by Bill Evans
If you are outside during a thunderstorm and you feel your hair start to stand on end, or if you’re fishing and your line appears to just hang in the air when you cast, or if you are wearing a raincoat that feels like it’s lifting into the air, lightning will strike soon. You are feeling the static electrical charges in the air mounting. Get to a place of safety immediately!
There’s electricity in the air!
Kid Gizmo; used by permission.
This Dude Is ’da Man! The Story of Roy Sullivan
“Lightning set my underclothes on fire!” said Roy Sullivan to a captivated audience on the 1980s TV show, That’s Incredible! Roy was a ranger in the Shenandoah National Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. He was dubbed the “human lightning rod.” He had been stuck by lightning eight times. That’s right, in eight separate incidents he was struck by lightning and lived! Roy owns a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for being struck by lightning more than any other human being.
The first hit he took was while he was standing in the park’s lookout tower in 1942. His only injury was the loss of a big toenail. In 1969, Roy’s eyebrows were singed when lightning struck him while he was driving along a mountain road. A year later he was walking across his yard when lightning zapped him again, searing his left shoulder.
In 1972, he was struck a fourth time while working in the ranger station. The lightning set his hair on fire! He grabbed a bucket of water and poured it over his head to put out the flames. “I’m just allergic to lightning,” he said at the time.
While on patrol in the Shenandoah National Park in 1973, Roy saw a storm cloud forming and drove away quickly. He said the cloud seemed to follow him. He thought he had outrun it, but when he got out of his truck, lightning struck him for the fifth time and left him with an injured ankle.
Just when you thought his luck might turn for the better, it got worse! While fishing in a fresh-water pond on a Saturday morning in 1977, lightning struck Roy for the seventh time, hitting him in the top of the head and traveling down his right side. With his hair singed and burns on his chest and stomach, Roy staggered toward his car. As he stumbled down the trail, a bear appeared and tried to swipe three trout from his fishing line! Despite everything that had happened, Roy managed to find the courage and strength to smack the bear with a branch. That was the twenty-second bear he had hit in his lifetime.
In the early 1980s, Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning for the eighth time. Roy just seemed to attract lightning. But despite the number of times he was zapped, he was never seriously hurt! He believed that an unseen force was trying to destroy him. He told a reporter once, “I don’t believe God is after me. If he were, the first bolt would have been enough.”
Oddly enough, Roy lived in a town named Dooms!
If I were as lucky as Roy, I would have bought a lottery ticket!
* * *
A Classic Literary Moment
One blinding flash after another came, and peal on peal of deafening thunder. And now a drenching rain poured down and the rising hurricane drove it in sheets along the ground. The boys cried out to each other, but the roaring wind and the booming thunderblasts drowned their voices utterly.
—Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
* * *
Holy Cow! It’s Raining Lightning!
David Dewhurst; used by permission.
Lightning takes many different forms and shapes. All lightning discharges occur in the same manner, but the conditions under which they develop and are viewed make the flash look different. Scientists and ordinary people have given different types of lighting interesting names, such as:
Andes Lightning
Anvil Crawler
Ball Lightning
Band Lightning
Beaded Lightning
Black Lightning
Blue Jet
Chain Lightning
Cloud-to-Air Lightning
Cloud-to-Cloud Lightning
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce
Cloud-to-Ground Lightning
Corona Discharge
Dry Lightning
Fillet Lightning
Forked Lightning
Globe Lightning
Heat Lightning
Pearl Lightning
Ribbon Lightning
Rocket Lightning
Sheet Lightning
Sprite
Stellar Lightning
St. Elmo’s Fire
Streak Lightning
Thunderbolt
Zigzag Lightning
Did you know the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second? I wonder how fast lightning would be if it didn’t zigzag!!
Could Someone Please, Please, Give Me a Glass of Water?—Drought
Kangaroo in drought conditions
Kumalie Walker; used by permission.
Droughts are extremely prolonged weather events that cause severe environmental, economic, and sociological damage. A drought is simply a long period—a season or more—of dry weather. During a drought, there is either no precipitation or much, much less than normal. Droughts can last for months, or even years.
Unlike wet weather events like thunderstorms and hurricanes, which have a somewhat predictable life cycle and timetable, there is no certain time that a drought begins or ends. The most famous droughts in U.S. history occurred in the 1930s, at the same time as a massive heat wave. These two conditions created one of the greatest and most devastating weather disasters ever. And to top it all off, this happened at the time of the Great Depression, when the U.S. economy was at an all-time low.
