May 2014 Blue Duck Weather News

May 2014 Weather News!

“It’s gonna be hot, it’s gonna be bright and it gonna’ last for the rest of your life”.
That’s about the size of it as we head into the month of May for the deserts of Arizona. Why do you think they call it a desert? Take a look out the window from your air conditioned home, office or vehicle.

And as promised we will begin the count of temps over one hundred degrees until there are no more, say around October or November. Sounds like a long ways a way. And also understand although temps did not hit the hundreds until May it has been over one hundred days in Phoenix with temps above normal.

I actually think we were lucky on The Land for May as there were only seven days it reached above one hundred degrees, and only two were one hundred and five degrees. How lucky is that I ask somewhat sarcastically? But the brutal count is on especially when we get into June, the hottest month of the year in Arizona.

With the heat and the constant drying of fuels comes the ever more present danger of fire. No one likes to hear of a wild fire anywhere but when the Slide Fire erupted in Oak Creek Canyon around the 20th of the month my heart sank. Oak Creek Canyon is arguably one of the most beautiful places on earth and personally I also believe it is a spiritual place as well. Just ask the Lovely Mrs. Blue Duck about her spook. As of the end of this month the fire had consumed just over 20,000 acres and fortunately all buildings and businesses in the canyon were spared even when their loss seemed eminent. You will read all about its rapid growth in this latest edition of Blue Duck Weather.


As you read this month’s edition you will clearly see there are too many wildfires this early in the season, or is it now, just a year round occurrence? A historic find in the middle of a burned up wilderness, a fire so massive in Alaska it is creating its own weather, three months of rain in one day! One region with so much rain it is being called a thousand year flood, whiskey flavored pigs (I swear we don’t make this shit up), drones banned over National Parks, water police and patrols due to lack of water. Read about this and so much more in Blue Duck Weather News.

The average temperature on The Land for May was a pleasant 78.40 degrees.
The average temperature at Talking Trees and Antelope Hill was an even more pleasant 64.48 degrees.
Still no rain since March with a yearly total of .49 inches.
Due to an glitch we have no lake levels to report this month but it probably wouldn’t change the bleak outlook of that large toilet, Powell.



5-1- The aftermath of a month’s worth of rain in one day in Baltimore; a retaining wall gave away with a deluge of water that swept cars away.

The Etiwanda Fire in Rancho Cucamonga, California prompts 1650 evacuations. Dry conditions and Santa Anna winds are brutal!

Border Patrol beacons in Arizona north of the Mexican border will allow migrants to call for emergency aid crossing the desert. There are twenty two 30 foot tall solar powered towers. They have sun reflectors and blue lights that are visible for ten miles. They are posted with signs in three languages that direct a user to push a red button that sends out a signal for help. In 2013 agents found 194 bodies and rescued 802 people.

5-2- A massive mudslide kills 350 people in an Afghan village with 2000 missing! 350 homes completely covered with several feet of mud.

5-3- One hundred degrees the first time this year in Phoenix. It is a day later than the thirty year average. (Whoopee!) With it topping out at 102 it is eleven degrees above normal. There were two Camelback Mountain rescues in Phoenix today due to dehydration.

5-4- Earliest one hundred degrees in Witchita, Kansas on record.

The 307 acre Cameron Fire near Alpine, Arizona is zero contained.

The Square Top Fire began as a controlled burn in the Chiricahua Mountains has grown to 400 acres and is 50% contained. The 125 acre Redington Fire north east of Tucson was human caused and 50% contained.

5-5- With a Red Flag Warning in northern Arizona the Hearst Wildfire three miles north west of Williams has started.

5-6- And yet another fire erupts near Prescott in Chino Valley. The 89 Fire has burned five hundred acres with wind gusts over 40mph.
A wind driven fire, out of control fire burns near Guthrie, Oklahoma and has consumed 3500 acres. One man killed who refused to leave his home and six homes destroyed. Temperatures over one hundred degrees.

5-7- Amazing on The Land this morning; with a 12mph wind it produced a 5 degree wind chill reducing the morning low to 54 degrees. A high of only 74 degrees occurred, fuck those one hundred degree days as long as we can.

The Grand Canyon has banned the use of drones for personal picture taking due to the sound. (I think target shooting at the drones in action would be fun and inspirational. Just think as they plummet into the abyss after being hit by a bullet Quiet those fuckers forever!)

It is so hot and dry in Kansas corn cannot be replanted yet. August like temperatures last weekend. The wheat crop is also half of what it should be.

5-8- Tornado threat affects fifty million. Confirmed tornado in Minnesota and two to three inches of rain in Fort Worth and Dallas.

5-10- Forty five agencies in California are keeping watch and patrolling for water waste. So far it is only training and warnings but fines of up to one hundred dollars are possible and enforceable, There are restricted days for watering, no hosing off sidewalks and driveways, no over watering and in some areas no filling swimming pools.

Bees attack two teenage hikers near Marana, Arizona. They encountered a beehive in a crevice and were stung twenty to thirty times each. Rescuers helped them off the mountain after the two were able to dial 9-11.

