Category Archives: Weather

ten years later

June 29, 2015 6:47 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Recently there have been a lot of articles on the upcoming 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.  A devastating weather event that killed over 1800 people, destroyed New Orleans, sent the largest wave of American refugees across the US since the Dustbowl days, and started many people thinking more intently about climate change.

Along with the rest of the nation we watched on television as the true aftermath of the storm unfolded.  Days later we received a large number of evacuees in Houston and many took up temporary residence here as New Orleans was being rebuilt.

Houston of course missed the immediate effects of Katrina but a few weeks later we became worried that Hurricane Rita.  Katrina refugees feared that they would have to weather a second major Hurricane in less than a month.

I remember the build up in tension across the city as we watched Rita come up the Gulf.  The supermarkets, convenience stores, and sporting goods stores were picked clean of food, batteries, and camping supplies.  The weathermen were on practically 24 hours a day.

Three days before the storm a small trickle of cars started coming in from the coast. A day later it was a torrent of cars.  The coastal residents didn’t need to be forced to evacuate.  The lessons of Katrina were too recent and too raw to forget. The highways were clogged with cars and some began running out of gas just sitting in the gridlock for hours.

My boss shut down the office that day and told everyone to come back after the storm.

I was living in Alief, on the southwestern part of Houston, at the time.  I seriously began to ask myself if staying was such a good idea. But then I thought about the clogged roads and concluded that it was probably already too late.  On TV the reports were all about the preparations to receive the storm.  Plywood was in short supply as businesses and homeowners were boarding up windows.

I drove round the city that night and looked at the preparations.  A car dealership had boarded up one window but the window next to that was wide open.  Maybe they had run out of wood or the employees had fled?  The city was a ghost town.  I went to a local bar that I frequented.  A few diehard barflies kept one bartender and a pair of waitresses company.  Everyone was nervous.  A waitress told me that she couldn’t wait for her shift to end.  She had packed up her apartment and was moving to Oklahoma as soon as it was over.

The day before the storm and the city was edgy and tense.  Everything that could be done short of moving the city a couple hundred miles further inland had been done.  The coastal traffic had ebbed.  No one was left in the area between Houston and Galveston.

The first few waves of clouds from the storm arrived around dusk.  The sky was oddly green.  The weathermen predicted landfall sometime during the night.  I don’t know why it is, but Hurricanes prefer to arrive in the early morning.  I put a flashlight next to my bed and went to sleep.

Of course nothing happened.  At the last moment the storm veered towards the north and went into East Texas and western Louisiana.  That part of the state is much less populated and had already evacuated.  The city was spared the brunt of the storm.

We had dodged the bullet this time but would not be spared three years later when Hurricane Ike came to town.  Back in 2005 we got on with cleaning up and integrating the Katrina evacuees into Houston.

I have to admit that Houston has for the most part benefited from Hurricanes.  First was the 1900 hurricane that devastated Galveston and made Houston into the largest city in Texas.  Grim but true.  And now we received a large dose of culture and flavor from the Katrina refugees that decided to stay in Houston and make it their new home. I think that these refugees and their influence have helped make Houston into a more cosmopolitan and livable city and this in turn has helped draw in more immigrants from other parts of the country.

 

 

Posted in: Houston, hurricanes, weather

Turbulence

June 21, 2015 6:07 AM , Leave a Comment ,

The weather news reports for Texas have been unabashedly positive these last few months.  The local newspaper report that all our reservoirs, once empty and bleak holes in the ground, have now replenished and we can declare the drought over.

Of course it’s a totally different story out west.  California faces the prospect of another dust bowl summer and perhaps the destruction of tens of thousands of acres of farmland.  The rest of the nation faces higher food prices as a consequence.

Four years ago it was the exact opposite.  A neat little online tool can help you visualize it

http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/MapsAndData/ComparisonSlider.aspx

While I’m glad that our condition has improved, I worry that the overall picture is slowly but surely deteriorating.  California will recover in time.  Of that I’m sure.  But these see-saw changes in the weather are leaving deep scars in nature’s ability to heal itself and to withstand the abuse that we throw at it.

Nature can put up with a lot and given time it can come back stronger than before but with the increased demands that we are putting on the planet I am not sure that the damage in some of the more marginal areas will heal this time.  As these marginal areas fail to heal and become wastelands other areas that were fruitful become marginal and we stress them even more as our material needs increase.

It’s a vicious downward spiral that has the potential of eventually becoming self-sustaining and unstoppable.  It to be arrested or even reversed and given time and conscious effort it can be.  But the time and the ability of our species to affect a positive change is rapidly dwindling.

