Yesterday, my eyebrows were raised hearing that I25, north of Denver, southbound was closed by a 25 vehicle crash, at about 2:30 p.m. (Then, to rub it in, the station played “Journey through the snow” from the Nutcracker.Clearly, Denver and points north have snow. We don’t. We have dry ground. That shouldn’t be surprising, given that in the years I have lived in Colorado, I have seen things liek an actual line on the roadway with snow north of it and dry ground south of it. Many places in the US and the world use the saying, “If you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes.” Only Colorado, in my experience, scan say, “If you don’t like the weather, just move about a hundred feet – in any direction.” Of course, it isn’t always true – but it can be true fairly often. Also, I did receive confirmation to see Virgil Sunday. ( was getting nervous!)
The Daily Beast – Far Right Turns on ‘Faker’ & ‘Liar’ Marjorie Taylor Greene
Quote – In a phone interview with The Daily Beast, [far-right radio host Stew] Peters said that Greene was “actually a threat to national security” and declared that she would “burn in hell” one day. “Marjorie is NOT America First, but regrettably a faker and a liar who raised millions claiming she would impeach Biden, and now backs a man for Speaker who refuses to impeach Biden,” he said Friday evening. Additionally, Peters—like many other far-right pundits—engaged in an extremely sexist attack referencing the allegation that Greene had an affair with a “tantric sex guru” ahead of her recent divorce. Click through for details. This may sound like good news – but it isn’t really. The iissue is that she’s not extreme enough for those who are turning against her. We might be able to use that to our advantage in the battle for the Speakership, but I don’t know that our delegation is savage enough to do so.
Crooks & Liars – Blue America Says #DraftLucas
Quote – Blue America started running [a #DraftLucas ad campaign] across Missouri [Monday] morning before dawn. So far, the ads are on Facebook and Instagram. We’re primarily asking people in Missouri to join us in calling to #DraftLucas– and anyone else… please use #DraftLucas on social media. Click through for details and video ad. This is really for Nameless, as the rest of us aren’t big social media users – but useit when you can (maybe put it in an email signature?)
Yesterday, They are tentatively predicting snow for tonight (for anyone who doesn’t use Weather Underground, the ten-day view is a graph. The temperature is a line {red}, but the chance of precipitation is a filled-in area – purple if it’s snow, blue for anything else.) It’s purple from around nine tonight to 4 am tomorrow. But, we’ll see. Farther down the page, they show a predicted accumulation, and those are in the single digit hundreths of an inch.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
The Conversation – Congress passes legislation that will close off presidential election mischief and help avoid another Jan. 6
Quote – Presidential elections are complicated. But in a move aimed at warding off future crises like the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, the Senate and House have passed legislation to clarify ambiguous and trouble-prone aspects of the process…. [A] bipartisan group of congressional leaders aimed to pass reforms to the 1887 law governing this process, the Electoral Count Act, before the end of 2022. As an election law scholar, I have suggested that Congress focus its reforms on a few crucial areas that could have wide bipartisan support. Now, it has done just that, and the omnibus government funding legislation that includes the Electoral Count Act reform passed the House on Dec. 23 and heads to the White House for President Joe Biden’s expected signature…. With these simple bipartisan solutions, Congress has instilled confidence in future presidential elections. Click through fpr details. Before you say “It’s not enough,” let me assure you that you are correct. But it does address the main avenues used by Tyrannosaurus Ex and his mob on and up to (and since) January 6th. Of course, in anything run by humans, there will be people with the desire and drive to cheat.
What with Time magazine selecting Volodomyr Zelenskyy as “Person of the Year,” and pretty much everyone except MAGAts being in agreement, I hope I can be forgiven for writing a bit like a fangirl. I’m putting three sources together for this short take. First is a Zelenskyy origin story – I’ve seen it before, but without sourcing, and it seemed too good to be true. But now that I can trace it to Zelenskyy himself, in a video speech, on his own official page, I feel confident to share it. Next, there is the Crooks & Liars announcement of a Crookie Hero Award. Finally, and I warn this is a 45 minute video,here is a link to a documentary based on Dave Letterman interviewing Zelenskyy. Letterman does speak with other people, and gives some of his own impressions of the nation and the war (including the fact that one village he visitied gave him the honor of certifying his beard as the best in the village.) It really is worth every minute, even if you may have to save it for later.
