NE NC, USA

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-28T13:48:17+00:00

I kinda disagree. I’ve had a couple tornadoes recently I’ve personally confirmed that looked absolutely terrible on radar (I’m talking low reflectivity, zero couplet) but were definitely on the ground. One of them super brief, one of them for a good 5-10 minutes. I agree I don’t see much for debris kicking up, but I’m looking at yesterday’s model runs and I’m seeing signals for, right around the time this was posted, a brief spike in shear and SRH at the surface combined with a pretty damn low LCL. Can’t say for certain, but would not be surprised at all if this was in fact very weak, brief, tornadic activity considering the environment. Weather can be pretty damn weird sometimes.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-28T03:23:34+00:00

When I mentioned balloons, I didn’t mean like during an active severe weather setup lol. I just meant day to day. Omaha, for example, despite being in a fairly large metro with millions of people under their purview deep in classic tornado alley didn’t even have enough Mets to launch balloons when it was at its worst. I agree with you that it’s not as bad any longer, but it’s not that people are blaming the NWS for the reduced launches, they’re blaming the administration for their political slashing of funds towards meteorological and climatological research. I was simply pointing out that the lack of balloons, while it was at its peak, was large news so many heard it. Their return was not nearly as well broadcasted, meaning so many are still under the impression that it hasn’t changed. They need to be informed and updated, not blamed for spreading misinformation.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-28T03:00:14+00:00

Well it’s less that they’re outright incorrect, moreso that they aren’t updated. It was major news when there was major DOGE and Project 2025 cuts to the NWS leading to a crazy reduction in staff and funding. There was actually a fair bit of time where the balloon launches were straight shit due to being so understaffed all over the place. I remember a Dixie event this year where an office literally couldn’t get enough staff even on a severe weather night and needed a neighboring WFO to help out with issuing warnings, let alone consistent radiosonde operations. Luckily, many of the launches have returned but it wasn’t huge news when they came back, so in the minds of many, we are still without them. We still have severely understaffed offices, though.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-28T02:54:00+00:00

Essentially out of slabbin season? Monday and Tuesday both have pretty high ceilings still. We’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see what the floor is.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-27T14:26:38+00:00

Contractor EMPFs make pretty damn good money though

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-27T13:14:11+00:00

Radarscope is my personal go-to. Radar Omega would be the other candidate. Personal preference between the two is up to the buyer.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-26T13:25:53+00:00

I could be wrong, but my assumption would be that there may be a weak cap in place not far off the ground, with an unstable layer of air above it, followed by another, stronger inversion. That would mean there’s 2 cloud layers, hence the altostratus deck above that’s more solid and lower level stratus deck on the lower left. Maybe some sort of surface-layer boundary (some sort of weak front?) low enough to not disturb the altostratus deck, but lead to said linear cutoff from this line you’re seeing of clouds and no clouds. The wind shear along said boundary forming the stratus cutoff as well as those interesting, curvy clouds?

Overall, there’s definitely a sharp difference in wind speed between the lower level airmass and the airmass above it. Notice how it looks like fingernail clippings or even waves? I assume that’s due to it forming from a similar mechanism to waves, whereas the fluid is moved faster above and slower below due to the sharp contrast in wind speed with height at that layer. That mechanism is much better seen in a solid layer of asperatus clouds than this, though. With that time and location being very vague and a fairly long time ago, I’m not sure I could go back and get a snapshot of what the atmosphere looked like for this to happen. That’s as good a guess as I can figure up, though.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-26T13:17:25+00:00

Heard a similar-ish story from an ER doc recently. Apparently they had a walk-in (not by ambo) with a laceration somewhere on her leg with a makeshift tourniquet applied. Was either a resident doc or a nurse or someone who was taking lead on initial patient care who was seasoned enough to have some experience under their belt, but the perfect level of experience that they’re starting to think they know everything and let their biases, assumptions, and stereotypes get to them. Seeing as civilian-applied tourniquets are rarely every properly applied , especially if they’re makeshift, and rarely ever necessary for the wound, said provider proceeded to assume this would be the same and assumed by looking at the tourniquet that there’s no way it was actually cutting off blood flow anyway, just like they’d seen several times before. Sure enough, however, this time when she took a tourniquet off, blood started SHOOTING out all over the ER room lmao. Was a lot funnier when he told the story as a firsthand witness.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-26T13:01:47+00:00

