Thank goodness, thus far the warning below seems to have been alarmist in fact. The last time we actually suffered something like this, the lightning started about 700 forest fires, overwhelming California's ability to fight them.
Fire Weather Watch
Statement as of 9:46 AM PDT on June 08, 2013
... Fire Weather Watch in effect from Sunday morning through Sunday evening for thunderstorms with dry lightning for the valleys and mountains of the North Bay and the hills and valleys of the East Bay...
The National Weather Service San Francisco Bay area has issued a Fire Weather Watch... which is in effect from Sunday morning through Sunday evening.
* Affected area: fire zone 506 North Bay interior valleys... fire zone 507 North Bay mountains... fire zone 510 East Bay interior valleys... fire zone 511 East Bay hills and Diablo Range.
* Timing: from 11 am PDT Sunday through 8 PM PDT Sunday with the chances of thunderstorms becoming greatest in the afternoon and evening hours.
* Thunderstorms: chances increasing to 25 percent by Sunday afternoon across the area. Thunderstorms will be dry to begin with but by the evening there will be a possibility of minor amounts of rainfall.
* Outflow winds: locally gusty to 40 mph in the immediate vicinity of thunderstorms on Sunday.
* Impacts: lightning strikes will produce increased chances of fire starts in the impacted areas. Ongoing dry conditions and fuels will allow for any fires that start to spread quickly.
Precautionary/preparedness actions...
A Fire Weather Watch means that critical fire weather conditions are forecast to occur. Listen for later forecasts and possible red flag warnings.
Who goes out day-hiking when temperatures to 110 degrees are forecast? Isn't there a common sense badge or something that boy scouts need to take before they're allowed to go out and do things like this?
Do they have to wait til winter to go out? It's HOT there all summer. It was the part where they were "tragically unprepared" aren't boyscouts supposed to always be prepared? Isn't that their motto? :P
Well someday soon my friends, this ride will come to an end
But we can't just get in line again.
(Streetlight Manifesto)
"When you feel you're about spring, what you, Governor Romney, think is the checkmate moment of the debate and your debate opponent says to you 'Please. Proceed...'" - Jon Stewart
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sally Rosebud
Do they have to wait til winter to go out? It's HOT there all summer. It was the part where they were "tragically unprepared" aren't boyscouts supposed to always be prepared? Isn't that their motto? :P
It isn't 110 degrees there all summer!
In 110 degrees the only way to be prepared is not to go outside. And anyway, come on - a 70-year-old man?
__________________ "...Dakota will grow up to be very scary... but in a HOT and desireable kind of way." - 3Ring Binder
Ok, so it's not 110 degrees at night. I know I was in AZ a couple of days in August one year and OMG it was over 100 every day. In the summer in SC it's usually in the 90's and humid, there is ALWAYS a risk of heat stroke unless you are prepared.
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Yes but you deal with it by limiting outdoor activity and exertion; not by deliberately spending all weekend outdoors and purposefully engaging in strenuous activity! Maybe that might fly for young people, but a 70-year-old? That's just not prudent.
The designs I'm aiming for are nothing like bunkers- perhaps more like Earthships. The reason for the underground aspect is that 4' below the surface, the temp stays at a constant 55 degrees year round. eta: tornado-proofing is bonus.
Add some sun in winter [via deciduous trees] and you have a very low heating bill. Add leaves to the trees and you have an even smaller heating bill in summer. Add permacultured gardens on a couple of acres with some chickens, goats, etc, and a greenhouse, and you have a self-sustaining food supply going. eta: if everybody in this country built their homes to some of these standards, our energy consumption would be cut enormously.
And with the proper water-catchment built in, you can also add things like aquaculture and irrigation.
My plans also include heavy wooden shutters like the ones on the villas in France, and rolling metal shutters [like the ones on old shop fronts in NYC] which are storm-proofing for the glass windows/ walls when necessary.
As stated elsewhere, these designs are light, bright, elegant and spacious, and don't feel like a basement at all. And most certainly wouldn't hold up to Ramtha's bunker-specs.
