Environment

The Raging Hassayampa River

The local weather has provided us with much needed rainfall, but not without some flooding in certain areas. We have been OK here in our domicile, but some have had minor flooding in town, with some more major incidents throughout the state. The normally-dry Hassayampa River (clickable image) had running water on Wednesday when Damsel took this photo.

We’re high and dry here and the rain storms are expected to subside into our regular sunny fall weather after this coming weekend. So, we expect to be OK for the Thanksgiving holiday next week. Our retirement itinerary has us shopping tomorrow (Thursday 11/20/25) and stocking up on groceries such that we won’t need to shop during Thanksgiving week.

We’ll post about our Thanksgiving Holiday next week.

Excursion Progress

Image: Weather in the Albuquerque area this evening – courtesy Damsel – Click to enlarge

It has been over two weeks since since posting about our progress on the big summer RV excursion. At this point, to make a very long story short, we’re on the last couple of stops before returning to our home. In the image above, you can see the weather in the area where we’re camped.

Damsel has been posting some photos on social media, but we have been remiss in doing that here. A major reason for the lack of posting is some adversarial conditions encountered, which I won’t elaborate on now. Perhaps I will in our trip summary to be posted when we’re settled in at home again.

We got as far as the Atlantic Ocean in North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. We made our way back to our present location by following several interesting locations and finally along historic route 66.

Meanwhile, we’re making progress and will be done with the excursion real soon.

Revival of the Compost Bin

In the post on Imbolc Weekend, I mentioned that our compost bin needed rejuvenation by virtue of a new bag of worms. I ordered 500 wrigglers from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm at that time; today, the worms arrived and I followed the recommended instructions to introduce them to the heap within the bin. I assume that they are happily getting busy with their program of converting our compost items into vermicast.

When we replaced our old compost bin with this one, I predicted that it, also, wouldn’t last very long in Arizona, like it’s predecessor, but it has hung in there for nearly 10 years now. Here’s a photo of the bin then and now:

As you can see, the lid is a little warped and needs to be secured with a bungee, but the ol’ bin is still doing its job of keeping the compost heap, worms, castings and soil contained within.

Cardinalis Cardinalis

I took my Canon EOS Rebel SL3 camera with me on my morning walk, when this Cardinal lit atop the anti-squirrel cone on the bird feeder crook. Zoom lens set to 250mm in the camera’s “program” mode, which is the setting for automatically adjusting aperture, shutter speed and ISO speed. Clickable image.

It is a nice, sunny morning here with temperatures in the 50s F. The forecast is for possible rain over night and for the next few days. We need it.

UPDATE: [02/05/25] In the interest of being fair and balanced, I took an image of the Female of the Cardinalis species in a mesquite tree out back near the birdfeeders. Click to open the image viewer.

First Day of Winter 2024-2025

Today marks the first day of winter in the northern hemisphere. It is also the shortest day for us with only nine hours and fifty-six minutes of daylight.

In Wickenburg, we’re enjoying a nice sunny day and expecting a high temperature today in the mid-70s Fahrenheit. It is also The Sabbath, God’s Day of Rest. We will be preparing our feast of “Gumbolaya,” which is a combination of Gumbo and Jambalaya, two very favorite Southern (Cajun) stews. If we add okra to the Jambalaya, it becomes Gumbolaya.

Tomorrow, for Sunday Dinner, we will be having Crockpot Roast Top Round of Beef. Check the Food Blog for photos of the eats.

Clickable Image above: Waning Gibbous Moon over the big Saguaro Cactus in front of the Garage.

Second Spring

The weather outlook in our little patch of Arizona looks to be cooling off somewhat; that is, high temps of less than 100°F. In our experience, this indicates not autumn, but our “second spring” for the next few weeks. As you can see in the image above, cactus flowers are now appearing on our “Devil’s Tongue” (ferocactus latispinus).

My camera caught some other interesting things as seen below . . .

This is a Black Hawk which soared above our place yesterday. They look similar to turkey buzzards, but they lack the bright red head the buzzards are known to have.

And, as fall advances, the fruit on our lemon tree are beginning to ripen. We will be making Limoncello around year’s end.

Some of the most commonly seen birds in the area are doves. This Mourning Dove perched in the mesquite tree where we place bird feeders year around.

Click on any image to enlarge.

Altocumulus Mammatus

This past Monday evening, I photographed the above image after I noticed the normally flat-bottomed cumulus cloud had these predominantly rounded protrusions below. I recognized them as mammatus.

Mammatus is a cellular pattern of pouches hanging underneath the base of a cloud, typically a cumulonimbus raincloud, although they may be attached to other classes of parent clouds.

I remember from my days as a commercial instructor pilot that these cloud formations were to be avoided. There can be up/down drafts, microbursts, wind shear and possible other airborne hazards.

Not long after the photo was taken, we got some steady rain for about fifteen minutes. The ground got a good soaking with little runoff. Last night, however, several thunder cells rolled through the area and left plenty of rain. There was no evidence of flooding afterward.


Now, speaking of weather, I saw a couple of interesting articles on the topic of the Farce of Anthropogenic Climate Change. The first one “Greenhouse Gases Are a Scientific Myth” from American Thinker, discusses, as the title indicates, “climate stupidity” with regard to so-called “greenhouse gasses.”

The most recent climate stupidity suggests that American factories report their greenhouse gas emissions. As we learned from our country’s first cap-and-trade rule in California, reporting led to required reduction of clean-burning natural gas. Most factories in California have closed because of that rule. It required a 75-percent reduction of natural gas — the factories’ only heat source — over five years.

Read More

The next article, from long-time blogger “GREENIE WATCH,” discloses a study debunking CO2’s adverse effect on the weather.

A powerful peer-reviewed scientific study delivers substantial evidence that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the atmosphere have zero impact on the Earth’s global temperatures. The study concludes that even though most publications attempt to depict a catastrophic future for our planet due to an increase in CO2, there is serious doubt that this is, in fact, the case. Instead, the study authors deduced that their research unequivocally means that the officially presented narrative that human activity is causing a detrimental CO2 increase on Earth’s climate is merely a hypothesis rather than a substantiated reality.

Read More

We’ve long known that the notion of man-made climate change is as follows: