* 69 was one of the warmest temperatures in Alabama today (Dothan and Mobile)
* 35,810 feet is the deepest part of any ocean on earth. That depth is the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific. A typhoon would have plenty of water to do some upwelling with!
* 10 million is how many people who died in China in 1877 from a drought-caused famine. Did you know that droughts strike more people than any other natural disaster?
*1904 was Birmingham’s driest year, overall, with only 34.32 inches. Normal is about 54 inches.
* 0.00 is how much rain fell in Birmingham during all of October, 1924. Only 0.01 fell in November. So during an 8-week stretch we did not get enough rain to hardly wet the pavement. It was probably our worst drought and a lot of wells went dry.
* 3.5 million square miles is how large the Sahara Desert is. It is the largest on earth. However, Antarctica is also considered a desert–known as a polar desert. It is larger than the Sahara.
* 80,000 square miles is the size of additional land that becomes a desert in the world each year. That is about the size of Kansas.
* 2,983 miles is how long the Continental Divide is in Western North America. Rain that falls west of the divide heads toward the Pacific and east of the divide toward the Atlantic or our firend, the Gulf of Mexico.
* 24 feet was the highest storm surge during Huricane Opal in early October, 1995. That 24-foot surge was recorded at Fort Walton Beach on the NW Florida Coast.
* 3 billion was the estimated dollor damage from Opal. A lot of that was in Alabama.
* 15 is the most number of days that Birmingham has recorded 100-degree heat in a single year. That was in 1925.
* 87 in Brownsville, Tex., was the warmest in the USA today.
* 60 mph is the projected wind gusts in the Colorado mountains tonight with very heavy snow and whiteout conditions. (Translation: a good old-fashioned blizzard)
* 70 mph gusts are expected tomorrow on the east side of the mountains near Colorado Springs. Even along the I-25 corridor, frequent gusts may reach 60 mph. That could flip over the 33/40 Storm Chaser.