Two days ago, a Waterloo, IA evening TV sports announcer was reassigned to the early morning local news – but told to cover the weather pertaining to the blizzard blasting through Iowa. Mark Woodley did NOT appear to be a happy camper during his three-and-a-half-hour stint. And he wasn’t shy about letting his audience know it … in the most snarky and entertaining way that has now gone viral.
Woodley had originally posted the montage of clips to his personal Facebook page, but his friends and family intervened and convinced him to put it on Twitter.
This is what you get when you ask the sports guy to come in to cover a blizzard in the morning show. pic.twitter.com/h0RL9tVQqg
The next thing he knew, the movie director Judd Apatow and the actor Josh Gad (voice of Olaf) were retweeting him. And his humorous antics have since been covered by NBC’s “Today Show” as well as The New York Times and even the Wall Street Journal.
Besides putting on his heavy winter togs, Mark Woodley also put on a grimace to head out into the subzero temps to report on the impending blizzard.
Woodley noted that he usually does the evening news stint which run “for only 30 minutes and are generally inside.” So, he started the first of his 14 freezing outdoor reports explaining why he was covering the weather instead of sports.
“I usually do sports; everything here is canceled for the next couple days, so what better time to ask the sports guy to come in about five hours earlier than he would normally wake up, go stand out in the wind and the snow and the cold and tell other people not to do the same.”
He got grouchier and grouchier as the three-plus-hour-long morning news show slogged on. And the warm and cozy staff inside was loving it!
Woodley handled their ribbing expertly:
“This is a really long show. Tune in for the next couple hours to watch me progressively get crankier and crankier.”
We’re all familiar with the local TV news folks’ banter, so it was no surprise when Woodley seemed to quibble over a colleague’s assignment tracking the impending storm inside the station’s warm van.
“Clint got the better end of that deal — that thing’s heated.”
“The outdoors currently is not heated.”
As is not uncommon, the temperature outside continued to fall throughout the morning show, even as the sun was slowly coming up.
“I’ve got good news and bad news: The good news is I can still feel my face right now. The bad news is I kind of wish I couldn’t.”
Woodley was begging to return to his regular job and felt someone had it out for him:
“I’m pretty sure, Ryan, that you guys added an extra hour to this show just because somebody likes torturing me.”
Woodley’s reply when asked by the warm-as-toast anchorman sitting inside the nice warm studio how he was doing is a classic:
“Again, the same way I felt about eight minutes ago when you asked me that same question.”
“It’s absolutely fantastic, Ryan.”
Finally, in the last shot of the morning, Woodley got to sign off:
“Live in Waterloo – for the last time this morning … THANKFULLY!”
His snarky take on reporting the weather has been greatly appreciated by an audience who have lavished praise on his honest reporting. Here are a few of the accolades Woodley received on Twitter:
Like most local TV reporters, Woodley has always dreamed about making “big” someday. He’s facing his new curmudgeon notoriety admirably well:
“Being known for being the crotchety old sports and weather guy was not on the list. But it is what it is.”
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
We never used to, and mostly still don’t, think of winter as tornado season. (We also don’t think of earthquakes in the eastern United Sttes, ot hurricanes reaching New Yor, or sea level rise.) But it looks as though we are going to have to start thinking about all of these things.
Of course there is a lot science still doesn’t know. One limitation of science is that in order to actually study something – as opposed to making a model, which is what climate scientists have been doing – that something has to actually exist. And I guarantee there are many things we undoubtedly hope we will never have to know, if they don’t make it from model to reality. But winter tornadoes are not one of those things. They are here.
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Tornadoes and climate change: What a warming world means for deadly twisters and the type of storms that spawn them
The deadly tornado outbreak that tore through communities from Arkansas to Illinois on the night of Dec. 10-11, 2021, was so unusual in its duration and strength, particularly for December, that a lot of people including the U.S. president are asking what role climate change might have played – and whether tornadoes will become more common in a warming world.
Both questions are easier asked than answered, but research is offering new clues.
I’m an atmospheric scientist who studies severe convective storms like tornadoes and the influences of climate change. Here’s what scientific research shows so far.