These harsh flood and drought patterns in our weather cycle are just the beginning of what could be catastrophic times to come.  if we do nothing then this could become our normal way of life.

 

Posted in: science, speculation, weather

Adapting to Houston’s weather

June 7, 2015 4:29 PM , Leave a Comment ,

I was at a fair and standing under a tent on an early June evening with a fan blasting right behind me and it still felt ridiculously hot.

Yup. Houston’s Summer had arrived.

Summertime in Houston isn’t so much a season as it is an ordeal by fire.  It is often the last barrier to recent emigres considering whether or not to make the city into their new home.

You may come here in November and be charmed by all the restaurants and parks.  You may come here in March and be thrilled by all the culture and sunny weather.  Then again, you may come here in August and turn right back around and refuse to get out of the plane.

It’s not a gentle land and definitely not one to wander about without some sort of air conditioner or fan on during the long Summer days.

This evening we were discussing the recent rain storms that had plagued the city for a couple of weeks and relating what we were doing when “the big one struck” on Tuesday night.

Most of the stories centered on underwater roads and monstrous hail stones that pelted anything and everything in sight and of all the downed fences and broken tree limbs that still have to be collected by the garbage collectors.

But here we are a week later and we were sweltering in the stifling heat and humidity.  I reflected that life in Houston was often like that.  Things were apt to change quickly in this town and if you didn’t adapt you would at best be left behind.

We’ve little to no experience with the bitter Winters that others experience up north but when these storms do make it to Houston we wisely stay in and don’t even try to brave the cold.

Of course we have a lot of experience with Hurricanes and we are often prepared days or even weeks in advance of the large storms.  Here’s hoping that we have none of that this year.

In the meantime we are adapting to our Houston Summer and preparing to host this familiar pattern of weather.  Hot and sunny for the next 5 or 6 months.

I’m already missing the rain.

 

Posted in: Houston, life in general, weather

A time for everything

May 18, 2015 6:12 AM , Leave a Comment ,

The rain’s been relentless this past week.  All I hear about on social media and on the radio is how awful the rain is and how it ruins plans.

Yes of course that aspect of the recent heavy rains is regrettable.  The rains affected some plans I had one day and the power outage stopped my office work on another day.

On top of everything when we get real Houston style storms it gets pitch black outside and with the lightning and thunder you get a feel for the fury and power that nature can wield.  Not all that fun but this is the rainy season in Houston.

But the thing is that if we look cross the country we can see what it’s like to have permanent “nice weather”.  California is going into its fourth year of drought and conditions are reaching a critical state.  I hear horror stories from my California friends about dead lawns, livestock, and water rationing and listen to their speculation as to where they may be able to move to in order to escape this disaster.

Of course along with our rainy season we get our dry season in Houston; July, August, and September.  The season when clouds will not dare show their faces unless they have a hurricane to give them backup.  These will be the endless afternoons where the sun will be relentless and refuse to set till after nine at night.

It’s curious to me that during these days that people won’t complain as much.  To me at least, this type of weather is as bad or even worse than rainy days.

For my part, I am glad for these rainy days and rainy weeks.  Every time we get one of these events I comfort myself thinking about all those water reservoirs that are north and east of Houston and I hope that they are topping off with fresh water.  I think about my California friends and their hyper abundance of “nice days” and I hope that sometime soon that they will be able to enjoy a rainy Houston day.

 

Posted in: attitude, environment, Houston, thought, weather

Living within our means

April 30, 2015 7:04 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve been doing a lot with my personal finances in the last few months.  Included in this was the purchase of a new car.  Something that I undeniably need living in Houston but yet some would argue I could have gotten something more pedestrian, less flashy, and more modest.  Some have asked if it is something that I can afford.

To which the answer is yes.  This was something that I’ve been thinking about for over a year and the numbers do make sense.  Now, I could have gotten something more modest, true but the cost difference really wasn’t going to be that great and I do feel that I got quite a bit for my money.  So I still feel that this was a good bargain for me.

Nevertheless these are valid concerns.  In my lifetime I’ve seen how quickly people can get in trouble with easy credit and overspending.  When I was in school the message boards were crammed with credit card applications for students to fill out and even though most students either didn’t work or worked part-time jobs they got ridiculously high credit lines.  Of course within a month or two these kids got into some real financial problems that took years to clear up.

But that’s just symptomatic of our culture or even our civilization as a whole.  We like to push the limits to the extreme and even break the limits till we get into trouble with not just money but resources, living space, and population size.

