Hello, intrepid and hopefully waterproof Salonistas! Thank you for braving the thick Babbage air to come to the November Salon. Today we’re going to talk about the weather. But only the weird stuff, I promise.
We’ll do some mythbusting, delve into weird weather sayings, celebrate non-human seasonal prognosticators, be astounded by a freakish tornado event, but we will NOT talk about the Kentucky Meat Shower of 1876. Sorry. Turns out it was real but NOT weather related. 🙂
I will occasionally drop links to videos or articles with more information. I’ll make sure these links are included in the salon transcript when it’s posted at the website, https://aethersalon.home.blog/.
If you want to be notified when the transcript is up and get news about future salons, be sure to join our group. There’s a link for that on the website’s front page, along with info about joining our Discord server, finding the Aether Chrononauts calendar, and even applying to speak on a topic you’re passionate about at your very own salon. (Highly encouraged! It’s fun and very gratifying.)
You may have noticed the wind sock and weather vane on either side of me. They are gifts for you, as my thanks for attending this salon. Just click them to take a copy. They are functional items that should help you gauge the weather in-world.
So, why did I choose to talk about weather today?
As I gaze out my window at our still-beautiful calendulas blooming up by the road (and I have NO idea why this and the next slide are upside down. Ah well) I remind myself that in past years we’d often be plowing snow on November 19th. This is Mid-Michigan. Michigan is NOT known for its warm late fall weather.
Our lawn is still green and lush. I’ve wandered outside in shorts this past week, and enjoyed relaxing in the sunshine on the back deck.
The catnip patches are still thriving, much to the delight of the two feral felines we take care of.
It’s all going to cave in on us soon, but this mild weather right now serves as a reminder that our planet is ever-changing.
If you haven’t yet heard, the USDA has recently revised the Plant Hardiness Zone Map for the United States. Mid-Michigan used to be Zone 5. Now we’re Zone 6A. If you are in the states and want to check your zone, visit https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/
But while we’ve had a Paradise November, August was anything but. On August 24th, Southeast Michigan was slammed with a terrific thunderstorm, which dumped up to 3 inches of rain an hour and delivered 6 tornadoes to our sleepy little towns and farmlands.
I’m still seeing trees, pulled up by their roots, laying at the edge of roads. And there’s at least one collapsed barn in my neighborhood. We came through fine, just a lot of small tree branches cluttering the yard and a few day’s power/internet outage. No biggie for a ‘Gander.
But one thing I did NOT see was a piece of straw driven into a tree by the force of a tornado, which brings us to our first Weird Weather Wonderings:
Can a straw really be driven into a tree trunk by a tornado?
Apparently pine needles are the easiest straw-shaped object to drive into the trunk of a tree. The needles are stiff, and one end is pointy. If a pine needle is picked up by a tornado and gets up to at least 150mph, it can definitely get stuck at least a little ways into a tree.
But that’s a pine needle. What about a piece of straw? First, let’s make sure we’re defining straw correctly. It’s the dry stem of a cereal plant such as barley, oats, rice, rye, or wheat. It’s what’s left after the grain has been removed. Straw should not be confused with hay, which is dry grass and certainly cannot be driven into the trunk of a tree.
It also helps that the tree itself will most likely be bending in that 150mph wind, which means its pores are a little more open and receptive to incoming objects. Small cracks may form on the bark too, making good gaps for slender objects to get into.
Season 4, Episode 18 of the Mythbusters TV series debunked the myth that ‘A piece of straw can penetrate all the way through a palm tree if propelled by hurricane-force winds’. They tried like heck, though.
They fired a piece of straw at 320mph at a chunk of palm tree from less than two feet away and could only get it a quarter of an inch into the tree. That speed is significantly faster than 253mph, the record set by Cyclone Olivia at Barrow Island, Australia, on April 10, 1996.
The Mythbusters tried again with a piece of reed (using the logic that reed can be mistaken for straw) at the same speed, and managed to get it a full two inches into the tree.
Of course, being Babbagers at heart, they also fired a piece of piano wire at 320mph from two feet away. It went all the way through the tree trunk. It also went through a sheet of plywood and embedded itself in a cement wall. The moral of this story is: Don’t stand near a piano in a tornado. You’re probably better off in a wheat field.
If you’d like to learn how to drive a straw (the plastic drinking variety) into a tree… er, I mean a potato… here’s a video that’ll show you how it’s done. Impress your friends, or just make French fries the old-fashioned, really slow way. https://youtu.be/FSznuT7aUz4?si=HP0i9kdeQzLWUSqN
Is It Hot In Here Or Is It Just Me?
Now, let’s heat things up a bit! Ever wonder about the highest temperature change in one location in a 24 hour period? Of course you have.
At 9:00am on January 14, 1972, the residents of Loma, Montana were shivering, as the temperature outside was –54°F (-48ish Celsius). The day continued to be miserably cold, but just after midnight a powerful Chinook wind blew through town at sustained speeds of 30-40mph.
What’s a Chinook wind, you ask? It’s a warm, westerly wind that’s common in the American west. Here’s a short but good explanation, with helpful diagrams. https://youtu.be/M8H0BhHd_cI?si=hUQTRUQlo5LLoMNs
Local rancher Jim Wood was quoted as saying, “Shortly after midnight I woke to the sound of a howling wind. I dressed and read the temperature and could not believe it read 34° above [zero]. The severe southwest wind continued and by 6:00 am the temperature was in the mid-40°s. By 8 am it had reached 49° and never raised higher the rest of the day.”
