Part of Hurricane Harvey disaster relief has been unemployment for those whose job was lost due to the storm.  This will be ending February 24th.  Those affected are encouraged to seek work or enroll in job training, more info and opportunities here.

ESPI remains steady at -1.10

The evolution of the storm pulling moisture from the Gulf of Mexico this coming weekend still looks likely.  The Northeast maybe not as impacted as this trends east.  Severe weather outlooks have varied in intensity.  Coastal areas looking most impacted now.

Looking at tomorrow storms are only expected in the far corners of the nation with some lake effect snow.  The storm coming to California doesn't look like it will effect the mudslide area in Southern California.  Good progress has been made, Highway 101 has been open since Sunday.  All the dranage ways are yet to be cleared though.  The next 10days should be dry for this area with the precipitation impacts reaching from Canada through Central California.

The storm just beginning to impact the west coast now will be one to watch as it traverses the country and pulls moisture from the Gulf of Mexico.  Though not looking as ominous as modeled a few days ago it could bring more severe weather than the storm that came through last (video below).  The cold shouldn't come as far south but maybe more moisture out of the gulf for the southeastern states over the coming weekend.  Monday, January 29th maybe a rough travel day across the Northeast with heavy snow on the west side of the storm and less frozen precipitation along much of the coastal areas.

On Monday, January 22,2018 around 9am an Oklahoma Gas well exploded near Quinton.  Five workers have been missing since.  Their names have beenreleased today:

• Josh Ray, 35, Fort Worth, Texas
• Matt Smith, 29, McAlester, Oklahoma
• Cody Risk, 26, Wellington, Colorado
• Parker Waldridge, 60, Crescent, Oklahoma
• Roger Cunningham, 55, Seminole, Oklahoma
  

The explosion was so large it could been seen from GOES-16

Fort Fowl going solar has been on my to do list for a few years now.  In that time, kept an eye out and collected a few bits of the solar set up.  A 12V 35AH deep cycle battery (like this one) was acquired on the cheap in a trade more than a year ago, the 700W inverter came to me more recently off a local scrapper's truck.  After Irma with no electricity, found myself trickle charging the battery with a 5watt solar cell and hooking that to a single 12volt outlet plug, similar to what is found in a car.  It was time to get this project done.  Ordered one of the few available at the time, this solar kit that comprised of two 100watt panels, mounting brackets, all needed cords to connect the panels together and to the also included solar charge controller.  Between all the hurricanes and long duration power outages there seemed to be a  shortage at the time.   The kit came late with a broken connector.  With time and a little effort it eventually all arrived in working order.

Attaching the solar panels to the hen house roof with the mounting brackets was a fairly easy task.  Have yet to run the wires out of sight and tidy up this project so it seemed like the perfect time to share pictures of how this working system is put together.  For now the wires from the panel are just fished in through a back window of Fort Fowl.

Two 100W panels would probably be a bit of overkill if this was to just power Fort Fowl.  All that is needed in there is some lights, a fan and somewhere to plug in a laptop or device.  Fort Fowl is central to the whole barn area that lacked electricity.  A place to plug in power tools, a vacuum pump for the bucket milker and fans for the herd and chickens would be handy.  A more powerful set up could be a source of power in an outage for the house and refrigerator too. 

With my needs and wants assessed, went with 200W total for solar panels, 15A charge controller, that 35AH 12volt battery (may add a second one eventually) and two inverters~ one is 250W for the fort's needs and the 700watt inverter for the rest that draws more.

Above is a close up of the Solar Charge Controller.  It's function is to tie all the parts together and keep the energy flowing in the proper directions.  These are crucial to a solar generator set up, look for them to be included in a solar generator kit sized to match the panels it comes with.  Read and follow all instructions, consult with a professional if this is a first larger solar project or start small and study up.  The process of converting sunlight to usable electricity is fairly simple and safe, though it complicates some and has more potential to harm as a solar generator's size and power grows.

Here is another view of the wires and parts.  Wires come in the window to the Solar Charge Controller which is also wired to the battery and the load. 

For the load a 12V DC outlet strip with three outlets was selected.  Something like this one, heavy duty with a 15 Amp fuse built in and an on/off switch.  From the 12V DC outlets various 12volt devices or inverters can be plugged in.  Converting 12volt DC (Direct Current) to 110 AC (Alternating Current) uses electricity and is done by an inverter. The higher watt the inverter the more is lost, so it can save to have inverters for various uses.  The (actually a) 200W one selected for this set up has three 110AC outlets, four USB plugs (two 2.4A & two 1A) and an on/off switch. 

Soon the battery should be moving into the bottom of the kitchenette cabinet along with the charge controller.  The wires coming in the window will be rerouted to come up from the bottom of the fort into the cabinet.  The 12V DC outlet strip may get mounted on the side of the cabinet where inverters or a 12V extension cord can be plugged in.  The 700W inverter may get put in line to a vacuum system for milking the cow.  To finish off the fort upgrade will be furniture for bigger kids including some sort of craft table.  The hammocks aren't going anywhere..

Watching cold air spill across the mid and eastern half of North America as a clipper comes through bringing winter precipitation deep into Texas and all the way through the Northeast.  By afternoon saw reports of snow in Southern Mississippi.  Snow is also falling in Western North Carolina.  I'll leave the PARI Cam, as it may be snow covered by morning.

