Althouse: "More than 11,000 waterfowl and wetland birds were killed after 'baseball-sized' chunks of hail fell on a Montana wildlife management area last weekend..."

August 20, 2019

"More than 11,000 waterfowl and wetland birds were killed after 'baseball-sized' chunks of hail fell on a Montana wildlife management area last weekend..."

"Ducks and shorebirds with broken wings, smashed skulls and other signs of internal bleeding were found on the shores around Big Lake Wildlife Management Area in Molt, Mont...."

NY Post.

42 comments:

tim maguire said...: Climate change. There was no hail just the day before.; 8/20/19, 2:49 PM
Nonapod said...: Nature can be a mean bitch sometimes.

I've heard that hail causes something like $8-10 billion in damage a year.; 8/20/19, 2:56 PM
chuck said...: The fossil record contains traces of these sorts of catastrophes, piles of fossil remains from some undetermined cause. I would guess that baseball sized hail could also kill people.

Deaths from hail are rare — the last known death caused by hail in the U.S. was in the year 2000, when a man was killed by softball size hail in Fort Worth, Texas.; 8/20/19, 2:57 PM
Wince said...: "Free range" and "cage free" ain't all it's cracked-up to be.; 8/20/19, 2:59 PM
ga6 said...: "
"Red in tooth and claw"

Nature wants you dead; 8/20/19, 3:10 PM
pacwest said...: If they'd been tubes they wouldn't have gotten smashed. But the tubes were full of fish. Sometimes there just aren't enough tubes.; 8/20/19, 3:23 PM
Anonymous said...: DAMN that Donald Trump!!!!1!!1!ONE!!; 8/20/19, 3:24 PM
madAsHell said...: But the tubes were full of fish. Sometimes there just aren't enough tubes.

"The Internet is just a series of tubes" --Former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens

If a fish can't use a bicycle, then what's the fish gonna do with a series of tubes???; 8/20/19, 3:29 PM
RobinGoodfellow said...: Nature hates nature.; 8/20/19, 3:31 PM
Doug said...: Answer me please, NY Post - how many birds are slaughtered by wind farms EVERY SINGLE DAY?; 8/20/19, 3:40 PM
pacwest said...: "If a fish can't use a bicycle, then what's the fish gonna do with a series of tubes???"

Well, they could go tubeless I guess, but that would be completely insane. Tubeless fish. Jeez.; 8/20/19, 3:46 PM
mockturtle said...: These hailstorms must be stopped! And Congress wastes its time harassing Trump when they could initiate some legislation to stop this needless slaughter of wildlife. Shame!; 8/20/19, 4:06 PM
n.n said...: A freak storm is a convenient cover story. How can we be certain that this genocide wasn't prosecuted by Green supremacists wielding high-capacity windmills?; 8/20/19, 4:10 PM
Big Mike said...: Nature is a Mother all right.

Doug’s question deserves an honest answer.; 8/20/19, 4:13 PM
gilbar said...: EDH said...
"Free range" and "cage free" ain't all it's cracked-up to be.

This Would NOT have happened to Iowa hogs! Confinement Buildings are basically DESIGNED to be Hail proof; 8/20/19, 4:28 PM
gilbar said...: If a fish can't use a bicycle, then what's the fish gonna do with a series of tubes???

This is off post; BUT, if you noticed, the fishes had MEN helping help into the tubes
how many wives does it take to change a lightbulb
that what HUSBANDS are FOR; 8/20/19, 4:31 PM
PM said...: Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/streamers-birds-fried-midair-solar-plant-feds-say-n183336; 8/20/19, 4:47 PM
iowan2 said...: These hailstorms must be stopped! And Congress wastes its time harassing Trump when they could initiate some legislation to stop this needless slaughter of wildlife. Shame!

One of the dems has a plan to shut down animal shelter euthanizations!

Sarcasm no longer works when talking politics; 8/20/19, 5:03 PM
Tom T. said...: How did they arrive at that somewhat specific number? I'm assuming they didn't actually count them all.; 8/20/19, 5:22 PM
Yancey Ward said...: I once got caught out in the open when golfball size hail hit. Not fun at all, and quite dangerous- I covered the top of my head with my arms and ran for shelter.; 8/20/19, 5:37 PM
chris brankfurt said...: PLEASE READ!!!! PLEASE READ!!!!!

