Category: Storm Weather

State Government Passes New Law, Makes Georgia a ‘monsoon state.’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Storm Weather

Why would they do that? There’s probably money to be made or political debts to pay off. Or, maybe it’s just the typical government insanity we’re seeing far too much of these days. The current RADAR includes hidden tornados. Great. Some clown thought this was a sure route to “all that lucrative FEMA money.”

When it comes to government, I agree with Groucho Marks’ statement that “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.”

From what I read on the news, FEMA isn’t very speedy when it comes to dispensing FEMA money. You have to suffer first–for a while. And finish burying your neighbors and kin.

Our indoor/outdoor cat is outdoors, watching for tornados, I guess. Or enjoying the rhythm of the falling rain. . .as the Cascades sang back in 1962. I think that’s Georgia’s new state song, replacing Hoagy Carmichael’s “Georgia on my Mind” which the federal weather service said wasn’t aggressive enough for tornado chasers.

Normally, I’d FedEx this weather to California, but I think they’re getting more rain than they bargained for while hoping that FEMA covers their losses. Don’t hold your breath out there, guys.

Somebody should have told the legislature that monsoon season in the U.S. is a June-to-September event that occurs in the southwest. Perhaps when it’s time to look for those to blame, we’ll say “just more global warming” while the guilty enjoy their FEMA money.

Malcolm

Mostly, we got nothin’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Storm Weather, writing
  • As for yesterday’s post about the predicted snow, we got plenty of nothin’, rain, wind, and 90 minutes of light snow that didn’t stick. Roads may be icy in the morning though.
  • On the other hand, the snow-event stew came out well. I think it’s the port wine which makes it tasty. Plus, the eleven secret herbs and spices. Psst, one of them is basil.
  • And then, too, we’re keeping our old car and its feisty battery with both a trickle charger and a jump starter. The price of both was less than the cost of one visit from a tow truck with a generator.
  • And then, also, our indoor/outdoor cat, Robbie, who usually bugs me all day to come in and out multiple times, didn’t like the looks of the weather, even thogh it was plenty of nothin’, and stayed inside. I’m surprised, though I had imagined him racing out the door into a snow drift. <g>
  • The main character in my novel in progress runs a pack train, and the more I look into this, I’m glad that–while I enjoying riding–the gear involved with a pack train is more than I want to deal with: even the standard Decker saddle. Can you imagine putting this on a horse while: (a) you were half asleep, or (b) drunk? I feel like I’m drunk when I write passages in which my character is putting it on or taking it off a horse.
  • The Ten Thousand Doors of January[2].jpgSince I enjoyed Alix E. Harrow’s The Once and Future Witches, I ordered her previous book, The Ten Thousand Doors of January from 2019. Does anyone following this blog read novels about witches? Being both old and old fashioned, I’m more into thre traditional craft than Wicca.
  • I know most of you are wondering by now whether we’ll be having leftover stew tonight since the snow event was pretty much nothingto write home about. The answer is “yes.

—Malcolm

Book sale: see the latest post on my other blog.

waiting for snow or maybe nothing

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Storm Weather, writing

Yes, we do get snow in Georgia, but usually we don’t–even when it’s predicted. Long-time Atlanta residents will remember “snow jam” in 1982 and an honest-to-goodness blizzard in 1993. Yes, I was there.

We understand, though, that if Izzy is as bad as some of the predictions, we can’t top what’s expected in the northeast. If we get several inches, we’ll have a mess mainly because we don’t have the infrastructer to deal with it. We do take offense when northeners poke fun at Georgia drivers trying to drive in snow when, at the same time, the national news is showing hundreds of wrecks up north where “people know how to drive in snow.” Ha.

We get freezing rain and black ice. I think that wintry mix can be worse than snow. As for Sunday’s possible snowfall, we just don’t know. I have beef stew in the Dutch oven. It will get us through the weekend whether Izzy shows up or not. And, our gas stove will heat it up nicely even if the power fails.

