A couple of days ago, I posted a photo of our first cactus blossom of the year. Now, here’s our first Epiphyllum flower of the season. We’ve been at the gun show all day, so enjoy this beautiful flower that you wish was in your yard.
Are They Blowing Smoke Up Our AWS?
Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) collect temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure (and wind direction and velocity in some locations) from various locations throughout the world. Data from this system is used to record, and subsequently extrapolate, climate patterns. But is there a problem with the accuracy of the data collected by individual AWS installations because of localized urban conditions and features? Can smoke from a nearby BBQ distort readings? Can air conditioner exhaust distort them? Can heat from asphalt?
Image: a remote weather observation unit – click for larger image.
In what might be a major contamination of weather data, weather sensors can be influenced by the effects of surrounding human activity and artifacts. These factors will skew the data in some locations because of unnatural heating and distortion of natural climatic conditions. If you bias temperature readings in some locations, it would be impossible to rely on that data unless it has been normalized to data collected in undeveloped areas.
A Northern California blog, What’s Up With That?, identifies four cases where Urban Heat Island (UHI) effects are likely distorting temperature data.
First Cactus Flower of the Season
This is the first bloom this year from one of our cereus cactus plants. This one was still opening when I got this shot last night. Its the first of many more to come on this cactus (one stalk has five flower pods, another three and most others with one or two pods. More photos will come later, I’m sure.
Just What Is A Blue Moon?
Tomorrow night, when the full moon rises over North America, it is believed that this will be a “blue moon.” The modern definition for “blue moon” is the second full moon to occur within a calendar month and tomorrow’s full moon will indeed be the second to occur in the month of May, 2007.
Cartoon Image courtesy of NASA.
But hold on – Sky and Telescope magazine retracted it’s 1946 second-in-a-month definition in favor of stating that the “blue moon” is actually based on the four seasons and is the fourth full moon to occur within a season (Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn). Using this definition, a “blue moon” may or may not occur within a calendar month.
It gets even more confusing.
Iraq War Today — WOW
Our selection for Weblog of the Week this week is Iraq War Today. IWT is always a good place to go for a military-oriented perspective on current news. Pam has a feature where she offers her “Two Cents Worth” on varying topics which is always interesting. We’re glad to feature Iraq War Today as our Weblog of the Week.
Holiday Shooting
Since most of the cooking yesterday was in the crock pot, we found ourselves with a little time on our hands. We decided to go to the range and rent one of their .45 caliber Springfield 1911 pistols. We bought a hundred rounds of ammunition, got a couple of silhouette targets and went out to a booth to shoot.
We found out a couple of things about the pistol; it had a kick only a little greater than our 9mm pistols and we each got hit by ejected brass since the casings seemed to fly out in semi-random directions.
All in all, it was fun though and we got a taste of shooting the larger caliber.
Click on the picture for a larger view.
Memorial Day BBQ
This is part of the meal we prepared to celebrate Memorial Day. We started cooking this morning with baby back pork ribs in a special barbecue sauce in the crock pot. The ribs cooked all day until we took them out to the grill and browned them up for about 10 minutes over some smoking hickory chips. The corn was roasting on the grill in their husks before shucking them and browning them a little with butter and pepper brushed on. We also had Cole slaw and baked beans. This meal was every bit as good if not better than your favorite commercial BBQ restaurant.
We took the time last week to send a donation to The Wounded Warrior Project knowing that some of our soldiers would be facing this holiday with serious injuries and we hoped that we could make it a little better holiday for those recovering from their injuries. We hope that you might consider donating to one of our fine Military Charities. Look in our sidebar for a few links to some organizations that make a difference for our troops. God bless our Military Men and Women.