Shelters for cold weather emergencies

During severe cold, DC's Homeland Security & Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA) (a city-level version of FEMA) opens "warming centers" and emergency shelters, typically at schools & recreation centers. They're often managed by the Red Cross.

I've run a few, including one in Maryland during the "Snowmageddon" blizzard.

Flash Flooding

A tragic event: at least nine people were killed by a flash flood in Arizona. It was sunny with no sign of rain, but a storm upriver generated it.

Video

Here is advice from the National Weather Service:

FLASH FLOOD SAFETY
http://www.floodsafety.noaa.gov/

On average, more people are killed by flooding than by any other single severe weather hazard, including tornadoes, lightning, and hurricanes. Most of these deaths occur at night, when it is more difficult to recognize flood dangers, and when people are trapped in vehicles.

Remember…

ClusterFlake 2014

DisasterMan was in the South to witness "ClusterFlake" firsthand. In fairness to them:

1. It wasn't the 2-3" of snow that was the problem. It was the ice that screwed up traffic.
2. Significant snow is so rare there that it's not worth spending money on plows, sand trucks, and other things to prep for it.
3. In Alabama, the forecasters really did get it wrong, saying it would fall farther south.

In Georgia, however, despite what the Governor claimed, the forecasters gave plenty of warning of where it would fall and how much. State and local officials just didn't listen. When the National Weather Service was saying to only travel in an emergency, why did they open the schools??

Anyway, it's easy to scoff at anyone farther south than you, but Japan has us all beat. You think you've got it rough? How about 50 feet of snow? Amazing pics here.

Sandy Twits

Today in the Twitter-verse:

     @lindsaylohan: WHY is everyone in SUCH a panic about hurricane (i'm calling it Sally)..? Stop projecting negativity! Think positive and pray for peace.

Oh wait, she and others have renamed it now:

    "It was nicknamed Hurricane Sassy during a Tyler Oakley twitcam on October 28, 2012 by Tyler Oakley, Alexander Gold, Lindsay Lohan, and Nikki Wood..."

More tweets:

Frankenstorm

Hurricane Sandy is combining with another storm to become a much stronger “Frankenstorm.” For more info, click on the Storm Center tabs above.

While there’s real danger, some of the media have gone overboard with the hype. As one columnist put it, a Fox News meteorologist “went berserk,” saying “worst case scenario” three times, as well as “extensive, catastrophic damage”; “power outages that could last weeks for millions of people”; and “our mouths dropped at the latest tracking.”

Update: Kudos to Jim Vance, 40-year DC news anchor, for preaching it like it is:

"Lot of people are on the edge, or already over the edge, of being freaked out by this thing. There are ... good reasons to chill out and make the best of this:

"We ain't no punks up in here! We know bad weather. We dealt with Snowmaggedon, we handled the derecho, we survived Irene a few years back. Some of us remember Agnes, which was a mother of all storms. We're still here. We're still standing. As we will be after this one is a memory."

Getting back to the hype, here's a snarky version from The Weekly World News:

DC Derecho

It never rains, but it pours. Just two days after we closed up the Red Cross shelter for people affected by the Bladensburg microburst, we had to open several more due to another windstorm. I'm managing one for 150 people, including about 60 kids, most of them very young.

This time it was a derecho, and in the same area the microburst hit, wind gusted up to 79 mph -- once again ripping the roofs off some buildings. [Videos after the jump.]

In this area alone, over a million people lost power. At the same time temperatures have hit the triple-digits. Not-so-fun fact: The disaster type that kills the most people in this area is the heat. (Or the humidity, depending on how you look at it.)

Bladensburg Microburst

I managed a Red Cross shelter yesterday for people in Bladensburg, MD whose homes were destroyed in a microburst Friday. A microburst is a very localized but very intense downdraft, with winds that can be as powerful as a tornado.

Dozens of apartment buildings were severely damaged, and hundreds of people were displaced. Miraculously, there were only 2 minor injuries.

We had less than 20 people who needed to stay in the shelter overnight -- but we fed 150 for lunch! We also had Red Cross Client Services and county Social Services interviewing people all day to find out what aid they needed.

Click here for damage pictures.

Hurricane Agnes Anniversary

The picture at right looks like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, but it was Elkridge, Maryland 40 years ago, after Hurricane Agnes.

