Would You Live In This Frozen Apartment Block?

I hate cold rooms in the winter.

You sit around, you want to read a book, watch TV, whatever, and it's cold. By cold, I mean 64 degrees or so. I'm wimpy.

So I wrap myself in fleece or a blanket and go about my day.

Imagine, though, if you lived in a building that was filling up with ice.

That's the fate of some people who live in a Siberian apartment block, in which the heat system, which is supposed to be powered by hot water, basically fell apart.

The large apartment block in Irkutsk, Siberia, has been filling up with ice from those broken water pipes.

The weather in Irkutsk is currently mild by their standards. (Highs mostly in the teens, lows between 5 above and 10 below most days, which is a good five to 10 degrees above normal for them).

There are still a few corners of the building that have heat, and the few remaining residents are huddling in those parts of the structure.  But so far, municipal officials have not moved these families out of this obviously dangerous building.

On top of that, spring will eventually come to Irkutsk.  What will happen when that huge volume of ice within that building will melt?

Here's a news video about the situation, with some breathtaking images from inside the building:

Interesting Theory: Man Thinks Roundabouts Create Tornadoes

A Pennsylvania man thinks that roundabouts like this one
cause tornadoes. I'm not sure how, but this guy is confident.

For some reason, there has arguably been more tornadoes than usual this year and last year in Pennsylvania.

Nobody is sure why.  It's probably just bad luck. But a Pennsylvania man has a novel theory as to why his state has had more than its share of twisters.

Traffic roundabouts. That's right. Traffic circles.  This guy is convinced that the growing popularity of traffic circles and roundabouts is causing those Pennsylvania twisters. 

By the way, the man has an alternative pronunciation of the word "tornado." He pronounces it "tornader."

Here's what he said when he called into television station WNEP's "Talkback 16" segment:

"We didn't have tornaders here until we started putting in traffic circles. Cause, on account of the - you want to know why? When people go round and round in circles, it causes disturbances in the atmosphere, and causes tornaders."

That is, um, interesting explanation for Pennsylvania's bad weather. And laughable. Which means of course, this unidentified dude has gotten a lot of reaction on Twitter.

One person wrote: "Not to mention that carousel rides ramp up in the spring. A mere coincidence?"

Another Twitter wag said Donald Trump should appoint this tornader guy as EPA chief.

Yet another person wrote: "Jesus, tornado alley must be in England then. There is a roundabout everywhere there."

For the record, Great Britain, on average gets about 30 tornadoes per year. The United States, though admittably much larger, gets more than 1,000 twisters annually.

Where I live in Vermont, they've installed several roundabouts on the states roads in the past few years. The Green Mountain State averages one tornado per year, but we haven't had one in five years. I wonder what "tornader" guy thinks of that?

A Strange, Babyish "Solution" To Climate Change

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah says if we all get married and have
babies, climate change will be solved. Or something. 

Like most of us, I still haven't fully digested the "Green New Deal"

For those who have been living under a rock for the past several months, the Green New Deal is a sweeping, long-term proposal to deal with climate change in a multi-faceted way, while also taking care to deal with other social ills.

There's a lot of moving parts to the Green New Deal, and if it goes anywhere, it will change and change and change again. We'll be hearing about this for a long time. Probably as long as climate change remains a deep concern. In other words, practically forever.

A lot of Republicans don't like the Green New Deal and even mock it. That is understandable, because liberals are most likely in support of it, and the Green New Deal does contain a lot of proposals that people left of center would tend to like.

That's all and good. The debate over what to do about climate change is missing conservative voices. If there were serious proposals from conservatives, maybe we'd get some decent compromises, probably some new ideas and maybe a better game plan to deal with climate change.

However, too many conservatives dismiss climate change as a hoax, or God's will, or something nobody can do anything about.

Finally, though, we have a conservative voice in this! Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah stepped into the fray this week.

He said:

"This is the real solution to climate change: babies..the solution to so many of our problems at all times and in all places is to fall in love, get married, and have some kids."

Um, OK?

It's hard to fathom what Lee was getting at here. Maybe being married and having kids is so all-consuming and distracting that you don't notice climate change. Sort of, if you're too busy to notice the house is on fire, then the house isn't on fire.

As CNN reports, Lee went on to explain his logic here.  Lee said, "Problems of human imagination are not solved by more laws, they're solved by more humans..... More people mean bigger markets for more innovation. More babies mean forward-looking adults, the sort we need to tackle long-term, large scale problems."

Well, actually I agree with at least part of that whole-heartedly. We do need more forward looking adults capable of tackling long term, big problems like climate change.

