Category: Texas

This is not the sky picture I wanted to show you. Well, I guess it is because I am showing it. I cannot remember where this was taken. Okay, jerk, yes, I know it was taken from an aircraft. Jeez. Leave me alone, will ya?

The truth is I took a couple of shots with my telephone from my office building of the scary-looking/not scary-looking skies this afternoon. Unfortunately, the shot was kind of blurred. I should have bracketed the photo. I had plenty of time. I wasn’t wasting film because I … film, you know, photographic material consisting of a base of celluloid covered with a photographic emulsion; used to make negatives or transparencies.

What sky I was photographing this afternoon was a mass of dark clouds hanging above a clearer horizon. I am not a meteorologist so I don’t know if it was a “wall cloud” of the kind you hear of or see in conjunction with a tornado or severe thunderstorm.

I don’t think our storm this afternoon was severe. The general conditions for a severe thunderstorm, according to NOAA:

“(A) thunderstorm that produces a tornado, winds of at least 58 mph (50 knots), and/or hail at least ¾” in diameter. Structural wind damage may imply the occurrence of a severe thunderstorm. A thunderstorm wind equal to or greater than 40 mph (35 knots) and/or hail of at least ½” is defined as approaching severe.”

Glad I could help. But no doubt it was a thunderstorm because I saw lightning and heard thunder and it rained like a cow pissing on a flat rock. Hell of a visual but that’s what I grew up hearing in East Texas. That and “gully washer” and “frog strangler.” It was raining very abundantly, is what I am saying. And that, my friends, is a good thing because as it is written, we are in the middle of a drought right here in River City, with a capital “d” that rhymes with “p” and that stands for “parchedness.” Which, my friends, means dry. I love “(Ya Got) Trouble” from “The Music Man,” if you hadn’t noticed.

Folks really are having trouble in river cities, such as Minot, N.D., where the Souris River is on a rampage and threatening the city. Worse yet, a rising Missouri River is causing Nuclear Regulatory Commission authorities to keep an eye on two nuclear power plants in Nebraska. Water, water everywhere … Or so it seems.

As I said, we here on the Upper Texas Coast are bone dry. The rains we had today and yesterday, particularly today, were nice. That’s why the threatening sky I wasn’t able to get a good shot of wasn’t all that threatening. Yes, it rained, and rained and rained some more. But it hardly made a noticeable dent in the rainfall deficit which now, thanks to the rain the last couple of days, is just less than 20 inches.

Such extreme lack of rainfall and our geographic proximity to the Gulf of Mexico gets a lot of people, myself included, talking foolish, saying things like: “We need a tropical storm to park off the coast for a week.” Of course, tropical storms have a nasty habit of not minding what we mortals try to tell nature. To paraphrase a great Jimmy Buffet song, there is no trying to reason with hurricane season. But the type of rain a tropical gully washer brings is about what we need.

Tomorrow is the start of Summer. You could have fooled me. What was all this hot, dry weather we’ve been through, it seems like forever?

The National Weather Service says our official weather station, the Jack Brooks Regional Airport in Nederland, Texas, reports that average rainfall for the county is down by 20.06 inches since Jan. 1, 2011. It’s been hot, too. That isn’t so unusual for this time of year. It is windy as it sometimes can be just off the Gulf Coast. The extreme dryness from the drought has brought about wildfires in this and other parts of Texas as well as a good chunk of the Southwest. Just a spark is all the dry grasses need, plus a little of the Gulf breeze turned into a heavy gust of wind and you have yourselves a conflagration.

Authorities say a wheel bearing started what is said to be the second-largest fire in East Texas history. The Texas Forest Service said today that the now-named “Bearing” fire has burned about 14,000 acres along the Trinity and Polk county line. That is almost 90 miles northeast of Houston. Two homes were burned and dozens have been evacuated, the forest service said, adding that the fire is about 40 percent contained.

A couple of good ol’ boys doing some target practicing on propane bottles sparked a wildfire near Sam Rayburn Reservoir dam in Jasper County. That is about 120 miles northeast of Houston and about 50 miles west of Fort Polk, La., if you are Army or ex-Army. I am ex-Navy, by the way. The fellow heading emergency management in the area of that fire said about 4,000 acres and seven camp houses were destroyed. I happen to know that emergency management guy up there in Jasper, Sabine and Newton counties. He is a guy named Smith. I think they named a cough drop after he and his four brothers. Smith also said there were some worries about some electricity outages because of fires being close to power lines. I suppose that had something to do with the fire being named the “Power Line” fire.

I have seen droughts, hot weather all in a tiresome combination to start huge wildfires. They don’t just happen in remote areas where ne’er-do-wells are target practicing with possible explosives in an area that is dry as “all get out.” All get out is a technical term used in East Texas meaning “really freaking dry.” I remember back in the summer of ’98, in the last century, when some big crowning fires burned right inside the city limits of Waco. The local fire department there along with help from multi-governmental federal and state firefighters staged at the Texas State Technical College Airport got on that fire which threatened to take a good part of Cameron Park and did a great job of getting the blaze under control before it did more harm. I have said here before and I will say it again. I lived and worked in Waco for seven years. I met a lot of really nice people. Although I never really cared for the place, Waco had a few marvelous spots and Cameron Park was definitely a crown jewel.

Today, here in Southeast Texas, the weather has been more like a normal summer day you would experience. The high temp was about 90 degrees. There was about a 20 percent to 30 percent chance of rain today. Looking at the radar earlier, I would say the coverage was much greater although what we got today was literally a drop in the bucket. Starting tomorrow there is a pretty good chance of rain for a couple of days, up to 70 percent. That would be nice to get some substantial rain. But, says meteorologist Jonathan Brazzell, of the National Weather Service office in Lake Charles, La., “Rainfall amounts will in no way end the current drought. It should provide some short term relief on the order of a few days to a week.”

In the meantime, if you are interested in keeping up with what’s going on in Texas and elsewhere with the wildfires here are some good sites:

Texas Forest Service — It gives a summary of each day’s fires and numbers in Texas.

U.S. Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Center — Dandy little site with various interactive maps showing wildfires throughout the county.

InciWeb — The Incident Information System gives a plethora of information on this searchable site that includes Google maps pinpointing the location of these fires.

These are only a few and as loaded with great info, they aren’t a substitute for someone at the scene reporting, blogging through Facebook — like my volunteer firefighter nieces do when they can —  their observations, or perhaps Tweeting. For all those brave souls on the fire lines, my best wishes that you all come home safe. I also extend those best wishes for those who live or have property threatened by fire. And a word to others, use your common sense if you have a smidgen of it somewhere. Where it is dry, all it takes is a spark to cause a disaster.

Happy Summer.