Take California for example.  The golden state with promises of endless farmlands carved out of the desert, green suburbs without end, and abundant, cheap water hauled from hundreds of miles away. What happens when the waters fail to come year after year?  The answer is the tragedy that’s slowly unfolding right now and affects not just millions of Californians but millions of people across the country and the world that depend on the produce grown there.

What will happen to that population?  They won’t just dry up and blow away.  We’ll soon see them in our neighborhoods looking for work and sharing our resources.  Problems that might have been sidestepped if we had not insisted on trying to squeeze every last resource out of a desert that wasn’t ready to take so many people in the first place.

California will heal but it will take a long time.  My question is when it heals and the rain cycle is restored will we go back and make the same mistakes again or will we learn and not try to live past the capacity of the land?

Posted in: consumerism, current events, economy, energy, environment, future, life in general, technology, thought, weather

Hard won lessons

June 8, 2014 7:12 AM , Leave a Comment ,

We entered our 6 month-long hurricane season the other day and all the local news outlets were reminding us what we needed to do.  Useful I suppose as Houston has recently had a major population explosion with people from other parts of the country moving here.

So I guess a word on some lessons learned from hurricanes past is appropriate.  The last hurricane was a bad one.  Over 95% of the city lost power and in some areas power wasn’t restored for a month.  The scale of the physical destruction wasn’t on par with Katrina and New Orleans but Houston is nearly ten times the size of New Orleans and for that alone I think that the destruction involved means that we in Houston know what we are talking about when it comes to hurricanes.

Electricity – It’s not totally necessary but its damn convenient.  We take it so for granted that it’s not really possible to realize all the things that we can’t do without it.  Most power outages last hours, but for major disasters it can go on for days.  During really bad storms even the land line telephone network will go down.  The city will be one huge tangled traffic jam as all the traffic signals will fail and leave motorists relying on common courtesy and yielding the right of way to each other.  Supermarkets will see tons and tons of food spoil and have to throw out it all out.  Well lit streets will become as pitch black as country roads.  Your comfortable home will become a sweltering hot box without any respite from the late Summer heat.  Hope for a short outage but prepare for a long one.

Food – Prepare before the storm.  Stock up on canned foods, shove them into the corner of the pantry, they can stay there for years if necessary.  For your perishable foods, stock up on ice or make your own.  Have a couple small coolers.  The reason for this is that their smaller spaces can keep cool longer than a large refrigerator space.  Although our fridge survived four days keeping cool on the ice we had in there.  Remember that melted ice can be used as drinking or cooking water later on if need be.  If you have any flour or cake mixes or whatever then you can keep busy by baking bread or making cake.  Freeze dried food and military rations?  You really don’t need any of that stuff.  Doesn’t taste all that great and with a little forethought you can do just as well with locally available food

Water –  The electric pumps to the city water mains shut down without electricity and the danger of bacteria seeping into the water supply existed for a couple of days.  Filtered water or water treated with disinfectants tastes nasty.  We had a water filter but luckily didn’t have to use it.  We started the storm with 25 gallons of bottled water and by the time the water was safe to drink again we finished with about 8 gallons.  Fill up the bathtub with water.  Not to drink but to have water to flush the toilets.  Ditch or pool water should be your last option.  Even with filtering or disinfecting I would still advise boiling the water from these sources.

Camp stoves and charcoal –  We used both for cooking.  Camp stoves can stay in the box for years.  Ours did and worked perfectly.  A small keg of gas will keep you cooking for days.  Charcoal is useful for grilling perishable meats.  The smoke is also useful for keeping away pests like mosquitoes.  Cooked perishables will keep longer than raw perishables.  If the electricity goes out for an extended period you will want to eat your perishable foods first.  Don’t forget matches.

Batteries –  Probably best not to buy too long ahead of time or they’ll be dead in the box when you need them.  Buy them at the beginning of August, when the chances of a hurricane in Houston really ramp up.  Buy a lot.  a 16 pack of D or AA or AAA batteries sounds ridiculous till you’re on day 5 of being without power and you need them cause your batteries died.  The traditional sources for batteries will be picked clean of batteries really quickly.  Try dollar stores or large warehouse stores.

Lights – You will need not only a flashlight but some sort of lamp to light rooms.  Flashlights don’t need to be giant spotlights but they should be adequate enough to light up an area that you are working on.  Lamps can be gas or electric-powered but I think you will want to reserve gas for cooking purposes.  Candles are more romantic than practical.  They don’t put out much light, they’re hot on muggy warm evenings,  they leave a mess behind, they are fire hazards.  One of those last option type of items.

Radio –  Get one of those hand powered radios.  preferably with AM/FM/TV/weather band dials and one that has a flashlight and cell phone charger.  They work great, and some give money to the red cross when you buy them.  Listen to the news for updates on what’s going on in the city.  Listen for updates on electric repairs, weather updates, and news on where you can find certain resources.

