Because the phenomenon seems counterintuitive, there’s an “air of mystery surrounding dry thunderstorms for folks who’ve never really encountered them,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles. Dry thunderstorms are rare in most places east of the Rockies, he said, because there’s “always enough moisture for rain to fall from them or for precipitation in some form to fall from them anyway, in the eastern two-thirds of the U.S.”
The strengthening outbreak also jeopardizes a fuller economic recovery, officials said. It was a point punctuated on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, as U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, urged Americans to get the shot … McConnell’s angst came as UCLA Fielding School of Public Health’s UCLA Center for Health Policy Research released new data from the 2021 California Health Interview Survey, attempting to shed light on Californians’ views on getting the vaccine and following suggested safety protocols.