* (Including a few extra items that have absolutely nothing to do with weather–zip.)
* 4.81 inches is one of the highest rain amounts in Alabama yesterday. That was at the Holly Pond School in East Cullman County where Jason Simpson picked up most of his IQ numbers. The school has a new weather station professionaly installed!
* 8 to 18 inches is how much snow is forecast for Yellowstone National Park Friday and Saturday. Besides that, additional moderate accumulations are expected over the weekend. A Winter Storm Watch is already in effect and that will almost surely be changed to a Heavy Snow Warning later. Night temperatures will be in the teens and highs in the 20s.
* 40 mph is the forecast wind gusts at Leadville, Colorado as it turns colder. There will be an increase in number of snow showers. By Saturday, numerous snow showers are expected with occasional thunder and lightning all day. Thundersnow!
* 107 is the number of named mountain peaks 10,000 feet or higher within Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The park covers almost 200,066 acres.
* 8,323,147 is how many acres Wrangle-St. Elias National Park in Alaska covers. It is the USA’s largest park and it contains the second highest mountain in the USA, called Mount St. Ellis. The tallest in all of North America is Mount McKinley at an elevation of 20,320 feet, also in Alaska..
* 8,000 fatalities is the generally accepted death toll for the great Galveston Hurricane of 1900. However, that number is probably closer to 10,000 or 12,000. It was impossible to bury the dead in a traditional way by digging graves, etc. As a last resort, rescue people loaded hundreds of bodies on vessels, carried them out to sea and dumped them. A lot of the dead bodies later washed ashore and as a last resort those bodies were gathered into piles and burned.
* 120 is the hottest official temperature ever recorded in South America. It was on December 11, 1905 at Rivadavia, Argentina. Remember, December is the heart of summer in the Southern Hemisphere.
* 113 is the hottest temperature ever recorded in Canada. It was on July 5, 1937 at both Midale and Yellow Grass, Saskatchewan. That was during the time of the great Dust Bowl years in the Great Plains of the USA. That 113 in that far north location, is 6 degrees hotter than it has ever been in Birmingham. We had 107 on July 29, 1930.
* 51 days is the longest period ever with no rain in Birmingham. That extended from September 30 to November 20 in 1924. That means not a drop of rain fell in all of October.
* 17 is how many miles it was to the nearest theater when I was growing up one-half mile south of Havana Junction in Hale County. It was the Strand Theater in Greensboro. Occasionally, our senior class at Akron High School would all go to a movie in Greensboro in two cars. Two cars, you say? Yep there were only seven people in the entire senior class–4 girls and 3 boys. A small movie place opened later in Moundville on Saturdays and admission was only 10 cents. Good old days because there was no such thing as an X-rated or R-rated movie. All of the movies were clean. Can’t say that these days.
* 8 degrees above zero is the “hottest” temperature ever recorded at the South Pole. It occurred on December 27, 1978.
* 212 seconds is how long it takes James Spann to completely demolish a big barbecue sandwich. I secretly timed him once at Jim’s Pit Barbeque in Billingsley. He is a human vacuum cleaner when it comes to BBQ.