So, I'll open up a can of worms here that will drive conservatives crazy. Let's welcome more immigrants!

Sure, we can't just let everybody come across our borders. The United States does need security and sovereignty, after all. But let's face it, Trump and his supporters are fighting tooth and nail to keep pretty much everybody out. Especially if they're people of color.  Can't have non-whites coming in, can we?

My point is, Lee is right, a steadily rising population is necessary for a strong, sociall, vibrant and economically sound nation brimming with new ideas. Yes, even if those ideas come from people of color.

Climate change activists note, with a lot of accuracy, that adding more people to the world doesn't solve climate change. It just boosts fossil fuel emissions, because the bigger the population, the more greenhouse gases end up in the atmosphere.

If so many people want to come into the United States and claim refugee status, let's look into it. Let's let more in, as long as they actually qualify for such status. Let's let in a fair number of immigrants, too.

You never know which ones might have some bright, smart ideas on climate change. Who knows if some kid from Guatamala comes up with a brilliant plan to stabilize the world's climate. Stranger things have happened.

Young people seem to have all the energy when it comes to climate change activism. They have the most to lose if global warming is not addressed. They're the activists here.

Of course, I'm giving Lee way too much credit here. He's just another Republican offering mocking talking points to a rabid, Trumpian base.

So we got from Lee the usual bullcrap stupidity of saying the Green New Deal aims to rid the world of airplanes and farting cows. Really. I'm not making this up. Lee also set up poster board sized pictures of things like Ronald Reagan riding a velociraptor. That's not made up, either.

Lee said that pic was meant to make us "consider the Green New Deal with the seriousness it deserves."

Again. Um, OK.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a principal backer of the Green New Deal, responded to Lee on Twitter thusly: "Like many woman + working people, I occasionally suffer from imposter syndrom: Those small moments, especially on hard days, where you wonder if the haters are right. But then they do things like this to clear it right up: If this guy can be Senator, you can do anything."

It doesn't seem like our government is going to respond to climate change in any real way, huh?

Winter Karma Hits Snowman Vandals

Somebody drive a truck into this nine-foot tall snowman in Kentucky,
hoping to topple it, but they didn't realize there was a giant
tree stump hidden under it. Somebody has a wrecked truck now. 

Earlier this month, some people in Kentucky celebrated a bout of winter weather by building an eight-foot tall snowman and named it Frosty.

Some idiot decided it would be fun to wreck it by driving their truck into it, says television station WLWT. 

Little did the pickup truck driver know, but the couple who built the snowman supported its base with a huge tree stump. The stump was hidden beneath the snow at Frosty's base.

The result, of course, was karma.

The people who live in the house where Frosty was came home from work to find tire tracks leading to the snowman. The stump beneath Frosty exposed, with an imprint of a bumper stuck into the remaining snow. Plus, Frosty remained standing, tall and proud.

There was surely damage to the pickup truck, but nobody knows who's it is.

Believe It Or Not, A Dust Storm In Greenland

Satellite view of a dust storm in Greenland of all places. Yep, they
can happen there and it's NOT global warming

We all think of Greenland as an incredible cold, forbidding place. It's basically an enormous pile of ice.

But as the Weather Channel points out, you can actually get dust storms up there. A satellite passing overhead recently took a photo of one.

These dust storms aren't anything huge like you see in the Desert Southwest or near the Sahara Desert or something like that. But they do get cranking up in Greenland.

They get going close to the coast, where snow and ice usually melt away during the summer.

Here's how it all happens:

Water from melting glaciers flows into a flood plain, then either recedes or evaporates. The sediment left behind consists of a very fine powder called glacial flour, which is created by the grinding of glaciers and pulverizing rock.

When the glacial flour dries out, strong winds can send it airborne, creating these far northern dust storms.

Unlike seemingly everything else that goes on in Greenland, which seems to be the go-to bellwether for climate change, the dust storms have nothing to do with global warming.

These little Greenland dust storms have been reported over many decades. Satellite photos rarely capture them because it's usually too cloudy to see them. This time, the skies cleared and the satellite got a nice shot of this dust storm.

"Baboon" Cuts Power In Phoenix As Auto Correct Reigns

This baboon, I mean haboob, which is a big dust storm, cut power
to an Arizona Diamondbacks game Monday.  ESPN accidentally
reported the problem was cause by a baboon. Damn autocorrect!

The Major League Baseball game in Phoenix Monday between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Texas Rangers was delayed by a power failure.

ESPN reporter Pedro Gomez was quick with the explanation in this tweet: "@Rangers and @Dbacks delayed because a baboon went through town and overloaded the grid, knocking some lights out." 

