Weather Disasters And Coronavirus: It's Complicated, For Sure

Hundreds of houses destroyed by an Oklahoma tornado in 2013. How
would you shelter all those people during and after a similar tornado
during the coronavirus pandemic? Emergency officials in much
of the nation are mulling that questio. 

Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes are still a good bet later today in and around Illinois, which means people will have to take shelter.

But where?  The coronavirus has us hunkered down in our houses already.

Of course, houses with basements are fine. You get a tornado warning and head for the basement. But lots of homes and entire neighborhoods rely on community storm shelters when tornadoes threaten.

The risk, aside from the actual tornadoes, is that some people who think there are available storm shelters for them when there might not be.

Some community storm shelters might be shuttered because of the coronavirus threat.  The pandemic has altered the entire world, so all the familiar rules are gone. It's up to local officials to decide which shelter is open and which is closed, so everybody will need to check.

The situation in Illinois is particularly dangerous today.  NOAA's Storm Prediction Center is considering whether to upgrade the risk to its highest level because of the possibility of very strong, long lasting tornadoes in Illinois later today.

People have been advised to figure out by this morning where to take shelter before by this morning to know where to go when the severe weather starts. By the time tornadoes form and warnings are issued, it's too late to begin considering where to take shelter.

This is especially true with this potential Illinois outbreak: Any tornadoes that form are expected to have a forward speed of 60 mph. That's awfully fast. Warnings won't be issued much in advance of the tornadoes hitting, and you won't be able to outrun them in a car.

Assuming community shelters are open, people might be hesitant to crowd into these places with lots of other people. After all, the experts unanimously tell us to stay home, and if we must go out, remain at least six feet away from other people if at all possible.

That's impossible in storm shelters. It's not a great choice, but the bigger danger is the tornado. The National Weather Service advises people to take the shelter from the tornado, and then worry about coronavirus after the storm.  The tornado, when it's happening, is the more dire of the two events.

It's only late March, so the tornado season is just beginning in earnest. It peaks from April to early June. Today's situation in Illinois will almost certainly repeat itself pretty frequently in one fashion or the other over the coming weeks.

Lots of places are already thinking about this, which is good. For instance, officials around Kansas City, which is definitely a tornado-prone area of the nation, said they have contingency plans for a weather disaster atop of the coronavirus outbreak, according to local news station FOX4

The pandemic makes things much more complicated, though.  How do you treat people injured in storms while avoiding Covid-19?  What about people whose homes have been destroyed by a tornado? Where do you put them and keep them safe?  What about cleanup and recovery? Rebuilding? Insurance and government permits for that rebuilding?

According to FOX4 in Kansas City, the planning continues.

"'Unfortunately, Mother Nature doesn't slow down because of Covid-19,' Matt May, the emergency management director of Wyandotte County, told FOX4. 'People are having those conversatios about what we woul do if we had a tornado now.'"

An even bigger problem could unfold in the late summer and autumn if the coronavirus pandemic in the United States remains uncontrolled. By then, it will be hurricane season.  Landfalling hurricanes in the U.S. and elsewhere require mass evacuations often involving tens or even hundreds of thousands of people. You end up with thousands of people packed cheek to jowl in emergency shelters.

People can only hope that the coronavirus pandemic fades out by August, when hurricanes really begin to crank.  Otherwise, that'll be yet another reason why we're really screwed.

Meanwhile the severe weather this weekend in the Midwest is just beginning to crank up, and will only get worst later today Some video:

Here's some hail damaging cars in Jefferson City, Missouri last night, as viewed by someone on their apartment balcony.  Some understandable NSFW language in here.

Heads Ups: Could Be Messy Travel Heading Into Next Christmas Weekend

I don't know if Christmas weekend travel will be as dicey as
in this photo, but there is a definitely potential for wintry storms
in Vermont and surrounding areas Friday through Christmas Day.

Christmas is a week from Monday already, and it's time to start traveling to visit friends and relatives. My husband flew off to South Dakota this morning. Luckily, there's no major weather issues in his flight path, so that's good.

Many of the rest of us won't be so lucky. It's looking rather stormy, especially in the eastern part of the country, as we head toward next weekend.

