It’s 87 degrees out today. That’s 14 higher than yesterday.
No rain yet. Weather.gov isn’t predicting the possibility for rain until Friday.
We’re under a RED FLAG warning, so I pulled out the sprinkler for the kids to play and watered the lawn and brush piles at the same time.
It was totally random, but while we were out a White Birch tree trunk snapped and crashed to the ground.
It caught us by surprise and forced a laugh from my son. It reminded me of the scenes in The Road
I thought there’d be rain today. It sprinkled for a few moments, but then it stopped… virtually nothing was collected in the rain buckets.
The USGS WaterWatch site classifies my region as over 28-days of “extreme hydrologic drought”.
Current forecasts predict a 50% chance of rain on Sunday.
I began directly planting seeds outdoors for my garden this year. The weather has been so mild I’m just going to try it that way.
So far I’ve planted two rows of watermelon, two rows of sunflower, and a row of green peppers. The sunflower seeds were from my plant last year and the green pepper seeds were saved from an “organic” pepper bought from a stand.
When the local farmer’s market starts-up again I plan on purchasing at least two heirloom tomato plants and using a homemade upside-down grower. I will also be purchasing some pumpkin seeds or maybe plants.
I may also produce a selection of random gourds again this year as I threw a couple outside before winter last year. If you remember my squash plant from last year, I ended up with 48 of those buggers. So, I have those as well as a larger variety.
With any luck in a week to 14-days I’ll have an update with pictures of my tiny sprouts. Until then, fingers crossed!
The three code words from tonight’s episode of The Walking Dead, “Beside the Dying Fire”:
First Word: FEAR
Second Word: THE
Third Word: HERD
Enter on AMCDead.com
The three code words from tonight’s episode of The Walking Dead, “18 Miles Out”:
First Word: WASTE
Second Word: NO
Third Word: BULLETS
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RAW Story reports:
“A pair of steamy explosions on the Sun’s surface in recent days is sparking the biggest radiation and geomagnetic storm the Earth has experienced in five years, space weather experts said Wednesday.
The full brunt of the storm is expected to hit Earth early Thursday US time and last through Friday, potentially disrupting power grids, GPS systems, satellites, and forcing airplanes to change their routes around the polar regions.”
WWLP (a local news source) reports:
“The sun erupted Tuesday evening, and the effects should start smacking Earth around 7 a.m. EST Thursday, according to forecasters at the federal government’s Space Weather Prediction Center. They say the flare is growing as it speeds outward from the sun.
“It’s hitting us right in the nose,” said Joe Kunches, a scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He called it the sun’s version of “Super Tuesday.”
The solar storm is likely to last through Friday morning, but the region that erupted can still send more blasts our way, Kunches said. He said another set of active sunspots is ready to aim at Earth right after this.”
NOAA NWS Space Weather Prediction Center is reporting:
The CME associated with the recent R3 (Strong) Radio Blackout event at 0024 UTC March 7 (7:24 p.m. EST March 6) is forecast to pass ACE early morning UTC on March 8 (start of day EST March 
. Geomagnetic storm periods reaching the G3 (Strong) level are likely from that CME; the most northern states in the “Lower 48″ should have a chance to see the aurora. Finally, a Solar Radiation Storm is also in progress and levels are currently above the S3 (Strong) threshold.
The image below depicts output from a WSA-Enlil model run covering the CME expected on March 8. The direction and velocity of the CME are inputs to this model. This model then describes how that CME will interact with the background solar wind, giving the forecasters better guidance on expected arrival times (arrival being the discontinuity near the yellow vertical line). In the disk in the upper left, the Sun is the yellow dot in the center, the Earth is the light green dot to the right of that, and the perspective is that of looking directly down on the North Poles of Sun and Earth. A dynamic version of this model run and additional model information is available at: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/wsa-enlil/cme-based/
The source of this activity, Region 1429, remains potent and subsequent activity is certainly possible. For more information on the NOAA Space Weather Scales covering the types of space weather and the associated impacts, please see: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/NOAAscales/
The three code words from tonight’s episode of The Walking Dead, “Judge, Jury, Executioner”:
First Word: STRUGGLE
Second Word: TO
Third Word: SURVIVE
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The three code words from tonight’s episode of The Walking Dead, “18 Miles Out”:
First Word: EVERYONE
Second Word: STAY
Third Word:QUIET
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Heading to Vegas for most of the week. Originally it was just supposed to be my wife going on a work trip, but through a series of fortunate events I’m also able to go. I put my name on the stand-by list on my wife’s flight to see if we can fly down together, either way we’ll be flying back together on Wednesday night.
Catch ya on the flip…
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