That is one powerful ape!

Turns out, as you can imagine, it wasn't a baboon cutting the power in Phoenix, but a haboob, which is one of those raging dust storms that often sweep through Arizona during the summer monsoon season.

The storm was severe. Tens of thousands of people lost power. A palm tree snapped in half and crashed through the roof of a house. Outside of Phoenix, high winds upended a mobile home and flash flooding was reported

And damn autocorrect victimized Gomez.

Haboobs form when strong downdrafts from summer thunderstorms stir up walls of dust that sweep through the desert, and sometimes through cities like Phoenix. They are dangerous, cutting visibiity on roads to next to nothing. People sometimes die in highway crashes in haboobs.

However, autocorrect.

You  have to wonder if the mascot for the NBA Phoenix Suns had something to do with this. Their mascot, the Suns Gorilla, said on Twitter he had an alibi, that he was out on a date with Shania Twain.

Yeah, Twitter is a weird place.

Gomez later tweeted that the Diamondbacks should sign this mystery baboom he created. "Looked like he had a power arm," he tweeted.

On my Mac, autocorrect keeps changing "haboob" to "kabob" which sounds like a tasty way to cut electricity to a major city like Pheonix.

I have to wonder what autocorrect has in store for other weather terms that have been in the news lately, like "pyrocumulus" "Bermuda High" "monsoon" and "precipitable water."

Maybe I should experiment.

Texas Weather Hazard: Heat Causes Tortilla Chip Fires

Austin, Texas firefighters battling a tortilla chip fire at a factory. A
heat wave set off the fires

Texas is certainly a hotbed of weather risks.

It's a land of epic floods, like Hurricane Harvey last year. It's a place the experiences horrible droughts. Dust storms. Destructive tornadoes. Hail the size of canned hams, as David Letterman would put it. 

And big heat waves. Not to mention tortilla chip fires. Wait, what?

It was so hot in Austin, Texas this past week that firefighters there dealt with a rash of tortilla chip waste fires.

According to CNN, a tortilla chip factory there was testing a new way to get rid of chip waste from the manufacturing process.  Says CNN:

"The company crushed the chips into a fine, powder like substance and put the powder into boxes that soaked up oil, Austin Fire Department division chief Palm Buck told CNN.

When the weather heated up, the chip dust heated up too -- and burst into flames. 'Certainly, tortilla chips was a new thing for us,' Buck said."

It definitely has been hot in Austin. Each of the past five days have been over 100 degrees, with a high temperature of 104 degrees reported Thursday and Friday. These are record high temperatures for the region.

Luckily, the boxes were stored outside the factory building, so the company can still keep cranking out tortilla chips in their undamaged building.

When firefighters arrived to put out the fires, new blazes kept breaking out in the boxes of tortilla chip powder. Firefighters were called to the scene three times last week, and stayed overnight one night to monitor the chip dust boxes. Finally, the fire department submerged the waste in water to prevent more fires.

Which is a good thing. The forecast for Austin calls for 100 degree temperatures through next Saturday, with a high of 107 degrees predicted for Monday.

Snow Cools Down Big Heat Wave In Vermont Town

An honest to goodness sledding hill during the middle
of an intense July heat wave in Vermont. Photo by Amy
Kolb Noyes/VPR 

Last week, while temperatures were well into the 90s across Vermont, kids were sledding on snow - real snow - in Craftsbury, Vermont.

It wasn't that some weird local cold pocket developed, though Craftsbury isn't normally the warmest place in Vermont. As Vermont Public Radio reports, the Craftsbury Nordic Center is experimenting with ways to store snow over the summer.

The VPR article, which is totally worth the read, tells us that because of increasingly iffy winters likely due to climate change, the Nordic Center is trying to adapt for ski season moments when the snow is lacking.

Says VPR: 

"'We're experimenting with storing snow, explained Outdoor Center co-ower Judy Geer,  'because the climate is changing and it's not enough to have snowmaking anymore because you might not get weather cold enough to make snow. And so, this way if we make snow when the weather's really cold in the winterime and save it, that way we can make it when it's more energy efficient and environmentally effective."

Craftsbury Nordic Center's summer snow storage scheme is actually pretty old school.  In past centuries, people went to ice houses in the summer to get ice to cool their food. The ice was covered in sawdust to prevent it from melting.

Craftsbury uses wood chips to cover the snow and keep it from the harsh heat of the summer. They haven't perfected it yet, and are experimenting and measuring the snow piles to see which methods preserve it the best.

