Fogbow

Jason Miles
@JMilesKHOU

Wow. Windows blown out in the CenterPoint, Total Energies towers in downtown Houston.. Maybe others. Seeing trees and other debris on streets, some intersections blocked, traffic lights out. Meanwhile, an @astros game is happening #khou11 @KHOU

Volkonski wrote: ↑Fri May 17, 2024 4:52 pm Reports of damage in the Houston area sound like that of a hurricane but without any storm surge.

Some places may be without power for weeks.

This week, Key West, Fla., experienced record-high temperatures, with a heat index of 115 degrees. Even the late Jimmy Buffett would have had trouble finding enough margaritas for that. Parts of South Florida were also hit by smoke from wildfires burning hundreds of miles away in Mexico. This is also the week that Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation that removes the words climate change from many state laws.

AndyinPA wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2024 12:21 am We had three tornadoes this afternoon, one of them where one of them hit last Saturday near me. Another one was very close to my daughter's house, and they went into the basement.

We normally have 4–8 tornadoes here in a year, mostly not really bad. We have had 9 in the last two weeks. There are no tornado sirens here.

Climate change, anyone?

It’s officially hotter than anytime since the birth of Jesus
Tree ring data allowing scientists to better decipher the history of the Earth’s climate
The year 2023 was the hottest in recorded history. The next warmest 25 have all occurred since 1996.

By F.D. Flam
May 16, 2024

It’s one thing to say the Northern Hemisphere summer of 2023 was the hottest of the 150 years people have been making measurements. This well-documented claim is often dismissed by skeptics of global warming who point out that the Earth has a long history of temperature fluctuations. That’s why it’s important that a new paper shows last summer was actually the hottest in the last 2,000 years — and that our current temperatures are even more of an outlier than we realized.

If all we had were the few decades of temperature readings to understand the past climate, we wouldn’t know whether our current warming was a major shift or a run-of-the-mill blip. Tree rings hold records that can go back thousands of years, giving us the perspective we need to understand what’s happening today.

In a paper published in Nature this week, scientists used tree rings not only to show long-term trends, but to plot Northern Hemisphere summer temperatures year by year for the last two millennia. 2023 was the hottest of them all. The next hottest 25 have all occurred since 1996. The next runner-up was way back in 246 A.D.

The world’s understanding of global warming changed dramatically when scientists started to document long-term temperature trends using tree rings, ice cores, sediment layers and other natural temperature monitors. In 1998, scientists published the famous "hockey stick graph” covering the last 600 years. It showed that global temperatures rose and fell like gently rolling hills until the mid-20th century, when they suddenly soared.

That gave people a graphic image of just how unusual things are today. Unable to discredit the results, some people tried to discredit the researchers by hacking into their emails in 2009 and taking statements out of context to imply they’d done something wrong — creating a phony scandal called "climate-gate.”



https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary ... nce-jesus/

Volkonski wrote: ↑Fri May 17, 2024 4:52 pm Reports of damage in the Houston area sound like that of a hurricane but without any storm surge.

Some places may be without power for weeks.

77 Houston ISD campuses still without power, still hoping to reopen Monday

'Dangerous out there': 15 dead as tornadoes slam multiple states in the South: Updates

John Bacon, USA TODAY
Updated Mon, May 27, 2024 at 1:42 AM GMT+2·

Powerful storms and tornadoes sweeping across the nation's midsection Sunday killed at least 15 people in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kentucky, injuring scores, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses across the region, and delaying the start of the iconic Indianapolis 500.

Seven deaths were confirmed in North Texas after an apparent tornado tore through Cooke County, near the Oklahoma border, on Saturday night, Gov. Greg Abbott said at a Sunday news conference in Valley View, one of the hardest-hit towns. Two children, aged 2 and 5 years old, were among the dead, according to Cooke County Sheriff Ray Sappington.

At least 100 others were injured in the deadly storm, Abbott said. The storm had struck a nearby travel center and gas station complex where more than 60 residents had sought shelter, according to Sappington.

Sappington said search and rescue efforts were complicated by downed trees and power lines that blocked access to roads.

The governor added that the tornado destroyed more than 200 homes and other buildings as well as damaged another 120 structures. "I'll be shocked if those numbers are not increased as further assessments are made," Abbott said.

A tornado also ripped through Denton County, northwest of Dallas, on Saturday night and damaged homes and other buildings while knocking down power lines. Officials said "a number of individuals" were injured and transported to area hospitals.

The National Weather Service in Fort Worth said its crews assessed damage and conducted storm surveys in Montague, Cooke, Denton, and Collin Counties.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/dangerous-5- ... 41183.html
(original: USA TODAY)