Poor farming practices and years of sustained drought were the cause of the Dust Bowl, an area of more than 50 million acres that stretched from Texas to Canada, and from Colorado to Illinois. Farmers deeply plowed the Plains grasslands and planted wheat. Even though the drought continued, farmers kept planting—and nothing grew.
The plants that held the topsoil in place were gone. Windstorms blew that topsoil into rolling clouds of dust, which turned day into night. At one point during 1935, the Texas Panhandle saw 38 days of continuous storms that sent dust all the way from the Great Plains to the East Coast and out to sea. Dust deposits were reported on ships as far as 300 miles from the coast!
A lake during a prolonged drought
Realine Media; used by permission.
Droughts are not a thing of the past. There are droughts going on all over the Earth almost all the time. In 2002, Colorado reported its driest year since record keeping began in 1895. Wildfires, out of control due to parch conditions, burned over a million acres in Arizona and Colorado.
Drought is measured on a scale called the Palmer Index.
* * *
Palmer Drought Severity Index
PALMER INDEX
SOIL MOISTURE
Above +4
Extremely Moist
+3 to +4
Very Moist
+2 to +3
Moist
-2 to +2
Average, Normal
-2 to -3
Dry
-3 to -4
Very Dry
Below -4
Extremely Dry
* * *
The positive numbers mean that above-normal soil conditions exist, with +4 being extremely moist. The negative numbers mean that the soil is extremely dry, with -4 being the worst. Negative numbers can lead to devastating conditions.
U.S. Drought Monitor maps are issued weekly by the Climate Prediction Center of NOAA. These maps show areas around the country which are effected by drought. In 2003, states in the Great Plains and in the West experienced one of the worst droughts in 108 years.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce
* * *
Another Classic Literary Moment
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is one of my favorite books. This is from that classic 1939 novel:
And then the disposs
essed were drawn west—from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless—restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do—to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut—anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land.
* * *
Watering restrictions during droughts can lead to “brown lawn.”
David Sobotta; used by permission.
Someone Please Give Me Some A/C!
Wherever I go, I love to eavesdrop on people who are talking about the weather. One of my favorite topics—besides hearing that meteorologists always get it wrong—is when people compare heat in the eastern United States to the heat in the western United States. They say, “Yeah, but out west, it’s a dry heat; in the east, we have the humidity!” The argument that “it’s the humidity, not the heat” is pretty much a nonstarter. From June through August, the U.S. Southwest broils in 110ºF heat and that’s uncomfortably hot no matter what the humidity!
Compare the two charts. One shows average annual temperature; the other, average temperatures just in July. You’ll see a heck of a difference!
* * *
Fifteen Hottest Major Cities in the United States—Average Annual Temperatures, 1970–2000
LOCATION
TEMPERATURE
Key West, FL
78.0°F (25.6°C)
Honolulu, HI
77.5°F (25.3°C)
Miami, FL
76.6°F (24.8°C)
Fort Lauderdale, FL
75.7°F (24.3°C)
West Palm Beach, FL
75.3°F (24.1°C)
Fort Myers, FL
74.9°F (23.8°C)
Yuma, AZ
74.6°F (23.7°C)
Hilo, HI
74.1°F (23.4°C)
St. Petersburg, FL
74.1°F (23.4°C)
Brownsville, TX
74.0°F (23.3°C)
Phoenix, AZ
73.9°F (23.3°C)
Palm Springs, CA
73.8°F (23.2°C)
Laredo, TX
73.7°F (23.2°C)
Orlando, FL
72.7°F (22.6°C)
Corpus Christi, TX
72.1°F (22.3°C)
* * *
* * *
Fifteen Hottest Major Cities in the United States—Average July Maximum Temperatures, 1970–2000
LOCATION
TEMPERATURE
Palm Springs, CA
108.3°F (42.4°C)
Yuma, AZ
107.0°F (41.7°C)
Phoenix, AZ
106.0°F (41.1°C)
Las Vegas, NV
104.1°F (40.1°C)
Tucson, AZ
101.0°F (38.3°C)
Presidio, TX
100.6°F (38.1°C)
Laredo, TX
100.5°F (38.1°C)
Redding, CA
99.5°F (37.5°C)
Bakersfield, CA
98.2°F (36.8°C)
Fresno, CA
98.1°F (36.7°C)
Wichita Falls, TX
97.6°F (36.4°C)
Waco, TX
96.7°F (35.9°C)
Dallas–Ft. Worth, TX
96.3°F (35.7°C)
Del Rio, TX
96.2°F (35.7°C)
El Paso, TX
95.5°F (35.3°C)
* * *
That’s Why It’s Called Death Valley!
