Tornadoes in Chicago yesterday have arrived with warnings in New York today.

Staff report

11:12 a.m. CDT, July 2, 2014

About 80,000 customers (click here) remain without power from Monday's violent storms, most of them in the hardest hit south suburbs where some residents may not see electricity restored until Friday, according to Commonwealth Edison.

As of 10 a.m., 78,000 customers to the south of Chicago were still without power, ComEd said.  About 2,100 customers in Chicago were affected by outages, 150 to the north and 960 to the west....

This was the required staffing of the US Embassy in Iraq as of 2012 AFTER US troops ended their occupation.

As of early July, (click here) according to DoS, 15,007 personnel were supporting the U.S. Mission in Iraq:

•  1,235 U.S. government civilian employees (includes full-time and temporary government employees and personal-services contractors)
•  13,772 contractor personnel (U.S., Iraqi, and third-country nationals), 5,737 of whom were providing security services

There are growing reasons to end the presence of any US military personnel. Contractors are leaving as any allies have evacuated already.

June 18, 2014

ExxonMobil (click here) has carried out a "major evacuation,'' and BP had evacuated 20 percent of its staff, the head of Iraq's state-run South Oil Company said Wednesday.

Dhiya Jaffar also said ENI, Schlumberger, Weatherford and Baker Hughes had no plans to evacuate staff from Iraq following the lightning advance of Sunni militants through the country. The companies, which are based in southern Iraq where the government is still in firm control, were not immediately available for comment.

"This message is not satisfactory for us. We are not convinced the work should not be done remotely. They should be here on the ground,'' Jaffar told Reuters.

"I assure the companies that the current developments in the country have not affected and will not affect in anyway the operations in the south,'' he said, adding that the export level for June will be 2.7 million barrels per day.

CNBC could not immediately confirm the evacuations....

July 1, 2014
Indian government (click here) flies back citizens from Najaf, Karbala and Baghdad as evacuations continue from war-torn region. Efforts on to secure release of 39 abductees.

As many as 94 Indians left Iraq on Monday after a "pro-active approach" initiated by the Indian officials there that would see nearly 600 nationals leaving the war-torn country to safety this week. 

Indian officials in Iraq are reaching out to fellow-countrymen themselves, and are busy facilitating the paperwork and ticketing for those who need it to enable them to fly back home, a Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson said. 

"The facilitation of Indian nationals in Iraq in areas which are not in conflict zones is now underway," the spokesperson said, adding that special mobile teams are reaching out to residences of Indians in Najaf, Karbala, Basra and Baghdad advising them to leave the country. ...

I am concerned for Belhaven, NC with the closure of their hospital and the nearest being 40 miles away. Helicopters don't fly in hurricanes.

July 14, 2014

0430z

UNISYS Water Vapor Satellite of the North and West Hemisphere

From twin tornadoes to dual coastal hurricanes. 

Pacific storms have been spinning for a few days already. The trend is for one storm to begin immediately after another dissipates. There have already been two Cat 4 storms in the Pacific. Currently the only active storm in the eastern Pacific is Tropical Storm Douglas.

The first storm of the Atlantic season could cause problems exactly where a hospital has been closed. This is going to be a challenge for that community. I would not be surprised if Tropical Storm Arthur can move more inland than currently expected. 

Arthur is a typical post 2005 storm, in that it manifested as a 'near shore' storm. There is a couple of things rapidly occurring. There is turbulence immediately offshore of North Carolina now. There is also a higher tropspheric storm in the center of the country over Kansas that has a high water vapor air mass immediately south of it. If it absorbs that water vapor it could fuel it's acceleration and provide a new vector to the current trajectory of the Atlantic storm. I am trying to dismiss that, but, if the Kansas vortex picks up velocity it could drag the Atlantic inshore as far as Charlotte to Ashville. The upper winds might change that, but, right now I would be remiss to disregard that potential.

July 2, 2014
1430z
UNISYS Water Vapor West and North Hemisphere (click here for 12 hour loop)