Category → weather
Holy Cow!
This video speaks for itself as being a close up shot of a lightning strike. I did not film this though the person that did film it said it was right here in Oklahoma City. I can believe it because we have some pretty scary lightning around here at times. Ironically I was searching for a specific Oklahoma City Thunder video when I stumbled on this. I am watching the Thunder playing the Hornets so I wanted to find a video on Youtube.
False Science of Climate Change
I don’t know about you but I am just about fed up with this whole man is destroying the earth mantra from the left wing whackos. Lately we have been making jokes and poking fun at them by showing all these snow storms and asking them where the global warming was. These people have swallowed the pill and are so caught up in this fraud that they are actually arguing with us on this point. They are saying that we are just missing the big picture and short sided to think that any cold snap would be relevant. To them global warming is something that is measured over decades and cannot be compared with one winter. To them it is easy to say that all these record snow falls are another example of global warming.
These people refer to people like myself as deniers. They see us as those who ignore the factual evidence and say that global warming is not true. I say show us the proof. They blindly follow this global warming argument with zero evidence. Some guy produces a hockey stick chart that is never proven and they just soak it up. They think that this one leaked email scandal in England has convinced us that it is bad science. They are wrong again. We never believed in man made global warming, global cooling, or climate change even for one minute. The leaked email scandal was just one more piece of evidence to validate something that we already believed. Let us clarify something right here. There is no man made climate change at all. Zero! This movement is created by those that have a socialist agenda. You have heard the saying “follow the money”. This applies in this case as well.
Please do not listen to me. Pay attention to those making this argument and look at the common denominator. The ones that are advocating global warming are the same ones that are advocating the governmental takeover of industries, healthcare, and the economy as a whole. The people that were protesting in the streets against the establishment in the 1960’s are those that are in control. These people were crazy then and they continue to be crazy. These people are so caught up in this save the world mantra that they cannot even see common sense. They see capitalism as evil and unfair. They fail to see that power has the potential to corrupt anyone whether they work for a corporation or the government. They do not see that government has just as much corruption as those in corporations except that the government has more power over them. Their blinded hatred toward capitalism has kept them from seeing that their beloved government is even worse. Look at history and you will see that every government that has tried socialism has either failed or failing. They use global warming as a tool to scare those skeptics of socialism to believe that corporations are destroying the earth. They want to convince people to give up their rights to the government so that evil corporations can be punished.
Global warming is 100% fabrications and has no evidence whatsoever. They prey on the conspiracy theorists that hang out at Roswell, New Mexico and Area 51. I know you have seen them. They are the UFO believers and Elvis is still alive groups. They are Big Foot and Locknesse Monster types. They are in your neighborhood and mine. They like to point out crazies that shoot abortion doctors and say this is how Christians are. They use these crazies to label the whole group. They are bullies that try to label you as a hate monger if you dare disagree with them at all. In the 1960’s they were bullies and they still are. They are now media executives and school administrators. They are idiots pure and simple.
Weather forecasting on a global scale has not even been possible until two decades ago so there is no way they could get long term forecasts and historic temperatures to measure against even if they wanted to. Since climate change is not a legitimate science but rather a fabricated left wing tool, it cannot be taken seriously anyway. They try to bully people by saying “The debate is over” in an attempt to silence the debate. One thing that the email scandal did validate with me is that these groups that are in charge actively suppress any scientist that would dare question this false science. I can think of an example of this. A couple years ago there was a guy that was actually advocating taking away the credentials of any meteorologist that would not preach global warming. If you follow the link http://www.alabamawx.com/?p=650, you can read about it. These global warming people are actively fabricating a lie and threatening to take away the credentials of anyone who dare disagree with them. This is more evidence of their disdain for freedom. Let us not forget that their beloved socialism was the title given to the former Soviet Union. You may remember the biggest bullies of them all called the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics (USSR).
