Hurricane Harvey

Wow...massive hurricane hitting Corpus Christi right now. The Texas Gulf Coast is promised days of drenching from the rain with large scale flooding.... Louisiana also getting its share of rain.

Hurricane Irene

Over Long Island & NYC right now...

It's Sunday

Today we went out in T-shirts. Yes, after the city shut down on Friday due to freezing weather and ice, today, Sunday, 2 days later, it is 70 degrees F. It's a sunny, warm, awesome day!

Super Bowl Sunday - game is on in a few hours...

It didn't snow

The 2 feet of snow that was in the forecast for Houston did not materialize. We did have lots of ice everywhere, though. The low temps hung around all day. Icicles that formed with the freezing rain are still around the roof and the backyard umbrella.

No work today! Played at home with the kids all day.

Houston freeways were closed with iced overpasses. Some motorists were stranded half way over sky bridges when they found ice and could not find traction to go forward or turn back...

It is cold today!

The cold is down here in Houston, too! Brrrr....

Angel

Oh what fun it is to play... we are closing 2010 with lots of laughter and happiness!

Pigeon Point

Pigeon Point Light Station State Historic Park sits on a cliff along the California coast between San Francisco (50mi S) and Santa Cruz (27mi N). The 115-foot Pigeon Point Lighthouse is one of the tallest lighthouses in America and has been guiding mariners since 1872. Its five-wick lard oil lamp and first-order Fresnel lens, comprised of 1,008 prisms, was first lit at sunset on November 15, 1872. The lens stands 16 feet tall, 6 feet in diameter, and weighs 8,000 pounds. Although the original Fresnel lens is no longer in use, the lighthouse is still an active U.S. Coast Guard aid to navigation using a 24 inch Aero Beacon.



UnklStuart in Flickr shared some incredible shots of the original fresnel lens. In his shot above you see the current working light outside the window and the fresnel lens. Stuart was part of a team that cleaned the lens prior to it's annual lighting in November. While no longer in service, the fresnel lens is lit once a year on the anniversary of the first lighting in 1872!

The restored lighthouse keeper's housing operates as a Hostel. We've been a guest at Pigeon Point several times and it's always a wonderful experience to wake up to the sounds of the ocean. I took the photo at the top on our last visit a couple of years ago.

Snowflake Bentley

Dentrite Star


Star Crystal


How is it possible that I don't recall ever hearing about Wilson Bentley?! The most incredible snowflake photographer, born in 1865.

This winter, I'll be sure to check out some snowflakes upclose.

For the kid in everyone - Snowflake Bentley is a wonderful biography written by Jacqueline Briggs Martin and illustrated by Mary Azarian. The book is sure to captivate the imagination and curiosity of kids and adults alike!

Bentley's photographs are available in the public domain. I love the collection at the Smithsonian: "There are seven basic shapes of snowflakes: the Star Crystal, the Dendrite Star, Columns, Plates, Capped Columns, Needles, and Irregular Forms."

Photos by Wilson Bentley from the Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 31, Box 12, Folder 17, Negative no. 976 & Negative no. 332.

For a modern microphotography spin it's worth checking out Kenneth Liebbreth's book Snowflakes.

The windows in our computer/guest room have been decorated with snowflakes all year round, courtesy of Kaila. Kaila and I love to make the paper cutouts. It was specially fun and 'refreshing' to have them up through the 100-degree Summer days.

The Perfect Front

A perfect cold front came through Houston yesterday morning, November 30th. My husband called and told me to look out the window. In the horizon, I saw this perfectly straight line of clouds crossing the city - I took a short break and snapped a few pictures... A co-worker sent me the NOAA satellite image.

At the beach

Hurricane Alex managed to agitate the Gulf of Mexico waters pretty well in early July. The beaches in Padre Island were covered in sargassum, an earth-brown seaweed. It was interesting to observe a whole micro-environment and habitat it creates. The sargassum provides a protective living space for shrimps, crabs and fish. All these small animals are camouflaged to blend in with the seaweed and they do it indeed.

The kids had a blast collecting some of these tiny animals. Their beach buckets became mini-aquariums. Kaila and I found a palm-size sargassumfish and as soon as we placed it in the bucket the shrimp went crazy. They all literally jumped out of the water, running for dear life, back to the beach, away from the fish. I guess sargassumfish think of shrimp as a delicious meal...and the shrimp know it.

We were happy to release the fish back in the ocean after identifying it (with the help of a Padre Island National Seashore park ranger). The shrimp took care of themselves.

The Blues...