Flagstaff, Arizona police and firefighters have begun patrolling the woods within city limits for fire hazards. The Woods Watch Program hopes to educate but also catch people sneaking into closed areas and disregarding fire restrictions. (In other words they are looking for the poor and homeless who are trying to stay warm at night.)

5-11- Williams, Arizona declares a water emergency. Water for pools has to be trucked in and many businesses are also trucking in water.

And from his secluded location in Colorado Ryduck reports three inches of snow. There is a Winter Storm Warning for most of northern Colorado and southern Wyoming. I-80 is closed

5-12-Zion National Park in Utah joins the Grand Canyon in banning drones for picture taking. A recent incident had an unmanned aerial system separated several young bighorn sheep from the adults in the herd. If the young can not rejoin the herd they are dead. It is already illegal to use drones in Yosemite and Yellowstone National Parks.

5-13- An Iowa distillery is attempting to raise whiskey flavored pigs. They will be feeding spent rye mash by a special formula by scientists and livestock experts. If it works a two hundred pound whiskey pig will cost six hundred and ninety nine dollars. Some in the food industry claim there is a great demand for whiskey flavored bacon. (Why not just dip a piece of fried bacon in a whiskey glass, eat the bacon and drink the whiskey. It won’t be long you can’t tell the difference anyway?)

Now Payson, Arizona is imposing water restrictions. No new lawns allowed.

Up to six inches of rain from San Antonio to Houston last night and this morning.

Wildfires burn ninety homes in the Texas Panhandle.

“All hope is lost for Antarctic glaciers. All of the glaciers are rapidly losing water to the open sea by warmer ocean water. Global sea rise levels of four feet or more are coming this century. Two separate scientific communities, One NASA says it is now unstoppable and an amazingly distressing situation.”

5-14- Heat records broken from L.A. to San Francisco with temps in the nineties and hundreds, hotter than Phoenix today.
A dozen fires burning in Carlsbad, California with thirty homes destroyed. There have been 20,000 evacuations in San Diego County and Santa Barbara due to the fires. The winds blowing are typical of October at 50mph. A State of Emergency has been declared.

Due to a 27% decline in caribou numbers in Alaska from 2011 to 2013 officials may restrict hunting them. The Western Arctic Herd had about 490,000 in 2003, 325,000 in 2011 and about 235,000 now. (We better not make the same mistake as with the buffalo decline.)

5-15- “A War with not bullets” as firefighters are sent to battle nine separate fires in San Diego County. Fourteen square miles have burned, a college campus and a theme park is closed. There is some speculation that some of the fires have been intentionally set. A nuclear power plant is closed and part of Camp Pendleton is evacuated. Twenty structures have been destroyed.

California University is closed as with Lego Land. Thirty homes have burned in San Diego County. Out of control with ten thousand acres burned and 5% contained. High temps in the nineties along the coast.

5-16- One “transient” found dead due to the fires in California.
On March 23rd (you read it first here in Blue Duck Weather) officials released water out of the dam just south of where the borders of Arizona, California and Mexico meet. For the first time in over twenty years the water has crossed the barren desert river bed and is about to reach the ocean. The release was a joint effort to revive trees, wildlife and aquatic life since the delta dried up decades ago. This one time release ends in two days.

5-17- 27,000 acres have burned in San Diego County. Yesterday a 57 year old man was arrested on arson charges connected with one fire. Eight homes and an eighteen condo burned up.

104th day in Phoenix temperatures above normal.

In Wichita Falls, Texas no outside watering and car washes closed on weekends.

Four months of rain in one day for Bosnia! Twenty five dead and 300 landslides.

5-18- Worst flooding in a century in Bosnia and Serbia. 24,000 evacuated and millions live in flood plains.

5-19- Balkan flooding is being described by some as the worst flooding in a thousand years! Power plants are threatened and landmines hidden for twenty years may surface in the flooding. There are 222,000 mines still hidden from the Bosnian War of 1992- 1995.Thirty seven dead from flooding.

5-20- Breaking News! A wildfire has started near Slide Rock Park in Oak Creek Canyon, Arizona. Parts of 89A closed. Garland’s, Junipine resort, all other businesses and recreation areas in the canyon evacuated with only twenty minutes notice. Wind gusts of 32mph and a relative humidity of only nine percent. Red Cross is opening up shelters in Flagstaff.
“Record flooding worse than war” proclaims the prime minister of Bosnia.

5-21- The Slide Fire in Oak Creek Canyon has burned a thousand acres and is zero percent contained. This has turned into a Type 1 fire with fifteen hot shot crews on the ground. 30mph winds.

Tornado Warnings in the Denver area and all flights in and out are postponed or cancelled.

Two women are recuperating after being attacked by a moose while walking their dogs in a park. Both were stomped by the moose but one woman was able to get away, the other was not so lucky. She has staples in her head, fifteen stitches in a leg and four broken ribs. Officials say moose are agitated by dogs and do not walk toward a moose but away from them if you encounter one.

A female bear and two cubs may have killed chickens on a property near Globe. Other bears have been sighted in the area. A young black bear suspected of blowing out a transformed while climbing a tree near Duncan, Arizona. (I have no idea if the bruin survived the encounter, I doubt it.)

A new wildfire has broken out near Woods Canyon Lake in northern, Arizona and has burned a 150 acres. There is a Red Flag Warning for the area with 33mph winds.