Last week, during the heat wave, the Nordic Center uncovered the snow to help throw an icy block party during the record heat. They spread the snow out onto a sledding hill for everyone to enjoy. The timing was exquisite, given the hot spell.

The old saying is Vermont has nine months of winter and three months of poor sledding. But in Craftsbury at least, that old cliche went out the window.

When the July sledding party was over, the Craftsbury Nordic Center covered any unmelted snow back up to continue their summer storage experiments.

Again, click on the link to get the whole story. Cool story, pun intended.

Did Mardi Gras Beads Contribute (Slightly) To New Orleans Flooding?

Workers remove discarded Mardi Gras beads that had been
clogging a catch basin in New Orleans. Photo by Max
Becherer/New Orleans Advocate 

Mardi Gras is fast approaching and the city of New Orleans is in full party mode. The festivities obviously include all those strings of beads that are being thrown around at parade after parade.

Everything has a dark side and those beads have a small dark side. They contributed, at least in a small way, to a damaging flood in New Orleans last August.

Ten inches of rain doused the low-lying city in early August 2017, which as you would imagine caused that destructive flood. It turns out the flooding was made worse by a drainage system that hadn't been adequately maintained in years.

This prompted an emergency cleaning program of the city's catch basins, which turned out were clogged with debris. This allowed water to accumulate in the torrential downpours more than it otherwise would have.

Workers removed 7.2 million pounds of debris from the catch basins, says The New Orleans Advocate. An admittedly small part of that debris problem was the Mardi Gras beads. About 93.000 pounds of the beads were removed from the catch basins during the cleanup.

Going forward, New Orleans will clean more catch basins annually than in previous years, to keep up with the debris removal. In and near the French Quarter, where most of the Mardi Gras festivities take place, clean up crews will sweep litter after parties and parades to the middle of the street for pickup and disposal.

They used to sweep the debris to the sides of the streets, making it more likely Mardi Gras beads could fall into catch basins.

Other cities, even here in Burlington, Vermont also have Mardi Gras celebrations. (Burlington holds their Mardi Gras celebration on March 10 this year.) Time to check the catch basins in those towns?

Best TV Weather Segment Ever Includes Forecasts Of Farts And Toots

A little kid named Houston crashed a Mississippi television
meteorologist''s segment to forecast "farts and toots."

Residents in and near Jackson, Mississippi were probably startled, and maybe delighted, that their televisied weather forecast included the chance of farts.

Probably delighted because the scary news was delivered by a little boy who crashed an adult meteorologist's on-air weather forecast.

The WBLT-TV forecast presented by meteorologist Patrick Ellis on a recent Saturday began benignly enough.

Ellis said the area was under a threat of light showers, but that dry air over Mississippi would squelch most of the showers.

So, nothing extreme to worry about among Mississippi weather watchers.

That's when a young kid named Houston decided to spice up the ho-hum weather forecast a little bit, says Adweek's TVSpy website. 

Houston burst onto the set during Ellis' segment to warn viewers that "farts and toots" were also in the forecast. It looks like Houston demonstrated the threat of this "dangerous" weather by letting one loose himself.

You can see the delightful video at the bottom of this post.

It turns out that WLBT that local lawyers are sometimes invited onto the news set during the station's 6 p.m. Saturday broadcast. Often, these lawyers bring their kids to see how a local television news cast is run.

Usually, this doesn't cause much excitement. This time it did. "This Saturday was a little different....This Saturday our friend Houston decided he wanted to be on television."

When you watch the clip, it's great to see that Ellis just rolls with the situation until Houston's father abruptly pulls Houston off the air, pre-empting what could have been a really glorious weather forecast.

Here's the clip:

Hair Freezing Contest Puts Fun Into Frigid Yukon

Participants in the frozen hair style contest in
Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada.

Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada is definitely one of the world's cold spots.

In the winter, the temperature is almost alwaysbelow zero.

So what better place to have a frozen hair style contest.

Uh, what?

Yeah, it involves getting people to create the most unique hair style possible by freezing their hair.

Here's how it works. There's a resort near Whitehorse called Takhini Hot Springs, where people can soak in water that has a temperature of about 100 degrees.

The pools are outside, and the contest starts when the temperature dips into the minus 20s, which happens a lot in Whitehorse.

People get their hair wet, wait a few minutes until it starts to freeze and get stiff, and style it in such a way that is, uh, different.  (Everybody stays immersed in the water up to their necks so they stay warm, except for their hair.)

I guess when it's winter, and you have cabin fever, you've got to think of something differnet to do, so why not freeze your hair?