Whenn I lived in northern Illinois, we didn’t get the day off when several feet of snow showed up during the night. My Jeep with studded snow tires powered through the worst of as a I commuted from the Illinois-Wisconsin border to my office near O’Hare airport. I don’t have either a Jeep or snow tires now, so I’m less willing to drive in the stuff even though my front-wheel-drive Buick navigated snow jam with zero problems. Mostly, I worry about the other drivers and their lead feet and a tendency to jam on the brakes.

Snow in Georgia is always an adventure, from sold-out grocery stores to slippery roads to people telling stories about how bad that 1/4 inch was in their neighborhoods.

By the way, this would not be the best time to have a flight scheduled at Atlanta’s airport. You probably know that. You do, don’t you?

—Malcolm

Mountain Song by [Malcolm R. Campbell]“Mountain Song” is free on Kindle January 18th through January 20th.

This story is set in Glacier National Park.

Devastating weather in Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Storm Weather, writing

If you haven’t seen the pictures of the damage caused by what some are calling “The Quad-State Tornado,” you will. Some say one massive tornado traveled 250 miles. Some say, the weather was made up of a family of some thirty tornados. Kentucky took the biggest hit and may well have suffered its worst weather day in history.

North Georgia escaped, though it was dark here most of the day with exceptionally heavy rain. As with hurricanes, it’s hard to feel much joy in dodging the major thrust of a storm when that means it caused death, destruction, and property damage somewhere else.

According to WikiPedia, “The most prolific activity was caused by a long-track supercell thunderstorm that produced a family of strong tornadoes, if not a single long-track tornado, across four states. The tornadoes first touched down in northeastern Arkansas, before progressing into the Missouri Bootheel, and western portions of Tennessee and Kentucky, ripping through towns such as Monette and Leachville, Arkansas, and Hayti and Caruthersville, Missouri before crossing the Mississippi River into Tennessee and eventually into Kentucky, where the town of Mayfield suffered catastrophic damage.”

That all this occurred during the holiday season makes matters worse.

Whatever else I might have written today pales into insignificance as those of us–especially in the South–are thinking about Kentucky. On Facebook, when an area or a family suffers a loss, people often say “My thoughts and prayers are with you.” I’m not sure what this means other than the fact it’s become a handy cliché along with “I’m so sorry to hear the news.”

Do these comments help? Perhaps as a way of acknowledging that somebody else is suffering and/or has experienced a loss. We are saying, via clichés and better words, “You are seen and your suffering is seen and your loss saddens us.”

We are not gods. We cannot “fix” this. Perhaps one day we will know how to build affordable structures that are immune from high winds. But not today. Today we are sad. Tomorrow we may find ways to help beyond what first responders are doing already. Many of us will find ways to reach out.

Malcolm

stormy weather, keeps raining all the time

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Storm Weather3 Comments

What do you make of this?

What you see here on RADAR is the remains of hurricane (briefly) Nicholas. They’re like the haint that won’t go away. Ida haunted people all the way up into New England. At present, Nicholas appears to be heading more or less north. Is there a reason for this?

Those with PhDs in stormy weather can show you on a weather map how so-called “global winds” determine the route of a hurricane (or its remains). The models seldom agree 100%, so we tend to see hurricane path maps as a bunch of spaghetti–a twisted mass of potential routes.

My view, which isn’t accepted by anybody other than those who are considered kinky, is that the storms’ paths are determined by the people who want to experience them.  Obviously, credible meteorologists don’t include the human equation when considering where a storm will go next. Global winds, though, aren’t the whole story when you exclude people–en masse–who want or need a storm. That is to say, they call it into their neighborhood.

Why would they do that? Excitement, getting out of stuff, pitting oneself against the elements, doing heroic deeds, increasing one’s supply of “war stories,” mind-bending highs, living on the edge. Most of that is subconscious, so people can claim they don’t know anything about it and, yes, act offended when anyone suggests the storms go where they are most wanted.

