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RE: Cold air funnel forms a You shaped Tube
Yes, we've been following the horrible situation over there--or at least, the news covers it until they cut to go over and cover the wildfires again. We don't get flash flooding around here--flooding yes, but we're flat enough that it's usually more gradual. My wife's hometown, which is in the Mississippi River area of Missouri, was flooded almost completely during a spring flood back in the 90s, but they had no deaths or injuries.
But my relatives in the "hollers" of Kentucky and Tennessee have way too much experience with that problem. I hope none of us have to experience it again anytime soon.
Yes, the fires are becoming a big problem in many parts of the world, connected to more heat waves occuring. They are also having problems with that in the mediterranian region, Italy, Greece, Turkey ect. Large areas of forest burned down, villages destroyed, people killed. And a lot of tourist places evacuated - that had just recently reopened after the Covid lock downs.
And its hot there. Like in Greece, I mean they are used to hot summers - but now its kind of Death Valley hot. And it stays hot at night, too.
Yes, the flash floods are particulary destructive. Before, my mother used to live in a town at the river Rhine (the German Mississippi, sort of) and flooding where not unuasual there, every few years they had more or less severe floodings, after the winter when the snow melts ect.
But because of that, the people there are prepared for floodings, and the water rises slowly. Then they clear the stuff out from their basements and ground floor, and just wait until its over. Of course its still a mess, because calling this stuff "water" is a very polite desciption. But they have tiled walls and floors, so they go through the house with a steam cleaner and wash it out, bring their stuff back in and thats it. Till next time.
But the flash floods happen so fast, that people cant even run fast enough. And the destruction is immense. There a pictures of streets, where even the tarmac is washed away, and you can see the big drain pipes and electricity cables and water lines that are normally 6 feet underground. And solid stone houses collapsed, because the ground underneath their foundations was washed away.
The people in the affected places do get much support from all over Germany, still its very hard for them. And of course there is always the thought "What if it happens again?", for those who are having to rebuild - or leave.
I suspect it would be after about the second time of being underwater that I'd decide to pick up and leave. But of course there are very few places anywhere in the world that aren't open to some kind of natural disaster. I think I've mentioned before that I keep a close eye on that kind of stuff, so I knew about the fires elsewhere, and the flooding, and such ... but I suspect a lot of Americans are too busy worrying about the problems over here to put a lot of thought into other places.
Here in northern Indiana our weather's been oddly--normal. Hot, yes, but hot is what we do in the summer. We've had some pretty severe thunderstorms the last several days, but again ... summer. The only big difference here is that our sunsets and sunrises have been spectacular, thanks to smoke from the western US and Canada floating over us in the upper atmosphere.
I remember a couple of decades ago reading that researchers had determined wild weather like this is actually normal for the world--that we had, in fact, been going through an unusually mild climate. That talk went away when global warming became a thing, and before the research there was a lot of talk about man-made global cooling.
I told my wife the other day that the Earth is just trying to shake us off: We're like ticks on a dog, and we finally bit once too often.