5-22- The Slide Fire has grown ten times to 4900 acres with zero containment. There are 840 personnel on the fire. Three thousand residents of Forest Highlands and Kachina Village are told to stand by for evacuation orders.

The Funny River Fire south of Soldotna, Alaska has grown from seven thousand acres to 20,000 acres! (You don’t often think of fires in Alaska but there is bark beetle infestation there too killing millions of trees.)
A sixteen year old Gilbert, Arizona teen has been arrested after admitting cutting off a part of one hundred and fifty year old protected saguaro cactus in Pinnacle Peak Park, Scottsdale. Damage is estimated at ten thousand dollars. ( What a young fool!)

5-23- The Slide Fire is at 7500 acres no homes lost. The fire missed Junapine Resort by mere feet.
Just across the Arizona, New Mexico line on I-10 a massive dust storm caused a pileup that killed six innocent motorists.

Portland, Oregon orders boiling water before drinking due to E-Coli bacteria.

5-24- Slide Fire 10,000 acres and zero containment.

Civilians are banned from reentering two Bosnian villages after major flooding. There is grave concern of potential epidemic flash points of disease due to thousands of rotting animal carcasses.

5-25- Twelve hundred firefighters now on the Slide Fire and it has burned 14,100 acres and is twenty five percent contained.

5-26- 18,500 acres burned, 35% containment and evacuation orders are lifted.

A fifty year old man dies when he jumps from a one hundred foot high cliff at Apache Lake into seventeen feet of water.

The massive Funny River Fire in Alaska has burned 218 square miles. One thousand homes and structures under evacuation orders.
Hurricane Amanda on the eastern Pacific is the earliest and strongest hurricane on record for May and is a Category 4 system.

5-27- A historic find deep in the woods of the Slide Fire; an old cabin, railroad trusses and an old look out. The structures may be over one hundred years old and have not been visited by man since then. It is being protected until it can be studied.
Three missing ranchers after a mudslide in Collbran, Colorado. The area is very unstable so search and rescue is impossible at this time.

5-29- Residents and businesses are allowed to return to Oak Creek Canyon and the fire is 55% contained.
The Funny River Fire in Alaska is so big it is creating its own weather and can be seen from space. Wolf cubs are rescued and being helped while their parents have disappeared or perished in the fire.

5-30- A foot of rain in southern Louisiana floats caskets, one dead and streets are muddy rivers.

5-31- The Slide Fire is 75% contained at almost 21,000 acres.

Until next month when the South West has all but burned up remember:
Pioneers took bullets. Settlers took Land.
Professor MR Blue Duck.

April 2014 Blue Duck Weather News

April 2014 Weather News!

This edition of Blue Duck Weather is dedicated to the memory of Claire Stevens, ninety six years young. She caught a train ride home on April 16th. I will forever respect her intelligence, free spirit and love of culture and the arts.

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul”- John Muir.

“If there is magic on this planet it is contained in water.” Loren Eiseley.

While much of the Country is just now enjoying a spring after a too long cold brutal winter, in my opinion, when April is over in the desert so is spring. There were ten days this month on The Land when the temps were at or above 90 degrees. What little spring grass we had is dead, the sky is turning from the brilliant winter blue to white, meaning real heat is on the way.

The average number of days during the summer season when the temperature is at or above one hundred degrees in Phoenix is 110 days! That means fucking three months. And I can guarantee you around July if the temps are below one hundred it is a sticky, muggy mess with humidity and dew points an arm pit of sweat.

So we shall play a little game. Starting in May I will calculate the number of days temperatures are at or above one hundred and keep track until fall is here. A sick reminder of the misery of summer. How many days do you think the temperature will be over one hundred from now through October? There will be a grand prize for the winner who guesses the closest. (Although we haven’t figured out yet what that prize may be.)

Pure tragedy broke out toward the end of the month. Tornado season was predicted to be possibly the quietest in one hundred years earlier in the month but all hell broke loose toward the end.

Also a one in three hundred year weather event happened at the end of the month in Florida. Read all about it in this month’s Blue Duck Weather plus:

What is “mass-wasting? If you are a stoner it is not what it sounds like, Arizona officials issue a “dire” wildfire season, the mud and rock toll continues to turn up bodies in Oso, Washington, the hopeful revival of the San Pedro River in southern Arizona, deep winter cold in April in portions of the U.S. while the West is already in fire season, mystery of bizarre duck like ocean sounds, the incredible story of red tailed hawks at a school, deadliest avalanche on Everest ever recorded and so much more in this latest mind staggering edition of Blue Duck Weather!

The average temperature on The Land was 71.34 pleasant degrees. The average temperature on The Lands in New Mexico was 55.39 degrees.
Still no rain with only .49’’ of rain on The Land.

No rain and the “great lakes” continue to shrink especially Powell at only 39%! Mead is down to 45%, Pleasant is 83% and Roosevelt 50%.

4-1- The death toll from the Oso, Washington landslide has risen to 27.

4-2- One inch of snow in Flagstaff, Arizona. (We will take what we can get, every precious drop of moisture. It is going to be a tragic summer for wildfires I fear greatly.)

