FLORIDA WEATHER EXTREMES

Element	Value	Date	Location
Maximum Temperature	109°	June 29, 1931	Monticello
Minimum Temperature	-2°	February 13, 1899	Tallahassee
24-Hour Precipitation*	23.28 in.	November 11-12, 1980	Key West
24-Hour Snowfall	4 in.	March 6, 1954	Milton
Snow Depth	4 in.	March 6, 1954	Milton

*The reported extreme of 38.70 inches at Yankeetown on September 5, 1950 is an estimated depth of rainfall calculated as part of a post-storm survey of Hurricane Easy (Cedar Keys Hurricane). Value has historically been considered reasonably accurate (and even an underestimate of actual rain fall), but an estimate cannot be considered an official observation from a reliable precipitation gauge.

Source: NOAA

COURT AVENEUE – BELFONTAINE, OHIO

Court Avenue is a small street in downtown Bellefontaine, Ohio, located adjacent to the Logan County Courthouse. First paved in 1893, it is known for being the first street in the United States to be paved with concrete. Court Avenue is listed in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

LOOKING WESTWARD ON COURT AVENUE

By Nyttend - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8801219

GULF INTRACOASTAL WATERWAY WEST CLOSURE COMPLEX

The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway West Closure Complex is a part of the New Orleans Drainage System; it consists of a navigable floodgate, a pumping station, flood walls, sluice gates, foreshore protection, and an earthen levee. The complex was designed to reduce the risk for residences and businesses in the project area from a storm surge associated with a tropical event, with an intensity that has a one-percent chance of occurring in any given year. When the gate is closed during a storm event, the 19,246 cubic feet per second 11 bay pump station is required to evacuate the rainwater that is pumped into Harvey and Algiers canals by 9 other pump stations along the canals. The pump station, which is the largest in the world, consists of 11 Caterpillar engines each producing 5,444 horsepower. The pumps could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in 3 seconds.

INHC-LAKE BORGNE SURGE BARRIER

The 1.8-mile-long Inner Harbor Navigation Canal (IHNC)-Lake Borgne Surge Barrier is located at the confluence of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW) and the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO), about 12 miles east of downtown New Orleans. The surge barrier works in tandem with the Seabrook Floodgate Complex at the north end of the IHNC (also known locally as the Industrial Canal) near Lake Pontchartrain. The projects reduce the risk associated with a storm surge that has a one percent chance of occurring in any given year, or a 100-year storm. At a cost of $1.3 billion, the IHNC-Lake Borgne Surge Barrier is the largest design-build civil works project in the history of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The IHNC-Lake Borgne Surge Barrier is the largest continuous surge barrier in the world.

SEAWISE GIANT

At a length of 1,505 feet, the Seawise Giant, an ultra-large crude carrier (ULCC) supertanker, is the longest ship ever built. Seawise Giant was ordered in 1974 and delivered in 1979 by Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Ltd. at its Oppama shipyard in Yokosuka, Kanagawa, Japan. Seawise Giant possessed the largest deadweight tonnage ever recorded: 564,763 tons. Fully loaded, its displacement was 657,019 tons. The heaviest ship of any kind, and with a laden draft of 81 feet, it was incapable of navigating the English Channel, the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal. Overall, it is generally considered the largest* ship ever built. In 2009, the vessel was sold to Indian ship breakers and beached for scrapping. *Seawise Giant was not the largest by gross tonnage, ranking sixth at 260.941 GT, behind the crane ship Pioneering Spirit and 4 Batillus-class supertankers.

WHITE SHOAL LIGHT, MICHIGAN

The White Shoal Light is a lighthouse located 20 miles west of the Mackinac Bridge in Lake Michigan. At a height of 121 feet, it is the tallest lighthouse on the Great Lakes. The White Shoal Light is the sole “aluminum-topped” lighthouse on the Great Lakes; most of the other lanterns are cast iron. The highly visible diagonal Daymark paint job, sometimes described as red and white ‘candy cane stripe’ is the only ‘barber pole’ lighthouse in the United States. White Shoal Light is one of over 150 past and present lighthouses in Michigan. Michigan has more lighthouses (still standing) than any other state with over 120 listed. (A scaled-down replica of this light was built on Lake Havasu at Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Located on the Lake Havasu Island Golf Course, the light is operational and was dedicated on November 2, 2008).

