Thunderstorm from summer 1998

While I was going through some old video transfers at work, I found the one I did of a video I shot at Enchanted Rock State Park back in 1998. I was out there to give a talk about meteor showers during special events they were having to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Texas Parks and Wildlife. I didn't get any video of the meteor shower, but I did get these shots of a nearby thunderstorm before sunset (things did clear up nicely for the meteor shower itself). The quality isn't great, but it was a fun test of the process and I was able to make a 20x version so you can see some of the movement of the storm.

Snow day!

After several other parts of the state got snow this winter, it was finally our turn for some. It was fun while it lasted! And I'll take it over those nasty ice storms any day.

Here's a short video of the snow from last Tuesday. This was shot from the roof of my building during one of the heavier snowfalls.



I've also uploaded a few photos to Flickr too.

Picture of the Week #61

Double rainbow over central Texas, with brighter sky inside the primary bow.

So long summer!

... and don't let the door hit you on the way out! We didn't hit the record for most 100F+ days (fell one short), but the average temp was the highest on record for Austin - 89.1. The scary thing is that is an average of the high and low!

Although it will definitely still be warm from time to time for the remainder of the year, the worst is finally over. Right on cue for the first day of fall, we had a nice cold front come through central Texas and drop the afternoon (yes AFTERNOON) temperature in to the mid-60s. I've always loved fall, in part because the summers in Texas can be so brutal and the relief from that first cool-down is almost indescribable. Unfortunately we don't get a huge amount of fall color here because of the dominant types of trees - one of these days I'm going to treat myself to a "leaf peeper" trip to New England in the fall - but it is still a nice season in Texas.

Maybe now I'll get that little extra spark of energy that usually comes with the cooler temperatures and get some more blogging done! I've got some material saved for a new "occasional series" now that the entertaining spam subject headings have dried up. :)

I *knew* this weather was driving me crazy

I had a conversation with a few people a couple of weeks ago and I hypothesized that the endless heat and lack of clouds was causing a form of the seasonal affective disorder (SAD) that usually is associated with cold northern climates in winter. Well... this article came through Twitter from the Austin American Statesman today:

Meltdown! If you think the heat is making you crazy, you're probably right By Helen Anders AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Tuesday, July 28, 2009
...
A University of Arizona study found that the hotter it is, the more likely you are to honk your car horn at somebody (and, one must assume, the more likely that person is to return a salute of his or her own.)

And a University of Michigan study concluded that the hotter it is, the more Major League Baseball batters get hit by pitches.

We don't need a study to tell us that heat prompts us to make excuses for practically everything. "It's too hot," we say, to work out, cook, walk the dog, join a friend for lunch, shop ... you name it.

What we're suffering from here is cabin fever on the scale of a North Dakotan winter. We hunker down in the air conditioning. We emerge only to get into our cars, turn on the air conditioning, go to our air-conditioned jobs, return home and re-hunker.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness calls the syndrome seasonal affective disorder, whose acronym is the highly apt SAD. Most cases happen in winter, but the alliance says 10 percent happen in the summer. People get depressed, can't sleep, don't want to eat and get all agitated.

Full article

Picture of the Week #44

Mammatus clouds in Texas

I took this photo after some rough weather a few years back. They weren't as bumpy as classic mammatus clouds anymore at this point, but still pretty cool looking.

Picture of the Week #21

Sunset after a storm, near McDonald Observatory in west Texas, July 2007.

If you look closely, you can see the domes of the 82-inch Struve telescope and 107-inch Smith telescope on the mountain at the far right.

This photo was taken while I was out at the observatory for our annual summer board meeting. We had a BBQ and reception down at the Sproul Ranch, which was rudely interrupted by some fairly heavy thunderstorms. July is the wet season out there so the rain wasn't much of a surprise and the upside is that west Texas is green and beautiful that time of year.

Sunset from Hurricane Ike

This photo is from the evening before Hurricane Ike made landfall on Galveston, so the outer cloud bands had already started passing over central Texas. I think there was also some volcanic dust in the atmosphere then, which is what added some of the purple tint-- we got a stretch of really colorful sunsets (even when there were no clouds) courtesy of an Alaskan volcano around that time.

Click on the photo able to go to the Flickr set (only 7 photos since there were a lot that were very similar to one another)

Ugh

Garfield's expression pretty much covers it.

(Although in all fairness, I think some direct sunlight was falling on the sensor, so that bumped it up a little. And the temp was a bit cooler than 81 in the house because the windowsill was also in getting some sun.)

Hello Dolly!

Yes, I know I won't be the first or last person to say that in regard to the new tropical storm that formed just east of the Yucatan peninsula. The storm is expected to move into the Gulf of Mexico in the next couple of days. Right now the track takes it into Texas at the Mexico border as a tropical storm.

The reasons for this little bit of weather-blogging are 1) I'm a weather junkie and 2) I was born in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and lived there and in Houston for the first 8 years of my life, so keeping an eye on tropical weather was something I got from an early age. Even now, living in central Texas, we still have to deal with tropical weather, and not just from the stuff that comes in from the Gulf. We sometimes get the remnants of Pacific storms coming in from Mexico and dumping lots of rain on us.

Since we're having a pretty hot and dry summer here this year, a nice soak from a minimal tropical storm wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Right now the forecast doesn't take Dolly to hurricane strength, so maybe she'll turn out to be one of those helpful storms. But of course, we all know how quickly the forecasts for the path and strength of a storm can change!