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There is a moderate risk of severe weather today in an area stretching from eastern Iowa through Illinois and Indiana into western Ohio. Large convective complexes are expected to form; but there is a lot of vertical sheer in that area so if the cap breaks early enough, there might be a few super cells before the LCCs congeal.
95 in Central KS today, 88 tomorrow, 97 Friday, 90 Sat, 88 Sun [w/ t-storms].
Today I am hunkered down in the a/c. Tried to take a nap, no dice. Just awful.
Tomorrow will be positively parka weather- will probably be digging up beds for my weedy medicinal herbs [mugwort, echinacea, catnip, etc] that we're putting out in the older veg patch [Battle of the Invasive Plants!].
Friday I will be hiding out inside yet again. Probably building insulated blinds for the livingroom and working on the meadow painting.
But I do not like the high heat at all- our a/c units are past decrepit and I've been stalling on buying new.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Govi
Is this all at a higher rate of tornado occurrences than usual, Cody?
No; it's been within expected numbers so far, and there have been no large-scale outbreaks yet this year.
This evening: there have and continue to be numerous TW's throughout the risk area; at least one tornado verified in Iowa earlier, with reports of damage.
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Wow, I'm starting to see the word "derecho" pop up on news sites in connection with today's weather. It's surprising because as dangerous and amazing as derechos are, it's just not a word that you hear a lot unless you're a weather geek. Yeah, a derecho is actually a very distinct possibility tonight.
A derecho, so you know, is a long-term sustained squall of fast-moving storms associated with very powerful straight-line winds.
Usually, a squall line is relatively short-term; at least the severe conditions within them are. Convection starts in one area, possibly as separate storm cells, which eventually combine into a squall line (I'm sure everyone is familiar with that term). The storms build up high and strong, and then collapse like a water balloon breaking, and gush all their "air" down to the ground and out in a forward direction in front of the storm line. This cold air tends to disrupt the convective potential of the air in front of the storm line. This initial gust can contain some damaging winds; but as the storms move forward over the "tamped" areas, there is only weak convection to feed them and the storms more or less peter out, perhaps persisting as a line of heavy rain and only occasional lightning, but definitely nothing severe.
A derecho, however, is a different aminal. It starts out the same way; but they're supported by a strong inflow of warm air from behind, which continually clashes with the outflow-cooled and extremely moist air that the line of storms overruns, amplifying its convective potential. That means the storms are able to continuously rebuild after every collapse, and thus continuously produce damaging straight-line winds over a long period. The other ingredient to a derecho is a strong midlevel jetstream which catches the tops of the building thunderstorms and pushes the whole line along very quickly. Derechos can be a hundred miles long and last for hours and hours, and travel for hundreds of miles, producing severe damaging winds the whole way - along with other bad juju that usually accompanies severe storms like big hail and flooding.
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Areas of Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic have been flooded by the swollen rivers Elbe and Danube. These floods are expected to continue as the river crests move northward through Europe. Bad situation there. :/
Last edited by Dakota Tebaldi; 06-12-2013 at 11:57 PM.
Areas of Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic have been flooded by the swollen rivers Elbe and Danube. These floods are expected to continue as the river crests move northward through Europe. Bad situation there. :/
So here we are camping and this huge storm comes through. I pile me and the dog in the truck and insist he drive us to the comfort station, which he does, cause he knows I'm a weenie. The comfort station didn't look all that solid, so we stayed in the truck.
The storm pretty much moves on, and now the radio is all excited about a tornado warning back HOME, right in our neighborhood and my older daughter's apartment complex.
When we get back to the camper, I call her and she is racing to get in the closet with the dogs! With the apparent tornado right over her! In the camper, we watch tv to see the storm pass over there, and then I call her back. She's fine, but a big tree came down and barely missed their deck, grazing it. She thought her number was up.
Now it's over, but there are too many trees down for her to get out of the complex to go check our house. Buncha people had tree damage to their cars, fortunately not hers. (Or unfortunately maybe, my husband says, given the state of her car.) No one was hurt.
My younger daughter was in a place the long storm line mostly missed. I hope she gets back home okay. We go back home tomorrow.
There's some kind of odd confluence of stuff cycling in from our north/west and stuff blowing up from Texas [Damn you, Texas!]. Evidently it's supposed to be crazy this weekend.
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