It's Raining Fish and Spiders

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It's Raining Fish and Spiders Page 15

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)

 

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