Just as I posted a few months ago, these people are opposed to the true Democratic free market society and this is the motivation behind their lies. Also as I pointed out in that post, that they forget that many of us are old enough to remember the 1970’s when the same crowd was talking about global cooling. They manipulate natural weather patterns to scare people that are too young to remember that a severe weather event is not the first time it has happened. I know many of you have watched the national news in the United States after any natural disaster. They find people in the streets that have no clue and ask them what they think about this event that has never happened before. They talk about how the frequency of heavy rains, heavy snows, hurricanes, or even earth quakes are a result of man made climate change. They have discovered something about human nature that works for them. That human nature is to be lazy and not question those in authority. The media places themselves as authority figures and repeat the same lie over and over again. If they say it enough times, people are lazy and just accept it as truth. The real truth is that there is no such thing as man made climate change whether it be cooling, or warming.
The world is being duped and the media follows right along. This is because those crazies you saw at Woodstock of the 1960’s are now in control. They are just as crazy now as they were then. They are just as much a bully now as they were then. Wake up people and stop listening to anyone at face value. Do some research from both sides of any argument and understand that people are self driven. It is human nature to do things for one’s self and those that are in power are no different. They know that in any society you are going to have self starters, workers, and lazy people. It is easier to fall into the lazy category. They drive people there by inundating us with negative stories on the news every single day to a point that people become numb to it. Eventually people become so overwhelmed that they do not feel they have time to research things. They just sit there and listen to what the media tells them not questioning it for a moment. Stop being lazy and get off your lazy butts and learn something. Learning is not just listening to someone else. Learning is listening to an argument with a critical mind. Learning is questioning what you hear and finding out the truth. Learning is finding out from many sources and not just one. You cannot just listen to broadcast media and be educated. You have to listen to them and listen to those disagreeing. You have to listen to many sides to the argument and come to your own conclusions. Do not just listen to me, ABC, CBS, or NBC. I am biased and I will tell you so. These guys are biased and will not tell you so. That is why you have to question both of us. Learn the truth and not be ignorant. If you believe this global warming scare then you are not truly learning because I can assure you that there is zero true evidence to back this theory up. Thanks for listening to my rant this morning.
Happy Valentines Day!
Still Frozen
This morning we got out of the house to survey the storm mess. I took some photos this morning to see some of the ice. As you can see this picture was taken looking directly into the front door of the house. I knew I better take this photo first thing in the morning because I have two teenage sons that would certainly remove these from the house and use them for swords. I am sure you all can remember when you were kids doing the same thing. As pretty as the snow and ice are, I am ready for it to be over. I am ready for some warmer, snow free ground. This makes two major winter storms we have had this winter. We almost always have a couple snow falls each year but nothing of this magnitude. If you click on the photo, it will take you to my Flickr page where you can see the rest of them.
Another Ice Storm
On January 28, 2010 we started off the morning dry and cold. Before long the rain moved in and the temperature dropped. By 10:00 AM the boss had decided to send everyone home because the roads were getting icy. It took us a whole hour to get from our parking lot to the gate to get off base. As the day went on we had more and more rain and later changed to sleet. It appeared that we had dodged the worst of the storm because the sleet does not stick to tree limbs and power lines. From the weather reports it sounds as if the worst of the storm was in Southwestern Oklahoma. Both my sister at Ft. Sill and my sister in-law at Altus AFB lost their power and are still sitting in the dark as of the time I post this. These ice storms are becoming a regular thing. You may remember the ice storm in December 2007 where the Oklahoma City area was hit the hardest. We were without power for a week so I can certainly sympathize with them losing their power.
This morning I woke up to find that we are off work again. This is nice to have a day and a half off work without having to take vacation time. My wife and I have decided that now we are off work so it can stop now. The snow can go away so we can have a nice week end. It is not listening to us. I need to call out Cox Cable to fix my line to the house. My Internet has some serious issues and needs to be redone. I know for a fact the problem is not my network. Well better get this posted before the Internet goes off again.