I'll mainly focus on here in Vermont and surrounding areas, at least at first. Expect some pretty big swings in temperatures and weather conditions all week as you finish your Christmas shopping and get set to travel.

It was certainly cold as heck this Sunday morning, as temperatures across most of the region dropped below zero again - the second time in a week that's happened.

It'll be a little better this afternoon - teens to around 20 - before other big changes come. It'll continue warming up Monday. That'll come with a price. It always does. There will be some snow showers around, maybe even some freezing drizzle as we keep warming well into the 20s.

Tuesday brings a brief thaw, with temperatures around 40, with showers. And some wet snow in the mountains. So it'll get sloppy and slushy.

Then another cold front comes through by Wednesday morning. It'll get pretty cold again, and Tuesday's slush will turn into sheets of ice. And crusty snow. Watch out under foot. It'll be slip and slide weather for you pedestrians Wednesday and Thursday. Roads could be kinda slippery Wednesday morning, too.

From there, big changes come again. Another storm system is expected to arrive Friday and Saturday. At this point, it looks like a warm one, at least around here. That probably means snow to icy precipitation to rain and back to snow at the end. This storm is nearly a week away, so it's hard to tell exactly what it's going to do. Stay tuned for updates, but what I've described looks like the scenario at this point.

Along the East Coast, it looks like there will be rain, with a fair amount of snow in the Great Lakes region. This storm should be over for almost everyone by Saturday afternoon and evening. However, some indications are that another storm could spread coastal rain and inland snow across the Northeast on Christmas Day.

There's even a chance it could be a fairly substantial snow. But looking at things eight days in advance, it's very hard to tell if that scenario will play out or not.  Could be a bust. Don't count on that storm yet, for sure. We'll see how it turns out.

It also looks like a very strong cold snap will begin to invade the Northern Plains and Great Lakes next weekend, and intensify on Christmas a few days thereafter. That very cold air will probably reach the Northeast after that maybe storm on Christmas. It's definitely looking like a very active weather pattern through the end of the year, and possibly into the beginning of 2018.

Next Up: Climate March On Washington

There's a huge climate march planned on April 29 to
protest the Trump administration's expected inaction
on climate change. I'm sure there will be other marches
in other cities, including one near you. 

Big demonstrations against President Donald Trump's policies are all the rage already, just two weeks into his term.

The big Women's March, huge in Washington and all around the United States, hit just one day after Trump was inaugurated.

Over the weekend, big demonstrations blossomed nationwide as Trump invoked an executive order banning many immigrants and travelers from certain Muslim countries.

I'm sure there will be many more marches and protests, and one potential biggie that is formulating is a march on climate change.

That demonstration still seems to be in its developmental stages, so I'm not sure on the particulars yet.  I'm guessing, though, that it's going to be pretty big, and take place in many cities across the United States and the world, not just in Washington DC.

I've seen planned dates for this demonstration to be on April 29.  It would make sense to have the big protest then, since it's close to Earth Day.

350.org, the big climate activist group, has scheduled April 29 as the big march dates, so that's why I'm 99 percent sure it will be then.

Here's what the 350.org web site has to say about this:

"That's  the date of the People's Climate Mobilization, a major march in Washington DC when we will come together with hundreds of thousands of people to reject Trump's attack on our communities and climate, amd push forward with our vision of a clean energy economy that works for all."

As I said, I'm sure there will be marches in other cities on that date for people who can't make it to Washington.

Meanwhile, there's also going to be a March For Science on Earth Day, April 22. This one isn't limited to climate change issues but certainly involves the subject. It's meant to demonstrate facts, science and peer review are much more important and reliable than made up facts meant to fulfill a political narrative.

It'll be interesting to see how many people turn out for these climate and science marches on April 22 and 29. There's no doubt climate change is a real biggie on the importance scale.

Yet there's so many competing issues people are outraged about in the here and now. Refugees, freedoms, the economy, you name it.

Of course climate change is happening this very second and the longer we dawdle the worse the problems will be in the future. However, human nature, being what it is, tends not to look at the hazard that is perceived to be down the road. They look at what the see right in front of their noses.

That's not to discourage the climate march. I hope LOTS of people attend and make their voices heard. Let's break some crowd records with this one.