What others believe about storms doesn’t bother me. That is to say, I have no agenda insofar as enlarging the scope of what meteorologists consider in their metrics. And yet, if you secretly enjoy the thrill of storms, then perhaps you know that you and others like you created that reality on your doorstep.

Gosh, is that crazy or what?

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell

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I’d A Rather Not See Ida

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Storm Weather, writing

“Ida’s catastrophic crawl inland has left at least four people dead and millions of people without power for what the Louisiana governor said Tuesday could be more than a month.” – Weather Channel

Growing up on the Gulf Coast, I’m used to stories like this focusing near where I live. At 18 miles inland, we saw a lot of damage, though nothing to compare with what Katrina and Ida brought New Orleans and neighboring cities. I must confess, as a kid, I found storms exciting; as a lot of neighbors said, “Sure, they were exciting when they got everyone worried and charged up and then veered off and hit somebody else.”

Perhaps I’ve matured, for that old childish excitement about stormy weather has disappeared. Maybe part of becoming an adult is seeing the death, destruction, disruption, and expense for what it is. As Afganistan comes to a horrible conclusion, I think a lot of people see wars the way children see storms: exciting and glorious and made for heroes and heroic acts. What a shame, for unlike Katrina and Ida, we have more control over such storms as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile in northwest Georgia, we’re getting more rain than we need with a potential for flash floods. I hestitate to mention it because a soaking rain is a tempest in a teacup compared with the weather on the Gulf coast.

I feel sad for the people who couldn’t get out of the way or the “brave” and foolish people who chose to ride it out while having a hurricane party. If they live long enough, maybe some of those people will grow up.

—Malcolm

 

 

Our calico cat hates storms

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Storm Weather2 Comments

Thunder, driving rain on the roof, power outages, and anything else having to do with severe weather, Katy isn’t going to like it. At 3 p.m. today, the heavy rain made it so dark inside the house, I finally turned on a light in the kitchen. Meanwhile, there’s been a tornado watch in place most of the day here in northwest Georgia. This Weather.com graphic is a tip-off that we’ll have more rain tomorrow and for the rest of the year maybe:

I’m glad we got our yard mowing caught up yesterday. I wish I hadn’t gotten drenched while grocery shopping this morning. The rain was light until I walked out of the store with a cartload of food and, as they say, the bottom fell out. I would have been drier in a swimming pool.

The people on Facebook tell me I have rain for Monday’s errands because I’m not showing Mother Nature enough respect. Yes, I call her Baby Cakes. I saw that as a term of endearment. 99 and 44/100 percent of my friends don’t see it that way. Who knew?

Well, now the sun came out and the rain has stopped. The baby goats in the pasture across the road are enjoying their late afternoon. Katy’s stopped acting like a fraidy cat. But it’s all a trick. As soon as it gets dark we’ll have a rainy night in Georgia as Tony Joe White wrote in his 1967 song popularized by Brook Benton.

When that happens, I think I’ll go take a nap while Katy hides under the bed.

–Malcolm 

Malcolm R. Campbell

Publisher: Thomas-Jacob Publishing

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We don’t need no more tornados

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Storm Weather2 Comments

“Parts of the South that endured severe weather outbreaks in consecutive weeks won’t be able to catch a break in the near future. AccuWeather forecasters say more volatile weather will arrive as soon as this weekend, and stormy weather could be unrelenting even into next week.” – Yahoo  

Look, if we wanted to play tag with dozens of nasty tornados, we’d move to Tornado Alley.

Thursday was a noisy weather day here in north Georgia: continuous rain, severe thunderstorms. The tornados occurred primarily in Alabama except for the one that devastated the Atlanta suburb of Newnan. We were on the edge of the tornado watch and will be again before the weekend is over.

We’re still under a flood warning from the last batch of rain. Now this, according to weather.com:

So, if you know Mother Nature, please let her know we don’t need no more tornados.

Malcolm