Environment

Erosion Control Project

Erosion Control Project

About three weeks ago, I posted an item about some erosion along the front of our property. Today, since the temperatures were in the comfortable range of mid-eighties, I started transporting boulders from the back property and placed them along the edge of the path that the runoff takes when we get our summer gully-washers.

I still have a way to go before I will be done. I have some more one-inch red gravel to place on the bare strip on the right end of the area. I also will be transporting more medium-sized boulders to place in front of the ones I brought down today. I also intend to extend the rock wash at the right end a couple of feet to the confluence with the runoff coming down the road.

Click on the image to enlarge.

More Erosion

More Erosion

We had a really heavy downpour last Wednesday night. It looks like I’ll have to shore up the front of the property with big rocks to avoid losing more of the landscape between the RV drive and the west wash. Again, I have plenty of big rocks up in the wash and around the lot, so it’s just a matter of collecting them in the wheelbarrow and burying them along the roadway where the floods wash down.

Damn! I’m supposed to be retired and all this stuff pops up to keep me busy. Ah well, It probably keeps me out of trouble.

Click on the image for the full sized panorama.

Monsoon Evening

Monsoon Evening

We had a pretty good rain shower this afternoon. It quickly came and went without much impact other than raising the humidity in our part of the Sonoran desert to an astounding 65%. Who ever said that Sonoran summers were a DRY heat?

All jesting aside, the rain this summer has brought a badly needed increase to the ground water plane here, regardless of the minor discomfort of a little mugginess. Tonight’s radar weather map indicates a lot of shower activity along the lower Colorado river and north of I-40 in the Kaibab plateau. The Sandia mountains and a lot of new Mexico are also enjoying a rainy evening.

There are a few flash flood warnings in all the heavy rain shower areas.

A Desert Toad

Colorado River ToadI noticed something moving on the RV drive last evening after some thundershowers. I thought it looked like a frog. We took photos of it while it was climbing up the slope behind the drive.

After a little research this afternoon, we believe it is a Colorado River Toad, a.k.a. Sonoran Desert Toad. It matches the description given in Wikipedia for such toads.

We have long heard that desert toads respond to thunder and come out of their burrows to look for pools in which to spawn. This is our first encounter with a desert toad.

Click on the image to enlarge.

From Wikipedia

The Colorado River toad, Bufo alvarius, also known as the Sonoran Desert toad, is a psychoactive toad found in northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. Its skin and venom contain 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenin.

The Colorado River toad can grow to about 7.5 inches (190 mm) long and is the largest toad in the United States apart from the non-native cane toad (Bufo marinus). It has a smooth, leathery skin and is olive green or mottled brown in color. Just behind the large golden eye with horizontal pupil is a bulging kidney-shaped parotoid gland. Below this is a large circular pale green area which is the tympanum or ear drum. By the corner of the mouth there is a white wart and there are white glands on the legs. All these glands produce toxic secretions. Dogs that have attacked toads have been paralyzed or even killed. Raccoons have learned to pull a toad away from a pond by the back leg, turn it on its back and start feeding on its belly, a strategy that keeps the raccoon well away from the poison glands.

An Actual Weatherman Debunks NOAA Claims

TV Weatherman Joe Bastardi, best known for his AccuWeather reports, has penned an article at The Patriot Post dealing with “Data Deception.” Joe starts out with a few links to debunk NOAA’s assertion that July, 2012 was the hottest July on record, which of course is more of NOAA and NASA’s chronic misinformation. Joe then continues with these thoughts on current conditions and how the gullible media stokes the non-existent fire with their brand of Chicken Little hysteria:

best-name-evah.jpgIt is true that it is very warm off the Northeast Coast, which is part of the reason I am so concerned that like the 1950s, the northeast is vulnerable to hurricane landfalls. However, it’s very cold off the West Coast. That should be relevant also when talking about how warm the waters are off our coasts. (It’s part of the cold cycle of the Pacific we have entered.)

One can read the debunking [at this link], but I wish to make a few other points. There seems to be a common thread with people who believe their idea of absolute truth means they can say and do whatever they want to get to that truth. The result is a series of loud announcements that grab the attention of a gullible media, and when debunked, do not have near the coverage as the original pronouncement.

[more]

Emphasis mine.

Playing With Solar Photography

Sun Spot 1543

Whenever I notice a large sunspot on the Space Weather dot com main page, I go over to the SOHO sunspot page and read about it. On SOHO, I saw that sunspot 1543 is prominent in the northern hemisphere of the solar globe today.

I grabbed the Canon SX-40 and my economy solar filter and went out in the courtyard and took the image above. I am using the same camera setup that I used for the May 20th annular eclipse and the June 5th transit of Venus.

The “little” sunspot is about three times the diameter of the Earth. Click on the image to enlarge.

Monsoon and the New Saguaro

saguaro-thunderstorm.jpg

We stepped out a while ago to take the dogs for a little walk. On our way down to the road, we saw lightning and heard thunder from this cell west of us. One of these days, I’m going to get lucky and snap the shutter just as a bolt of lightning is visible. You can see the rainfall in the distance behind the big (new to us) saguaro outside the courtyard. Click on the image to enlarge.