Moore, Oklahoma continues to recover from the two-mile-wide tornado that resulted in tragic deaths and devastated the Oklahoma City suburb last week. The financial cost is still being calculated, but one meteorologist estimates it could be one of the costliest tornadoes in history, with a price tag approaching $3 billion. And he may be right.
That same meteorologist predicted a major hurricane would hit New York City and the U.S. would enter a major drought. That was one year before Hurricane Sandy battered the Northeast and the 2012 drought that rivaled the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s.
So, who is this forecaster, and what are his other predictions? That’s the topic of today’s Just Explain It.
The meteorologist is Jeff Masters, who co-founded the Weather Underground website. In 2011, he predicted nine weather disasters in the U.S. that would cause $100 billion in damage each in next 30 years. He ranked them based on their potential impact and chose to focus on events that would take a $100-billion-toll because that amount of damage could theoretically cripple the U.S. economy.
He recently updated his list to include potential disasters all over the world: hurricanes, a typhoon, floods, droughts, even a change in the direction of the Mississippi River. Topping his list was a volcanic or nuclear winter! While Masters admits that’s unlikely to happen, he says the other $100 billion events are inevitable..............
