Half-Hour Hurricanes (read this article in order to protect yourself)

[donsu]

http://www.counterpunch.com/fitz07282006.html

Where were the Warnings About St. Louis's Ultra Storm?

(this is a long article and hard to pick a few paragraphs to show it's importance)

As clips of hurricane-strength winds uprooting trees across St. Louis in late July made national news, many commentators spoke of the awesome power of nature. But this storm was not an act of god. It was an act of Exxon-Mobile and its friends. And they are not gods, even if they are treated as such by the White House.

Where were the warnings?

-snip-

The storm didn't seem real until it was over, maybe 30 minutes later. Needing to know if my organic garden needs water, I carefully watch the weather reports. But I couldn't remember any storm warnings. At home with no electricity, I look through the paper for the forecast for that day: "Humidity will be very high and the excessive heat warning remains in effect." Nothing about the possibility of a storm, not even a mention of rain or wind in the forecast.

-snip-

My woes were small compared to those who had roofs torn off, suffered from heat exhaustion, or were electrocuted from dangling wires. The original estimate of 490,000 customers losing electricity on Wednesday had been increased to 570,000 by Thursday. That day, the electric company received over 40,000 calls per hour. After Friday's storm, the electric company estimated that 1.1 million customers lost power at some point during the three days. On Wednesday, 55% of St. Louis was without power. By Friday, over 75% of the nearby communities of Florissant and Granite City had lost power. In Jennings, it was over 90%.

-snip-

The unspoken phrase

-snip-

This suggests that global warming feeds upon itself in cities. Cities not only suffer the increased heat that the rest of the world does, but, accumulate heat because of their high concrete to tree ratio. As storms down urban trees, the concrete to tree ratio rises even more, making the city hotter. With fewer shade from trees, there is more reliance on air conditioning, which spews hot air outside as the interior of the building is cooled. The greater heat contributes to more storms that fell more tree, increase the temperature, and so on.

-snip-

During the week following the storm, several themes were noticeable by their absence in the St. Louis press. Of course, the phrase "global warming" has been more studiously avoided than during discussions following Katrina. Similarly, there has been an exclusive focus on the danger of trees with no mention of their value in diminishing the effects of storms.

An interesting change occurred in the reporting of water main breaks. An early listing of storm damages described how bursts and cracks in water supply pipes had been caused by electrical fluctuations after power returned to pumping stations. This explanation was curiously absent from reports of a massive water main break following the second storm. On Friday evening, water flooded the basement of the St. Louis Science Center and forced the closure of Interstate 64. Coverage of motorboats being used to survey the damage reported it as an unrelated story and made no effort to explore whether it could be related to the storms.

-snip-

The ultra-storm
-snip-
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for your protection please read the whole article

I can see a time coming very SOON when we have to leave storm shudders on 24/7

cutting down trees to our peril

[woodsprite]

1. I'm reading it. Had a HORRIBLE storm blow thru last night

with wind gusts up to 70mph. I don't know how it happened, but we are on a 1 acre wooded lot and very little was damaged (thank goodness!).

[Liberty Belle]

2. This is deja vu. I was in St Louis when a tornado hit with no warning,

don't recall the year but it was the same year the 500-year floodwaters peaked there. I was at a writers' conference. The evening of our big banquet, two of our members were looking out the window of our luxury hotel and saw a tornado approaching.

Alarmed, they went down to the front desk and asked if we shouldn't be going into a storm shelter or something, because of the tornado.

The desk clerk's less-than-helpful reply?

"What tornado?"

Minutes later, it touched down at the airport, less than a mile away. It tore up a runway and caused enough damage to force the airport to close up.

St. Louis definitely needs a warning system!