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Has anyone else gone down the weather rabbit hole recently?
I was always familiar with tornadoes living close to or in Oklahoma for a vast majority of my life. However, with the odd weather patterns we’re seeing this year producing severe weather, I’ve gone way down the rabbit hole. Watching weather livestreams, subscribing to chasers, the works. Has anyone else been on the bandwagon?
The chasers never fascinated me but the atmospherics and learning about fronts and pressure systems and the tradewinds/currents. We truly are living in a great time with all of this at our fingertips!
I’m honestly the opposite. Starting out with the chasers and the news/YouTuber streams and whatnot, but the more I watch the more interested I am in learning the science behind it!
Any channels you can suggest?
I’d go with what Seagull_McBoye put below to start. In addition, I know of Swegle Studios and weatherbox that puts out good content.
Here in Central Cali, some of the rainstorms we had in the fall and winter were highly unusual in that they had the same tropical, moist feel to them as the hurricanes I had seen so many times in Florida. They had significant wind strength and the water came at you sideways in the same small "shower-like" droplets that were almost mist, exactly like Florida ones. An article I read stated that Cali was either going to go dry or full tropical. I wonder if the warming water is turning Cali into Florida...
A few years ago I took a graduate level class on Disasters in History and it was almost all weather-related. One of the most interesting classes I have ever taken. Hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, droughts, floods, fires, the Dust Bowl, and much more. Fascinating to see how people in history dealt with these massive life-altering events that nature threw at them. Now whenever I see some big weather event in the news, I look for parallels from these historic events, and it's shocking to me how little things have changed. Obviously technology has gotten better, weather detection and tracking have improved, building materials and construction practices have adapted, but at the individual and societal levels, how we deal with these events is shockingly similar to how they were dealt with in the past. Logistical failures that hindered restoration efforts in Roman times or in colonial Spain can still be seen in the ways our governments, both local and nationwide, respond to things. The way a community will band together in the aftermath of a great disaster has been near constant for thousands of years, minus the texts asking if family members are okay and the 24/7 news coverage of the destruction. It's both comforting and a bit sad to me seeing the similarities of how humans have dealt with, are dealing with, and will continue to deal with these sorts of events.
That sounds super interesting actually. Was there literature in the class that encapsulated these that are available to read?
I don't remember the exact books and articles read (there were many), but a lot of research was done on sites like www.jstor.org. Just search for the disaster you are interested in (e.g. 'Krakatoa eruption' or 'Lisbon Earthquake') and there are bound to be plenty of scholarly articles about it and its aftermath. On jstor, you can create a free account and read a certain number of articles per month. Other than that, it was a lot of searching for books on the university library's website and checking out any that sounded remotely useful. Often times the articles that you find on jstor are written by historians who have written entire books on the subject (if they're interested enough to write an article on the subject, they are more-than-likely interested in writing a book on it as well). Or those articles will mention books in the footnotes for you to follow up on anything that catches your attention.
Hope that helps.
Until three weeks ago, the UK was full of scarfs and cold weather jackets. Now we're all in shorts.
The weather has been bonkers this year.
Good old climate change.
I've always been interested in the weather. It's been a wild ride these past few years, to put it mildly. I might look back into things when my health settles down some.
Absolutely and I live in an area that doesn't have tropical storms.
I don't follow it religiously but quite often and intense in the last decade.
Although California has a lot of sunny weather, we do get storms and wildfires. I like the Weather West blog for getting in-depth updates, including longer-term climate stuff. He writes about weather in other places too, when it's connected.
Check out Owsley Stanley and his theory of polar vortexes and what triggers an ice age.
That’s a rabbit hole that can kill at least a few hours and add another layer of climate anxiety to an already thick pile.
Same! I went waaay down the rabbit hole after the Rolling Fork EF4 earlier this year. I've always been very into weather and extreme weather, but something about that tornado was different for me. Maybe it was that I just randomly caught some of it live or that there was so much incredible footage from storm chasers, but it was a truly horrific, almost otherworldly, storm. Like something you'd only see in a nightmare...
Some favorite YouTube channels I've discovered are:
Carly Anna WX - great video essays of tornado disasters with emphasis on the human cost
Pecos Hank - doesn't upload very often, but when he does, it's usually something incredible
Skip Talbot - specifically his super detailed breakdown of the 2013 El Reno tornado
Also, storm chasers have been absolutely killing it this year with close intercepts and footage. But, the dark side to this is an alarming number of chasers have been struck by tornados recently. Incredibly none of those chasers have died or been seriously injured, but history tells us there can be grave consequences for "flying too close to the sun" with regards to extreme weather.
Funny enough I was out of the country for Rolling Fork so I didn’t get to see that live. It’s honestly been the last month or so I’ve become a weather nerd.
I do follow Carly with starting to watch Ryan Hall’s livestreams, but I’ll have to check out the other two. Thanks!
I moved into a new place in December and every local told me what the expect, weather and climate related. IMMEDIATELY there were 11 or 12 (or more?) atmospheric river storms. Floods, landslides, nonstop rain and wind, temp well below average for months longer than normal... Meanwhile they are all like "this is highly unusual, never happens!" So now I'm pretty sure things are just not going to align with the local expectations anymore and I can't trust anyone, and I have 3 different weather apps and have been trying to research "el nino"..... so, yes. I've gone way down the rabbit hole :(
I'm doing an environmental studies module right meow which is very interesting and depressing. I now pay more attention to articles/news stories about weather a lot more. I'm also considering tracking extreme weather events on a atlas to try get a better idea of the global weather patterns.
If you can try get your hands on a book called firmament by Simon Clark. It's really informative and well written.
Thanks for the book suggestion!
i found this website to be particularly fascinating in describing optical effect in the atmosphere - weather related, i suppose: https://atoptics.co.uk/
I live in tornado alley and I definitely got on the bandwagon this spring after a huge line of tornadoes blew through. There is so much interesting on YouTube about storm chasing and weather in general. I highly recommend the new movie called Supercell. Big name actors, great directing and photography, very exciting and a wonderful story. It's worth reading the background about the making of this movie, especially interviews of the director.