Conditions in Arizona are similar as in 2002 for extreme fire conditions that caused the massive Rodeo-Chedeski. We are in the fourteenth year of drought. There have already been 179 wild land fires this year and the snow pack is 50% of normal. Already there is a Fire Watch for southern Arizona.

4-3- Death toll in the mud and debris of Oso rises to 30 poor souls.
First tornado confirmed in St. Louis, Missouri with golf ball size hail and one hundred homes damaged. 50 million from Illinois to the Gulf Coast are at risk to day. Drivers stranded in flash floods. Two to three inches of rain in Indiana and southern Minnesota. There are blizzard and tornado warnings issued at the same time in certain areas. (This is pure fucking weather havoc!)
“England’s air a 10 for smog.”

4-5- Snow in Flagstaff and Winslow and 90’s by midweek in the Phoenix area. (More pure fucking weather havoc!)
Landslides are a result of “mass wasting.” Nature lowers the center of gravity as time rolls on. Mountains rise and they fall apart.

4-6- A Mesa, Arizona woman is attacked by her own two pit bulls while she was trying to break up a fight between the two bastards. She is flown to a hospital with severe injuries.

The National Park Service announces they want to push buffalo out of the Grand Canyon National Park and into the Kaibab Forest. The herd has grown from 150 in the 90’s to 350 today. They are chewing grass to nubs, damaging upland lakes and trampling and shitting on ancient American Indian dwellings. There is no hunting on park land to reduce the stinky bastards but outside of the park 20 hunters last year paying almost eleven hundred dollars per tag were drawn on a lottery basis.

The killing of wolves and buffalo protested by a dozen people at the state capital in Helena, Montana. The state has sanctioned hunting and trapping of these animals.

A 518 million dollar weather satellite will be launched this week after a fifteen year wait. (Good to see NASA still doing good things for our world and space.)

4-7- EF-2 tornado with 125mph winds destroys 30 homes in Jackson, Mississippi with seven inches of rain! A young girl is swept away in Yazoo.

4-8- First 90 degree day at The Land. (Shit, it is on the way).

Death toll in Washington rises to 33 from the devastating landslide in Oso.

Bad weather in Mexico and drought in California have driven the price of a case of limes from fourteen dollars to one hundred and twenty dollars! (sounds like bitter gold to me.)

4-9- One hundred degrees in the southwestern armpit of Arizona, Gila Bend.

4-10- It is fifteen degrees above normal in Phoenix. Today hit 98 degrees.
With a dry winter 52% of Arizona is now in Severe Drought Status compared to 28% last year.
It has been almost three weeks and the death toll keeps rising in Oso to 36 folks.
“Predictors” (snake oil salesmen) forecast a quiet hurricane season.

4-11- Possibly two fires are burning near Flagstaff, Arizona started today by human activity. One is “out of control’’ and has burned 80 acres with strong winds and low humidity contributing. (God, it is only April. Save us come June.) Red Flag Warning from Graham to Cochise counties in Arizona with 40 mph winds. (Just today I told the Lovely Mrs. Blue Duck that I hoped our sacred Mount Graham would be spared by fires this year. Wisely, she told me all mountains are already cleansed. Think about it.)

This is the latest peak cherry blossom bloom in Washington D.C. since 1993 due to the very cold winter and early spring.
Dangerous Cyclone Ita makes landfall in Cape Flattery, Queensland with four inches of rain in twenty four hours and 90 to 105mph winds.

From severe cold to a brush fire, forty acres have burned in Edison, New Jersey. Helicopters dropping water are helping with the fire.

4-12- The Fisher wildfire is 50% contained at 175 acres.

4-13- A lack of air tankers is a big worry this year for wild fire season. The early start puts us in a precarious situation. The threat of an incendiary fire season from Oregon to Texas creates a logistical challenge as wildfires typically ignite in bunches. Air tanker drops are critical in planning a strategy to fight a monster and everybody wants aircraft.

The Fisher Fire is now 75% contained Two more fires in Arizona have erupted today. There is a brush fire in southern Arizona and the Brown Fire near west of Sierra Vista. 28 mph winds and a humidity of 10% are not helping one bit.

Severe thunderstorms are exploding across the Plains from Texas to Missouri. Tornado concerns are rising. In Michigan 80mph winds have cut off electricity to 150,000 folks.

Ten thousand evacuate from raging fires in Chile. Sixteen folks have been killed and five hundred homes destroyed.

4-14- Winds carrying tumbleweeds have invaded the drought stricken prairies of Colorado. It is so bad that roads have been blocked, canals blocked and briefly closing one school and barricading homes from people getting in and out. (Now this conjures up a childhood memory when us little bastards would wait until it was dark and the wind was blowing. We would roll tumbleweeds in front of cars to see the people inside freak when the weeds exploded into a million pieces when some unsuspecting idiot would hit them. Squealing brakes, cussing occupants, and swerving vehicles; it was all great “harmless” fun by us merry pranksters of the evening.) This plague of tumbleweeds is reminiscent of the Dust Bowl 80 years ago. Cattle used to keep them in check but cattle herds are diminishing due to the drought and high cost of feed.

