Weather Event #8-Late March and Early April Severe Thunderstorms and Tornadoes

Updated April 07, 2006

Two strong storm systems crossed the country in quick sucession from Thursday, March 30 through Monday, April 03. The most significant outbreak occurred on Sunday April 02 with preliminary reports at least 27 dead and extensive damage.

Thursday, March 30:
Little Rock, Arkansas
Wichita, Kansas
Kansas City, Missouri
Omaha, Nebraska
SPC Storm Reports log

Friday, March 31:
Indianapolis, Indiana
Syracuse, Indiana
SPC Storm Reports log

Saturday, April 01:
Wichita, Kansas
Chase report by Sam Barricklow
Chase report by Justin Walker
SPC Storm Reports log

Sunday, April 02:
Little Rock, Arkansas
Lincoln, Illinois
Indianapolis, Indiana
Davenport, Iowa
Louisville, Kentucky
Paducah, Kentucky
St. Louis, Missouri
Memphis, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennssee
Chase report by Karen Leszke
Chase report by Mikel Shively
SPC Storm Reports log
Yahoo News article
KAIT (Jonesboro, AR)

Absolutepoker.net will never see my business again

Stage #364142550 Tourney ID 891393 Holdem Single Tournament No Limit $10 - 2006-03-28 14:07:34 (ET)Table: 6555256 (Play Money) Seat #8 is the dealer
Seat 1 - LUVMYSAILOR ($1500 in chips)
Seat 2 - LUGHER ($1500 in chips)
Seat 3 - STEVE1313 ($1500 in chips)
Seat 4 - BURNER24 ($1500 in chips)
Seat 5 - ANDYRW ($1500 in chips)
Seat 6 - RORECHOF ($1500 in chips)
Seat 7 - TYLER SP1 ($1500 in chips)
Seat 8 - CHAS1949 ($1500 in chips)
Seat 9 - DUCKGUN ($1500 in chips)
DUCKGUN - Posts small blind $10
LUVMYSAILOR - Posts big blind $20
*** POCKET CARDS ***Dealt to ANDYRW [As Ad]
LUGHER - Raises $40 to $40
STEVE1313 - Folds
BURNER24 - Raises $80 to $80
ANDYRW - All-In(Raise) $1500 to $1500
RORECHOF - Folds
TYLER SP1 - Folds
CHAS1949 - Folds
DUCKGUN - Folds
LUVMYSAILOR - Folds
LUGHER - Folds
BURNER24 - All-In $1420
*** FLOP *** [8d 5d 2c]
*** TURN *** [8d 5d 2c] [4d]
*** RIVER *** [8d 5d 2c 4d] [7s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***BURNER24 - Shows [3s Ah] (Straight, ace to five)
ANDYRW - Shows [As Ad] (One pair, aces)
BURNER24 Collects $3070 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***Total Pot($3070)Board [8d 5d 2c 4d 7s]
Seat 1: LUVMYSAILOR (big blind) Folded on the POCKET CARDS
Seat 2: LUGHER Folded on the POCKET CARDS
Seat 3: STEVE1313 Folded on the POCKET CARDS
Seat 4: BURNER24 won Total ($3070) All-In HI:($3070) with Straight, ace to five [3s Ah - B:5d,B:4d,P:3s,B:2c,P:Ah]
Seat 5: ANDYRW HI:lost with One pair, aces [As Ad - P:As,P:Ad,B:8d,B:7s,B:5d]
Seat 6: RORECHOF Folded on the POCKET CARDS
Seat 7: TYLER SP1 Folded on the POCKET CARDS
Seat 8: CHAS1949 (dealer) Folded on the POCKET CARDS
Seat 9: DUCKGUN (small blind) Folded on the POCKET CARDS

If this only happened every once in a great while, as the odds dictate it should, then I could shrug and say "that's poker", because it is. So why do hands like this seem to be the norm rather than the exception? I am consistently losing money going all-in with a dominating hand over my opponent(s). It was the same at pokerroom.com and pokerstars.net. Online poker can kiss my ass. See you in hell.

