious! He said its "scary". I knew damn well Stephen Harper was behind all this weather stuff.
Lacking any sense of irony, Reuters reports this yesterday:
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A cold winter and increased coal-burning power production raised carbon dioxide emissions in 15 EU states by 1.8 percent between 2002 and 2003, the EU environment agency said on Tuesday.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=8849797
I ran my bloody car all day to generate that heat, so those better be good pictures.
I was told I had to help out in global warming, and the gas costs to make that damn CO2 is costing me a fortune... :-\
Apparently there is some dispute over whether it's better to go to your basement or flee in a vehicle if you see a tornado. What's known is that if you are outdoors and it's a few hundred metres away, you should lie flat in the closest ditch you can find. If it touches down right on top of you, it is recommended that you use the "fold and smooch" technique.
http://www.answers.com/absquatulate
"To decamp; to suddenly take leave and squat elsewhere."
We'll it's not quite fold a smootch, but it does reference "squat elsewhere".
If it touches down on top of you, you will certainly decamp, and without much effort. And you will likely have the urge to squat, but you will be airborne when you do so. You can't do much about the weather.
My reading of the denotational form suggests an intention of proactive behaviour, but I take your point.
Imagine standing on a hilltop looking to the west as the biggest dark cloud you've ever seen in your life comes toward you with more lightning bolts coming out of it than from all the other storms you've seen in your life put together, and then being swallowed up by seemingly impenetrable rock ash that almost suffocates you as you run for cover. That was eastern Washington when Mt. St. Helens blew up back in 1980. Such storms I needn't see again.
Ouch, I'd rather not imagine that Jeff. That makes absquatulating much more difficult. It's sort of like global statism: imagining that sometimes keeps me awake at night.
The most tragic thing of all, if I was standing on that hilltop, Jeff, is that I would never be able to make an effective case against what was about to happen to me. Nature has a way with words.
Jeff, that would have been bad, and we've had nothing here comparable, but I was in the big Tornado in Edmonton when it happened. Seemed kind of wierd having lawn chairs, garden sheds, and safes falling down around you while your driving home, and I was 5 miles away from it.
Some folks may wonder about the sanity of someone standing on a hilltop while an immense storm with lightning everywhere comes roaring in. On this occasion the day had been sunny, with no rain forecast. The ash cloud was moving at an average speed of about 100 km per hour. Curiosity (etc.) sometimes overwhelms the otherwise prudent.
There is something deeply stirring about the force of nature, be it storms or big waves. I've had dreams of overwhelming meteorological phenomena, but to see it coming in real life the way you did, on that sort of scale, well, that would be one of the greatest digestive assistants known to man.
"Curiosity (etc.) sometimes overwhelms the otherwise prudent."
That's such a true statement. You see images all the time of people driving into tornados, blocking a bridge watching a flood while a semi can't stop, driving to see a train wreck while a poisonous gas cloud hangs over there head, and all I got to say is ... Mother nature (disaster, etc) can be awe inspiring causing people that are related to the incident to do strange things..
Can I just note that EBD's comment that "Nature has a way with words" is notably sage.
And further to Rob's note, there was a few years ago a major plastics plant fire about a block from where I live. The firemen, ambulances, and police had trouble attending to their duties due a convergence of gawkers that spilled in to the street. The next day the newpaper reported that a lady saw the inferno of pitch-black smoke on the horizon and drove five miles so her daughter could see the fire.
Darwin was right. My job is to keep out of their way.
Just a quick note on a longer-term view of climate on the prairies. 'Drought' has been the long-term average since the ice age. (I refuse to use the tendentious 'normal') Europeans (as usual) had horseshoes around their necks when the came to (invaded) the western plains- they lucked into the wettest century of the last hundred. Palliser (one of my heroes) in 1859 was more correct than given credit for when he said that the (to be named later) 'Palliser Triangle' was too dry for agriculture. Modern agriculture is too quick to pat itself on the back for growing stuff (at huge cost in $, energy, and land terms) where 'nothing' grew before. ('Oh, we are _so_ much smarter than that now.')
How long will it be before Saskatchewan (and Alta, and N.Dak, and Minn, and Man.) reverts to the long-term mean. (And will 'global warming' get the blame?)
Yo JM! Human beings are quite good at adaptation. Witness the Inuit and the Lapps, who have made a good living where people are not biologically suited to be. Despite your hopes, the prairies will not be depopulated. So, preach your secular religion to your own choir.
Yes, I remember the storms too. Memorable, they were.
Meanwhile, it appears that some U.S. Senators are willing to look past the anecdotes of this storm or that drought:
"For the first time, the Senate passed a bipartisan resolution indicating that global warming is a problem to be taken seriously."
More here:
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2005/2005-06-22-09.asp#anchor1
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