Money –  Yes this is a tool too.  ATM’s may be out of money or out of power after a disaster and almost no one will be taking credit cards.  Get a lot out.  If you don’t need it you can deposit it later.

Generators –  These can be useful but only if you know how to operate them.  Biggest rule is operate it outdoors.  During the last hurricane, 30 people had to go to the hospital because they almost died breathing in carbon monoxide.  Set it up outside.  With a good-sized generator you can operate your fridge for  a few hours and refreeze the freezer and cool the fridge area.  This can extend your food sources for weeks this way.  If your neighbors can provide fuel you should think about sharing this resource.  Don’t forget motor oil.

Gasoline –  Goes without saying that you should top off your car’s gas tank.  Even if you don’t have a power generator you should still have a spare can of gasoline for general use.  During the last hurricane many gas stations had gasoline but the fuel pumps didn’t work due to the electricity being off.  Again, exercise care in the use and storage of this.

Your car –  Make sure your spare tire is filled up and your tools for changing a flat are there.  Try to park your car in an area that will most likely not flood and hopefully away from trees.  Get an emergency roadside kit for your car and shove it into a corner of your trunk.  You can buy them at Walmart for almost nothing.  During the first day there will be flooded streets, debris on the road, and panicky drivers.  Best to stay off the streets till things settle down.

Communications –  During a crisis the emergency people will commandeer all cell phone voice frequencies so calls from your cell phone will usually not work but text messages will still go through.  Land lines may or may not work.  But you can still keep in contact by text messaging.  If you can somehow get online you can also try social media like Facebook or try utilities like Skype to contact people but make sure you keep your usage to a minimum.  Buy a spare phone battery and charge it up.  Get a car charger too.

Guns – If you’ve never handled them before then this is not the time to start.  The rule about guns is that you only point it at what you intend shooting.  So if you know you could never shoot someone then there’s really no point in getting one.

Neighbors, friends, and family –  They are your ultimate resource.  Share your commodities with them and they will share with you.  They can also be relied on to share news or lend a hand in clearing storm damage.

Price gougers –  Price gouging is defined as raising the price of necessities 20% above per-disaster prices.  Necessities are things like food and water and gasoline.  Things like tennis shoes or cell phones are not covered by this, neither are generators.  During the last storm some guys went out-of-town to buy generators and came back to sell them at double or triple the price.  They will usually set up in a strip mall parking lot and work out of the back of their car.  If a cop wanders by then they usually banish.  These guys deal in cash only and are usually pretty sleazy.

Above all try to keep a positive attitude on the ordeal.  Everyday you wake up is a day closer to getting back to normal.

Posted in: current events, weather

Houstocanes

September 5, 2013 6:41 PM , Leave a Comment ,

Houstonians are generally laid back about weather events.  Perhaps it’s something to do with the inevitability of the humidity.  No matter how many Summers you’ve spent here you know that first blast of 100% humidity in the Spring will knock you flat and that it won’t let up till mid to late November.

But some time in late August Houstonians get a queer expression on their faces.  Nothing that you can pin down during conversations but a certain something.  They begin to linger a little longer over the weather page in the paper.  Stay up a little later for the 10 o’clock news to catch the weatherman.  Their eyes focused on some spot in the Caribbean.  Looking searchingly at a fuzzy satellite picture for the slightest sign of a hurricane.

Having weathered so many you’d think that you would become accustomed to it and in some sense I suppose this does happen.  As I’m sure that southern Californians don’t even notice small tremors and that Midwesterners accept the coming of tornado season.

But even the most die-hard gulf coaster gets to look round at this time of year.  Is that tree going to withstand a Cat 2 storm?  Are the storm drains going to overflow and fill up my first floor?  How old is that can of Spam in the cupboard?  We nonchalantly prepare for it on the weekends.  An extra couple gallon bottles of water, some cans of soup here and there.  Maybe some late spring trimming of branches.  Nothing to get excited about.  Nobody admits to being nervous about hurricanes.  Admitting that would be a gross breach of decorum.

They get ready as best they can for the big event without really trying.  They leave the panic for when the weatherman officially gives them leave to panic.  Then they take it in stride like any other American to panic.

It’s only in the waning days of September that they begin to relax slightly.  The high hurricane season unofficially ends and they begin to relax a bit more and become a little more complacent.  Life can return to normalcy for another ten months.

Houstonians will return to their normal pastimes and once more forget about the possible monsters of the Gulf.

 

 

Posted in: Houston, weather , Tagged: ,