Something to talk and write about
June 29, 2011 (Wednesday)
O.K. the hurricane season is visibly under way with the appearance of Tropical Storm Arlene in the Gulf of Campeche, headed for Mexico. The month of June almost made it without a named storm, but she showed up on Tuesday the 28th. The forecasters had been talking about rain in South Texas as a result of the broad circulation associated with the tropical system, but those chances seem to have disappeared. Too bad. The drought continues.
I haven’t heard anything about “cloud seeding” in a long time. For a while it was talked about a lot. The idea, which was first tried in 1946, was to use airplanes to spread dry ice or silver iodide aerosols over clouds that seemed likely to produce precipitation. The process was intended to increase the amount of rainfall from those clouds. I’m probably way behind the times in my descriptions, but efforts are still being made to increase rainfall using these and similar methods. China recently claimed credit for heavy rains which fell, according to their reports, because of their work.
We’ve always had heat waves and droughts. They rarely come to stay, but they can be quite disruptive and destructive for long periods of time. We’ve had torrential rains and floods as well. At times the winters in South Texas are mild, and at other times quite severe. Occasionally we will have hard freezes lasting days that actually immobilize thousands of fishes and sea creatures, so that they float to the top of the water and are washed ashore, at times numbering in the millions.
The weather is always good for a little conversation. And every once in a while, a blog.
