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Why have emergency weather tech?

I grew up in Chicago and then southern Indiana. In southern Indiana, you watch thunderstorms because of the hot and cold air meeting often swirls. Swirling air is the environment in which tornados flourish. Knowing what a storm was going to do is critical. The fact that my father was before I am one of the reasons why I am a weather gadget geek. I know there are many instances where I am the only one in a room, at a party, or at work that has the weather gadgets. I get that. Weather isn’t one of those things that people care about. Well, they do but on a different level. They care if the weather impacts them, changes their plans or makes them do things differently than expected. Many people adapt to the weather and don’t even think it. Cold outside, fill the bird feeder!

That said I am not a storm chaser. I was watching a little of that on the weather channel the other day. The people that have specially built vehicles with incredible weather tech outfitted to chase the heart of a storm are impressive, but that is not something I will ever be a part of.  That said, many people today have smartphones, there are some applications you can download that are just a couple of dollars that will put you ahead when it comes to weather.

  • If you are in the EU, the EU has a wonderful weather radar application that works very well. eWeather, Weathercube, Weather and Radar and many others do a good of presenting live reader feeds of weather
  • WeatherBug is a great US tool (they may have non-US weather stations) that allows you to see the weather shared locally. Often a school or the television station broadcast the weather. You can often find something in your backyard.
  • NetATMO has a home station you can install but you can also just their app to see local weather.
  • Bloomsky – fun app, same NetATMO there is a weather station, but you can also use the app to see local weather

Most of these applications offer weather radar. Now, I hear the fear. I don’t know how to read weather radar. The fun thing about using weather radar systems on your smartphone is that they are also smart applications. Interested in lightning strikes? Or volume of lighting you simply select that filter from the application, and you see lightning strikes. Same for rain or snows, simply switch the view. Weather alerts are great, critical and I highly recommend you have an emergency weather radio in your house. The Oregon Scientific weather radio is a great radio for starters.

The reality of climate change is the severity of the weather. Weather professionals talk about a century and five hundred year storms. In the last ice age, roughly 10,000 years ago, the Anantara cores that have been lifted show that they had throughout the 1000 years of the last ice age 28 100 year storms. In the resulting 10,000 years, there have only been 100 of those storms a million or 1 a century. We have had 23 100 year storms in the past 30 years. In other words, the worst weather the world has ever seen before humans and our grand ability to change the climate was significantly less extreme than the weather we have today.

  • Question of

    Did you know that no reputable scientist doesn’t fully support Climate Change?

    • Yes
    • No
  • Question of

    Did you know that the weather we have today is WORSE than during the last ICE AGE?

    • Yes
    • No
  • Question of

    Did you know that the Oceans are warming much faster than originally projected?

    • Yes
    • No

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What do you think?

Written by DocAndersen

One fan, One team and a long time dream Go Cubs!!!!!!!!!!!!!

22 Comments

  1. I can’t believe that the populace is still just sitting around like idiots while some greedy assholes are actively trying to destroy the climate for a few more bucks

    2
          • I just can’t believe we allowed things to go this far. Actually, yes I can…

            The problem is manmade, and the fix is simple- stop doing it. Who cares if someone doesn’t make enough money or it disrupts the economy? When faced with extinction, all other outcomes are preferable…

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        • I think the problem is that 16% of that impact (climate change carbon gas production) is agricultural and can’t be stopped. The push for safer fuels was moving forward in the US until the current EPA. Now we are moving back to coal. Gee, a product that killed the producers and the consumers. Smart move!@

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          • Burn coal, build a useless wall, repeal net neutrality, put kids in cages, am I missing anything?

            Let’s just pretend that 50% of the impact can’t be changed. That still leaves half that can, and can change immediately. Or, you know, burn coal and make it as bad as you can as fast as you can

            1
        • I am reminded of the old three stooges routine. Mo, constantly pokes Larry in the eyes until he puts his hand in front of his face to stop it.

          Sometimes I wonder if we need to do more than stop it now.

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          • I would love for the populace to be proactive but that’s unlikely since we can’t even get them to stop. Hell, now some clown wants to burn coal? That’s moving backward!

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        • I worry that there are two things precluding that the populace is: aware, First there are still people posting on the internet (even here on Virily) that climate change isn’t real. That is a huge awareness issue.
          The second is we haven’t educated people on the reality of how painless a fix could be if we were careful. The city of Amsterdam has moved to solar power as much as possible. Germany has more than 40% of its overall power produced by solar. They haven’t decreased production, they simply replaced the bad with the good.

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          • the US likes to pretend that solar power isn’t feasible, and yet Deutschland proves that is a lie. If you can run solar in northern Europe, you can run it anywhere in the 48

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        • I was part of the NIST team that wrote the Transactive Energy report. (National Institute for Science and Technology). The end result of our white paper was that the only thing holding back solar production in the US was legal.

          🙁

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        • The funny thing is that solar systems aren’t free. There is a need for maintenance and such (I have one at my house). Plus the power company still gets its bump (you have to have an emergency power system).

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