Weather

Cooler than normal for late July in the deep south. This morning it was 66F. Had several deer out back. Later around noon I saw some when I walked down the driveway to check the mail. Guessing they like the cooler weather too.

MS River is finally starting to go down, 1/2 a foot give or take a day. They started Monday closing 10 gates a day on the Bonnet Carre spillway, only 186 total to close.

Bonnet Carre Spillway 100% closed. I listened to the Corp of Engineers announcement. I missed part of it. The river is low enough to be in stage 1 flood control now down from stage 2. It entered stage 2 in October of 2018. Jeeze it's been high for a long time. So 9 months. The MS river is finally going down.

Extreme heat advisory. I'm not sure it qualfies as extreme but hey someone has a job so might as well do something. It's called August in the south. 93F is not extreme heat here for this time of year. When I worked for the US Forest Service I cruised timber full time (basically counting trees) and they warned me not to work outside on days above 92F as it was too hot. LOL. Yeah all summer in TX, stay inside. It's not like I was in a parking lot for 8 hours a day. It's called shade from trees. At this rate we'll be living in AC/heated pods 24/7 in 20 years and never leave.

Edit - love these days. 97F and the sun shining hard obviously. Then I heard it raining hard, very hard. Go check. Sun still shining. Then the wind blew hard, very hard. I love these days. The temp went down to 79F in about 10 minutes. Of course you can't see outside for the amount of steam coming off the blacktop road and the roof on houses. Oh and it's 10,000% relative humidity but man I love these days. Super hot to not super hot almost instantly.

It's 68F here now less than an hour after dark. Feels good.

Hurricane Andrew in 1992 hit Florida hard as cat 5 I think it was. Crossed over into the gulf and eventually hit Louisiana. Damage wasn't that bad and not near as bad Florida. But I remember the Atchafalya spillway. Dead fish for miles and miles, from th gulf up until it spilt from the MS river. Probably 90 miles give or take. Solid dead fish. Oxygen depletion was the reason given but no idea how that works. It took years and years before the fish recoverd in the spillway. Fishing was totally closed for a long time. The spillway is the heart of cajun land and what makes LA, well LA. Oddly enough the crawfish came out OK. I guess they were buried too deep or didn't need the oxygen.

Oddly enough having gone thru several hurricanes and Katrina as well I've never seen wind do what Andrew did. 75 year old cherrybark oak tree that was 20+" in diameter it just bent the tree over about 4 feet off the ground at about a 45 degree angle for a minute while the wind blew. Then the tree recovered and that was it. Odd. It was feet from the back porch so I just watched it out the door.

Friend of mine had just got married. His wife had a heart attack from being afraid of the hurricane I guess. Called 911 and they were too late. Took them forever to get to his house with all the power out, trees down and such. He's still working at the same job, doing the same thing almost 30 years later. Never got remarried.

You'll never experience a more peaful time, weather, and feeling than in the eye of a hurricane. Everyone should experience it at least once. Go outside and walk around. Incrediably calm, quiet, and the pressure drop or something makes it feel incrediably calm. You almost feel 10 years younger LOL. Guess I'm crazy.

Well I live in cent. Fl. These use to be fun, but now I dread them. It will mean a lot of good tall trees get felled (less shade) and a good chance of being without power for a few days. The one back in fall of 2016 had us without power for over a week. It suuuuckkeedd.