Blueberries any one? We picked close to 20lbs of blueberries this morning! The kids had a blast - and my bucket was always the least full. Kaila and Daniel picked berries from the bushes and from my bucket... They had a big laugh seeing Daddy eat straight off the high branches like a giraffe.

It reminded us of our trip to Alaska a couple of years ago. The best part of our hikes, scenery aside, was picking wild blueberries and salmonberries along the way. One big difference, 60's and 70's F in the AK summer versus 80's and 90's F here in TX.

Oh, and Kaila did not "allow" me to take too many pictures. It degraded productivity. "Mommy, you're not picking your blueberries! You're just taking pictures!!!"

I'll have to try making some blueberry jam, blueberry cobbler, blueberry pancake...courtesy of http://www.moorheadsblueberryfarm.com/. I'm glad they supplied us with some yummy sounding recipes.

Spill

Approximate oil locations from May 1, 2010 to May 5, 2010 including forecast for May 6 based on trajectories and overflight information. Produced May 5, 2010.

From NOAA's website - daily updates and forecast of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill:
http://deepwaterhorizon.noaa.gov

Hopefully the weather will hold steady and not hinder on-going cleanup efforts and efforts towards stopping the leak.

Snowflakes

It snowed in Houston today!

Post-Halloween with Calvin

For all those of you experiencing tons of snow already...here are some ideas from Calvin!

Umbrella Day

I'm getting ready to go for a run in the morning and I hear this tingling noise on the window...rain...I wait for a while and the weather clears a bit - humidity is at 100%, but it's not too hot. I get home and I poll the kids for a trip to the zoo. Yes! We get ready to go and it starts sprinkling again...hey, get the umbrellas. Let's go. And off we went, umbrellas in hand. The kids actually had fun in the rain - thankfully it never got too hard while we were walking around.

After the zoo, we waited out some showers and went on a train ride around Herman Park.

A fun day. Zoo promise kept.

2009 High Winds - it's starting...

A satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at 3:15 a.m. EDT shows Tropical Storm Claudette as it comes ashore in the Florida Panhandle Monday Aug. 17, 2009. It is the first named storm to hit the U.S. mainland this year.(AP Photo/NOAA)

Over the Atlantic, Hurricane Bill formed early Monday. The storm had maximum sustained winds near 75 mph that were expected to gain speed and top 110 mph, the threshold for a major hurricane.

"We do believe (Bill) could become a major hurricane during the next couple of days," said Daniel Brown, a hurricane specialist for the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Bill was centered about 1,160 miles east of the Lesser Antilles and moving west-northwest at 22 mph. The five-day forecast shows the storm passing northeast of Puerto Rico and heading toward Bermuda.

By MELISSA NELSON, AP

Makeshift office

My group has been working in a large conference room with PCs and workstations scattered around the space. It's going to be several days until we can go back into our offices. This afternoon large 18-wheelers drove in with gigantic "portable" AC units to handle our 15+story building. Large genarators to power these AC units and elevators will also be necessary... it's going to be interesting to see all this play out.

Unscheduled day off

Rain, thunder and lightning continued in bands through the night. Around 4:30am I was awakened by the loudest thunder I've ever heard around here - everything vibrated. The kids slept peacefully through it. It's been a while since I've gone through such a loud storm.

We set out for our morning routine just to find that school was closed. I drove to the office with the kids and my office building was also closed - 12ft of water in the basement. From the driveway you could see the "pool" down the delivery ramp.

I'll be surprised if they can actually clean up today and have the building ready for the workday tomorrow. I'm sure plumbing, electricity, elevators all will need to be cleaned out and inspected...what a mess!

It was treat to spend the morning with the kids just playing around in a museum.

Butterflies are coming back

Butterflies are back by the reservoir. My run was quite joyful with the butterflies fluttering along the path - swallowtails, gulf fritillaris, a monarch, a few small earthy-beige ones, a pretty yellow with black wingtips one. It's beeen very dry lately and the reservoir is at the lowest level I've seen. Hopefully this will not affect the birds coming through in the next few months.

In Ike's path

Today for the first itme after the storm, we ventured out to the beach. Months later and the signs of Hurricane Ike are still very evident far inland. A drive through Bolivar Peninsula however really showed us the power of the storm. Small communities where houses once stood were only left with stilts in some places, other areas nearby remnants of houses still stand. Amazingly people are rebuilding right along the beach front again... probably the lucky few that have received their insurance settlement. A long battle between isurance companies is underway to assess who pays for what. Was the house that is not longer there damaged by the wind or by flooding waters?

Pelicans and seagulls, where did they go during the storm? They where out in large numbers today along the beach and by the harbor.