Category Archives: Rancho Roly Poly

Let the flooding begin

Posted on March 12, 2009 | Comments Off on Let the flooding begin

We’re under a flood advisory from the Austin-San Antonio office of the National Weather Service :

"AT 644 AM CDT MODERATE TO HEAVY RAINS WERE FALLING AT RATES
APPROACHING AN INCH AN HOUR.  RAINFALL FROM YESTERDAY AND OVERNIGHT
HAS BEGUN TO SATURATE THE SOIL AND AREA CREEKS ARE RESPONDING.
PERIODS OF HEAVY RAINFALL THIS MORNING WILL RESULT IN MORE RUNOFF."

LCRA Hydrologic gauges around Austin show almost two inches of rain at many spots in the past forty-eight hours. (Three to four inches seems to be the norm out in the hills.) And more rain is forecast through Saturday. Remains to be seen if this is the big one. But our droughts almost always end with floods.

MORE:  We’re unlikely, however, to get anywhere near the fifteen to eighteen inches we’d need to permanently end the drought, according to KVUE meteorologist Mark Murray. It will help green things up for spring.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather/Climate

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Tarantula

Posted on March 8, 2009 | Comments Off on Tarantula

Add the tarantula to the rancho’s indigenous species. Mrs. Charm saw a black one last night on the patio with a body about four inches long. It had just walked up out of the flower bed. She reached for a dust pan to smack it with but the attached broom fell down and the tarantula reacted to the noise by scurrying back into the bed.

So we looked them up on the Web and she was consoled to learn that they are rarely harmful to people and not aggressive–unless you’re a mouse, a lizard or a small bird. They’re even sold as exotic pets. In six years we’d never seen one in the back forty. Although the pool guy did report fishing a dead one out a few months ago, probably looking for a drink in the drought and apparently done in by the chlorine. I’ll have to be more careful pulling weeds in the future. I was already on the alert for snakes coming out in the spring warmth.

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Posted in Mrs. Charm, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana

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Forest fire

Posted on February 28, 2009 | Comments Off on Forest fire

The months-long drought combined with a downed power line due to today’s strong wind started a forest fire in Bastrop County just east of Austin. Ten homes have been destroyed so far, with another two hundred threatened. No rain at all in the forecast, but the wind is expected to subside by tomorrow night.

UPDATE:  At least twenty-three homes and nine businesses taken by the fire through the Bastrop pines so far. More wind forecast tomorrow. SUNDAY: Wind is light and the fire seems to be mostly under control.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather/Climate

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Mr. B. is nine

Posted on February 24, 2009 | Comments Off on Mr. B. is nine

Just think, nine more years and I won’t have to get up early… Meanwhile, he opened his first present: a new batting helmet for his spring season with the Grasshoppers. Maybe it can break his hitting slump. More tonight when Mrs. Charm makes cowboy hamburgers, etc.

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Posted in Mr. Boy, Mrs. Charm, Rancho Roly Poly, Scribbles

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Colonoscopy

Posted on February 15, 2009 | Comments Off on Colonoscopy

I get these things every five years, thanks to colon cancer running in my family via primary relatives, so I know they’re worthwhile. They don’t hurt, thanks to the drugs you get. The worst thing about them is the awful preparation fluid you have to swallow by the gallon. Tastes like motor oil.

But I really must demur when some bloggers, including the vaunted Instapundit, say they are foolproof at discovering colon cancer. My father had them for years and they didn’t save him. Maybe it depends on the skill of the doc. That would figure. That’s why they’re called medical "practices."

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Posted in Blogosphere, Rancho Roly Poly, Science/Engineering

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Tornado Alley active

Posted on February 10, 2009 | Comments Off on Tornado Alley active

Rain is good. We’re supposed to be getting more of it this afternoon and into tonight. But there’s also a watch out for tornadoes that could be popping out of the severe thunderstorms. Not good. Fortunately it’s mostly northeast of us.

Via the Seablogger.

UPDATE:  The thunderstorms swept through about 10 p.m., leaving behind about a half an inch of rain and some pea-size hail. Fortunately the storms, with wind gusts to sixty mph, were moving pretty fast so were gone in about fifteen minutes. Looks like Oklahoma got the tornadoes.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather/Climate

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Rain, at last

Posted on February 8, 2009 | Comments Off on Rain, at last

Wind’s really picking up at the rancho, gusting to twenty-five thirty-five out of the southeast whence normally cometh our rain-making Gulf moisture. Indeed, the forecast is for thunderstorms overnight. LCRA meteorologist Bob Rose thinks we may get some real rain over the next three days, possibly the most we’ve had since mid-November.

In fact, Rose, noticing that the southern Jet Stream is becoming more active (and thus capable of guiding Pacific storm fronts our way), is thinking something I was wondering about the other day: that the 2008 drought might just finally get busted later this month into March. If so, it would be by a flood, of course. Floods are the way droughts break hereabouts. But we’ll take it.

UPDATE:  By 9 a.m. Monday, according to LCRA’s hydrologic system of rain gauges, one-half to three-quarters of an inch of rain seems to be the norm over the area since midnight. Nice to see water ponding in the gutters again.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather/Climate

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