Category Archives: Weather/Climate

Killing community (and initiative)

Posted on September 19, 2011 | Comments Off on Killing community (and initiative)

Time was when a sense of community was valued. But that was before Big Nanny and her highly-paid micro-managers took over. Now, community increasingly is overridden by government inspection and fees.

The Bastrop fires were the latest example. Volunteer firefighters from all over Texas, following a long-established tradition, rushed to help, only to be turned away by government for an alleged lack of training. Similar to the volunteers, rushing to help after Hurricane Katrina’s flooding of New Orleans, who the feds rounded up and sent to Atlanta for—get this—diversity training.

Bastrop fits with the current trend for bureaucrats to outlaw kiddy lemonade stands and threaten to regulate (if not eliminate) independent bake sales for church and school fundraisers. Gotta keep us serfs in our place. It’s our job to pay the “fair” taxes that keep the ‘crats rolling in dough— individual initiative could threaten their livelihoods.

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Posted in Texana, Weather/Climate

More Texas drought ahead

Posted on September 15, 2011 | Comments Off on More Texas drought ahead

Drought is normal in Texas, but this certainly is overdoing it. Especially with the fires—though it should be said they are more a matter of modern population density than anything else. Some people are comparing it all to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

More accurately, if less commonly known, it’s an analog of the terrible Texas drought of the 1950s—long before the greenhouse effect/global warming/climate change was a money-making gleam in Al Gore’s cynical eye. Which means it will continue for a while, at least through this winter.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather/Climate

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Record low Arctic sea ice? Not

Posted on September 14, 2011 | Comments Off on Record low Arctic sea ice? Not

As usual, the Gorebot and the other warmingistas are claiming that Arctic ice is melting at a record pace. The coasts will soon be inundated by the rising oceans. They told you so. Except that it’s pure B.S.

“The lowest amount of ice was no where close to 2007 this year as one can see at this link http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png,” says anti-warmingista meteorologist Joe Bastardi of Weather Bell. “It is low, but over the coming decades it will come back….to demonstrate the balance I feel is simply being attained….”

Bastardi’s meteorologist colleague at WB, Joe D’Aleo (AKA Dr. Dewpoint) adds this:

“I want you to see that the changes are real but that they tie with natural factors. Man has an effect on the climate primarily locally through land use changes and urbanization and through our emissions of primarily aerosols but… natural factors still dominate as shown by the extremes of recent years.”

As always, however, the warmists also will blame AGW for this week’s unusually early cold snap in the Northern Plains, since they claim that all weather extremes prove their greenhouse/global warming/climate change theory. How convenient. The proof against that is its own logical absurdity.

Meanwhile, the Gorebot (who, fascistically, calls AGW skeptics like Bastardi, D’Aleo [and me] “racists”) will choose his own “reality” today, raising money via ten dollar donations to keep his Lear jet and his Tennessee mansion polluting the atmosphere he claims to be so concerned about—while others hand him the mockery he deserves.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Weather/Climate

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Wildfires: Obamalot’s Katrina

Posted on September 9, 2011 | Comments Off on Wildfires: Obamalot’s Katrina

The recent wildfire-fighting in Central Texas has been an almost-exclusively ground operation. Thanks to Obamalot, too few water-carrying planes are available.

“The U.S. Forest Service terminated the contract with Aero Union five weeks ago to operate seven P-3 Orions that are critical to the agency’s firefighting mission, leaving the federal government with 11 tankers under contract to help battle more than 50 large uncontained wildfires now burning nationwide.

“That’s down from 40 tankers used by the Forest Service just a decade ago, according to Rep. Dan Lungren (R.-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Administration, who is challenging the decision to dismiss the largest provider of heavy air-tanker support to the federal government.”

Of course, Katrina impacted a largely-black New Orleans when a dastardly Republican was in charge of FEMA. The fires are a Western phenom, largely in states that are white and do not vote Democrat—so there’s no big media whoop-de-do about the missing tankers. Tough luck for us.

Via Drudge Report

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Posted in Obamalot, Texana, Weather/Climate

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Snakes a’ comin’

Posted on September 8, 2011 | Comments Off on Snakes a’ comin’

Tom Spinker photo of a Texas rattler, via Accuweather, which picked up Earth & Sky’s warning of a suburban invasion of “very hungry” snakes this month due to the drought.

We’ll be watching.

Fortunately, rattlers generally aren’t killers, unlike, say, Texas coral snakes, which are relatives of the King Cobra. But the rattler’s bite is painful and everybody reacts differently.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Scribbles, Texana, Weather/Climate

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Smoke and soot

Posted on September 7, 2011 | Comments Off on Smoke and soot

Got up this morning, smelling smoke. Went outside to find an alarming haze of it all around the rancho. Then I found this at KVUE’s site:

“The smoke smell in the air over North Austin has many people alarmed. There are no new fires in the area. That’s just the wind is blowing the smoke from the other Central Texas fires in our direction.”

The Bastrop forest fire east of the city is only about a third contained. Six hundred Seven hundred eighty-five homes out there have been destroyed so far.

Little pieces of soot are now falling in the back forty. No embers yet.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather/Climate

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Wildfires

Posted on September 4, 2011 | Comments Off on Wildfires

Getting antsy at the rancho with drought-induced wildfires to the north, east, south and west. Hundreds of homes destroyed in all those directions, plus about 16,000 acres of pine forest out in Bastrop County. Nothing in our immediate area yet but we’ve got the garden hoses ready just in case.

Firefighters don’t know what’s causing the fires. Arson doesn’t seem to be the culprit. But they know what’s spreading them: High winds caused by a cold front moving slowly towards us from the northwest.

Usually one of those attracts wind and moisture out of the Gulf and the differential in temperatures causes rain showers, if not thunderstorms. But all the moisture seems to be tied up in Tropical Storm Lee, leaving us with the winds—and, thanks to the drought, wildfires.

UPDATE:  Good roundup story by the daily, which is leading Drudge.

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

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