Agnes did tremendous damage to the Mid-Atlantic, even though it had weakened to a tropical storm by then. At the time, it was the most costly storm ever, doing over $11 billion in damage (in 2011 dollars). It also killed 128 people.

In Florida, Agnes spawned 28 tornadoes. In DC, it flooded the National Zoo, and the Potomac River rose 15½ feet next to Georgetown. It also caused the greatest flooding ever recorded in Maryland, with bridges washed out in Laurel, and Ellicott City under as much as 14½ feet of water. The entire state of Pennsylvania was declared a disaster area.

A slideshow is after the jump.

Love Conquers All

Two nearby tornadoes didn't stop this couple's wedding. Normally, "until death do us part" isn't expected to be minutes away.

(They were unharmed.)

Image credit: Cate Eighmey Photography

Tornado Alley: Chesapeake?

The Washington Post reports a "shocking" statistic, namely that Maryland has had the 3rd highest density of tornadoes over the past two decades, beaten out only by Kansas and Florida. How is it we have more than the other Great Plains states?

Key word: density. That is, the statistic is the number of tornadoes per 10,000 square miles. That's a bit misleading. In raw numbers, Texas has the highest number (155), followed by Kansas (96), and Florida (66). As you'd expect, the other large numbers are in the central U.S. -- the so-called "Tornado Alley" -- and the deep South (sometimes called "Dixie Alley").

Live-Blogging Hurricane Irene

I'm managing a Red Cross shelter, mainly for people whose power was knocked out by the storm. We have 12 senior citizens and 3 kids.

Dinner was courtesy of the Dept. of Corrections. Only the best for us: bologna & cheese on white bread. Anyone vegetarian, allergic, or keeping kosher? Let them eat cake! (Or cookies, in this case, the only other thing they sent.)

They're providing breakfast too. At least I can get something from the snack & soda machines. Oh, wait: can't have those, schoolkids need to eat healthy! (D'oh!)

When I was their age, the school sold us jelly donuts, and we turned out OK.

Sort of.

You think this is bad? When I was your age...

DC finally got significant snow -- but only about 6", a far cry from last year's "Snowmageddon." Still, we can show the pictures below to our grandkids and say, "when I was your age, we had to walk 10 miles to school, uphill both ways, backwards, through 50 feet of snow... and we liked it!"

Click to enlarge. More pictures after the jump.

Wrath o' the Gods

Yesterday we had heavy rain, lightning, thunder, tornadoes, power outages...

"Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!" -- Bill Murray in Ghostbusters

Thankfully, our local alert system warns us of pending danger.

The Coming Ice Age

"Snowmaggedon" doesn't just disprove Global Warming; it shows we're entering an Ice Age! :-)

The show "In Search Of," narrated by Leonard Nimoy, warned us of the coming Ice Age in a 1978 episode. (Available on YouTube.) Here are some excerpts:

[Scenes of blizzards, glaciers, and snow-capped mountains, and dramatic, axe-murderer-approaching-type background music.]

"Climate experts believe the next ice age is on its way. ... When the weather turns on us again, how thin is the margin between life and death?

Live-blogging Snowmageddon 2010

9:00 am
Running a Red Cross shelter. Awakened by a call at 7:15 saying they'd pick me up at 7:30. Fortunately, the shelter has plenty of coffee and cereal.

We've got two RC volunteers; a nurse and a social worker; two cops; and a few guys who shovel the sidewalks. Only missing one thing: clients.

9:30 am
TV reporter saw a guy come out to "go for a run," but he got scared and went home. Damn, it looked like such great jogging weather.

The rule (we tell ourselves) is that calories don't count on a DR (disaster response). So... lots of cookies, no jogging... I'll have some insulating padding when this is done.

Tornado Warning

It was raining cats and dogs this afternoon. (Now we have dead pets everywhere.) It occurred to me, as I looked out the window, that I am, after all, a SKYWARN storm spotter for the National Weather Service. Maybe I ought to call in, so the people in Building 2 know what it's like over at Building 4.

But I didn't. And maybe I should have, so they'd get the news earlier. See this warning below? It says it was sent at 7:07, and I received it at 7:18.

------ Original Message ------
Received: 07:07 PM EDT, 08/21/2009
From: "Alert Montgomery"
Subject: SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING

The National Weather Service has issued a SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING for Montgomery County until 7:15. Doppler radar indicated a thunderstorm approaching the County which has intensified well past severe limits.