WHITE SHOAL LIGHT, LAKE MICHIGAN

AK-47

PEGASUS AND DRAGON

Pegasus and Dragon is a 100-foot tall statue of Pegasus defeating a dragon in Gulfstream Park, Hallandale Beach, Florida. It is the third-tallest statue in the United States*.  It is also the world’s largest and tallest equine and European dragon statue. The Pegasus is poised with its front hoof on the neck of the dragon, which lies prostrate far below the level of the equine. The statue complex is 200 feet in length and 115 feet in width. Pegasus is made of 330 tons of steel and 132 tons of bronze. The dragon is made of 110 tons of steel and 132 tons of bronze. At night the statue is home to a fountain show featuring 13 musical pieces, 350 fog nozzles, 116 water nozzles, special LED lighting and dragon breathing fire 20 feet during the show. *Wikipedia lists Birth of the New World in Puerto Rico as tallest statue in the U.S. and the Statue of Liberty as the second tallest.

THE ALL-AMERICAN CANAL

The All-American Canal is an 80-mile long aqueduct, located in southeastern California. It conveys water from the Colorado River into the Imperial Valley and to nine cities. Five smaller canals branching off the All-American Canal move water into the Imperial Valley. These canal systems irrigate up to 630,000 acres of crop land and have made possible a greatly increased crop yield in the area, originally one of the driest on earth. The All-American Canal is the largest irrigation canal in the world, carrying a maximum of 26,155 cubic feet per second. Agricultural runoff from the All-American Canal drains into the Salton Sea.

SHANGHAI MAGLEV TRAIN

The Shanghai maglev train is a magnetic levitation train line that operates in Shanghai. The train line connects Shanghai Pudong International Airport and Longyang Road Station, where passengers can interchange to the Shanghai Metro to continue their trip to the city center. The line is the third commercially operated maglev line in history (after the British Birmingham Maglev and the German M-Bahn) and is the oldest commercial maglev still in operation. The Shanghai maglev train is the first commercial maglev with cruising speed of 268 mph and is the fastest commercial electric train in the world. * *A TVG (France’s intercity high-speed rail operator) test train set the world record for the fastest wheeled train reaching a speed of 357.2 mph. However, conventional TGV service operates up to only 200 mph.

POPULATION WARS: WAYNE COUNTY, MICHIGAN V. FULTON COUNTY, GEORGIA

LINE 3 (CHONGQING RAIL TRANSIT)

CRT Line 3 (and the branch line branded as Airport Line) runs from north to south, linking the districts separated by Chongqing’s two main rivers, the Yangtze and Jialing rivers. At a total distance of 40.7 miles, CRT Line 3 is the longest single monorail in the world by track length. Line 3 is also the world’s busiest monorail line with a daily ridership of over 675,000 passengers per day.

CRT LINE 3

BLACK HAWK STATUE

The Eternal Indian, sometimes called the Black Hawk Statue, is a 48-foot sculpture by Lorado Taft located in Lowden State Park, near the city of Oregon, Illinois. Dedicated in 1911, the statue is perched over the Rock River on a 77-foot bluff overlooking the city. Black Hawk weighs in at 536,770 pounds and is the second largest concrete monolithic statue in the world (after Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro).

Black Hawk Statue - Oregon, Illinois

NORTH DAKOTA MILL AND ELEVATOR

The North Dakota Mill and Elevator is the largest flour mill in the United States. It is located in the city of Grand Forks, North Dakota. Established by the state government when it was led by Nonpartisan League representatives, it is the only state-owned milling facility in the United States. With eight milling units, the Mill produces and ships 49,500 cwt. of milled products daily. In addition, the Mill ships over 14,000 cwt. of food grade bran and wheat midds daily. The Mill cleans, processes and mills over 100,000 bushels of top-quality North Dakota wheat daily. On an annual basis, the Mill adds value to 34 million bushels of spring and durum wheat. The terminal elevator has a storage capacity of 4.3 million bushels of wheat.

The North Dakota Mill and Elevator

HIGH LEVEL, ALBERTA, CANADA

High Level is a town in northern Alberta, Canada. The population according to its 2017 municipal census is 3,992. High Level is home to the northernmost grain elevator in the world. In August 2019, Grain handler, Richardson Pioneer announced that construction had started to replace the existing grain elevator with a new one. The new facility, connected to Canadian National Railway track, will have 32,000 tons of storage capacity and a loop track configuration able to load 135 rail cars.

Grain elevator in High Level, Alberta - the northernmost example of its type in the world

By awmcphee - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79660637

LINOLEUM

Linoleum was invented by Englishman Frederick Walton in 1855. At first Walton called his invention “Kampticon”, which was deliberately close to Kamptulicon, the name of an existing floor covering, but he soon changed it to Linoleum, which he derived from the Latin words “linum” (flax) and “oleum” (oil). Walton opened the American Linoleum Manufacturing Company in 1872 on Staten Island. It was the first U.S. linoleum manufacturer, but was soon followed by the American Nairn Linoleum Company in 1887 (later the Congoleum Corporation of America), in Kearny, New Jersey. Walton was unhappy with Michael Nairn & Co’s use of the name Linoleum and brought a lawsuit against them for trademark infringement. However, the term had not been trademarked, and he lost the suit. The court opined that even if the mane had been registered as a trademark, it was by now so widely used that it had become generic, only 14 years after its invention. It is considered to be the first product name to become a generic term.

