Remember, climate is what you expect — and weather is what you get. (Dr. Jeff Masters explains here.] The more of certain kinds of weather you get, the bigger the effect on the climate — and that’s why we’re seeing bigger, more frequent extreme storms:
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – At least
1724 people were killed in southern Indiana and Kentucky after a series of fierce storms carved a path of destruction through the Midwest on Friday.The National Weather Service estimated there may have been 10 or more tornado touchdowns in the two states.
Kentucky declared a state of emergency, and Indiana officials said they were discussing that late Friday night.As night fell, crews were searching for victims and beginning the cleanup.
In the town of Chelsea in Jefferson County, Ind., first responders found a 4-year-old boy and his great-grandparents lying on the ground 50 feet from where the elderly couple’s home had been blown off its foundation. The house was thrown more than 100 feet away. All three died of multiple blunt force injuries, according to David Bell the county’s Emergency Management director.
A man who lived nearby also was killed when the storm slammed into his residence, Jefferson County Sheriff John Wallace said.
The victims’ names were being withheld pending notification of relatives, Wallace said.
“All of this happened in less than 30 seconds,” said Cory Thomas, a Hanover volunteer firefighter, who was sitting in a firetruck watching and videotaping the funnel cloud as it moved from the north.
Michelle and Daniel Cartwright, whose parents lived at an intersection nearby, had rushed from their home to his parents’ house to help his grandmother during the storm. They moved her to the basement and heard a tremendous roar as the storm bore down on the house, Michelle Cartwright said.
“It’s undescribable. It sounded like the house was collapsing,” she said. “I thought I was gone. The windows shattered. Dust was flying everywhere.”
In Washington County, four people were found dead in a structure along Old Pekin Road, according to Sheriff Claude Combs. The victims were a family of two adults, a child and a baby, he said.
Nothing but an interglacial warming period. Nothing to see here. If you think this is impressive, you haven’t seen anything yet.
Yeah, nobody wants to connect the dots, but ignorance is NOT bliss in this case. We keep living the same way when it has become abundantly clear that it’s going to kill us one way or another. Head in the sand is no escape from mother nature’s wrath. Nature doesn’t give a shit whether we “believe in” global warming or not – it just reacts to all the carbon we’re dumping into the atmosphere year after year (like it just disappears).
Humanity has become a cancer on the planet and nature will rid itself of us.
We’ve simply based our economy and culture on a finite resource the fumes of which are toxic. The petroleum never really goes away when it is burned, it just changes state into its various chemical constituents. It’s like taking a lead brick and grinding it into powder and sprinkling it all around and calling it “gone.” It’s invisible but toxic, just the same. For the most part, humans aren’t causing these climate cycles; they began long before we started burning petroleum. No doubt we’re not helping, but we’re not the primary drivers.
Naomi Klein on the topic: http://inmedias.blogspot.com/2011/10/global-warming-local-farming-and-naomi.html
Adapt.
Dr. Jeff Masters’ blog at Wunderground has over 2000 comments. I think it tied up my PC, but it’s been buggy and freezing up recently. Whassup with that?
I keep wondering just how bad these monster tornadic storms can get with even more moisture in the atmosphere….
The radar of the whole storm from was pretty impressive when shown on radar last night on the local CBS weather: It reached from the Gulf of Mexico, near or in eastern TX and reached up to above the nothern US border. Big, powerful weather system.
Fortunately for us near the East Coast, the force dropped sharply before getting here. But, later tornadic storms probably won’t be so accommodating.