CDR: Re: Weather

[Jim Choate]

On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, Templeton, Stuart wrote:

> i think the weather thing has more to do with the agricultural background of
> the country, and how this influenced the development of American Society at
> an early stage.

No, it's because the continent of the US is larger and as a consequence
the weather tends to be more violent. Got something to do with the size of
the air masses and their ability to store energy. Review some good weather
texts. [1]

We have hurricanes, tornadoes, flash floods, locust swarms (here in Texas
every year they get so thick you can literaly sweep them with a broom),
etc. at a much higher rate than Europe.

And anyone who hasn't seen a Force 5 tornado literaly rip the slabs of
houses out of the ground and sling them for over a mile, or a playing card
stuck edge on in a telephone pole, or ever seen a 20 ft storm surge come
in (I grew up around Galveston & Freeport and used to surf the hurricane
surges) will never understand keeping an eye on the weather.

When was the last time a town literaly ceased to exist, except for an
empty cow pasture, in less than 30 minutes due to a tornado in Europe? No
houses, no fences, no trees. If you'd like to see an example review
Gerrold, TX and the F5 that hit there a coule of years ago. And we get mud
slides that will match anything in Meditteranean Europe (roughly same
latitude...hmmm).

All that flooding that Europe is going ga ga over we get here in the SW
every fucking year. Hell, we had 4in. of rain in about an hour last week
for example. The lake that was very low two weeks ago is now within 2
feet of being full. The lake is held at half depth normaly (for flood
control) and runs about 680ft. It holds over a million acre-feet of
flood storage at that level. You do the math. Our flow rates at some of 
the damns went from less than 100 cfm to over 20,000 in less than a day.
Crests were 12+ feet over flood for example. And we've got another one
coming this weekend. When I was about 7 or so (1967?) it rained for 28
days straight in Galveston. I have this vivid memory of us driving through
flooded Houston in my dad's truck getting a giggle out of the thousands of
stranded cars sitting in water that went halfway to the windows just so
we could get my Aunt who worked on the other side of town and couldn't
get out. There's a reason the houses down there are built on stilts and
3-4 ft pier-and-beam slabs.

But it's not just Europeans, even yankee's (northerners) get a lot of guff
about the weather. In Chicago we see reports of people dying when the
temp. hits the high 90's for a few days. It stays hi 90's here in Austin
for months. We had 2 weeks of over 100 temperature and the nightly temps
don't get below 90. Yet we have very few if any deaths. And I've yet to
meet anyone who doesn't stand in awe at the Texas thunder bumpers.
Lightning and thunder like no place on Earth, except Florida.

The flip side is that we, in the SW at least, don't know shit about cold
weather and feet of snow. A cold winter for us is several 3-4 day stints
of sub-freezing, above zero, temperature (though you don't usualy hear of
anyone dying there either). When it snows here in Austin (and it doesn't
melt instantly) the entire town literaly closes up and eveyrone goes out
and plays in it. Drives folks from the cold climes absolutely batty.

There's an old saw about Texas,

If you don't like the weather, wait a few minutes. It'll change.

[1] Dynamics of Atmospheric Motion
   J.A. Dutton
   ISBN 0-486-68486-5 (Dover)
   $18 US
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