Update 7-25-08



Well, Dolly has now come and gone, leaving a lot of rain in the Rio Grande Valley. We got some here in Central Texas (see the view from my back porch on Wednesday evening), but not as much as I had hoped. It looks like the Valley took a fairly bad hit, but so far I haven't heard anything of deaths or serious injuries, so that's good.

The trend is pointing towards an active season, although I can't imagine that we will see anything like the historic 2005 season. Only time will tell, but let's hope that if it is a repeat of the 2005 activity, it isn't also a repeat of the failures of that hurricane season.

Is it fall yet?

Ugh, I know I'm a native Texan and all, but this summer has already been really annoying. I'm sure most of it has to do with how wet and relatively cool last summer was, making this hot and dry one extra bothersome. We've been having some spotty showers for the past week or so, but they've all managed to not rain on Elgin. I got a brief shower one day on my drive home, but it was just enough to coat the car in a thin layer of dust-mud. But, on the upside, the distant showers have left us with some cool sunsets. I'll have some new ones posted on my Flickr pages soon.

Storm photos from last week

We have had some spotty popcorn showers over the past couple of weeks, a lot of them coming from moisture sweeping up from the Gulf. By the time they get to central Texas, it's usually close to sunset, so we can get some really amazing skies in the evenings. I've added the most recent photos (including the one above) to my "Sunsets and Weather from Elgin" Flickr set linked through the photo. (The new photos are at the bottom of the set.)

Rainbow cows

This photo is from a storm that blew through one evening about two weeks ago. It rained pretty hard, but it also cleared really fast. With the sun fairly low in the west and it still raining off to the east I was pretty sure we'd have some nice rainbows and I wasn't disappointed. I only wish I had the SLR with the really wide angle lens at home so I could have captured the whole arc! A secondary rainbow was also visible for a lot of the time, although it didn't make a whole arc.

One cool thing is that the rain hadn't moved too far when the rainbow started to show up, so it appeared to be coming down in our neighbor's field. Guess I should have gone looking for that pot of gold, but I think the cows beat me to it. In the picture above (which is linked to my rainbow Flickr photoset -- the last six are from this storm) you can see the rainbow coming down in front of the cows and the trees on hill in the background.

Freaky

Okay, so it is the 7th of April, and in central Texas it is now SLEETING. Tooooo weird. This is right up there with the ice storm that was followed by a high of 99F about two weeks later - in February.

Interesting weather the last few days

So, it started with rain, which then became floods, and now it is freezing rain, sleet and snow.

Overnight Friday into Saturday morning we got quite a round of thunderstorms and very heavy rains (on pretty well saturated ground). After going to breakfast we drove around to all the low spots on the roads around the house and pretty much all of them were under water. The creek that is just down the road from us was higher than we've ever seen... the monitor on it says that the normal level lately was about 5 ft, but Saturday night it peaked at 34 ft. Thankfully we're up on a hill. If we have water in the house, Houston is in the drink...

By Monday, the cold air that was wreaking havoc in the middle of the country had worked its way down to Texas and combined with the moisture from the Pacific to give us freezing rain. We already had the day off from work for Martin Luther King Day, which was good, since ice and Texans in cars don't mix well. The forecasts last night looked bad, so the University (and all the school districts) canceled work and classes for today (Tuesday). Good thing too, since sleet, snow pellets and honest-to-goodness SNOW has been falling all day. We're in a little bit of a lull right now, but it looks like more is on the way. I'm personally hoping for more of the snow, since 1) it's a lot safer than the ice and 2) it's so pretty!

We've been taking photos and I'll have some up on Flickr once I get a chance to upload them. The satellite internet is a little slow from home today since the receiver is covered in ice!

Aaahhhhhhhhh

I love fall. No two ways about it, it's my favorite season although it's followed closely by spring and all the beautiful wildflowers it brings to Central Texas. I figure this comes from being a life-long Texan and when that first strong cold front of the season comes through and finally breaks the heat, it is such a welcome relief.

The first burst of Canadian cold air is working its way through town right now and it is finally starting to feel like fall in Texas. Now if we could just get some of those cool fall colors on the trees...

Greetings from Philadelphia

Hello from the city of brotherly love! I always love going to a city for the first time and trying to get a feel for it. Philly has some wonderful architecture, in business, public and residential buildings. We stopped briefly at the art museum last night after dinner and saw the "Rocky" steps, but we'll actually go in on Friday. Had dinner at a cool place called Monk's and I tried a local ale. A little more hops than I would usually go for, but good (dinner was chicken apple sausage... yummmmm).

Today we went to the Mutter Museum at the College of Physicians and saw their weird and wonderful collection of medical models and specimens. After that we had lunch at the market in the Reading Terminal Market and then went to the Academy of Natural Sciences (where the picture at the top comes from). Small, but a nice dinosaur collection.

I also discovered why when they show the people suffering in the heat in the northeast on the news or Weather Channel, they always show people sticking their feet in the fountains. The reason - it feels darn good. Did it twice today and both times it really helps soothe my sore and hot feet.

Off to NYC for the next few days...

Update: Had Tony Luke's for dinner... Philly cheese steaks in Philly! I think I'm going to explode...

Ah, the weather of Texas

On Saturday, I had to dig out a pair of shorts to wear because the temperature was in the 80s. On Wednesday, we have sleet and freezing rain and even a stray snowflake here and there. Gotta love it!

Although the best example of mercurial Texas weather was one February (1997, I think) where we actually hit 100 degrees F and had an ice storm that shut down the city for a couple of days all in the same month...