Weather and primaries in the US by Barbora Misakova

Who would expect that weather has such a power that it can even influence national policy? Well the truth is that it can. These days are in the United States holding primaries and everyone wants to give a voice to chosen candidate. As we could see situation and expectations of some candidates changed radically what lead to their voice losses. This time it wouldn't be excessive expectations of some candidats but weather what will reshuffle situation. On Tuesday there were strong thunderstorms and snowstorms in the eastern half of the US and the second evacuation in few weeks were needed in Indiana. While snow from Colorado were spreading out and it was a big possibility that more than 11 inches of snow could be expected also in Wisconsin, in warmer areas such as Oklahoma, Ohio and New York a band of rain and thunderstorms occured. This stormy weather had reached during the Tuesday morning many states among them for example Arkansas, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Oklahoma and others. Situation looks even worse when except rain and snow there were also threat of strong and damaging wind, hail or somewhere also tornadoes. Presidential election in the US had to many times fight against ugliness of weather and there were also efforts to make some political forecast such as "the weather forecast favors Democrats" or "The Republicans should pray for rain". Some researchers were studying the impact of weather on policy and they even claim that if it rains there is more people staying at home than if it snows; one inch of snow causes that turnout is lower in about 0.5 percent. While some voters from Alaska had to face 50 degrees below zero temperatures, people from two Indiana counties had to be evacuated after heavy raining during Tuesday's night. Other weather problems occurred also in New Mexico; in Chama more than 33 inches of snow fell down and blocked roads, damaged some building and stranded residents in their homes. No one can surely say when will weather situation calm down and if these weather problems were final.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080205/ap_on_re_us/severe_weather;_ylt=AlwL.1YQhXHU_FMmDL0Yam2s0NUE

by Barbora Misakova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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