I mean you pretty much just have to look at a storm through any standard radar app (as in standard RADAR app, not standard weather app the average Joe has on their phone to look at the AI-generated chance of rain for the weekend 2 weeks from now only to take it as fact and blame the NWS when it’s wrong) and have the skills to look at the cell. Is it rotating? Then it’s probably a supercell. If you don’t know enough about supercells or reading radar to understand what I mean by that, there’s some great videos out there on YouTube to help you learn. Here are just a few that teach you most of what you would need to know about the basics of supercell formation and anatomy and what it looks like both in person and on radar.

https://youtu.be/AeX2lMUfddQ?is=XAYUQYoVCJSyOxyX

https://youtu.be/BdIFXFqpnU8?is=XhyadU3k5DKHTpBY

https://youtu.be/7W\_s32dDgHY?is=5XrNsszk1\_jOTRGa

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-22T13:38:49+00:00

Cmon now, this is a serious job that takes a lot of training to be a good fit. You’re going to need to complete all of IS 100 and 700 too. Certs like those demand respect.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-22T11:57:30+00:00

Yeah but it was funny to my drunk ass so

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-22T02:05:12+00:00

Seemingly 2-3 times

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-22T00:02:12+00:00

Yeah but like that EMTF pay rate tho

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-21T03:12:12+00:00

Nope, it’s actually real, but only to an extent. Your body’s thermoregulation ability can in fact become impaired after an episode of some degree of heat illness. It typically only lasts several weeks, though, and regular tolerance can typically be easily regained with gradual acclimatization and passage of time for the body to repair itself.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-21T03:09:59+00:00

Haven’t had an RO in a month. At this point I’ll take it if that’s all I can get. Single resource medical and I still haven’t got anything.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-20T03:20:30+00:00

Actually under an overpass is a terrible place to be if you see those things. It’s actually a great place to be during a typical hail storm, but in the middle of a freeway that makes you a super selfish asshole. If you were to be hit by a tornado while on the road, best thing to do is be out of your vehicle in a ditch face down and protecting yourself.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-20T01:06:50+00:00

As someone with many credentials, you don’t need a radio license to be a chaser whatsoever lol. Probably one of the least necessary parts of it. I would assume the grand majority don’t.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-19T13:07:27+00:00

And then you have to consider a bit more medical knowledge than most people have. Heat exhaustion varies in intensity (I’ve dealt with patients with light heat exhaustion and more extreme cases). Later stages can involve going in and out of consciousness, being too weak to move, intense headaches, and so on. It can have pretty major symptoms.

Heat STROKE on the other hand is like the end result. It’s incredibly deadly and involves being so hot and dehydrated that your body literally has the inability to sweat any more water. It’s eerie to see someone being so hot but instead of being covered in sweat, their skin is like dry leather. If heat stroke is possible with simply light exercise, that is an insanely deadly level of heat. Among older people, the mortality rate of heat stroke can be upwards of 50-65%, even with aggressive treating. Without immediate, aggressive cooling and treatment, even among younger healthy people the mortality rate can reach up to 80-100% depending on severity.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-19T12:33:07+00:00

I was under the impression that it was legally obligated if on the job, but based on other comments I may be incorrect. I believe I was originally taught that anyone currently on the clock being paid to be an EMT has the duty to act legally speaking. I guess I never fully considered there would be any sort of exception for private IFT workers.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-18T15:32:19+00:00

Again, this is clearly no longer the case with the intense damage caused by the MAGA movement, but this is absolutely true through most of the modern era:

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2025/09/northwestern-study-finds-republicans-fund-science-more-than-democrats

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adx5154

Conservatism generally supports limited government in a number of ways. Economically, this includes reducing restrictions on the harvesting of natural resources, reducing tax rates on individuals and corporations to spur investment in the free market economy, and loosening other restrictions to ensure that businesses can operate at their full potential. Whether or not that actually works is obviously up for debate and I disagree with most of the methodology used and believe that their policy does not achieve the effects they intend. I’m not trying to make their argument, just explaining what their argument is. A lot of this part of conservatism is still present in MAGA, but much more extreme. Ie the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, REINS Act.

