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Texas: From droughts to extreme heat to blazing fires
Winds fuel flare-ups in Palo Pinto County, across state
Strong north winds fueled wildfire flare-ups around Possum Kingdom Lake on Sunday and firefighters managed to contain most of them, but the rest of Texas wasn’t as lucky as thousands of acres and hundreds of homes burned in another day of the worst wildfire season in the state’s history.
A wildfire estimated to be 16 miles long near the Austin suburb of Bastrop charred about 14,000 acres Sunday, destroying or damaging an estimated 300 homes.
“It’s catastrophic,” Mark Stanford, fire chief of the Texas Forest Service, said Sunday. “It’s a major natural disaster.”
More than 40 new wildfires were reported to the Texas Forest Service on Sunday as strong winds, low humidity and very dry vegetation left firefighters scrambling to extinguish blazes throughout the state.
“We’re very stretched right now,” Tom Berglund of the Texas Forest Service said Sunday.
As of Sunday afternoon, firefighters Read more…
Nebraskans say a Canadian oil pipeline poses unacceptable risks
Part of the Keystone pipeline (solid line) is already working. Construction on Keystone XL (red dotted line) is supposed to start soon so oil can flow to the GulfThe 20,000 miles of pipes that carry oil and gas across Nebraska’s open prairies don’t bother Randy Thompson at all. Neither do greenhouse gas emissions or oil geopolitics.
Yet the 63-year-old, Republican-voting rancher and other Nebraska landowners have begun to kick up a lot of dust over the Keystone XL, a 1,711-mile pipeline that, if built, will cut across Nebraska’s heartland as it funnels oil from the Athabasca sands of Alberta, Canada, to Read more…
Peaceful Activist Is Banned By Austin Mayor For Stating His Name “Ronnie (TOKE) Reeferseed”
Recently Austin Texas Mayor Lee Leffingwell installed new rules for citizen communication that says a person can’t speak on more that three agenda items per session. Many Austin activists are outraged by this dictatorial new violation of the citizens right to participate in local government. Apparently Mr. Ronnie Reeferseed was outspoken on this issue and was warned not to complain again.
State electric grid strains amid record heat; Austin breaks 86-year-old record
It was so hot Wednesday that power plants across the state stuttered amid high demand, prompting the manager of the electric grid for much of the state to order about 100 large industrial customers to shut down for more than two hours as electricity reserves dipped dangerously low.
In Austin, temperatures Wednesday reached 106 at Camp Mabry — the 70th day of triple-digit heat, breaking an 86-year-old record.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas declared a Level Read more…
City breaks record for most 100-degree days in a year
Midland is officially in the midst of the hottest summer on record.
With a high temperature of 100 degrees Friday, the record for 100-degree days in one year is now 53, breaking the old mark of 52 previously set in 1964. With triple-digit temperatures expected through the weekend, the hot conditions will continue into the first part of the school year.
Midland experienced 21 days of triple-digit temperatures in 2010.
“This has been an abnormal weather year,” Read more…
Texas drought will harm wildlife habitat for years
Turkey vultures drop in for a drink from one of the very few remaining watering sources on a private ranch that spans over 7,000 acres Saturday Aug. 6, 2011, near San Angelo, Texas. Randy Bolf, a fence contractor and rancher that leases the property for his cattle herd said that all of the rain and run-off watering tanks on the ranch that straddles Tom Green and Coke county have dried up and area wildlife and his cattle rely on the artificial watering sources he maintains on the property. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
(AP) — In a muddy pile of sand where a pond once flowed in the Texas Panhandle, dead fish, their flesh already decayed and feasted on by maggots, lie with their mouths open. Nearby, deer munch on the equivalent of vegetative junk food and wild turkeys nibble on red harvester ants – certainly not their first choice for lunch.
As the state struggles with the worst one-year drought in its history, entire ecosystems, from the smallest insects to the largest predators, are struggling for survival. The foundations of their habitats – rivers, springs, creeks, streams and lakes – have turned into dry sand, wet mud, trickling springs or, in the best case, large puddles.
“It has a compound effect on a multitude of species and organisms and habitat types because of the way that it’s chained and linked together,” said Jeff Bonner, a wildlife biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
Since January, Texas has only gotten about 6 inches of rain, compared to Read more…
Heat wave chokes southern U.S.
The suffocating heat wave sweeping the southern U.S. that has led to at least four deaths and left farmers’ fields bone dry shows no signs of abating as temperatures continue to reach record highs and electricity demand threatens to cripple the power grid.
The National Weather Service issued yet more excessive heat warnings Thursday for most of the southern plains, where the temperature in parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas reached as high as 43C, without the humidex.
Southern parts of California and Arizona in the west and Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas in the east also fell under heat advisories, while municipalities and counties scrambled to open cooling centres and make house calls on vulnerable residents.
Dallas marked its 34th straight day of temperatures over 38C, while on Wednesday, Fort Smith, Ark., saw the temperature reach 46C without the humidex, breaking a record of 42C set back in 1896.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, Florida residents are bracing for the Read more…
Unemployment rose in 90 percent of U.S. cities in June
Unemployment rates rose in more than 90 percent of U.S. cities in June, according to a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Unemployment rose in 345 large metro areas during the month, according to the report. Rates dropped in 20 cities, and remained steady in seven.
The national unemployment rate increased in June to 9.2 percent.
The statistics show a drastic change in unemployment rates in recent months. In May, unemployment rates rose in only 210 cities. In April, rates decreased in nearly all metro areas.
In June, employers added just 18,000 jobs, the lowest number in nine months. It was also a sharp decrease from the average of 215,000 jobs that were added in February, March, and April.
Many of the highest unemployment rates were seen in metro areas that are college towns. Champaign-Urbana, Ill., the home of the University of Illinois, saw its unemployment rate rise from 6.9 percent in May to 9.6 percent in June. College towns in Read more…
Drought by area impacted is worst ever – though majority of US still drought free
From the University of Nebraska-Lincoln , a new record in the 12 year old drought monitor.
US sets drought monitor’s ‘exceptional drought’ record in July
Worst classification for drought in nearly 12 percent of contiguous US
The percent of contiguous U.S. land area experiencing exceptional drought in July reached the highest levels in the history of the U.S. Drought Monitor, an official at the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said.
Nearly 12 percent of the contiguous United States fell into the “exceptional” classification during the month, peaking at 11.96 percent on July 12. That level of exceptional drought had never before been seen in the monitor’s 12-year history, said Brian Fuchs, UNL assistant geoscientist and climatologist at the NDMC.
The monitor uses a ranking system that Read more…
Never Mind Bret, Season is Just Getting Started
The circle gets the square, or in this case, the big red circle near Africa has room to become the strongest feature yet for the 2011 season.“A stronger tropical wave now over the eastern North Atlantic might be a feature to watch during the next week or so.”While Bret is now pushing out to sea and remains no threat to the mainland U.S., indications continue to point toward a busy August and September as far as hurricanes are concerned.
A sizable tropical wave has rolled westward, off the coast of Africa, and bears watching as it cruises along through Antilles waters this weekend.
It is still a little early to expect much from the Cape Verde area, but one of the tropical waves could help to breed a tropical cyclone in the southwestern part of the Atlantic Basin by next week.
According to Tropical Weather and Hurricane Expert Meteorologist Dan Kottlowski, “A stronger tropical wave now over the Read more…
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