Weather Event #7-Early-Mid March Severe Weather

A classic southwest-flow pattern conducive for severe thunderstorms was in place over the central United States from Thursday March 9 through Monday March 13. This resulted in several severe weather outbreaks including the largest March tornado outbreak since 1990, on Sunday March 12th across much of Missouri. Here are the reports from various National Weather Service offices around the country:

Thursday, March 9:
Birmingham, Alabama
Little Rock, Arkansas
Paducah, Kentucky
Memphis, Tennesee
Nashville, Tennessee (1)
Nashville, Tennesee (2)
SPC Storm Reports log

Friday, March 10:
SPC Storm Reports log

Saturday, March 11:
Thunderstorms affected the Green Bay area this evening with a nice lightning show:
























































Paducah, Kentucky
St. Louis, Missouri
SPC Storm Reports log

Sunday, March 12:
Little Rock, Arkansas (covers March 11, 12 and 13)
Chicago, Illinois
Lincoln, Illinois
Wichita, Kansas
Kansas City, Missouri
Springfield, Missouri
St. Louis, Missouri
Hastings, Nebraska
Tulsa, Oklahoma
SPC Storm Reports log

Monday, March 13:
Birmingham, Alabama
Huntsville, Alabama
SPC Storm Reports log

Monday, March 20:
A "cold-core low" system helped produce several weak tornadoes in Oklahoma, which marked the first sucessful chase of the year for several people. Other severe thunderstorms tracked across the southeastern United States.
Birmingham, Alabama
Chase report by Jeff Snyder
Chase report by Justin Walker
SPC Storm Reports log

"She don't want to hear no secrets/she would guarantee me that/she knows there ain't no words than can describe her..."

Yesterday evening I was fortunate enough to hear Arlo Guthrie, son of the prolific folk singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie, as he stopped by UWGB on his "Alice's Restaurant 40th Anniversary Massacree" tour. Arlo's unique blend of folk and country blues is far from the heavy rock music I ordinarily listen to, but I've always had a special fondness for his work. Maybe it's his incredible, evocative voice, or his sense of humor ("I've always maintained that songwriting is a lot like fishing. You're just sitting there, and the songs are swimming by. If you've got a pen, you can catch 'em-unless you're unlucky enough to be sitting downstream from Bob Dylan").

Arlo played the aforementioned Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man", as well as crowd favorites "Coming into Los Angeles", "City of New Orleans", "The Motorcycle Song", and of course the (in)famous "Alice's Restaurant" ("This is a song about Alice, and the restaurant, but Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant it's just the name of the song, and that's why I call this song 'Alice's Restaurant'"). The title of this post is a line from the beautiful "In My Darkest Hour", a song Arlo says came to him in a dream ("Most of the songs I wrote, I wrote when I was awake, but not all of 'em. I had this dream and there was this guy singing this song in the dream. When I woke up I couldn't remember if it was me singing the song, so I didn't know if it was my song or what. But I figured, 'What the hell, my dream'").

Also included in the set were some of Woody Guthrie's material, the classic "This Land is Your Land" and "My Peace", which Arlo had just set to music for the first time for this tour ("My father wrote hundreds of songs that he never recorded, but he didn't know how to write music, so nobody knows how the songs go").

Winter's Last Hurrah (with any luck)

This map shows a classic winter weather pattern, with the key feature highlighted with the red line. It is a strong trough parked over southeast Canada, trailing a cold front southward and westward across the northern Gulf of Mexico. In the wake of the front, a cold Arctic ridge has sunk southward across most of the central and eastern continental United States.

The computer models are forecasting a significant pattern change by mid-late next week. They all forecast the SE Canada trough to move away and be replaced by a ridge, with another strong trough digging into the western United States. The combination of the counterclockwise flow around the trough in the West and clockwise flow around the ridge in the east will draw moist, unstable air northward from the Gulf of Mexico (which is currently supressed to the south of the cold front) and possibly signal the start of the spring severe thunderstorm season.