SharonA

Last night around midnight it had tapered off here (Freeport) ... now it's snowing again. Not heavily, but at about the same clip as the early stages yesterday morning. Hard to guesttimate the snowfall considering the high winds we had for a bunch of it. Lots of scouring of areas then huge drifts at the edges.

I'm envious of those of you with the 20+ totals. We in Freeport had a late start, nothing showing when I peeked out the window at 7:50 then about 40 minutes later it was going OK. It's basically been continuous all-day with light to moderate snow in between spurts/bands of heavier stuff, vis about 1/4-1/2 mile when it gets heavier? There were a couple of memorable moments of a minute or so white-out. I'm going to guess about 6-8", tops, so far, over the previous stuff that hadn't yet melted. Snowblower sidewalk cuts are > a foot deep but some of that is the leftovers from last week. The wind has been strong to blast-gusty, 40mph+ IME at times. Cars in the parking lot facing into the wind are snowless on the front and huge piles on the back windows and rears. The wind was strong enough to blow enough snow under the overhang that it kept triggering the automatic doors to open. So much for working from the lobby, I quickly got tired of a freezing blast of air every minute or five. Hopefully we'll get more in the next few hours ... late to start, late to stop?

Nope. I've had safe deposit boxes in a number of institutions and they all required use of two keys to access - one held by the customer (me) and the other by the bank. I go in, sign a card/fill out a form that records who accessed it when (one bank always checked my photo ID, others took my word that I was who I claimed to be), sometimes had the signature compared to the one on file, put my key in one lock and they put their key in the other. Even though in theory the paperwork specified who had access to the box, the fine print covered their butts with wording to the effect that "anyone possessing the key is assumed to be authorized to access the box contents", and the ID/signature-check just to make sure it's not someone pretending to be *me*. The signup and disclosure forms made a huge deal out of making sure I knew I had to bring my key every time, they couldn't do it with just their key, and "don't lose your key, we can't open the box. You have to fill out paperwork and pay us in advance a fee to cover both drilling the lock and then replacing it and issuing new keys because that's going to destroy it". Now what would be interesting is how the bank handles this without the backup paperwork ... who/what has the backup copy of the records of who's got what box number, the cards with accountholder info and alternate accesses and access history and so on. My previous bank went from small-local to itty-bitty-branch-of-huge-one to bankrupt-huge-one-gets-bought-by-even-bigger-one, yet the original account open cards, signatures, info, etc, were always in the same beat-up old box in an office that wasn't inside the vault. If this branch had been in Joplin, those records would be in a field a few dozen miles away. Things are quite different with safe deposit boxes vs stuff left at a hotel office, for example. Anyhow, sorry to digress so much. Business continuity after disaster is sort of an interest of mine.

The official stuff: 000 NOUS43 KSGF 242259 AAA PNSSGF KSZ073-097-101-MOZ055>058-066>071-077>083-088>098-101>106-250445-...UPDATED PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SPRINGFIELD MO 559 PM CDT TUE MAY 24 2011 ..EF-5 TORNADO CONFIRMED IN JOPLIN... THE JOPLIN TORNADO HAS BEEN UPGRADED TO AN EF-5 TORNADO. * DATE...22 MAY 2011 * MAXIMUM EF-SCALE RATING...EF-5 * ESTIMATED MAXIMUM WIND SPEED...IN EXCESS OF 200 MPH * ESTIMATED PATH WIDTH...3/4 MILE * FATALITIES...122 * INJURIES...750 * THIS PRELIMINARY INFORMATION WAS DETERMINED BY A NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SURVEY TEAM AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE PENDING FINAL REVIEW OF THE EVENT AND PUBLICATION IN NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE STORM DATA. AN EF-5 TORNADO IMPACTED A LARGE PORTION OF THE CITY OF JOPLIN. WIND SPEEDS WERE ESTIMATED IN EXCESS OF 200 MPH. THE PATH WIDTH WAS ESTIMATED AT THREE QUARTERS OF A MILE WIDE. FOR REFERENCE...THE ENHANCED FUJITA SCALE CLASSIFIES TORNADOES INTO THE FOLLOWING CATEGORIES: EF0...WIND SPEEDS 65 TO 85 MPH. EF1...WIND SPEEDS 86 TO 110 MPH. EF2...WIND SPEEDS 111 TO 135 MPH. EF3...WIND SPEEDS 136 TO 165 MPH. EF4...WIND SPEEDS 166 TO 200 MPH. EF5...WIND SPEEDS GREATER THAN 200 MPH. $$ WISE

There is a thread here dedicated to the surveys .... I don't know about the Wiki page nor who is handling it. Many of the surveys are preliminary

Same here. I wish we had a separate thread for the "what's the best way to stay alive" circling and another for the wx and science.

Well there's a pair of cells moving into and through Carroll County now ; the southmost looks to clip Atlanta. Both were TOR warned on the AL side of the border and SVR on this side. Getting thunder, lightning, and gusts in Winston/west Douglas County now. From where we are, we hear an East Carroll County siren go off when there is any warning for any part of Carroll County. It wails for a few minutes then stops. Sort of like a 25-minute-heads-up for us. The real Showtime, however, is yet to come for Atlanta.