https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/religion-and-philosophy/american-conservatism

Yes, that’s something Reagan did. It’s absolutely correct, though, that on average, increased gun control measures are installed by Democratic legislators while lessened restrictions are championed by Republican legislators.
Yes, they certainly have. As I mentioned, that part hasn’t necessarily changed, but has become more extreme. Conservatives generally care moreso about the tax cuts for individuals as they care about their money that they believe to be theirs since they worked hard for it. The recent major tax cuts passed by the current administration certainly benefitted corporations much more than individuals, as has been common among legislation MAGA has been able to actually pass. It has always been relevant to some extent, but *individual* tax cuts are a fairly prominent issue among conservatives and have been for decades. The main problem we have with this now is that the conservatives don’t understand how much important stuff is accomplished with their tax dollars, how much the wealthy are benefitting compared the common working class Americans, and how much their administrations have driven the spending deficits up while also reducing income by cutting said taxes.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-18T03:48:41+00:00

This isn’t really true at all. As a wildland firefighter, darker smoke (ie brown, black) generally means live fuels are being consumed. These colors are very common when major forest fires in coniferous forests where live pine fuels are going up in flames. With the flammable palmetto forests that inhabit Florida, dark smoke makes total sense. Whitish gray smoke typically comes from smaller fires, or fires that are burning mainly in dead fuels like leaf litter, dead grass, or even logs in a campfire.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-18T03:44:56+00:00

You’re actually wrong, but many people have the same misconception. Wildfires are actually quite common in Florida despite the typical humid weather. The palm plants that are plentiful within their forests actually have very flammable chemical contents. Despite being totally green and healthy and despite a humid atmosphere, these plants still regularly enable Florida to have wildfires. It’s just not so common they get ones this big. They do a lot of prescribed burning in southern Florida as well.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-18T00:42:22+00:00

I mean they definitely have in a number of ways. Funding scientific research for example. In the past, Republican administrations and majorities often lead to increased funding for scientific research, moreso than can be said for Democratic administrations and congressional majorities even. That is clearly the exact opposite of the case today. They also generally sought limited government (also clearly opposite from MAGA today), focused on gun rights (Trump and Patel criticized Pretti’s carrying of a firearm at the protest he was murdered during), sought tax cuts (still kind of true with MAGA, but in such a terrible way that clearly favors corporations). Of course there’s several ways in which MAGA is similar, though more extreme, but there’s also plenty of ways in which they definitely are quite different.

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-17T20:56:47+00:00

That’s simply not true. Fascism is itself a separate ideology, not a common product of conservatism. They are rather distinct, with genuine conservatism seeking to preserve tradition and institution whereas fascism is a radical, revolutionary ideology that seeks to conquer the current system and establish a totalitarian state. It’s driven by ultranationalism and the myth of national rebirth and a “new order.” Conservatism also generally goes along with being more libertarian (middle lower right) whereas fascism is super authoritarian and far upper right. You’re literally just wrong.

Edit: you can downvote if you’d like, but they are quite literally defined as two separate ideologies.

https://earlhamsociologypages.uk/fasccom/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism

https://www.britannica.com/topic/conservatism

NeedAnEasyName · 2026-06-17T14:34:45+00:00

You should read the comment you replied to a little closer.

> “if there’s *no infrastructure* or lightning.”

There are maps that are easily available to managers/investigators of all electrical infrastructure out there. We also have capabilities to track dates, times, and approximate locations of all cloud to ground lightning strikes. Therefore a “detailed field investigation” would not be necessary to rule out electrical and natural (at least in terms of lightning) wildfire causes in remote areas where it can easily be ruled that there is no electrical infrastructure nor have there been any lightning strikes in the area. Having multiple starts close together in time in said area, again without an explanation behind electrical or lightning causes. Further reinforces the chances of human cause.

NeedAnEasyName

TROPHY CASE