That’s a rise of 103 degrees within 24 hours. Imagine all those Lomanites (Lomanians? Lomers? Lomanders?) scrambling to exchange their flannels for t-shirts.
The Super Outbreak Double Tornado Strike of 1974
The 1974 Super Outbreak was a freaky couple of days. On April 3rd and 4th, 148 tornadoes raced around the United States midwest, striking Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and New York. 9 of them also hit Ontario, Canada, as tornadoes do not respect country borders. 7 of the tornadoes were of F5 intensity, which is rare and at the top of the scale. They can generate winds of 261-318 miles per hour!
Now, it was rare enough to have 7 F5 tornadoes strike in such a small time window, but the situation gets even weirder. Just outside the town of Tanner, Alabama, TWO, yes TWO of those F5 monsters touched down in almost exactly the same location within the same hour. The odds of that occurring are… *handflail* Who the heck knows?
In an article at Weather Underground https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Most-Unusual-Weather-Events-US-History-Part-1 Meteorologist Christopher Burt says, “The first tornado formed at 6:30 pm CDT in Lawrence County and tracked northeast for a full 90 minutes, killing 28 people along the way. Tanner took a direct hit when the twister was at its most powerful, around 7:15 pm. At 7:30 pm the second tornado formed and followed a path almost identical to the first tornado (just 500-1000 yards to the south). Tanner was the first community to be struck by this second tornado, around 7:45 pm. This tornado was on the ground for 50 miles and killed 22. One victim injured near Tanner during the first tornado was transported to a nearby church that was struck by the second tornado, killing him. The Alabama communities of Capshaw and Harvest were also struck by both tornadoes.”
The man that was injured by the first tornado and killed by the second one isn’t named, but I’ll take a wild guess that his name wasn’t Lucky.
Can you fry an egg on the sidewalk in a heat wave?
It’s unlikely. For an egg to be fully cooked, it needs to reach a temperature of 158 degrees. Most concrete sidewalks can’t heat any higher than 145 degrees. If you’re willing to cheat and for whatever reason don’t have access to a stove, just put your egg in a pan on the sidewalk, and use a magnifying glass to focus a sunbeam on the egg. If it explodes and sends burning hot goopy shrapnel bits at your face though, don’t come crying to me. (ProTip: Experts recommend frying your eggs on the hood of a black car.)
Why do we say it’s “raining cats and dogs”?
While no one knows the exact source, etymologists have notions about how it came to be. Here’s some of the possibilities they’ve come up with:
The Norse god Odin was often depicted with dogs and wolves – symbols of the wind. Witches are of course associated with black cats, and sailors see black cats as a sign of a coming rainstorm. Soooo: rain and wind, cats and dogs. Hey, etymologists? You’re reaching. Settle down. It’s embarrassing.
Another theory is that the Greek expression ‘cata doxa’, which translates to ‘contrary to experience or belief’ might have come about because of Greeks who were unable to believe how hard it was raining! Cata doxa! Cats! Dogs! Again… this is the best we can come up with?
Oh, wait! Let’s give it one last try. There’s an Olde English word, ‘catadupe’. The word isn’t in use anymore. But it meant ‘waterfall’. A heavy rain can seem like a waterfall. I don’t know about you, but this theory has my vote.
Punxsutawney Phil Has Competition
Punxsutawney Phil the groundhog may be the most famous predictor of winter weather, but he’s not the only woodchuck doing that. There’s heaps of other contenders being used by various locals, such as:
Sir Walter Wally: Raleigh, North Carolina
Birmingham Bill: Birmingham, Alabama
Buckeye Chuck: Marion, Ohio
French Creek Freddie: French Creek, West Virginia
Woodstock Willie: Woodstock, Illinois
Chesapeake Chuck: Newport News, Virginia
Chuckles: Manchester, Connecticut
Chattanooga Chuck: Chattanooga, Tennessee
Jimmy: Sun Prairie, Wisconsin
There’s also various other animals, including a duck, predicting the weather in offbeat places. Among those, my favorite is 91-year-old “Big Al”, a 1,000 pound alligator in Beaumont, Texas. Big Al thinks shadow-watching is for wussies and wimps. He’s trained a human named Arlie Hammonds to wade out into the water, get Big Al to open his mouth, and then he lobs a big steak in there. If he spits the steak out – 6 more weeks of winter.
I hope Big Al never comes across the weather duck.
And now for the big finish…
Can A Tornado Make A Cow Fly?
The fine folks at Altair, a data analytics company, created a “Cow in Wind Tunnel Simulation”, and concluded that a tornado can *tip* a cow, but cannot make one fly. https://altair.com/newsroom/articles/Digital-Debunking-Could-a-Tornado-Make-a-Cow-Fly
However. Seeing is believing. Here’s a video showing an actual cow flying through the air after being picked up by a tornado. If you are impatient, it’s right around the 2:30 mark. And warning, it’s not grisly, but it makes me gasp as this cannot end well for the cow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNfsd47DPJw&t=76s&ab_channel=ReedTimmer
And since it’s impossible to top a flying cow, I’ll end here. I’ve only touched on the topic – we really could go on and on till morning and beyond. Do you have any questions or interesting weather antics of your own to share?
Thanks for being here today! I hope you learned something new. Be careful going home, who knows what the weather might do next?
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