Archive for the ‘tornado’ Tag
Living in Maine has given me a great appreciation for monitoring the weather. Our winter here starts in late October and extends itself to the end of April, a full six months of snow, sleet, and cold. If you’re not a lover of miserable weather, I recommend you never move here. Today’s posting contains random weather tidbits you haven’t likely heard before. Enjoy!
- Lightning strikes the earth of hundred times every second, from the 1800 thunderstorms in progress at any given moment.
- Rain contains vitamin B-12.
- Observations of increased rain after US Civil War battles led to abortive experiments with weather control. Cannon volleys were fired into the clouds in order to induce rain.
- Nearly 100 pollution-filled, weather-beaten years in New York have done more damage to Cleopatra’s Needle – a granite obelisk covered with hieroglyphics – than did 3500 arid years in Egypt.
- 17 1/2 inches in circumference and 1.67 pounds in weight: that’s the size of the largest hailstone known to have fallen in the United States. It struck during a severe storm at Coffeyville, Kansas, in September of 1970.
- In 1816, there was no summer in many areas of the world. In parts of New England, snow stayed on the ground all year. Crops there and in Europe were ruined. Volcanic dust from the corruption of Tomboro in Indonesia that blocked the rays of the sun has been blamed.
- In living memory, it was not until February 18, 1979, that snow fell on the Sahara Desert. A half-hour storm in southern Algeria stopped traffic but within a few hours all of the snow had melted away.
- Residents in a small village in Scotland schedule their television viewing according to the tides. At low tide, the nearby mudflats absorbed the broadcast “waves”. Thank God for cable.
- On June 10, 1958, a tornado was crashing through El Dorado, Kansas. The storm pulled a woman out of her house and carried her 60 feet away. She landed, relatively unharmed, next to a phonograph record titled “Stormy Weather”.
- Due to friction with the surface of the planet, the wind retards or accelerates the spin of the Earth very slightly. A peak in the seasonal slowing of the planet is most evident during the northern winter.
C’MON WINTER
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I’ve been infected with that same disease I get every year at this time. It always seems to take me by surprise which I don’t really understand. It’s a deceptive little virus that kind of sneaks up on me . . . it’s called Spring Fever. All I really give a damn about is getting out of the house, standing in fresh air, feeling the sun on my face, and being able to walk along a beach. Is it any wonder why I can’t seem to concentrate on anything else?
I’ve been doing a lot of internet surfing and perusing through my collection of books recently and have happened upon a huge steaming pile of ridiculously stupid trivia that anyone in their right mind could care less about. That’s the reason I decided to share it with you.
These tidbits are in no particular order of importance, just a whole lot of true nonsense.
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Odds of being killed in a tornado – 1 in 2 million.
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You use more calories eating celery than there are in the celery itself.
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Odds of being killed by falling out of bed – 1 in 2 million.
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It only takes 7 pounds of pressure to rip your ear off.
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On average, there are 178 sesame seeds on each McDonalds Big Mac bun.

Did you ever think you’d see the day when someone would count the seeds on a Big Mac, then put that info on the Net where I could find it and pass it on to you. It must be fate.
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In the past year your hair will most likely have grown 12 cm and your nail about 4 cm.
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There are 1 million ants for every person in the world.
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Odds of being killed by a dog – 1 in 700,000.
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World population has grown by around 76,570,430 since your last birthday. In the time it takes you to read this another five babies will have been born.
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13 people are killed each year by vending machine’s falling on them.

Stay alert when you assaulting your next vending machine. They’ll get you if your not careful.
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Odds of being killed by poisoning – 1 in 86,000.
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314 Americans had buttock lift surgery in 1994.
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If you counted 24 hours a day, you would be over 31,000 years old when you reach one trillion.
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Odds of being killed in a car crash – 1 in 5,000.
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There are more than 1,000 chemicals in a cup of coffee.

This should help all of you to really enjoy that next hot cup of morning chemicals.
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If you played all of the Beatles’ singles and albums that came out between 1962 and 1970 back to back, it would only last for 10 hours and 33 minutes.
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Odds of dying while in the bath tub – 1 in 1 million.
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Experts at Intel say that microprocessor speed will double every 18 months for at least 10 years.
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The Apollo 11 only had 20 seconds of fuel when it landed.
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Odds of being killed in a plane crash -1 in 25 million.

I guess all the propaganda we’ve heard for years about the safety of air travel is true. The odds are certainly better than those for car accident deaths.
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Driving 55 miles (88 km) per hour instead of 65 miles (105 km) per hour increases your car mileage by about 15%.
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The average person flexes the joints in their finger 24 million times during a lifetime.
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1/3 of all cancers are sun related.
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If we had the same mortality rate now as in 1900, more than half the people in the world today would not be alive.
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Airbags explode at 200 miles per hour.
Let’s hope none of us have to experience an airbag situation. They can keep you alive during a collision and then break your damn neck at the same time.
Twenty-nine more useless facts you can use to win bar bets.
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