Tornadoes, Fires, & Floods

Spring has sprung, and it is extremely nasty.

CNN reports that U.S. storms kill more than 40

Among the worst-hit places was Bertie County, North Carolina, a rural area in the northeast part of the state. The weather service reported 14 deaths in the county. Zee Lamb, county manager, said there were 11 fatalities.
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The death toll across six states includes another nine in other parts of North Carolina; four in Virginia; seven in Alabama, two in Oklahoma, seven in Arkansas and one in Mississippi.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center said it received reports of at least 230 tornadoes across the region during the past three days, though some of those reports were likely sightings of the same twister.

I was watching the system on the weather radars and you can see the super-cells explode and throw off the vortexes that can become tornadoes. We were under watches most of yesterday, but the worst stayed inland to the north.

The fires continue as the Governor asks feds to declare Texas a disaster area due to wildfires

(CNN) — Texas Gov. Rick Perry is asking the federal government to declare the state a disaster area, a bid to spur assistance during a particularly potent wildfire season that has imperiled lives, structures and livelihoods in 252 counties, his office said in a statement Sunday.
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Authorities have responded to 7,807 fires across more than 1.5 million acres since this year’s wildfire season began, Perry wrote in the letter. These have affected all but two of the state’s 254 counties.

A total of 244 homes have been destroyed and another 8,514 threatened residences “saved.” The governor noted that one firefighter has died and 18 others have been injured.

The largest fires are in West Texas in sparsely populated counties with almost no resources to even spot fires, much less fight them. Texas is having a drought after a couple of years of rain from tropical events, so there is lots of fuel available and gusty winds to fan the fires.

The rain has been up North, and the result is flooding on both sides of the US-Canadian border. The CBC report, Prairie floods keep officials vigilant, covers Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, but the problems extend South into Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota. As one area improves its dykes, it just increases the water levels down stream.

Note: Dyke is from the Dutch Dijk, and I know all about the supposed difference, but I will continue to use the original spelling.