Winter Storm Impacts, Disaster Tourism, Weather Junkies
A massive winter storm brings freezing rain and sub-zero wind chills to a large swath of the United States, including Texas and the Midwest. Residents in Fredericksburg describe being trapped by ice while discussing the phenomenon of "disaster tourism" and weather junkies who follow creators like Max Velocity. Despite widespread power outages in the region, some households remain operational due to standby generators.
fredericksburg· winter storm· max velocity· weather channel· disaster tourism
00:00 I should mention, dogs do not dance. And from Northern Silicon Valley, where we can tell that the weather's hurting the show, I'm John C. Dvorak. Yes, people couldn't get outside to mail a check. It's horrible, I tell you. It's horrible. It doesn't matter.
00:44 Hey, it wasn't as bad and it is bad. Well, okay, yes, okay. We should explain to people outside the country. Yeah, well I think this is international news. Yeah, we have a big storm in the middle of the country. It's kind of chilly here at 60. Oh, shiver me timbers. Yeah. So it is, I think it's about 25 right now. And it's cold. Yeah. For us. Well, yeah, it was, I think it was 14 or 16 last night. Too cold. Yeah. But last night is when we got freezing rain and mixed with snow. And so it's just packed. It's just packed on top of everything. So we can't drive. We can't even get down a driveway. We could slide down the driveway.
01:42 But we can't drive. So you're stuck there. Yeah, kind of stuck. But we're ready for it. So without raiding the supermarkets, how much food, because everyone raided the supermarkets, how much food do you think the average person has in their house already? that they could hold out with. You mean like actual food or peanut butter? Food in the house. Or peanut butter. What counts as food? I count that. Oh, I think if people really looked at what they have, they probably have enough for two weeks. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah. And if you have a big freezer, you can probably go longer. Oh, no, we could go two months if we're just doing stuff from the freezer because we do the big, you know, we get the big shipment from K&C Cattle.
02:32 But even at a certain point we could eat the dog's food because she has that farmer's dog stuff. I'd eat that. And then we just eat the dogs. I think we could go for a couple of months. Dog's looking at me right now like, what? What did you just say? What? What did you just say? No. Yeah. Funny enough, lots of power went out in Fredericksburg but not at our place. Once again, once again, the generator is not used. That's the reason you buy it. The minute you get it, it never flips on. It's just not necessary. It's amazing. It really is amazing. But yeah, and it's weird. Like my buddy Dave in Alabama, it's 50 degrees. It's like this thing went right around Alabama. It's the weirdest thing.
03:27 Yeah, when kind of it's a funny pattern. It's very strange. What I haven't heard though... Global warming. Proof. No, I haven't heard that for sure. But I haven't heard the extreme weather event. That's typically what they roll out. I think it's diminishing. The whole, in fact... I think people are realizing that people are getting sick of hearing it. Yeah. Yeah, there was something I had a I think I had a clip about this somewhere. I thought I had Well, are you looking for the idea of the weather report from the people from NPR? You can play that Let's see where the report storm update Oh storm storm updates a massive winter storm is sweeping through a huge swath of the country from the southwest heading to the mid-atlantic and then up through the northeast this weekend
04:22 with heavy snow and ice possible. Freezing rain in Sleet is also expected in many states. That could bring down trees onto power lines, leading to widespread power outages. Already thousands are without power in the Southwest. National Weather Service meteorologist Josh Weiss. So if people lose power, if people can't get out of their homes because snow and ice is covering the roadways, they could be stuck for several days without the ability to get warm and it's going to be so cold. We've got sub-zero wind chills that may reach as far south as Dallas, Memphis, and Raleigh, North Carolina, and all points north of there. So people are trapped due to heavy snowfall and damaging freezing rain. This cold is going to linger all of next week, making a dangerous situation truly life-threatening. Thousands of flights have been canceled or delayed because of the storm. Mimi texted me. She texted me about three times a year.
05:15 Usually one is, okay, time to do taxes. And then this is the first time this year she's like, oh, Max Velocity says it's gonna be bad. She loves Max. Yeah, she called me last, she says, oh, you think he's gonna be okay? I said, yeah. I appreciate her concern. She doesn't say, she doesn't text me like, are you gonna be okay? Just said, Max Velocity says you're gonna die. Here it comes. Max will watch he's fun to watch because I'm always saying it you I've watched him a couple times But he's a little he's a little too intense for my taste a little Okay, he's way too intense for my taste and he's
05:59 And Mimi's just in love with this guy and she thinks his reports are so dynamite, but they have nothing to do with anything she's doing. She's up in an area, he doesn't cover, he's covering the Midwest mostly. She's just a weather junkie. So who cares? She's a weather junkie. I mean, I know people like this. She's a weather junkie. There are people who just, you know, there's a, um, on the YouTube TV, there's a quad squeen, squeen, squeen. I keep saying squeen. Squeen, this is squeen. Stop me! I like the screen. I like the quad screen. That's what it's called now. Quad screen of Weather Channel, Fox Weather, there's two other ones. And I'm sure people watch that all day long. Oh, weather. Weather. Look, weather. Holy mackerel, do you see the size of that hail in Oklahoma?
06:49 It's a form of disaster tourism, you know, virtual disaster tourism, because he always has the storm chasers. And the storm chasers are now chasing snow. Yeah, we're in the snow right now. We're driving. It's snowy. Yep, it's cold. Back to you, Max. Anyway, I'm sure we will survive. If we don't get any more precipitation, we should be okay. I found my climate change things at the end of this clip because coming on the heels of the national security strategy is the new United States defense plan.