Death Valley is the hottest place in the world! No one will live there until someone comes up with an operation to replace your appendix with central air-conditioning. It is located in southern California, and has the most extreme heat of any area on Earth! Imagine a vast expanse of sand, littered with animal bones—with maybe some human ones thrown in—and, well, you get the picture.
Death Valley’s maximum temperature of 134ºF (56.7°C), recorded on July 10, 1913, is the hottest temperature ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere. That temperature is surpassed by only one other city in the world: Al Aziziyah, Libya, which once recorded a temperature of 136.4ºF (57.8°C) on September 22, 1922.
What makes Death Valley unique is that it’s consistently hot. The longest stretch of consecutive days with a maximum of 100°F (37.8°C) or higher was 154 days in 2001. This is only eclipsed by Marble Bar, West Australia, which had a run of 161 consecutive days with highs of 100°F (37.8°C) or more in 1923–1924.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce
July 2006 was Death Valley’s hottest month on record: the average temperature was 106ºF (41°C)! And on July 19, 2005, the temperature ranged from a low of 101ºF (38°C) to a high of 129ºF (54°C), meaning the daily average was 115ºF (46°C). That’s likely to be the hottest average daily temperature ever recorded anywhere in the world.
What did one skeleton lying in Death Valley say to the other? “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity!”
Putting ice down your pants sounds like a good idea about now!
* * *
Is My State the Warmest, or Just Very Friendly?
(Annual Maximum July Temperatures from 1971–2000)
STATE
TEMPERATURE
LOCATION
Alabama
93.6°F (34.2°C)
Bessemer
Alaska
73.9°F (26.3°C)
Central
Arizona
112.5°F (44.7°C)
Willow Beach
Arkansas
94.7°F (34.8°C)
Blue Mountain Dam
California
114.9°F (46.1°C)
Death Valley
Colorado
94.9°F (34.9°C)
Uravan
Connecticut
85.4°F (29.7°C)
Stamford
Delaware
87.6°F (30.9°C)
Newark
Florida
94.7°F (34.8°C)
Lakeland
Georgia
94.7°F (34.8°C)
Waycross
Hawaii
88.9°F (31.6°C)
Honolulu
Idaho
91.2°F (32.9°C)
Glenns Ferry
Illinois
91.2°F (32.9°C)
Kaskaskia River Lock
Indiana
90.5°F (32.5°C)
Evansville
Iowa
88.3°F (31.3°C)
Keosauqua
Kansas
95.9°F (35.5°C)
Wilmore
Kentucky
93.6°F (34.2°C)
Gilbertsville Dam
Louisiana
94.5°F (34.7°C)
Calhoun Research Station
Maine
82.5°F (28.1°C)
Sanford
Maryland
90.6°F (32.6°C)
Baltimore
Massachusetts
85.5°F (29.7°C)
Chester
Michigan
85.7°F (29.8°C)
Dearborn
Minnesota
85.5°F (29.7°C)
Chaska
Mississippi
93.0°F (33.9°C)
Belzoni
Missouri
92.8°F (33.8°C)
Kennett
Montana
91.5°F (33.1°C)
Brandenburg
Nebraska
93.3°F (34.1°C)
Beaver City
Nevada
108.4°F (42.4°C)
Laughlin
New Hampshire
83.2°F (28.4°C)
Durham
New Jersey
88.1°F (31.2°C)
Woodtown
&
nbsp; New Mexico
91.1°F (32.8°C)
Lordsburg
New York
86.0°F (30.0°C)
Scarsdale
North Carolina
86.2°F (30.1°C)
Whiteville
North Dakota
86.2°F (30.1°C)
Medora
Ohio
88.1°F (31.2°C)
Fairfield
Oklahoma
98.6°F (37.0°C)
Chattanooga
Oregon
95.4°F (35.2°C)
Pelton Dam
Pennsylvania
87.6°F (30.9°C)
Hanover
Rhode Island
82.6°F (28.1°C)
Providence
South Carolina
95.2°F (35.1°C)
Columbia (Univ. of SC)