Two Memphis City Councilors, And A Scary Number Of Other People Say Storm Dropped "Man-Made" Snow

The black stuff left on snow then
trying to melt it with a lighter is
just partly combusted material from the
lighter, not some nefarious plot
in the snow. Despite this fact, 
conspiracy theorists falsely
insist there is something "wrong"
with innocent snow and sleet. 

We've just gotten two big snow and ice storms in the southern United States in a little over a week. 

Which you'd think is bad enough. 

Now we have a bunch of people coming out of the woodwork, including two Memphis City Councilors, telling us all that snow and sleet and ice was fake. Man made for some damn reason none of these nutcases are clear about. 

Our city councilors from Memphis are Pearl Walker and Yolanda Cooper Sutton who took to social media to explain to us the storms weren't meteorology. They were apparently.... oh, who knows what.  

 As memphisflyer.com tells us :

"Cooper Sutton posted a video showing who she says is her husband attempting to melt a chunk of ice with a light. 'It's not melting  (it stinks) the you set fire to it OMG, Jesus Christ what is happening!!!"

The video is a slo-mo showing flame licking snow blue no water drips. Cooper Sutton says "This is not melting" she said. "What is falling from the sky hitting the ground?"

Her colleague on the City Council, Walker, responded to Cooper Sutton's post with the words "Man Made"

OK, I'll take off their tin hats and put on my Captain Obvious hat and explain it.. 

I wasn't there for their little science experiment, but I imagine the smell came from the butane lighter they were using.   There's not much water in a handful of snow, so not much water would drip from it. What little was there probably soaked into the tiny air spaces within the piece of snow. There's a lot of air in there, even if it's hard packed snow.  

Anyway, our friendly Memphis councilors got blow back immediately. 

A local activist named Hunter Demster decided to wade into the social media thread with this reasonable comment: "(Disheartening) to see several sitting Memphis City Council members literally pushing conspiracy theories about 'man made' sow," Demster wrote on Facebook. "Sigh......We are screwed as a species."

That just encouraged more people to double down on the conspiracy, and other to deride it. 

Cooper-Sutton later told WREG she meant her social media statements as light-hearted posts shared with family and friends. She went on to say how much she's done for the community and that she was getting death threats for questioning whether the snow was fake.

I'm sure Cooper-Sutton does a lot for Memphis, and anyone who sends out death threats to someone just because they have a very odd false, unscientific is way over the top. Don't do that! Death threats over this are much dumber than thinking the snow was manmade. 

Still, I have a lot of questions for our esteemed city council members.

If that was a manufactured material that resembles snow, who made it? And how did they make so much? Why? If somebody is sending a message by making that stuff, what is the message? Are there any whistleblowers who could help? Documents? Any other kind of proof? If this stuff didn't melt when you brought it in, why is it slowly melting outdoors when the temperature rises above freezing?  

Many people around Memphis said the stuff that fell on the city in late January  felt different to the touch than in most past winter storms. These many people are right. When Memphis does get winter storms, more often than not it's either the powdery snow that blows around, or wet, heavy cement. 

This stuff felt like small, heavy granules. Because they were. Almost everything that came out of the sky during that storm over Memphis was sleet. 

It wasn't just our city councilors. A now-apparently deleted post on the social media site Threads asked "So what chemicals are in that white stuff on the ground that's called SNOW? I have never seen ice or snow that doesn't break or melt in my life. Now if I'm asking a crazy question just let me know."

Well, I wouldn't call the question crazy, but again, it's not chemicals, either. Where this person was probably got a little snow a lot of sleet and a little freezing rain to turn the mess into something I'd call snowcrete.  

Concrete consists of gravel aggregate and a cement-like water slurry that binds it all together. In the case f that big storm, a bunch of sleet became the aggregate and the freezing rain the cement slurry to form the "snowcrete," 

In other words, millions of people experienced was just a big, strange, oddly widespread mixed precipitation storm 

There's also a TON of videos on line of people, like the Memphis City Councilors, putting the flame of a lighter to the snow. It leaves a black mark every time. That wasn't caused by a weird plastic substance in the snow, which the tin hat crowd would have you believe.   It was soot from incomplete combustion of the butane in the lighter. 

This is just little ole me telling the world to relax, there's no conspiracy to create storms of plastic pellets or chemicals to terrorize the public. The only terror was the amount of sleet and freezing rain, composed purely of frozen or freezing water that came out of the sky. Like it does in every winter storm. 

There are so many conspiracy nuts out there, that my little voice won't make a dent in all this. But I have to try anyway.  

Tornado Update: At Least Nine Dead, Dozens Injured In Big Tornado Outbreak

Severe damage from a tornado Friday in Wynne, Arkansas.
Photo by Ray Sharp, via Facebook and CNN

 The death toll from swarms of tornadoes and intense thunderstorms on Friday is at least nine with dozens injured.

The storms caused damage even more widespread than the tornadoes that afflicted Mississippi last week.  

Nine or more deaths is of course terrible news, but the fact that it wasn't worse is a blessing. 

One factor that probably reduced the death toll was the dire tone of the alerts and warnings issued on Friday. A rare "high risk" alert for tornadoes was issued in parts of the South and Midwest.  As the tornadoes developed, it became clear that some of them, as forecast were quite strong and long lasting. 

Warnings for the tornadoes carried "particularly dangerous situation" alerts which tends to wake up people to the danger even more. 

Another, probably somewhat lesser factor in the could-have-been-worse death toll is many of the tornadoes happened during the day.  Even though we're told not to wait for visual cues when a tornado warning is issued, humans are humans. We instinctive need that jolt to take cover when we see that menacing funnel bearing down on us. 

It appears some of the worst damage was around Little Rock Arkansas and points north and east of there.  The report of 600 injured around Little Rock that I saw turned out to be an exaggeration, but dozens of people were sent to hospitals with tornado injuries in the Little Rock metro area. 

The same supercell thunderstorm that unleashed the tornado in the Little Rock area dropped another powerful twister well to the northeast on the city of Wynne, Arkansas. Two deaths were reported there, along with extensive damage to the community. 

Several tornadoes later roamed the area around Memphis, Tennessee, causing more widespread damage. The twisters avoided the center of Memphis, and instead struck its northern and southern suburbs. 

AccuWeather reported two additional deaths from a likely tornado or tornadoes in Sullivan, Indiana. Widespread damage was also reported in this region, as you might expect. 

In Belvidere, Illinois, a tornado or intense thunderstorm caused much of the roof of the Apollo Theater to collapse during a concert. One of the 260 people inside died and 28 others were injured. 

In Iowa, several large tornadoes roared across the flat landscape. One of the tornadoes caused a lot of damage in Coralville, Iowa, according to the Des Moines Register.

Luckily, though, many of the largest tornadoes threaded the needle and just missed larger Iowa cities such as Ottawa, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Marshalltown and Waterloo. 

Overall, there were 65 preliminary reports of tornadoes in the U.S. on Friday. The number will change as National Weather Service investigators probe the damage swaths. 

Today, the tornado threat is less, but a few twisters could pop up in the Northeast, especially around New Jersey, Delaware and eastern Pennsylvania. 

Signs are pointing toward another possible big tornado and severe weather outbreak early next week in the Midwest and South. 

After that, the weather pattern seems to want to calm down, at least temporarily, so there might be a week or so starting about Wednesday or Thursday in which there won't be many tornadoes, hailstorms or severe thunderstorms. This being April, though, you never know.