hawkstwelve

TikTok has a year to sell or get banned. By then, the election will be in the rearview mirror. Not to mention you think your average American has a short attention span? Just look at the 20-somethings... They'll be moved on to the next manufactured crisis within a few months at most.

I'd argue that you and MAGA are the ones hell bent on going down with the ship. And yeah, I do think the polls showing Trump solidly winning are wrong. I'm old enough to remember when polls indicated a large red wave was coming in the 2022 midterms and it was nothing more than a small ripple. Who's to say we aren't seeing a similar phantom wave this go around?

Biden is disliked by many, Trump is absolutely hated by more.

Nikki Haley dropped out over a month and a half ago and yet she just pulled 157k votes in the PA primary, enough for almost 17%. Earlier this month, she received 13% of Wisconsin and New York primary votes as well as 11% of Rhode Island votes and 14% in Connecticut. In most of those states, the combined non-Trump vote was around 20%. It certainly appears that roughly 20% of the Republican party are 'never Trumpers' and will most likely not vote for him in November. Trump was unable to secure 6% of the party in 2020 and lost the election. Even if half that 20% ends up coming home to Trump, that is still a significant hurdle for him to climb within his own party, let alone Independents or moderate Democrats. I still firmly believe that Trump will lose us this election and we will be staring down the barrel of a Kamala Harris presidency within a year or two. Maybe by 2028 the Republican Party will pull their heads out of their asses and move on from the guy. Although something tells me our party leaders are just not all that smart.

Pretty crazy that over the course of the 160 miles between us you can go from just 57% of YTD precip (Omaha) to 109% of YTD precip (Sioux Falls). You've been awfully close to getting in on the action but storms seem to continuously crap the bed at the last second in your area. Sure hope you can get precip back on track soon!

With the latest rainfall we have received, we are now 109% above average on YTD precip, currently standing at 5.2 inches. We are already approaching our normal rainfall for April - currently at 2.36 with the average being 3 inches. Most models show us getting another inch or so of precip over the next 10 days so we should end up above normal for April as well. Assuming that pans out, this will be our first above normal precip month since January. On the temperature side, we are running at almost +7 on the month. This will be the ninth month in a row of above normal temperatures as our last below normal month was July of last year (-0.4). The closest we have had to a below normal month in that time span was January which came in at +0.3. Otherwise, we have been running anywhere between +2.3 to +13.4 for each month since last summer. And if it wasn't for last July's barely below normal departure, you'd have to go all the way back to March of 2023 to find a solidly below normal month (-7.5). In other words, we have been on quite the warm stretch for a while now.

I got introduced to Coleman Hughes when a clip of his interaction on The View went viral recently. Here's that segment of their show, if you're curious. Putting aside their obvious disdain for this man and Sunny Hostin's incredibly rude and condescending manner in questioning him, I heard him talk about some really interesting ideas - ideas that, IMO, should be considered common sense but are unfortunately labeled "radical right wing talking points" by ignorant people like Sunny. Coleman makes the case for a true "color-blind" society where we acknowledge that people are obviously different races (in contrast to the folks who like to say "I don't see color" as if that makes them non-racist) but that we should focus on socio-economic classes in order to better address the issues of today. He talks about eliminating race-based government policies that group people based on their skin color (ie if you are black, you are automatically at a disadvantage and should be given preferential treatment) in favor of policies that look at other metrics such as income, crime, family wealth, etc. in order to determine who in our society needs additional help and who doesn't. He also talks about how Robin DiAngelo and Kendi's views on racism are fundamentally racist themselves, quoting D'Angelo in saying "I strive to be less white, and by being less white, I'll be less ignorant", and how that type of viewpoint does more harm than good in trying to fight racism. He comes across as an incredibly intelligent, rational, calm, collected young mind that I think our country would really benefit from listening to more often. Below is another recent interview he did on PBS, which is much more fair and actually allows him to get his points across without ad hominem attacks. I highly suggest a watch if you have the time. Very interesting stuff.

Sister-in-law near Okoboji, IA reported the sirens were going off about 20-30 minutes ago. Looks like there was a tornado warning issued around then for a cell that ended up passing by just to the west. Closer to home, we are now up to 1.14 inches on the day and have a slight break in the precip as the low moves by just to our south. We had an almost-midnight high of 67 but have maintained a temp on either side of 55 for most the day. A far cry from the 88 degrees we reached just a few days ago.

Tornado Watch has been issued just one county off to my SE. I believe this might cover @BojiMom area.

We're up to almost an inch of rain on the day, with more looking to be moving up from the south shortly. We should end up getting into the dry slot for this afternoon before the wraparound moisture hits us overnight. It has been a gray, wet, dreary day so far today. Very PNW-like and a nice change of pace from the summertime weather we enjoyed over the weekend.

