Thanks to El Nino (according to my local television meteorologist), we are experiencing some extreme weather. Here in Southwest Florida, we enjoy abundant warm sunshine until Christmas time, when the temperatures dip a bit. However, this past Christmas week, temperatures were 20 degrees warmer than usual and we were on track to tie the record high of 86 on Christmas day.
Then we had some of this, which I am calling smog:
And then some of this lovely rain and fog:
And last weekend, for the first time, I actually received a tornado warning on my cell phone. A confirmed F2 touched down a few miles from our home on 1/9/16:
I've not seen this many blue roofs since we moved to Florida just ahead of Hurricane Charley in 2004.
On 1/14/15, we experienced sonic booms from naval air operations.
Then, this past Friday 1/15/16; all of us in the office received tornado warning alerts on our cell phones. We closed all the outer doors and prepared to take shelter in the restrooms if necessary. My daughter texted to let me know her school was lining up in the hallways for the tornado alert. An F1 tornado touched down a few miles from my office:
Notice the wooden boards driven upright into the ground.
On Sunday 1/17, an F2 tornado tragically claimed the lives of two residents in Duette. The couple's son and grandchildren were able to crawl from the wreckage. Also on Sunday, severe storms caused a "meteotsunami" in Naples. The water depth rose from average top of 4 feet to 7 feet:
A meteotsunami? Really? I've never heard of such a thing. My spellcheck doesn't even accept it as a real word. What is going on in Southwest Florida? It's not even rainy season! Not even close!
Many times I've joked that the world is becoming just as "The Day After Tomorrow" predicted, but now I'm wondering if that is really a joke at all.
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