Friday night a tornado caused 400 miles of death and devastation from St Louis, Missouri, into southeastern Kentucky. By Saturday morning at least 27 tornados or high wind storms had been counted, most in Kentucky and Indiana, with a smattering along the Chesapeake Bay. Thanks to climate change, these deadly storms are shifting from the traditional flat plans of Kansas and Oklahoma to the forested areas of Appalachia.
So, what kind of help will the survivors receive, now that the White House has declared that FEMA is finished. Just last week the acting head of FEMA was fired because he told Congress FEMA is necessary. And internal documents state that FEMA is not ready for the Atlantic hurricane season.
The St Louis and Louisville weather offices were down by well over a quarter of its staff thanks to cuts. How can we expect warning with enough time to prepare – Remember Sandy? We had at least a day or so ahead of the storm, but the new regime thinks we don’t need good weather tracking. But we need more than 30 minutes to prepare.
Prayer for the Day
God who made the rain that we need for crops,
We know we have upset the balance you created;
Lord, who made the sun to give us warmth,
We know we have abused your creation.
Open our eyes, O Holy One, so we damage not the earth,
The world given to us through your beneficence.
In the name of the One who walks with us,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
The growing intensity and frequency of severe weather events like extreme rainfall, extreme heat, and drought can be directly attributed to climate change, but the link between tornadoes and climate change is currently not fully understood. Challenges remain that prevent clearer attribution, including: limited data collection methods, high year-to-year variability, and difficulty modeling key physical elements that help tornadoes form as well as directly modeling tornadoes due to their small size.
Center for Climate and Energy Solutions
We can't in any way call one tornado something that's attached to climate change, but we can say the pattern of which things are increasing and getting stronger, that likely is related to a warming world.
David Parkinson, CBS News Senior climatologist
I call upon you, O Lord, come quickly to me; give ear to my voice when I call on you.
Let my prayer be counted as incense before you,
And the lifting of my hands as an evening sacrifice.
Psalm 141: 1-2