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rhhardin said...: Sports is hailstones. Vegetables is tumors. George Carlin.; 8/20/19, 6:26 PM
Fritz said...: ga6 said...
"
"Red in tooth and claw"

Nature wants you dead

Nope, it just really doesn't care one way or the other.; 8/20/19, 6:31 PM
Fernandinande said...: CO broke its hailstone record a few days ago: 4.83", near I70 & Kansas.; 8/20/19, 6:56 PM
WK said...: How were the size of hailstones measured before golf and baseball were invented? What did tornados sound like before we had freight trains? Rain before domesticated cats and dogs.....; 8/20/19, 7:03 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: +2348142454860

Nigeria. I would hold out for one of their princes.; 8/20/19, 7:10 PM
tim in vermont said...: Every hear a full grown white pine fall in the forest? I wonder what they sounded like before plane crashes?; 8/20/19, 7:17 PM
mockturtle said...: Sarcasm no longer works when talking politics

True, Iowan2. The truth is far more laughable than what anyone could dream up.; 8/20/19, 7:37 PM
jerpod said...: How were the size of hailstones measured before golf and baseball were invented?
*******************

David Letterman introduced the canned ham standard of measurement.; 8/20/19, 8:05 PM
Maillard Reactionary said...: Jeffrey Epstein was supposed to be there, but he committed suicide in prison first.

All those birds killed for nothing. Best laid plans, eh?

OTOH, it's hard to arrange a hailstorm in a prison, even in New York.; 8/20/19, 8:40 PM
Maillard Reactionary said...: jerpod said: "David Letterman introduced the canned ham standard of measurement."

This Standard has recently been replaced by the Pumpkin Spice Spam Standard.

Your kilometerage may vary.; 8/20/19, 8:41 PM
Ken B said...: “Sarcasm no longer works when talking politics.”

True. It gets fact checked.

That isn’t sarcasm btw, it’s what Fernandistein actually does. He actually googles the stuff and bitches. So, real life really is more laughable than fiction!; 8/20/19, 9:16 PM
traditionalguy said...: Record Ice formation means Global Cooling is here.The warm air from the earth rose up into a colder than usual upper atmosphere.; 8/20/19, 10:48 PM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: Death from Above.; 8/21/19, 4:23 AM
tim in vermont said...: "Record Ice formation means Global Cooling is here.”

Or our records don’t go back very far, or the warming caused by CO2 is leading to more convection in thunderstorms, or whatever.; 8/21/19, 7:30 AM
tim in vermont said...: They don’t like to talk about convection because it is a path for warming around the greenhouse effect. Greenhouses have glass roofs to prevent convection. Obviously CO2 obstructs the escape of heat from the surface, but there is more than one way to skin a cat, as they say. Less warming than predicted by their models and stronger thunderstorms due to venting the heat by convection has always been my layman’s idea of the future. The “less warming than predicted” is playing out nicely.; 8/21/19, 7:33 AM
tim in vermont said...: Of course if you lessen the difference in temps between the Arctic and the temperate zones, this will have the effect of lessening thunderstorms. I was just reading about the “great blowdown of 1950” that happened in the Adirondacks, 800,000 acres of heavily damaged to blown down timber. There was a huge blowdown in the 18th century there as well, but you can bet if one were to happen today, global warming would be blamed.; 8/21/19, 7:36 AM
Roger Sweeny said...: On a trip to Iowa a few years, we heard ads for a "hail damage sale". Seems the dealership's stock was stored outdoors ...; 8/21/19, 8:17 AM
JAORE said...: We have unwanted geese by the brazillions here in Alabama. Some have even evolved to learn they don't have to migrate so they are full time residents. It is illegal to kill, or even harass them.

Goose shit is slick and, while still wet, stinks to high heaven.

Any place with open water can begin to look like a feathered LA homeless camp.

[Hail storm] Death from above is starting to look pretty good.; 8/21/19, 9:44 AM
tim in vermont said...: You need coyotes. People kill coyotes, but coyotes can handle geese. The reason the geese get away with not migrating is that we protect them from their natural predators. Nothing is more helpless to a coyote than a baby goose, and they are tasty. It has to be a predator large enough to stand up to the bluster of the adults. Foxes can’t do it.; 8/21/19, 12:30 PM
minnesota farm guy said...: A guide friend near Pierre SD told me that a similar storm hit his area last year and pretty much completely wiped out the pheasant population, which in that area is pretty substantial. He had to cancel all his sports because there were no birds.; 8/21/19, 2:49 PM
tim in vermont said...: It was a slightly bigger hailstone that killed the dinosaurs. “It came from S P A C E!"; 8/21/19, 2:59 PM