A very cold storm dumped a half foot of snow on Nebraska yesterday and snow over Kansas and Oklahoma this morning.
Hungry and irritable from a long winter five bears wander onto the driveway of a home in Florida. When they went into the open garage looking for trash and food the woman who owned the home went out to investigate the ruckus. She was attacked by a sow and managed to make it inside before collapsing. Her fifteen year old son called 9-11. The woman required 30 staples and ten stitches in her scalp. The family lives next to a wildlife preserve. ( I do believe I would have been armed before I went outside to investigate.)

4-15- The Fisher Fire is now 95% contained but the Brown Fire is at 0 containment and burned 400 acres.

Three inches of snow in Detroit makes this the snowiest winter season on record with 94.8 inches of snow. In Pittsburgh the temperature dropped 30 degrees in six hours. In International Falls the record low was 5 degrees; 12 degrees set back in 1962.

4-16- The Brown Fire is now the nation’s top priority fire. (I wonder if it has anything to do with it burning near a military base)
“Diminished by drought and pumping, the San Pedro River may get new life from captured storm water.” This year a project will attempt to contain monsoon rain and filter it into the aquifer to try and preserve and improve the river’s flow. 17 million gallons is hoped to drain through and recharge pools, trenches and wells.This river near Sierra Vista, Arizona as thought by many to be the South West’s last free flowing river. The BLM is in court to block a seven thousand home development project that would use groundwater near this river.

Temps through the East are twenty to forty degrees cooler than yesterday. In some areas it happened in a matter of minutes not a matter of hours!

Chile trying to recover after a major wildfire that kills twelve poor folks.

Sticker shock from weather extremes- Smallest amount of beef production since 1951. The price of chicken, eggs and bacon are also up to record levels. Another drain on the food supply is the growing demand from China for U.S. food. (Now I ask you why don’t they feed themselves and let us worry about us. The answer is because China owns us and we are deeply indebted to that country.)

4-17- The Brown Fire has grown to 240 acres and zero percent contained.

Although warm in Phoenix the first 90 degree temp was on April 8th. The average is on March 31st. On average temperatures of one hundred or above will last 110 days. (Oh lucky us!) The earliest one hundred degree day was on March 26th, 1983.

Phoenix urban mountain rescues have doubled the first three months of 2014 compared to last year. Hikers are underestimating dangers of heat, desert mountain terrain and lack of water. There have been 76 rescues this year. (Why don’t the rescued pay the bill?)
Heavy spring snow from Minnesota to Ontario with one foot on the ground in northwest Wisconsin and the upper Michigan peninsula.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion but this one amazed me: “When was the last time you heard of a forest fire that was started by a sandwich or an LED lantern…..We can reduce human caused fires if we take the fire out of our campouts and picnics. They may be less appetizing without the hot meals and melted marsh mellows for you s’mores, but our forests will love you for it.” I have had a fire in the windiest and driest of conditions and great precautions were taken to keep the fire in a confined and cleared area. We take just as much care in completely putting out a fire as we do leaving a clean camp. There just is no excuse for starting a wildfire in any weather.

4-18- About a month and a half early campfire restrictions in place in the Coconino, Kaibab, Prescott and Tonto National Forests in Arizona.

The Brown Fire is 25% contained.
And from the There is a fox in the henhouse file; a red fox is loose in the White House and cannot be captured. The bastard is eating the garden and trips motion detectors. (Maybe it is a ground drone sent to spy!)

4-19- The Apache Sitgrieves National Forest in Arizona will impose fire restrictions in three days.
The Brown Fire is 75% contained. There is a new fire north of the Brown Fire sparked by lightning. The O’Donnell Fire has already torched 600 acres.

Flagstaff, Arizona’s largest homeless shelter is closing at night for the summer season due to lack of funding. But many folks head to the woods to camp and the nights are still cold. There is a huge worry with as dry as it has been of campfires by the homeless turning into a major forest fire.

With only days leading up to Good Friday four Hickman’s Farms, three in Arizona and one in Colorado have produced one hundred million eggs for Easter in America! (You think we’re just a little obsessed?)

4-20- The O’Donnell Fire and the Brown Fire in southern Arizona are contained.
A Fire Watch is issued for all of northern Arizona beginning tomorrow.

4-21- Red Flag Warning issued for northern Arizona tomorrow with 50mph winds expected.

4-22- Forty-one confirmed dead in Oso, Washington from the terrible landslide earlier this month.
So far there have been the fewest tornadoes in the U.S. in 60 years. It may be the slowest in a century. Very cold weather systems drove cold, dry air across the Gulf States. The instability was not adequate for storms to cross the Gulf States from the Atlantic.

4-23- Scientists are monitoring one of the largest iceberg breaks off Antarctica. It is 255 square miles with ice one third mile thick headed to open ocean.

On the 18th thirteen guides were killed or missing during a massive snow slide on Mount Everest. Known as Sherpa the guides were preparing ropes for hundreds of climbers to come later. As of today the Sherpa’s plan to postpone guides on Everest for a year in observance of their killed brothers. They are also protesting about lack of funds to help their families. Nepal has set up relief fund. This could be devastating to the people who have paid as much as ninety thousand dollars for a guided trek up Everest.