Christmas Eve Snowstorm
Wow! We often complain about never having snow here in Oklahoma City. Most of the time if we do have winter weather, it ends up being sleet or freezing rain. Yesterday it was a nice 65 degrees and we were really enjoying it. This morning I woke up at 6:00 AM and it was raining. By 7:15 it had turned to sleet. The sleet fell for nearly four hours before turning to snow. By noon the National Weather Service had issued a blizzard warning for most of Oklahoma including Oklahoma City. In my 43 years I cannot remember ever having a blizzard warning here. The picture above shows looking behind my house toward the North. The picture below shows a view looking across the street. I was having a difficult time taking this picture because I the snow was blowing in my face even though the wind was from behind the house and I was on the front porch.
To be honest, I was very skeptical of this being much of a winter weather event because we have been promised these storms before and ended up with rain. When these pictures were taken, the wind was blowing 50+ miles per hour (MPH). Although we received 14.1 inches of snow, the drifts were pretty high. We had to shovel a huge drift from behind the car just so we could back out of the drive way to pick up my son from work.
The good thing about this snow is that tomorrow is Christmas and we have not had a white Christmas in 20 years. As of the time I am posting this, it is still snowing pretty hard. The radar shows that it is almost over. It looks like the snow will not last more than a couple more hours. Tomorrow should be a nice clear day for Christmas although we will have a nice snow covered day. While it is nice to have the snow, I have been watching the weather coverage all day and it has been telling us about one car accident in Midwest City that involved 50 cars. Another accident in El Reno involved 20+ cars. I know there have been many others but these two are the ones that really stood out to me. Let’s hope no one was seriously injured. It would be tragic for someone to have injuries on Christmas eve. I did drive to the store just outside my residential area about an hour ago and it was tough but manageable. As long as you don’t stop in a deep snow drift you are okay. We had to help push another car so they could get moving.
For us, it has been a nice day. Our white Christmas is a welcome site and we are happy to see it despite having nearly zero visibility.
Conflicted on Storm
I have made it clear over time of my love for storms. Maybe I am weird but I just find the storms enjoyable. On Thursday July 16, 2009 we had a surprise storm that I found to be a dream come true. This storm was sudden and small in size thought it caused some damage in the area it covered. The storm covered most of the Eastern half of the Oklahoma City metro area while the Western half of the city remained sunny and hot. Although this storm was very exciting and wild, I too was a victim of the damage from this storm. Most of my damage was an after effect of the storm. In the photo above you can see the main entrance to Heritage Park Mall in Midwest City, Oklahoma. As you can see the roof was blown off onto the front wall. This was just one example of the many buildings that lost roofs as a result of the + or – 80 MPH wind that resulted from this storm. In the photo below you can see some of the 2 inch hail that we received at our home.
In this picture below you can see one of our repeaters (145.25) antennas bent over from the high winds. This antenna is a very expensive $900 antenna that is 20 feet long and the pole is more than two inches in diameter. This antenna still works but is very unattractive to look at.
Just as the antenna above is bent, you can see our other repeater (443.3) antenna that is on our WIN System repeater. This antenna is just as expensive as the one above. The wind was very powerful to be able to do this on both towers more than a half mile apart.
There were other damages that were not pictured here such as our car. One of our cars took many dents because of the hail. In addition to these there were after the fact damages done because of the power surges after the storm. This storm knocked down many power poles in my area leaving thousands of people without electricity. We were one of the fortunate ones that did not lose power long term but rather lost power intermittently over a two day period. At least I thought we were fortunate. As the local power company repaired many of the power lines that were destroyed, it resulted in a drain of the rest of the electrical system. With each pole that was restored, we received a one or two second blink of our lights. This went on for two days resulting in damage to several of our household appliances. In the picture below you can see my $200.00 Internet radio that was ruined. This radio will not even light up now. In addition to this we lost a computer, a Nintendo Wii that was less than one week old.
The brand new computer that replaced the bad one has now developed an intermittent outage that I cannot duplicate. The appliance damage is exacerbated by the fact that I live in an old home where there is not an adequate grounding system in the electrical wiring. The typical surge protector that most people use to protect their appliances are rendered useless in these cases. They cannot protect from surges because they need an adequate ground to shunt the excessive voltages to. Without giving the surge protector a good ground to send the excessive voltage to, it leaves those appliances vulnerable. In fact I have every one of these appliances plugged into these surge protectors. There may be other problems that I have not found yet. There were many trees that were split in half all over my neighborhood leaving the streets filled with leaves and tree branches.