Climate models can’t see tornadoes yet – but they can recognize tornado conditions
To understand how rising global temperatures will affect the climate in the future, scientists use complex computer models that characterize the whole Earth system, from the Sun’s energy streaming in to how the soil responds and everything in between, year to year and season to season. These models solve millions of equations on a global scale. Each calculation adds up, requiring far more computing power than a desktop computer can handle.
To project how Earth’s climate will change through the end of the century, we currently have to use a broad scale. Think of it like the zoom function on a camera looking at a distant mountain. You can see the forest, but individual trees are harder to make out, and a pine cone in one of those trees is too tiny to see even when you blow up the image. With climate models, the smaller the object, the harder it is to see.
Tornadoes and the severe storms that create them are far below the typical scale that climate models can predict.
What we can do instead is look at the large-scale ingredients that make conditions ripe for tornadoes to form.
A researcher with NOAA and the Oklahoma Cooperative Institute prepares a light detection and ranging system to collect data at the edge of a storm. Mike Coniglio/NOAA NSSL
Two key ingredients for severe storms are (1) energy driven by warm, moist air promoting strong updrafts, and (2) changing wind speed and direction, known as wind shear, which allows storms to become stronger and longer-lived. A third ingredient, which is harder to identify, is a trigger to get storms to form, such as a really hot day, or perhaps a cold front. Without this ingredient, not every favorable environment leads to severe storms or tornadoes, but the first two conditions still make severe storms more likely.
By using these ingredients to characterize the likelihood of severe storms and tornadoes forming, climate models can tell us something about the changing risk.
Rising global temperatures are driving significant changes for seasons that we traditionally think of as rarely producing severe weather. Stronger increases in warm humid air in fall, winter and early spring mean there will be more days with favorable severe thunderstorm environments – and when these storms occur, they have the potential for greater intensity.
What studies show about frequency and intensity
Over smaller areas, we can simulate thunderstorms in these future climates, which gets us closer to answering whether severe storms will form. Several studies have modeled changes to the frequency of intense storms to better understand this change to the environment.
We are already seeing evidence in the past few decades of shifts toward conditions more favorable for severe storms in the cooler seasons, while the summertime likelihood of storms forming is decreasing.
The December tornadoes destroyed homes and buildings in communities from Arkansas to Illinois and claimed dozens of lives, including people in Mayfield, Ky. Scott Olson/Getty Images
For tornadoes, things get trickier. Even in an otherwise spot-on forecast for the next day, there is no guarantee that a tornado will form. Only a small fraction of the storms produced in a favorable environment will produce a tornado at all.
Several simulations have explored what would happen if a tornado outbreak or a tornado-producing storm occurred at different levels of global warming. Projections suggest that stronger, tornado-producing storms may be more likely as global temperatures rise, though strengthened less than we might expect from the increase in available energy.
The impact of 1 degree of warming
Much of what we know about how a warming climate influences severe storms and tornadoes is regional, chiefly in the United States. Not all regions around the globe will see changes to severe storm environments at the same rate.
In a recent study, colleagues and I found that the rate of increase in severe storm environments will be greater in the Northern Hemisphere, and that it increases more at higher latitudes. In the United States, our research suggests that for each 1 degree Celsius (1.8 F) that the temperatures rises, a 14-25% increase in favorable environments is likely in spring, fall and winter, with the greatest increase in winter. This is driven predominantly by the increasing energy available due to higher temperatures. Keep in mind that this is about favorable environments, not necessarily tornadoes.
What does this say about December’s tornadoes?
To answer whether climate change influenced the likelihood or intensity of tornadoes in the December 2021 outbreak, it remains difficult to attribute any single event like this one to climate change. Shorter-term influences like the El Niño-Southern Oscillation may also complicate the picture.
There are certainly signals pointing in the direction of a stormier future, but how this manifests for tornadoes is an open area of research.
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================================================================ Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, this is an article aimed at general audiences. In the comments, another scientist addresses another aspect, and Professor Allen replaies that that was omitted deliberately to keep the article clearer for the general reader. In actuality, there are many factors which affect, say, tornadoes. As a general reader myself, I would ask something mike, “Given other contributing factors such as El Niño-Southern Oscillation, if surface warming were not present, would this tornado have happened when it did,. the way it did?” And I suspect the answer to that is “No.” But even if it’s only “Maybe,” I don’t understand why we still continue to take such chances with our and other people’s lives.