4-24- As of today 33.9% of the Great Lakes are still completely iced over compared to 2% this time of year.
Wildfire in New Jersey and one school is evacuated. (Never thought of New Jersey as a place that would have a wildfire, especially coming out of such a cold winter.)

Some are forecasting a strong El Nino this winter. The ocean along the Equator is warming up fast. The last time this happened there were record setting rain events in Arizona in 1997, 1998.

Two Colorado elk hunters arrested after a motorcyclist is killed by them running a rope across a country road.

“A mysterious duck like sound recorded in the ocean around Antarctica has baffled scientists for over fifty years. The sound of the oceanic quack consists of a series of repetitive flow pitched pulsing sounds. Minke whales are actually producing the sound from deep below the surface.”

For the first time in history all of California in moderate to deep drought. (I find this ironic with a state bordering an ocean. Doesn’t the ocean produce humidity and fog for miles?)

A Queen Creek, Arizona goose is attacked by bees and rescued by a fireman with a “Fido bag” respirator. (I swear we do not make this shit up.)

A father and his five year old son are plucked off of Camelback Mountain in Phoenix. They had plenty of water but became lost. ( Now I wonder how the fuck you can get lost on a mountain when any view is nothing but homes and people, just walk!)

4-25- Snow Warnings issued for northern Arizona and the White Mountains.

The National Weather Service is issuing an alert days in advance from Oklahoma to North Carolina. “Prepare Now”, as 32 million people will probably be affected by super cells and tornadoes.

4-26- “High Alert.” Six tornadoes in North Carolina last night and tornadoes in Texas through Kansas. Two hundred homes destroyed and the first EF3 with 150mph winds recorded.

30mph peak wind gusts on The Land and it is 25 degrees cooler than yesterday. We even had a wind chill with 70 degrees plus 20mph winds equaled 65 degrees!

Three thousand without power in Phoenix due to high winds and 5.5’’ of snow in Flagstaff!
The Aerostat Fire has erupted in Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

4-27- Hail and winds from Iowa to Louisiana and a confirmed tornado in Nebraska. A half dozen states are under tornado watches. Flash flooding in Iowa City, Iowa. The highest storm risk is Little Rock, Arkansas.

4-28- Deadly tornado kills ten in Vilonia, Arkansas with a thirty mile path of destruction. The killer struck after midnight.
The search for victims in Oso has been officially stopped. Two people still remain missing.

The Lovely Mrs. Blue Duck read this memo when she returned to work at school on the Reservation:

morning Teachers;
There is a young hawk or bird of prey that seems to be trapped in the playscape (playground) tower. Please do not let any of your students use the playscape at this time as we do not want to frighten the bird nor do we want anyone to get hurt by it. The animal control officer has been called and will remove the bird soon………” (As it turned out it was a young Red tailed hawk. A group of three had been nesting in a large water tower near the school. After the bird was released from the playscape tower in flew and landed right in front of Mrs. Blue Duck’s classroom where it sat for a period of time. I have never seen a red tailed hawk remotely close to here, only above the desert lakes, amazing!)

4-29- More killer tornadoes and seven more dead in Alabama and Mississippi. Two tornadoes splintered a building in Tupelo killing one. This storm system is so large it covered most of the South and could be seen from space. Fifty tornadoes in twenty four hours spotted in sixteen counties in Mississippi. After the third night of storms a total of thirty five are dead. One man said “Pressure drops, ears hurt and you can hear the train coming.” A lady in Vilonia said “You don’t understand everything you have until you realize that all I’ve got is now is just what I have on.”

4-30- Historic twenty two inches of rain falls in the Florida Panhandle in twenty four hours. State of Emergency declared in Pensacola, Florida with water rescues and five inches of rain in one hour. Two trillion gallons of water in one day! A once in three hundred year event and more rain than Hurricane Ivan ten years ago.

The American Lung Association ranks Phoenix as the eighth most polluted city for air standards as measured by year round particle emissions. Heat, dust and lack of rain to blame. Phoenix was 18th on the list last year.

A Flagstaff woman falls four hundred feet to her death from the Grand Canyon at Mather Point. The cause of the fall is under investigation.

After arguing with her children a Phoenix woman throws a kitten off a third floor apartment balcony to its death. She has been arrested of animal cruelty and abuse. (Sheriff Arpaio has a place for this sicko.)

And that brings us to the conclusion of yet another month of brilliant weather reporting and all the news that fits in this insanity. Until next month when the freight train is howling at midnight remember;

Pioneers took bullets. Settlers took land.

Professor of quackology, distinguished award winner MR. Blue Duck

March 2014 Weather News!

Greetings my loyal readers of Blue Duck Weather! There is enough weather tragedy in these journals as it is. Let us begin on a humorous, if not silly account. There was a fluke and a mild weather disturbance in Arizona this month. It caused a “massive” dust storm in the southern deserts. Thank God it was not called a fucking “Haboob.” It caused enough of a stir that television news had reporters all over the valley exclaiming about the potential damage of the dirt storm, where it had struck and where it was moving. In the paper the next morning the headline news talked about the precursor to the monsoon and blah, blah, blah. What we experienced had nothing to do with the monsoon or the wind flow and moisture during that yearly period of time here in the South West. Was it humorous because to us long time desert dwellers it didn’t mean a whole lot? Was it humorous because normally the weather is so dull here that weather sensationalism is the news event of the day? Or is it humorous because people are idiots, oblivious or have no idea what a dust storm even is? I just don’t know but all the news coverage of a brief weather event made me laugh my ass off.

