[Leica] Wednesday Weeds

[Don Dory]

Douglas, the central US is much like central Asia in that there is no
impediment to very cold air moving south from the polar regions.  Every few
years the warm air carrying a heavy load of moisture is impacted by large
arctic fronts.  If the collision happens further north Colorado gets snow;
but if it happen further south you get rain right at the freezing point.  A
little wind and the temperature on the surface areas goes below the
freezing point of water.  It typically is a narrow band that mimics the
pressure bands.  San Antonio is about 110 km south and they had little or
no icing.

The other issue is the economists tell us that the cost/benefit ratio of
spending the funds to prepare for these events is to the point of let the
folks freeze might be seen as a problem.  The economists must not know
anybody that depends on electricity to survive whether that is keeping
medications chilled or mechanical support to breath.

On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 6:29 AM Douglas Barry <imra at iol.ie> wrote:

> Don
> I'm surprised to see ice storms hit Austin as it's not that far from the
> Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf influences our weather here at 53 degrees north
> for the better with the effects of the Gulf Stream, and we're 4,000
> miles away, so you'd think that the benefits would be even stronger at
> only 150 miles distance. Here in Ireland, we're much nearer the polar
> region, but see nothing like your impressive photos even though we do
> get cold weather every year with heavyish snow every four years or so.
>
> Writing about it, I've probably broken our lucky weather streak, and
> we'll get one huge snow storm in the coming days. That said all our
> electricity supply cables are buried underground and we tend not to use
> overhead cables much in urban areas, so weather outages are rarer.
>
> Douglas
>
> On 15/02/2023 11:00, Don Dory via LUG wrote:
> > Greetings to all.  Some of you may have read that the SE United States
> had
> > a bit of cold weather.  Starting just south of Austin and reaching north
> > there accumulated about 12mm of ice on everything.  Typical of Austin
> they
> > had not prioritised limb trimming around power lines or engineering guy
> > wires on transmission towers.  As a result there are still ~50,000
> jpeople
> > served by Austin Energy without power after a week.  I wasn't especially
> > affected so went out and documented the sparkly ice.  The first three
> are a
> > Sago Palm that didn't respond too well to the prior cold snap:
> >
> >
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/don_dory_gmail_com/Wednesday+Weeds/Sago+frozen+fronds+III.jpg.html
> >
> >
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/don_dory_gmail_com/Wednesday+Weeds/Sago+frozen+fronds.jpg.html
> >
> >
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/don_dory_gmail_com/Wednesday+Weeds/Sago+frozen+fronds+II.jpg.html
> >
> > The next two are of a Desert Willow that was rather lovely in it's new
> > clothing:
> >
> >
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/don_dory_gmail_com/Wednesday+Weeds/Desert+Willow+leaves+under+ice.jpg.html
> >
> >
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/don_dory_gmail_com/Wednesday+Weeds/Desert+Willow+leaves+curled+and+iced.jpg.html
> >
> > The last two are an oak tree:
> >
> >
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/don_dory_gmail_com/Wednesday+Weeds/Oak+buds+on+ice.jpg.html
> >
> >
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/don_dory_gmail_com/Wednesday+Weeds/Oak+leaves+under+ice.jpg.html
> >
> > All the best.
> >
>
>
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-- 
Don
don.dory at gmail.com