Tax Day Radioactive Rain 9X background in Saint Louis Missouri

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Stay out of the rain! If you have to drive through the radioactive rainfall, make sure your vehicle's environmental controls are set to re-circulate. Turn on your defroster or air conditioner, if possible. Selecting "recirculate" would be my primary action. If "defrost" is not an option with recirculate, turning on the air conditioner would also work. The purpose of the air conditioner/defroster is to dehumidify the air in the car, and to reduce the possibility of off gassing. Of course from a driving safety point of view, don't let your windshield get fogged up!

The readings from the Tax day rainfall here in Saint Louis are roughly 9 times greater than background radiation. The sample is a few paper towel sheets which were used to wipe the rain water off of a piece of sheet metal located in my front yard. The sample max'd out at 0.09 mR/hr. The sample was taken at approximately 7:45am, during the trailing edge of a squall line that moved in a few hours earlier.  In previous thunderstorms, samples taken using the same methodology have read as high as 0.228 mR/hr, roughly 20x background.

Despite the high readings of 20x background some people have ridiculously claimed that these readings could be coming from naturally occurring Radon washout. Previous studies done by Klemic in 1996 show max peaks from Radon washout at 0.012 mR/hr. Throw in that fact that the highest readings I have observed have occurred at the tail end of storms  after over an hour of rain, it becomes obvious how ridiculous any claims of Radon washout really are.