THE GEYSERS POWER PLANT

The Geysers is the world’s largest geothermal field, containing a complex of 18 geothermal power plants, drawing steam from more than 350 wells, located in Mayacamas Mountains, approximately 72 miles north of San Francisco. Power plants at the Geysers are of the dry steam power plant type, where the steam directly powers the generator. In general, the Geysers has 1517 MW of installed capacity with n average production facto of 63% (955 MW).

BROOKLYN-BATTERY (HUGH L. CAREY) TUNNEL

The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel (officially the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel) is a tolled tunnel in New York City that connects Red Hook in Brooklyn with Battery Park in Manhattan. The tunnel consists of twin tubes that each carry two traffic lanes under the mouth of the East River. I-478 is the official route designation for the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and its approaches, although it is not signed as such. With a length of 9,117 feet, the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel is the longest continuous underwater vehicular tunnel in North America.

BOUVET ISLAND

Bouvet Island is an uninhabited sub Antarctic high island and dependency of Norway located in the South Atlantic Ocean. It lies at the southern end of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and is the most remote island in the world, approximately 1,100 miles north of the Princess Astrid Coast of Queen Maud Land, Antarctica, 1,200 miles east of the South Sandwich Islands, 990 miles south of Gough Island and 1,600 miles south-southwest of the coast of South Africa. The island has an area of 19 square miles, of which 93 percent is covered by a glacier.

Location of Bouvet Island (circled in red) in the Atlantic Ocean

GREAT MAN-MADE RIVER

The Great Man-Made River is a network of pipes that supplies fresh water obtained from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System fossil aquifer across Libya. It is the world's largest irrigation project. The project utilizes a pipeline system that pumps water from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System from down south in Libya to cities in the populous Libyan northern Mediterranean coast including Tripoli and Benghazi. The water covers a distance of up to 1,000 miles and provides 70% of all freshwater used in Libya. According to its website, it is the largest underground network of pipes (1,750 miles) and aqueducts in the world. It consists of more than 1,300 wells, most more than 1,650-feet deep, and supplies 6,500,000 cubic meters of fresh water per day to the cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirte and elsewhere. The late Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi described it as the "Eighth Wonder of the World". (On 10 April 2020, a station controlling water flow to Tripoli and neighboring towns was seized by an unknown armed group. The flow of water was cut to over two million people as a result, and as such the attack was condemned by the United Nations on humanitarian grounds).

U.S. STEEL TOWER

The U.S. Steel Tower is a 64-story skyscraper at 600 Grant Street in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Standing at 842 feet, it is the tallest building in Pittsburgh and it is the tallest building in the world with a completely flat roof. The roof itself, at approximately one acre in size, is the largest roof in the world at its height or above.

U.S. STEEL TOWER PITTSURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

HIGHEST CITY AND HIGHEST POST OFFICE IN THE UNITED STATES

There are 3 municipalities that vie for the highest city in the United States. All 3 are in Colorado. Alma is a statutory town located in Park County, Colorado. The population was estimated to be 312 in 2018. According to Wikipedia, Alma, at an elevation of 10,578 feet, is the highest incorporated municipality in the United States with permanent residents. Alma, has a contiguous residential area (on Mountain View Drive) extending to 11,680 feet above sea level. Leadville is a statutory city located in Lake County, Colorado. The population was estimated to be 2,762 in 2018. At an elevation of 10,152 feet, Leadville is the highest incorporated city in North America. Winter Park is a home rule municipality in Grand County, Colorado. The permanent population was estimated to be 1,051 in 2018. Its motto is: “Colorado’s Highest”. Although the town center is at about 9,000 feet above sea level, Winter Park, using administrative boundaries as a measure, became the highest incorporated town in the U.S. after the July 2006 annexation of 5,214 acres of Winter Park Resort to allow new on-mountain improvements. Winter Park’s claim as the highest incorporated town is disputed since Winter Park has no residences above 9,550 feet, while contiguous residential neighborhoods in Leadville extend to 10,360 feet and in Alma to 11,680 feet. Also, Alma’s town center is at 10,361 feet. Alma is also the location of the highest post office in the United States. The Alma Post Office (80420) sits at an elevation of 10,578 feet above sea level.

Alma, Colorado Post Office