Clear skies and a bit on the warm side this way-too-early Wednesday on California’s north coast — yesterday was about as good as it gets with sunshine, blue skies and heated air.
Today we’re suppose to have the same with no rain expected until Sunday, but we won’t hold our breath on that prediction.

And weather still remains the big US story (beyond racists, mass shootings, ‘humane’ executions, and so forth) as the line of horror storms moves eastward leaving 35 people dead from Oklahoma to Mississippi — tornadoes, and a shitload of rain.

(Illustration: the Palmer Drought Severity Index found here).

In my old stomping ground of the Florida panhandle, 15 to 20 inches of rain has fallen in the region during the last 24 hours.
In shit like this, staying alive is a touchy game. Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters has some advice for vehicle drivers in such predicaments: Sometimes it is better to abandon your vehicle and take shelter in a ditch, if you are caught in a car during a tornado. However, if there is already flying debris in the air, leaving your car and exposing yourself to the debris in order to get to a ditch may be more hazardous than staying in your car.
So there.
As a young newspaper reporter nearly 40 years ago, I once interviewed this guy that did get out of his car during a tornado and hid in a ditch — he survived to tell me the tale. If I remember correctly, he had one small scratch over one eye.
Although even with all the flying debris the last few days, this year so far has been way-down on the tornado numbers: Through April 23, 2014, the preliminary tornado count was at 93, which compares to the previous record low of 116. On average the U.S. has seen close to 275 tornadoes through April 23, 2014.
Less doesn’t mean better — fewer twisters, but those that do occur are mother-humpers — and the reason?
Of course, the old chestnut of climate change — from Climate Central yesterday:

The end of April has arrived, and with it, the record for the first month in human history with an average carbon dioxide level in Earth’s atmosphere above 400 parts per million has been set.
With a little more than 24 hours left in the month, the average for April can’t slip below 400 ppm.
“Every day in April has been over 400 ppm,” said Pieter Tans, a climate scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are monitored from a site atop Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano, where they have been measured continuously since 1958.
The long record has charted the steep rise of the greenhouse gas — the most prevalent in Earth’s atmosphere — as a result of human emissions.
The first measurement in excess of 400 ppm was made on May 9, 2013.
This year, the level rose above that mark a full two months earlier, and has remained above 400 ppm steadily since the beginning of April.
While the milestone is largely a symbolic one, it does illustrate how far emissions have risen from their preindustrial levels of 280 ppm.
The last time atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were this high consistently was anywhere from 800,000 to 15 million years ago, various studies have estimated, and the world was a very different places then, with much warmer temperatures and extremely higher seas.
…
On reaching the April milestone, Ralph Keeling said, he remembers “when the concentrations were below 350 ppm” and that “it still feels a bit surreal now to be reporting concentrations over 400 ppm. Even though it was pretty much inevitable that we would get to this point, it still takes some getting used to.”

And it’s only going to get worse.

Prevention maybe an ounce of cure? Sometimes it just works out that way as in this horror-ironic story of the day:

A U.S. food safety summit in Maryland earlier this month has become a cautionary tale after more than 100 attendees came down with suspected food poisoning.
Most of those affected complained of diarrhea, the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said in a statement.
Local health officials have heard from about 400 of the 1,300 attendees and are at a loss as to the exact cause of their illness.

Time we all got the shits — just shut up!

(Illustration out front found here).