* 8 is how many weeks until the official beginning of the 2008 hurricane season. It starts on June 1.
* 39 is how many years ago (almost) that the powerful Hurricane Camille made landfall on the Mississippi coast just east of Bay St. Louis. It was on August 17, 1969.
* 190 mph were some of the highest winds produced. An Air Force reconnaisaince plane clocked winds over 200 mph while she was still off shore.
* 143 is how many people died along the Gulf Coast because of Camille from Alabama to Louisiana. However, most of those were in Mississippi.
* 256 was really the final death toll from Camille, because 113 people died in massive flash flooding in Virginia after Camille moved inland and weakened with the remnants curving east toward the Atlantic Coast. Much Atlantic moisture was pulled into the system and the moisture-laden winds dumped extremely heavy rain riding up against the Appalachian Mountains. So that made a grand total of 256 deaths.
* 5,000 homes were destroyed by Camille and an additional 40,000 damaged.
* 38.70 inches is the most rain ever recorded in the State of Florida within a 24-hour period. It occurred in Yankeetown on September 5, 1950 in connection with a tropical situation.
* 100 is the average number of people killed annually by lightning in the USA. An additional 1,000 are injured. Florida leads the nation in both categories. Lightning is frightening.
* 189 inches is how much snow Caribou, Maine has received this winter and their snow season is not over. That is 84 inches above the average amount by March 31. They now have 31 inches on the ground as of today. I have always been fascinated by Caribou weather. Even when I was a kid in grammar school and high school and subscribing to the Daily Weather Map that came by mail one day late, Caribou was one of the first places that I looked for plotted on the map.
* 120 inches was the snow depth at Alta, Utah this morning. That is a ski area in the Wasatch Moutains of Northern Utah, but they have received a whole lot more snow than usual this winter.
* 101 inches is the snow total for Madison, Wisconsin so far this season–55 inches more than usual.
* 89 below zero was the temperature at Vostok, Antarctica late this afternoon (CDT). They had a steady wind of 9 mph, which means their wind chill was way below minus 100.
* 71% of Alabama is forest.
* 23 million acres is the amount of woodlands in the state.
* 300,000 is how many acres of cotton were planted in 2008 in Alabama.
* 75% is the increase over 2007.
* 184% is the big increase in soybean acreage in 2008 as compared to 2007. (These figures from the Alabama Department of Agriculture, Alabama Field Office of the USDA.)
