Sunday, January 07, 2007

Tornados, Global Warming, Media and Weather Wusses

(The incredible picture to the right is not doctored in any way and was snapped by Eric Nguyen; it is perhaps the most spectacular tornado/funnel cloud picture I've ever seen and I've seen a lot of them.)


The past few weeks have seen a few tornadoes and tornado warnings in the southeast United States. This weekend I started noticing newscasters on CNN, Fox and MSNBC speaking in ominous tones about tornadoes during months "when they are not supposed to happen" and questions about if global warming may have anything to do with it. They are quick to say there is no concrete connection but, as Leo Buscaglia once said, "you never know, so you might as well worry about it."


Hmmm, let's see: Super cold air that produced blizzard conditions in the Rockies and central U.S. warms as it moves on, but it's still cooler than the normally mild climes in the southeastern states. Warm, moist air from the gulf is ever present in this area; the two come together. Let's see what could possibly result?


Global catastrophe? Man-Bear-Pig? New York frozen or underwater? Wait, I know:
Violent thunderstorms that sometimes spawn tornadoes! Oh man my head just hurts from it all sometimes.

What really sits like a boil on my butt is that any one of the "journalist" could spend less than 15 minutes on the Internet and see from historical weather data that October through February tornadoes occurred virtually every year since they have been systematically tracking such thing, usually in the Southeast/gulf coast regions. I need a BC Powder.

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