* 22 persons is the number that were killed over the weekend in tragic tornadoes in Oklahoma, Missouri and Georgia.
* 14 feet was the reported wave height on the Long Island buoy late this morning with NE winds gusting to 49 mph. It is all due to a strong low-pressure area centered off the coast of Virginia. That is the same storm system that affected Alabama over the weekend.
* 17 feet is the height of waves off shore from Rhode Island.
* 61 mph was the wind gust at a weather buoy east of Lews, Delaware.
* 41 mph was the wind gust in New York City with a driving rain and only 48 degrees.
* 7.05 inches is the rain deficit as of today at Muscle Shoals in NW Alabama.
* 5.72 is the shortage at Huntsville.
* 4.33 inches is the rain shortage at Anniston Airport despite recent rains.
* 4.90 inches is the deficit at Tuscaloosa Airport.
* 0.58 is the current EXCESS at Birmingham Airport. Shazam…we have a surplus for the first time as far back as I can remember.
* 3.70 inches was one of the heavier rain amounts over the weekend at Brilliant in SE Marion County.
* 90 is the approximate number of major oases in the African Desert. Some of the world’s largest supplies of underground water are under the Sahara Desert. A lot of those oases result in tapping into aquafurs and getting well water. Some of the wells are centuries old. Some of the oases furnish enough water to irrigate nearby lands where cotton, citrus fruit, wheat and corn is raised.
* 3,475,000 square miles is the size of the Sahara Desert. It is the world’s largest desert.
* 1,042 is how many inches of rain was recorded at Cherrapunji, India in only 12 months between August 1860 and July 1861. That place is in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains, so the moisture-laden winds have to rise and get a bunch of moisture from condensation. The monsoon season accounts for a lot of that rain. Some other parts of the year are relatively dry.
* 30% is how much of the earth’s land area is covered by forest. That percentage is a lot higher in Alabama.
* 10 million is the approximate number of people who died from a drought caused famine in China in 1877.
* 9,300 feet is the elevation of the South Pole.
* 128.6 degrees below zero is the coldest temperature ever recorded on earth. That was at Vostok, Antarctica on July 21, 1983. Sure sounds funny to mention a temperature that cold in July, but of course, the seasons are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere. Incidentally, the temperature at Vostok late this morning was 91 below zero and they are expecting a low of 101 below zero tonight.
* 840 thousand square miles is the area of Greenland making it the world’s largest island.
* 305 feet is the maximum depth of Hudson Bay in Canada. That is relatively shallow for such a large body of water.
* 20 days is how long it is to the official beginning of the 2008 hurricane season. We are anxious to see what kind of a season we will have. I pulled a copy of our afternoon 7-day discussion and Weather Fax (as well as the e-forecast) from Friday afternoon, August 26, 2005. After we had issued iit we had inserted a special paragraph. It went like this:
SPECIAL NOTE AT 3:45 PM (AUGUST 26, 2005)
Major changes will have to be made to our 7-day forecast. The Saturday/Sunday part is okay, but please ignore Monday and Tuesday until we can make major changes. Late this afternoon the National Hurricane Center shifted the projected landfall of Hurricane Katrina much further westward to near Biloxi on the Mississippi coast. This will mean that our weather will be much more serious in the Monday-Tuesday timeframe with possible flooding rains and high winds. We are working on those changes now and we should have new forecasts posted ont he 7-day discussion not later than 6:00 p.m. Early this afternoon, it seemed that the most favored area for landfall Monday morning would be in the NW Florida Panhandle around Panama City or maybe west of there. One thing for sure–there will probably be several changes to that landfall projection before it moves ashore.
…..And the rest is history.