Pro-Palestinian protestors blocked access today to O'Hare and SeaTac airports along with the Golden Gate and Brooklyn Bridges as well as I-5 in Eugene, OR. I can't think of a faster way to get otherwise neutrally-stanced people to immediately hate whatever cause you are supposedly championing than to pull that type of shit. What do these protestors even think? Stopping people from going about their day (let alone taking a flight to see a dying loved one or something) is going to solve a conflict that's been going on for centuries? Suddenly Netanyahu is going to say, "Gee, these people in Illinois seem really angry so I guess I should stop the bombing." I mean, really? What's the end goal here besides pissing off your community? Just complete and total morons. Go back to your basements. Or better yet, go find a job so you are doing something more productive with your Monday. Idiots.

Iran state media is reportedly showing videos from fires in Chile and Texas, claiming that it's Israel. Definitely seems like this was just a ploy to save face domestically and not to start a wider regional (or world) war. Hopefully cooler heads prevail in whatever response Israel feels like it needs to do.

We have reached up to a very hot feeling 88 degrees today, our highest temp since last October on the 2nd when we reached 92. We're going to be grilling, playing lawn games, and having a bonfire tonight. A little taste of summer in April!

Agree with others on the potential for a severe outbreak next week. Latest ECMWF looks pretty nice on the lightning front.

Cool picture of a tornado from 1884 taken in South Dakota.

Rest of the week should be fairly quiet after we get hit with some light wrap-around moisture today and some more light precip on Wednesday. We've received 0.57 inches of rain over the past two days. Not great but not terrible either. We look to be warming up to near 80 by the weekend with perhaps another system in about a week, almost an exact replica of this weekend's storm as it's currently modeled. It seems like storms have been rolling through here every 6-8 days since the end of March and that pattern looks to continue for at least another week or two. End of April is looking potentially dry and mild at this point.

Tornado warning just to my south.

Family and I sat on the back porch last night and watched as the line of thunderstorms rolled in. We saw some large cloud-to-ground lightning strikes and heard some decent rumbles of thunder. It was more than I expected so that was pretty nice. The low is located pretty close to us here today. NWS FSD is pointing out the possibility of landspouts/funnels forming later this afternoon. HRRRRRR shows some thunderstorm redevelopment around 3-6PM. I'll be keeping my eye to the sky today for any rotation!

It has been extremely windy here today with partly to mostly sunny skies and a high of 64. Darker clouds are building to my SW though. Really hoping we can score a rumble of thunder and a couple lightning strikes tonight. Looks marginal up here but might just be enough to eek it out if the band can hold together. We shall see.

A kind of long but interesting read that discusses the problem with the 'white rural rage' myth that some Democrats are adopting in regards to rural America. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/05/white-rural-rage-myth-00150395

Watch it, dude. If you continue to do nothing but troll people in this thread, I will straight up ban you. Maybe from the forum altogether, as from what I have seen in the PNW thread recently, you like stirring the pot there too. Just about had enough.

Hello pot, meet kettle.

A little closer in the near term, the ECMWF is showing some lightning around with this weekend's system. Sounds like these could be accompanied by some fairly strong winds. Perhaps a secondary, but growing concern could be with the winds Saturday evening into the early overnight hours. Southeast low-lvl flow is expected to ramp up quickly Saturday evening with 925 mb winds off the EC pushing 55 knots, and GFS pushing 50 knots ahead of and along the advancing corridor of rain. These winds sit at the 99th percentile or in some cases outside the 30 year model climatology for early April, especially at the 850/700 mb layers. Could see a scenario where high gusts mixdown with the rain and embedded thunderstorms Saturday evening. While the NBM winds (gusting over 60 mph) may be a bit on the high side, it should be noted that both the EC/GFS/GEM/NAM all produce a corridor of 50 to 55 mph gusts as the precipitation moves northeast. The GEFS/EPS also note mean wind gusts between 45 and 50 mph Saturday evening, with more than a handful of members over 50 mph.

It's obviously a long ways out there but the GFS is showing some gulf moisture and accompanying high CAPE values making it up to my neck of the woods on my birthday. Some birthday fireworks Mother Nature style.

Did he prioritize it? Didn't he go to Easter mass? Did Trump go to Easter mass? Look, I'm not a Biden fan in the slightest, but on the one hand you have a president attending Easter mass and on the other hand you have a former president marketing his $60 bibles. You tell me who is prioritizing what. The 'proclamation' Biden did was horrible timing, yes. Typical screwup from his White House comms office. But it is incredibly dishonest to frame this as him trying to "erase Easter" or "replace God with trans", which I saw all over Fox News and from Republican congressmen. It's such a naked ploy to just gin up anger with the base, especially when it's something that can be disproven with just 30 seconds of research. Unfortunately, taking that amount of time to check things out is just asking too much from some Americans these days. They'd rather spend their time in a perpetual outrage at the other side. So stupid.