This damage leaves me a little conflicted on the storm that was so enjoyable at the time. This was a wakeup call that shows that we can be a victim during and after the storm. Although the storm was over two days ago, I continue to get blinking lights due to the power company reinserting those downed lines back into the system. If you live in an older home that does not have adequate grounding, you will be vulnerable to power surges even if you have surge protectors installed. It looks as though I have a lot of work to do to get this place up to standards. Surprisingly it was not the lightning that caused these damages. It was after the storm when all these surges happened that has resulted in the damages to my appliances. This makes it even worse because even if you were responsible and unplugged your appliances when you saw the storm coming, you would have plugged them back in after the storm. There would ordinarily be no reason to unplug my appliances with the current sunny skies yet these ongoing power surges allow continue to damage my equipment on this sunny day.
If you are like me and have a lot of electronic equipment, you may want to do some research and find out what constitutes true surge protection. You may find out that you have no protection at all like myself. I hope this post helps to alert you to the risks that are inherent with electronic equipment. If you have this equipment, you may want to take some action to protect yourself.
Summer in Oklahoma City
I guess it is that time again. The photo above shows the temperature as 109 degrees while the National Weather Service only listed the high as 105. Oklahoma gets a little of both cold and hot. This is fairly common temperatures to get in summer though it only happens about two weeks each year. The average high on the hottest day of the year is 94 degrees though we have periods of much warmer like this. Just thought I would share this.
Boy Was I Wrong?
It is not that often that a person can get it so wrong that it brings fear to them. Just 30 minutes ago I was complaining about the rain always missing us. This evening was shaping up to be another one of those evenings where there is a line of thunderstorms that goes completely across the state and then forms a hole just as it passes the metro area. As much as I love storms I find myself getting mad when this happens. Well I guess I insulted God, or angered him in some way because shortly after that, we had a downpour. I would estimate that the wind was blowing nearly 80 MPH in the above photo. You can even see a leaf blowing by in this shot.
In this picture you can see how the street was flooded near my home. This is the rain that we never get. I would say the water was about four inches deep in the center of the road here.
In the picture above you can see the tree branch laying in the road with the hail splashing in the flooded street. The storm was almost over at this point and you can see the elementary school in the background is showing signs of the sun coming out.
This is the beautiful sky as the storm is moving away. The large bird circles over head asking himself “What was that?” I really enjoyed this storm and wanted to share it with the rest of you. That wind did get a little scary at one point. I missed some great shots because I was trying to keep the camera dry. At one point the wind was blowing so hard and the rain was coming down so hard that I could barely see across the street. I do not want to be known as the one that always complains when things are going bad and never give God credit when things are going well. We really needed this rain and it was a real blessing. I am very thankful to be able to get rain especially when two hours earlier it was 97 degrees. If you want to see the rest of the pictures, just click on any one of them and it will take you to Flickr to see the whole set. Thanks for stopping by.
Rainbow
Tonight a storm went by here and barely brushed by us to the East. We did manage to get enough light rain while the sun shine over head. The one good thing that did come from this was this pretty rainbow to the East. I will take whatever rain we can get but we really need some more. The rainbow was a real blessing to look at it. Also it cooled the temperature from 97 degrees to about 85 in just a half hour. I just wanted to share this image.
How Does This Happen?
I long ago noticed a trend that happens more often than you may think. I have noticed that many times we will have a line of storms that go from Kansas to Texas, or Texas to Arkansas and the storm will somehow miss us. How does this happen? The storm will be a non stop line all the way across the state and yet just before it arrives in the Oklahoma City area and a hole will appear so that it completely misses us. Once it passes, it will rejoin and it once again goes all the way across the state. Someone like myself that loves stormy weather notices these types of things.
I think I will start saving screen shots of radar views any time I catch this happening. I know it sounds like a non issue but it is amazing how often this happens.