Now turn the page to where the weather proved to cause a deadly landslide in Oso, Washington. Weeks of rain and saturated soil, even reports of a small earthquake set off a landslide that sent fifteen million cubic yards of mud and rock down the mountain, literally a piece of the mountain crumbled. With mud as deep as forty feet, as I write this, bodies are still being recovered. You will read about the incredible force of nature, the speculation and the sad reality.

In the North East they called it the winter that would never end! And collectively I could hear them scream “IN LIKE A LION AND OUT LIKE A LAMB MY ASS! I am sure there are many casualties of the brutal winter and stories of survival and perish we shall never read. But please take a solemn moment to bow your heads and quack about the thousands of meat eating ducks that perished. These cousins, normally used to steak every night, could not crack through the ice to eat the minnows to sustain them. A sad, sad predicament indeed!

Some of the features in this latest and greatest Blue Duck Weather include, but not limited to (sounds like some bullshit warranty), a city that has had no rain in excess of one inch since October, 2011, a rare confirmed tornado in Mesa, Arizona, a town in northern Arizona that is out of surface ground water and the price to pay, a boy in Montana buried by an avalanche in the backyard of his own home, what Burl poachers are and why they do it, where radiation testing begins almost three years after the great tsunami in Japan all but destroyed nuclear reactors, where the most lightning strikes occur, 30 million salmon hitch a ride, drought and the new gold rush, tuberculosis from cats and an alarming increase in Arizona of severe dog bites.

The average temperature on The Land for the month was 64 degrees. The average for the high country of New Mexico, affectionately known as Talking Trees and Antelope Hill was 52.16 degrees. This was a bit alarming to me. Normally there is a twenty degree difference between the desert here and 7400 feet there. It was not exceptionally cold here in March. Does that mean it was exceptionally warm there?

The Land received .49’’ of rain on one day in March, the only rainfall this year. Phoenix has recorded a more impressive .99’’ of rain, but a proverbial drop in the bucket.

We better keep an eye on the diminishing lake levels, especially Powell. I need not repeat myself in telling you this lake and the lake below it are critical to civilization in the South West as we know it. Powell is down to an astonishing 39%. Mead is 46%, Roosevelt 50% and Pleasant a more reassuring 83%.

3-1- After sixty days with no rain .37’’ of rain at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. Flash Flood Warning out until seven p.m. A possible funnel cloud spotted in Mesa with trees down and reports of a hot tub being thrown over one thousand feet. 1.22’’ of rain in Cave Creek, over 2’’ in Fountain Hills, .75’’ in Surprise and .94’’ in Buckeye.

And here at The Land I had given up on the rain with nothing falling all day. Then sometime after ten p.m. a welcome and fast one half inch fell. It is about fucking time!

A ten acre site that Phoenix bought in 2000 at Tatum and Pinnacle Peak Roads will be turned into a five million gallon reservoir. Lined with concrete it will measure 145’ in diameter, 30’ high with eleven inch walls. It will be buried half way with landscaping around it. (No one has said where the water supply will come from, flooded washes?)

Los Angeles experiences one inch of rain or more for the first time since October, 2011! One inch of rain in San Diego. Water rescues in normally dry L.A. River, 2 to 4’’ of rain in parts of California since yesterday.

Record snowfalls in Missoula, Montana. Avalanche destroys two homes. Two buried in snow found alive.

3-2- Confirmed EF-0 tornado in Mesa, Arizona yesterday at approximately Alma School and University and Alma School Roads with 60-80 mph winds. Enough rain fell that a home near Thomas and 75th Street in Scottsdale under a foot of water.

Ice storms from Oklahoma to Kentucky affecting 139 million people. As another storm approaches some areas in Texas dropped from 80 degrees to 20 degrees twenty four hours.

Snow causes a 104 vehicle pileup on I-25 near Denver. One killed and thirty injured.

3-3- In the aftermath of the latest storm temperature fall like a rock in parts of the Plains and the East. Three inches of ice in Kansas City, Missouri, breaking a record of one inch set in 1962, In Richmond, Virginia the temperature dropped form 72 degrees to 22 degrees with wind driven snow.

3-4- Four degrees in Baltimore breaks a 100 year old record. Atlantic City and parts of New Jersey 2 degrees, Washington D.C. 0 degrees. Three days ago it was 80 degrees in north Texas. Last night it fell to the low 20’s.
Normally running at eight billion gallons per second Niagra Falls frozen for the second time this year!
Cold wet day for the Mardi Gras with highs in the upper forties, twenty degrees below normal.

3-5- The Great Lakes is 90.50% iced over and may set a record, the third highest amount of ice since record keeping began.
Two more bighorn sheep found dead in the Catalina Mountains near Tucson. One breeding male left.

Endangered jaguars receive 1200 square miles of protected habitat in Arizona and New Mexico. “Welcome home to Arizona, jaguars” for cats that venture north from a preserve in Mexico.

