Category Archives: Weather

Mr. Boy’s straight A’s

Posted on November 13, 2014 | 4 comments

He still wears shorts in the winter-time, despite the Arctic blast that settled into Central Texas overnight Tuesday. But I now have to concede that it makes a certain sense.

He rides a school bus now, a bus which stops a short distance away on our street. Then, as he says, he spends the rest of the day moving from classroom to classroom, most of them overheated and drowse-inducing. No, public schools still haven’t solved that problem.

And you have to admire him for his straight A’s so far in high school, including the 90 he pulled out of algebra again for the first semester’s second of three cycles. Thankfully he has his mother’s academic work habits instead of mine.

UPDATE:  The 90 turned into an 89. He was angry at himself, another good sign.

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Posted in Mr. Boy, Mrs. Charm, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather

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When it’s flooding down in Texas

Posted on September 18, 2014 | 2 comments

When the waterfall started shortly after 2:30 a.m. last night, the rain kept pouring down, and the radar showed more red and yellow coming, I started erecting a spare floor-tile barrier against the outside of the sliding glass door to the patio and shoving towels against the door on the inside.

Saved the interior okay, but spent an hour from 4 a.m. to 5 a.m. searching up and down adjacent streets for our big wheeled recycling bin which had disappeared from the curb out front. Never did find it. Awoke to find Mrs. Charm had discovered it washed across the street, over about thirty yards of the neighbor’s front lawn and fetched up against their back fence.

Could have been worse. More rain already this evening and more forecast overnight. The radar shows plenty of red and yellow mostly green and yellow on the way. We’ll wait for our waterfall to renew itself before we panic. At least we’ll know where to look for the recycle bin.

UPDATE:  We were spared a repeat. Looks like G-town, however, well north of the rancho, got more.

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Posted in Texana, Weather

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Ready to freeze in the dark?

Posted on August 17, 2014 | 4 comments

“The U.S. is already facing the loss of 60 gigawatts of power over the next three years, the result of older coal plants’ being forced to shut down because they cannot comply with the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards enacted in 2012. At the time, the EPA claimed that only four gigawatts of capacity would be lost.

“Those of us familiar with the industry knew better, and the agency now does not contest that 60 gigawatts of coal-generated electricity will be lost. Ninety percent of the plants slated to close due to the MATS rule were needed to provide power during the polar vortex and other periods of severe weather last winter. Is the EPA willing to gamble that we won’t have another harsh winter in the next five years?”

Sure they’ll gamble, they don’t care about us peasants. WeatherBell Analytics, which has an awful good record, is forecasting this winter to be colder longer than last. Not that the federal Democrats give a rat’s. They got theirs, sucker.

Via WSJ.

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Posted in Obamalot, Science/Engineering, The Economy, Weather

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It was a dark and stormy night

Posted on June 13, 2014 | Comments Off on It was a dark and stormy night

Happy to awaken this morning to find the electricity back on. It was knocked out last night about 10:30 as big storms swept through with winds up to 60 mph. and a dramatic show of lightning, most of it east of us in Bastrop County.

Also reports of funnel clouds in the air and at least one touching the ground to become a tornado west of us in Burnet County. Some debris shown in this rather shakey quadcopter drone video from a few damaged houses but no one was killed.

We didn’t get a lot of rain, unfortunately. Most of it seemed to be falling south of the rancho. But we also didn’t get a lot of tree damage as some places did. Just enough to knock out the power, leaving us to move about the house with flashlights until we got tired of it and went to bed.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather

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Ready for the drought-buster?

Posted on May 22, 2014 | Comments Off on Ready for the drought-buster?

I was joking to Mrs. Charm the other day about the front page story in the daily on the severity of our drought (thanks to an increased population demanding more water) that whenever they highlight a weather problem, the solution is almost at hand.

Well, maybe not the whole solution, but a good wetting, according to WeatherBell’s Joe D’Aleo:

“This time of year is when rain com[e]s to the high plains as moisture gets drawn northwest upslope. They have a second peak in the fall with the early fall storms fed by the seasonal moisture that come[s] into the desert southwest.”

So, while it may not be a repeat of the Memorial Day floods of 1981, the forecast rain of two inches or more over the next ten days, following by a cooler-than-usual (less evaporation) summer and, thanks to El Nino, a wetter-than-normal fall, our long-awaited drought-buster may be almost at hand.

After all, we got three and half inches of rain in an hour at the rancho about this time last year. So it’s only wise to get ready for a real frog-strangler.

UPDATE:  Alas, no frogs were killed in the making of this Memorial Day weekend. We got only 2.5 inches at the rancho—much of it coming on Tuesday— but it was better than none.

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Posted in Mrs. Charm, Texana, Weather

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Our winter almost over

Posted on February 17, 2014 | 1 comment

After four months of chilly-to-downright-cold, we finally have a week’s forecast ahead of daytime temps in the mid- to upper-70s. But LCRA meteor Bob Rose says below-normal temperatures will return for the last week of the month into the first week of March.

No precip in the offing, unlike the experience of a fellow 13th Mississippi descendant who recently bought a copy of our new book. She lives in Maine (of all places) and says they just finished shoveling eight inches of ice-crusted snow off walks and deck and had another three inches of snow over the weekend. Better them than me.

Now if the damn juniper pollen would just get the shuck out of the air. Going on eight weeks now of sneezing and nose-blowing from “cedar fever” is just too much.

If it happens again next year, I have told Mrs. Charm, I’m moving to West Texas—at least for the duration. Hole up in some boarding house (if I can find one; if they have them anymore) with WiFi until the all-clear.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Mrs. Charm, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather

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Ice night, and snow

Posted on January 23, 2014 | 1 comment

“Rain and sleet likely before midnight, then freezing rain and sleet likely between midnight and 2am, then snow likely after 2am. Cloudy, with a low around 24. North wind around 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. Little or no ice accumulation expected. Total nighttime snow and sleet accumulation of less than a half inch possible.”

That’s from the Nat’l Weather Service. Their forecasts don’t always come true. We’ll cross our fingers that this one also is faulty.

UPDATE:  It wasn’t. There was enough ice and snow to cause scores of accidents this morning and the school district closed the schools for the day. Mr. B., as you might imagine, was crushed at not having to go to school. By 4 p.m., the temperature was 37 degrees, headed for 28 overnight,

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather

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