Friday the front and low should come together over the east causing some weather.  May see a little severe weather in the south.  The Northeast should start with rain turning to sleet, ice and probably snow on the backside of it for most into Saturday.

Look out Monday and Tuesday for a clipper type system to bring a moderate snow across the Plains and Midwest before anchoring heavily over the Great Lakes and then swinging into the still frozen East.

The Santa Barbra County mudslides have been a devastating second act to the Thomas Fire.  At least 17 people have died, 40 were injured, 43 others are missing.  At least 100 homes were destroyed.  The evacuation area was expanded today.  Many of those evacuated are being told it maybe 5 days before they get to return home.

Below is a video featuring some of the scenes that have come from this disaster.  Some of it is from Oprah's backyard.  The Gray Prius pictured was certainly one of the more memorable ones.  It opens with the mud sloshing around the corner in the street, with this Prius riding the wave through the S-curve with windshield wipers and lights on.  It gets rinsed by the camera then quickly rounds the bend out of sight down the road.  It turns out they made it unscathed.  Everyone was evacuating, this guy and his girlfriend were one of the last ones out as the hill started down the already muddy street.  The mudslide caught up to their car and swept them on from there til the bottom of the hill where they got out of it.  The car drove away from the incident with onlya few scratches.

Car Speeds Down Road Trying To Escape Fast Moving River of Mud Inside Edition
Published on Jan 10, 2018 Dramatic new video of the California mudslides is emerging as a car sped down a narrow road trying to flee from a fast moving river of mud and debris. Many people ignored warnings to evacuate, never expecting the mudslides would cause so much havoc. Hillsides which were stripped of vegetation by recent fires simply collapsed in the torrential rain. Oprah inspected the damage outside her California mansion in Montecito, which has been ground zero for the devastating mudslides.

Still watching weather systems affect both coasts.  West Coast has been wracking up some damage and a body count.  As feared the fresh burnt scar from the recent Thomas Fire was drenched by rain and the earth began to flow.  13 people died. 20 are hospitalized, four critical.  50 people were rescued by helicopter.  An unknown number are still missing.

'Rivers of mud' leave several dead in post-fire California Washington Post
Published on Jan 9, 2018
At least eight people are dead in Southern California, where mudslides and floods swept away buildings and inundated roads on Jan. 9. Subscribe to The Washington Post on YouTube: http://bit.ly/2qiJ4dy

Look for the two systems to begin to come together on Friday, possibly touching off severe weather in the Southeast  Saturday afternoon.  Then they may deepen into a single storm that comes up over the east Saturday night into Sunday and pulls cold air down in it's wake.

The launch posted about in the last blog with the Top Secret Zuma Satellite and perfect first stage landing, lost it's second stage and payload in space.  There is speculation it orbited the earth at least once and then came down, maybe together near India.  There was also an explosion in the atmosphere in Russia that didn't appear to be from a meteor.

Weather for the East and West to start the week.  The east may see a little more frozen precipitation especially toward the north.  Overall a warm up is coming.  The west is expecting rain for a change.  The recently burned areas are bracing for extreme mudslides.

Freezing a T-Shirt in -33°F Air Temperature with a Wind Chill of -83°F Mount Washington Observatory
Published on Jan 6, 2018Night Observer Caleb Meute goes out to see how long it takes for a wet T-Shirt to freeze. It took about a minute for the T-Shirt to freeze completely but stayed out a little longer to see how stiff it would become.

A solar storm is coming from this corneal hole on the northern side of the sun.  It is expected to graze earth's atmosphere in the arctic region where it may cause some auroras onMonday, January 8th.

#BombCyclone, aka Greyson has been a fast and powerful storm.  It left out of Florida yesterday like a messy Tropical Storm with a reported sustained wind at Melbourne Airport of 49kts.  As it moved up off the East Coast it bombed spectacularly dropping 59mb in 24hrs.  Last buoy reading off Maine was 965mb.  It hit Brunswick at 951.1mb.  It coincided with the supermoon to bring up the tides and surge.  Boston saw it's worst ocean flooding in recorded history.  There was 15.16ft surges over Mean Lower Level Water in the area earlier today at high tide.  The next high tide should be much more normal.  There was some speculation if some of the flooding might freeze before draining back off.  Looks like that might have started to happen in this video.

Winter Storm 2018: Flooding at Short Beach in Revere turns cars into icebergs MassLive
Published on Jan 4, 2018Adam Abougalala submitted this video of cars appearing to be frozen from the flooding on the Massachusetts coast on Thursday, Jan. 5.


So here we are four days in and that was probably a billion dollar disaster.  Turns out it's following a year known for disasters..2017.  Last year the insurance claims added to $135billion, more than any other year.  The total including uninsured losses did come up short, trailing 2011 tsunami and Thailand flooding.  The United States had about twice it's normal share of disasters in 2017.   Globally there were 710 natural catastrophes, which was significantly higher than the average of 605.

The nor'easter is forming now to the east of Florida.  It's expected to move quickly north up all the east coast.  Get ready for a bombing blizzard.