* 0 is the number of deer we saw while traveling from Starkville, Mississippi back to Birmingham Saturday night. Brian Peters was driving the 33/40 Storm Chaser and I was watching the roadside woods and ditches closely. I did not want a big deer coming through the windshield and landing in my lap.
* 8,000 is the approximate number of people who died in the great Galveston hurricane in early September 1900. The exact number will never be known, because hundreds of bodies were swept out into the Gulf of Mexico. Hundreds of additional people were also drowned inland from massive flash flooding. Some estimates are that the total death toll was more like 10,000 to 12,000.
* 113 is the hottest temperature ever recorded in Canada. It happened at Midale and Yellow Grass, Saskatchewan on July 5, 1937. This happened during the famous Dust Bowl years across the Central USA. That 113-degree high is 1 degree hotter than ever recorded in the State of Alabama, which was 112 at Centreville on September 5, 1925.
* 16 inches is the normal annual precipitation in Anchorage. That includes rain and melted snow. It occurs on an average of 115 days per year.
* 71 inches is the normal annual snowfall in Anchorage.
* 15 inches is how much snow Asheville, North Carolina normally gets in winter.
* 2 degrees is all the difference there is in the normal high temperature for January and July in Acapulco, Mexico. The normal high is 87 in January and 89 in July. That is what I call a stable climate.
* 114 is how many people were killed by a tornado in Waco on May 11, 1953, mostly in the downtown area. A multiple-story building downtown was jerked into an intersection by the powerful tornado and the building collapsed.
* 44 million is the estimated acre feet of water that fell as snow in the USA during the Blizzard of ’93. That is equal to about 40 days of stream flow on the Mississippi River at New Orleans. That estimate was made by the NWS Hydrology Office.
* 3 million is the number of people that lost power during the Blizzard of ’93, including 250 thousand in Alabama.
* 1 is how many doughnuts I had at the Southeast States Severe Weather Symposium at Mississippi State University this past weekend. However, that one was for Friday. Five is how many additional doughnuts I had on Saturday. The forecast was that I would have 12, so all of the GFS doughnut model data was wrong. If I had eaten as many doughnuts as encouraged by James Spann, it would have been closer to 36.
* 7 is how many pounds I gained in Starkville. I will lose that in less than one week.
* 7 is also how many catfish fillets I had at Pap’s Place in Ackerman, Mississippi Friday night. But, that is healthy food, although I did have some ice cream as dessert.
* 3 is how many times James Spann returned to the buffet line. He had skipped lunch and was famished. He reminds me of Bob Ferry, the former MIC at NWS-Birmingham. They both clean their plates so fast that you would think a vacuum cleaner was involved.
* 25 is about the number of times Little Miss Molly jumped high off the floor to greet me as soon as I got home after being gone two days. Even though she only weighs 9 pounds, she can jump as high as my belt.
* 3 is how many times Little Miss Molly’s majority owner posted comments on the blog after she saw what appeared to be me eating a whole box of doughnuts. She was not concerned, in fact she got a big laugh of our actions all weekend.
