1920 Palm Sunday tornado outbreak

For the last few years we have heard a lot about climate change, and only a fool would deny climate change.

However climate change is nothing new. We only started collecting global climate data since 1880, but our planet has been around for about 4.5 billion years. There have been a great number of climate changes during that time.

28 March 1920 was a Palm Sunday, as it is today. The Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 1920 was an outbreak of at least 37 tornadoes, 31 of which were significant, across the Midwest and Deep South states on March 28, 1920. The tornadoes resulted in fatalities of at least 153 but some reports put that figure at at least 380. There were also at least 1,215 injured.

The majority of the fatalities occurred in Georgia (201+), Indiana (56), and Ohio (55), while the other states had lesser totals.

Severe thunderstorms developed in Missouri during the early morning hours. The storms moved rapidly to the northeast towards Chicago, Illinois. The first tornado injured five people southeast of Springfield, Missouri in the pre-dawn hours in Douglas County. This first twister was a precursor of things to come, as the morning went on and the atmosphere began to destabilize, due to the abundance of sunshine that preceded the cold front in the dry slot area, which covered the lower Great Lakes region, extending southward well past the Ohio River Valley.

Newspaper accounts and weather records documented over 38 storms of major significance; therefor , the number of actual tornadoes is probably much higher, especially when the U.S. Weather Bureau (National Weather Service) prior to 1916 did not conduct any aerial/damage surveys, nor was there any education or awareness campaign for the public to properly report them.

Throughout the years we have heard many predictions on how many years we have left before the damage becomes irreversible, These prediction actually go back for decades.

Here is what I fear though , there are many good willing crusaders who are active in trying to safe the planet. Greta Thunberg , for example, but they don’t always back their activism up with science, It is often driven by emotions and not actual facts. There is a danger when we give people like a teenage girl a platform to pursue an agenda, which is sometimes dictated by others.

It is also dangerous when when we have billionaires, like Gunhild Stordalen, flying scientists all over the world in order to proof a point, not realizing that by doing so they actual lose the point and give more fuel to conspiracy theorists.

Science should be backed up by scientific facts and not by emotional driven opinions, although it may be well meant it can and will cause more harm then good.

We have to look for better alternatives then fossil fuel, but this also needs to be backed up by solid scientific data. However why we still use oil to heat our homes and move our transport is beyond me. There should have been an alternative for this a long time ago and not even for the benefit for the climate. Oil is an economic commodity and has often been used as a political weapon.

sources

380 Americans killed in Palm Sunday tornado outbreak 100 years ago this hour #OnThisDay #OTD (Mar 28 1920)

https://www.wfft.com/content/news/100th-Anniversary-of-the-Destructive-Palm-Sunday-Tornado-Outbreak-569181181.html

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2007-03-26-0703260190-story.html

https://www.weather.gov/iwx/19200328_tornado_outbreak

The legend of 40 days of rain

Legend has it if it rains on the 15th of July it will rain for 40 days continuously. Because July 15 is St Swithin’s day.

St Swithin’s Day, if it does rain

Full forty days, it will remain

St Swithin’s Day, if it be fair

For forty days, t’will rain no more

St Swithin was an Anglo-Saxon bishop who died in 862. He was made a saint over 100 years later and his remains were dug up and moved to a shrine in a cathedral on July 15 971 in Winchester.

Legend has it this so outraged St Swithin he caused it to rain uninterrupted for 40 days and nights.

Apparently though this only applies to the UK & Ireland.

But here is the thing, similar legend exist in other parts of the world.

France and Germany have  St Gervais day, which is on July 19, where it is also set to rain for 40 days

In the Netherlands they have Maria Siep on July 2/ Which is according to legend and the bible (Luke 1, 39-56) when Mary visited her cousin Elisabeth,the mother of John the baptist, Mary told Elisabeth on that visit that she was expecting a child who we now know would be called Jesus.The original day was July 2, but the Catholic church changed this feast day in 1969 to May 31, because July 2 was only 1 day after another feast day, the birth of John the Baptist. However the weather gods kept on July 2nd, hence if it rains on that day, guess what? Yes it will rain for 40 days in the Netherlands.

Well it is raining in Ireland today,  so legend is correct we will see a lot of rain for the next 6 weeks, although the weather forecast says we will have no rain tomorrow.

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Black Monday- April 13 1360

You often hear the term ‘the coldest winter,or hottest summer on record etc’ but the oldest ongoing instrumental record of temperature in the world is the Central England Temperature record, started in 1659.

Although I am not disputing the climate change, the fact is there have been climate changes  or freak weather events ever since the world has existed.

On Easter Monday, 13th April 1360, a freak hail storm broke over English troops as they were preparing for battle with the French during the Hundred Years’ War. So brutal was the storm that over 1,000 men and 6,000 horses lost their lives that night. Convinced it was a sign from God, King Edward rushed to pursue peace with the French, marking the end of the first phase of the Hundred Years’ War.

In April 1360, Edward’s forces burned the Paris suburbs and began to move toward Chartres. While they were camped outside the town, a sudden storm materialized. Lightning struck, killing several people, and hailstones began pelting the soldiers, scattering the horses. One described it as “a foul day, full of myst and hayle, so that men dyed on horseback .” Two of the English leaders were killed and panic set in among the troops, who had no shelter from the storm.

French friar Jean de Venette credited the apocalyptic storm as the result of the English looting of the French countryside during the observant week of Lent.

On May 8, 1360, three weeks later, the Treaty of Brétigny was signed, marking the end of the first phase of the Hundred Years’ War.

The legacy was mentioned in Shakespearean work:

“It was not for nothing that my nose fell a- bleeding on Black Monday last, at six o’clock i’ the morning.” —Shakespeare: Merchant of Venice, ii. 5.

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The 27 Minutes global warming event.

To be honest the ‘global’ in the title might be a slight exaggeration but it was a freaky weather event nonetheless in fact the freakiest weather event.

Imagine bundling up to get the newspaper on an early morning at 7:30 a.m. with the temperature at a frigid -4 degrees.(−20°C).

Just two minutes later as you are letting your dog out to stretch his paws on the lawn, you notice that the frigid air you walked out the door into is not so frigid anymore. You look at your thermometer and the temperature has shot up to 45 degrees.

Spearfish holds the world record for the fastest recorded temperature change. On January 22, 1943 at about 7:30 a.m. MST, the temperature in Spearfish was −4°F(−20°C).

Which an investigator concluded was “the result of the wavering motion of a pronounced quasi-stationary front separating Continental Arctic air from Maritime Polar air”, possibly contributed to by a chinook wind. After peaking at 54 °F at 9:00 am, the temperature was back at 4 below zero by 9:27. At Rapid City, temperatures rose from 5° to 54° in twenty minutes (9:20am – 9:40am), so rapidly that buildings were experiencing winter on one side and spring around the corner.

The Chinook wind picked up speed rapidly, and two minutes later (7:32 a.m.) the temperature was +45 °F (+7 °C) above zero. The 49 °F or 27 °C rise in two minutes set a world record that still holds. By 9:00 a.m., the temperature had risen to 54 °F (12 °C). Suddenly, the Chinook died down and the temperature tumbled back to −4 °F or −20 °C. The 58 °F or 32.2 °C drop took only 27 minutes.

The sudden change in temperatures caused glass windows to crack and windshields to instantly frost over.

Extreme winter maxima in the district are remarkably warm for its latitude and on January 19, 1921 Spearfish reached a remarkable 79 °F or 26.1 °C, not only the hottest January temperature in South Dakota on record,but almost certainly the hottest temperature recorded in or near mid-winter anywhere so far from the equator.

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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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