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Kitchen Table Kibitzing 8/15/2023: Splashy Weather [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-08-15

Harald Sohlberg: Summer Night (1899)

Good evening, Kibitzers!

🌺 I know the terrible devastation from the Maui fire strikes a chord with many of us here. In case you missed it, Daily Kos has set up an ActBlue page for some local organizations that are helping. [TealBomb diary here.] Further, Barack Obama has weighed in on Xwitter with his suggestion. [Obama xweet here.] (Later: in a further xweet, he also mentions Mālama Maui Nui and the Hawai’i Red Cross.) Oh, and then there’s World Central Kitchen.

So, now I’m in New Jersey, and I was startled to notice, as I write on Monday night, that my area is under a flood watch until Tuesday sometime, owing to the potential for a “basin average” of 1-3 inches of rain in a 3-5 hour period overnight. (“Basin average” meaning, I learn, for a “drainage basin” — an “area having a common outlet for its surface runoff.”) That sounds quite exciting, and I regret that it will be dark so I cannot watch this rain. I’m not trying to be flip. I’m up reasonably high, but surely some people are going to be dealing with water. I guess it’s better than fire, but then, I also note that an “isolated severe thunderstorm is possible as well, with damaging wind gusts and an isolated tornado”.

You know how I feel about tornadoes in New Jersey, regardless of their social situation. It made me decide to look at some storm-chaser video for this week, and now I actually have two weeks’ worth of extremely cool stuff to show you, so let’s get started with Part 1! I am headed back to Boston during the day on Tuesday, a move I may live to regret, so if I seem to be late for this diary, that may be why. On the other hand, if I stay here, there’s a reasonable chance there’ll be no power by Tuesday afternoon, so...

So, this week, we’ll take a look at the work of “Pecos Hank” Schyma, a native of Houston and a musician, songwriter, and amateur herpetologist who has nonetheless chiefly distinguished himself in the area of extreme weather photography. (Here’s his website.)

This video is a good example of his work — he does some videos that are meant to inform, and some that are gorgeous photography; this one is kind of a combination, introducing some storm concepts that we’ll see more about in later videos. Much of his narration appears as text on his YouTube pages, in general. The music here, and in most of his videos, is his own. [6:18]

This video is about mesocyclones, those Independence-Day-looking storm structures that are amazing but can create dangerous weather. [4:47]

Why the northeastern corner of Colorado contains a weird little hot spot for tornadoes, and Hank’s experiences chasing them there. [6:45]

This video discusses why similar storms may produce huge dangerous tornadoes OR nothing. Hank speaks with an atmospheric scientist whose work is modeling storms on a supercomputer, trying to identify how tornadoes are spawned. [15:14]

Now, we move into the area of lightning. This is beautiful video of slow-motion lightning with no narration, before we get all technical. [2:44]

I think this video does a great job of explaining to the non-scientist more or less what is going on with lightning. It also addresses the “lighting starts from the ground up” thing that I’ve always been puzzled by. The slo-mo footage is really remarkable to watch. [10:58]

Some events related to lightning, such as “red sprites”, were too difficult to capture before photographic advances fairly recently, and it was at first unclear if they really even existed. Now, they and several other classes of “Transient Luminous Events” have been well documented. Hank teams up with TLE expert Paul Smith to capture and study these phenomena, and even discovers a new one! [10:52]

To wrap up, Hank offers this collection of what he regards as his most beautiful footage. He notes that it leans toward more recent events, just due to how photography has improved. [6:47]

Doug Sahm was a favorite musician of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, so since we lack Dr. Thompson to write about the ongoing crumbling of Donald Trump, a thing that would have been very much worth reading imho, I thought Doug Sahm’s Stormy Monday, would be a good musical closer here. (They say Tuesday’s just as bad.) [5:38]

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/15/2186680/-Kitchen-Table-Kibitzing-8-15-2023-Splashy-Weather

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