Washington Post:
‘Large and extremely dangerous’ tornado rips through Kansas, causing multiple injuries and ‘catastrophic’ damages
A “large and extremely dangerous” tornado carved a path of destruction through parts of northeastern Kansas on Tuesday night, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a “tornado emergency” for several counties and the heavily populated Kansas City metropolitan area.
No fatalities have been reported, but at least 12 people suffered storm-related injuries and more than 13,000 were left without power, according to the Kansas City Star. While the full extent of the damage remains unclear, photos and videos from affected areas show what has been described as “catastrophic” scenes. The tornado is the latest product of a pattern of severe weather that has ravaged the central United States in recent days, devastating parts of Oklahoma, Ohio and Missouri.
what a year! blizzards, fires, floods, quakes, tornadoes and now comes the hurricane season
CBS news:
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday predicted nine to 15 named storms. Four to eight of the storms will become hurricanes, forecasters said, and two to four of those would become major hurricanes with 111 mph winds or higher.
Hurricane season traditionally kicks off on June 1. But earlier this week, subtropical storm Andrea briefly popped up, marking the fifth straight year a named storm came in May or earlier.
Peak hurricane season, however, begins in early September, so there’s still time to create a hurricane preparedness kit, CBS News’ weather producer David Parkinson said on CBSN Thursday. He said the season gears up in July, but August, September and October tend to be the three main months.
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and a twitter storm a-brewing
the guardian:
The former White House adviser Steve Bannon has described the Trump Organization as a criminal entity and predicted that investigations into the president’s finances will lead to his political downfall, when he is revealed to be “not the billionaire he said he was, just another scumbag”.
The startling remarks are contained in Siege: Trump Under Fire, the author Michael Wolff’s forthcoming account of the second year of the Trump administration. The book, published on 4 June, is a sequel to Fire and Fury: Trump in the White House, which was a bestseller in 2018. The Guardian obtained a copy.
In a key passage, Bannon is reported as saying he believes investigations of Donald Trump’s financial history will provide proof of the underlying criminality of his eponymous company.
Assessing the president’s exposure to various investigations, many seeded by the special counsel Robert Mueller during his investigation of Russian election interference, Wolff writes: “Trump was vulnerable because for 40 years he had run what increasingly seemed to resemble a semi-criminal enterprise.”
He then quotes Bannon as saying: “I think we can drop the ‘semi’ part.”
[…]
In Siege, Wolff quotes Bannon saying investigations into Trump’s finances will cut adrift even his most ardent supporters: “This is where it isn’t a witch hunt – even for the hard core, this is where he turns into just a crooked business guy, and one worth $50m instead of $10bn.
“Not the billionaire he said he was, just another scumbag.”
Wolff also details a 2004 Palm Beach property deal involving the now disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and the Putin-friendly oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev that, the author writes, earned Trump “$55m without putting up a dime”.
Epstein, he writes, invited Trump to see a $36m Palm Beach mansion he planned to buy. According to Wolff, Trump went behind Epstein’s back to buy the foreclosed property for around $40m, a sum Epstein had reason to believe Trump couldn’t raise in his own right, through an entity called Trump Properties LLC, which was entirely financed by Deutsche Bank.
Epstein, Wolff writes, knew Trump had been loaning out his name in real estate deals for a fee and suspected that in his case Trump was fronting for the property’s real owners. Epstein threatened to expose the deal. As the dispute increased, he found himself under investigation by the Palm Beach police.
According to Wolff, Trump made only minor improvements and put the house on the market for $125m. It was purchased for $96m by Rybolovlev, part of a circle of government-aligned industrialists in Russia, thereby earning Trump $55m without risking any of his own money.
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of course, the people in these states will continue to vote for republicans who not only deny climate change… but are also backing trumpty dumpty who wants to slash aid to them after the storms hit.
Tornadoes crush parts of Kansas, and 39 million are still under a severe weather threat
Mueller: “I am/am not speaking under duress…
Well…. that was interesting. Congress… do your job. And yes, subpoena Mueller and make him publicly state what’s in the report in front of cameras.
Do I think this will happen… probably not… would love to be wrong though…
Mueller not so much. For a big brave Marine — no much courage and hiding behind justice dept rules
Our climate is very much affected by the movement of warm gulf air. If a high stalls out over Arizona we have severe drought. If as is the case now it stalls out over Alabama we get warm moist air. Warm moist air with the rapid heating you get by being in the middle of the continent as we are is a great engine for generating severe storms. That is where we are right now. If the sun come out for a while to provide energy, pop up thunderstorms that turn violent will occur. Not all storms produce tornados. If you had looked at the radar for Kansas yesterday the state was doted with popup thunderboomers. As far as I know only the one that hit outside of Lawrence KS produced a tornado. None of this is unusual for this area. Now if it was happening else where……..
What I think is amusing with the climate change screamers is they can’t seem to decide if we are going to be in perpetual drought or going to wash away from the flooding. There is so much cluelessness on both sides of the screaming debate. BTW the screamers aren’t to be confused with serious research into climate change.
Jack
jack, these folks are already seeing the future….screaming while up to their hubcaps.
CBSlocal Miami Beach Taking Climate Change, Rising Sea Levels Very Seriously
MIAMI BEACH (CBSMiami) – The debate over climate change is front and center in South Florida, and one city in particular.
Miami Beach knows it could one day be under water and now officials are doing even more to get people’s attention.
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screaming from sea to shining sea
NOAA’s Sea Level Rise Viewer
“If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime,” Mueller said, “we would have said so.”
the resounding sounds of silence echoed throughout the land
Yes , Pat but you were talking my neighborhood. and for Miami is the problem the sea rising or the shore sinking? Given the disruption of the normal shore formation it could be either or both.
Things are complicated and not amenable to simple slogans.
Especially when the slogan is a demand that Americans sacrifice for the good of the future. I have faith in the Average American to be all gung ho supportive right up to the point it cost them some creature comfort.
Jack
So Mueller won’t be the resistance’s shining white knight.
Looks a lot like the climate change problem, slogans as usual won’t work, somebody is going to have get off their butts and do the work if you want to get rid of Trump.
Jack
Jack
You might want to check out Katherine Hayhoe on You Tube Facebook or Twitter. Nice conservative lady who happens to be a climate scientist and she is trying to wake up the deniers even if it may be too late to keep the worst of the damage from happening. Her Global Weirding is a great series
Wow, Biden is a dope.
Mr Jack,
Yeah, stalled highs cause different problems, depending on if you’re near the sea or on the plains, and what part of the cycle you’re in. The screamers who know their onions are concerned that you’ll be oscillating between the two stalled extremes, baking into hot cracked tile, and then flipping into water world. (Great habitat for lungfish, gambusia, and killifish.)
The center of the North American continent was once a vast shallow sea. There was a lot of carbon in the air, and the temps tended toward hot, hot, Jurassically hot. We could get back to that, I suppose. Minus the big reptiles, though.
Btw, Florida is rising, but the sea level is rising even faster.
I was making money hand over fast with my oil drilling stocks. Just as I started to feel like I knew what I was doing, the market turned on me, and I shed all my winnings and then some.
Like the Roaring ’20s and the Rocking ’90s, it was fun while it lasted.
sigh
Damn, we could have had a pizza party if you didn’t get greedy.
patd – I am good with sea level rise to ten feet. Of course I would live on an island with Chesapeake Bay shore front property.
So Mueller has decided that he cannot clarify his findings to make dipshit greedy old perverts understand that their god is a grifter, con artist and low intelligence coward.
And then he said!!!
NEW THREAD