3-6- Williams, Arizona is out of surface ground water. Residents can’t water lawns, hose off sidewalks or wash cars. Swimming pools can only be filled with trucked in water. People using 15,000 gallons of water a month will get a 150% water bill increase. (Spooky shit for an area predominant for forests.)

Watch for the effect of El Nino in Arizona next winter. The last major warming waters in the Pacific was 1997-98. This means fewer hurricanes in the Atlantic will occur as the waters will cool. Meteorologist say there is a 50-50 chance of this happening. (I am certainly not holding my breath, but hopeful of some drought relief as this phenomenon tends to bring heavy rain to the deserts.)
Talk about a bad day at the races! An Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race participant was flow off his crashed sled and hitting his head on a tree stump. He was unconscious for at least an hour before he moved on. Then he fell through ice and breaking his ankle after chasing one of his dogs that broke free. Another racer found him and stayed with him until he could be airlifted out.

3-7- Ice storm shuts down power for 250,000 folks in North Carolina.
Radiation testing in the California Pacific will begin almost three years after the fateful tsunami shut down nuclear reactors in Japan.

Eight year old boy tries to “lick and bite” his way out of an avalanche in his back yard. Protected by an air pocket he grew tired and fell asleep. Neighbors dug frantically for an hour to free him. He was scratched and had a bruised spleen but will recover. Authorities believe the avalanche was triggered by a snowboarder on Mount Jumbo even the though the area was closed off to the public for unstable snow conditions.

Unemployment and drug addiction have caused an increase in cutting off the knobby growths at the base of ancient redwood trees to make decorative pieces of furniture such as coffee tables and wall clocks. It is so prevalent on the northern California coast Redwood State and National Parks are closed at night. One hundred pounds of burl made into a dining room table can command thirteen thousand dollars!

3-11- The last nineteen days in Phoenix have been in the 80’s. The last 61 days have been at or above normal. Spring is here with the creosotes and the orange popcorn blossoms, the orange trees are blooming, and the mesquites are about to release the cooling canopies of much needed shade relief for the brutal summer that is just around the corner. What we are experiencing with this subtle spring beauty in the desert is not normally seen until April and even May. (It is going to be a fucking miserable summer.)

Here is something I would truly like to witness: A Mexican river bed that has been dry for decades due to overuse from the Colorado River will once again flow as an experiment to restore the area’s native vegetation. The gates of Morelos Dam, located where California, Arizona and Mexico share boundaries, will open on March 23 to release a manmade flood of 100,000 acre feet of water. Flows continue until May 18th, followed by a smaller stream of base flows. (I have to wonder if this continues if any of the wildlife driven away will return. I hope so.)


A Kingman, Arizona man is recovering after a fifty foot fall while rappelling a cliff in northwest Arizona. He was above a small stream bed when his rope snapped. He has several compound fractures in one leg and both hips. Fortunately he was with two friends. If he would have been alone it probably would have been adios!

3-12- Late winter Ohio snowstorm cuts power to thousands. Snow began falling last night from Missouri to Michigan. Downtown Kansas City receives snow seven hours after reaching 80 degrees!

3-13- 45,000 without power in Illinois, 26,000 without power in Ohio. Heaviest corridor for snow is from Buffalo to New England. Ten inches of snow at Niagara Falls. Gusts of wind knock down trees and power lines in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Seven inches of snow in Toledo, Ohio has officially set a record for the snowiest winter ever.

Yellow snow from treated effluent saved the Arizona Snowbowl ski season. The treated water cost one hundred thousand dollars to produce 60 million gallons for snow making! (No wonder the natives and elders protecting the mountain are beside themselves. How would you like sixty million gallon of treated piss and shit thrown on your birth ground of centuries? )

A man in southern Arizona, a suspected migrant, fell 125’ off Mule Ridge near Nogales. The man had a signal fire going and was rescued by helicopter after dark. He was airlifted with a badly broken ankle, cuts to the face and back and possible internal bleeding.

An elusive wild pig that has evaded hunters for years has been taken in North Carolina. The beast weighed over five hundred pounds. Although not a record, these smelly mean bastards usually weigh between one hundred and two hundred pounds. The hunter said “We are not wasting anything. That pig will provide food for me and my family for a good year.” (Good for you, that is what hunting is all about.)

3-14- Yesterday morning I noticed a haze that seemed to be in the sky everywhere, like smoke from a fire. It was so thick the normally blinding rising sun looked like an orb in the sky, almost like the moon. I even commented on this to the Lovely Mrs. Blue Duck. Today I read it was from a massive dust storm from the plains of Texas and not that uncommon for it to blow this far west.

A man scuba diving with friends near the old dam at Lake Pleasant, Arizona never surfaced. He had 140 minutes of air available. He was found later in the day over two hundred feet below water by an underwater moving camera used by rescue and recovery teams. It is not known how he died. (This may be “urban legend” but when I was a boy a heard a fighter jet crashed into Lake Pleasant near the dam. Divers said there were catfish over eight feet in length in the murky depths. With a young, inquisitive mind I always wondered if a barb puncture from a fish that large could kill you. Who knows?)

3-15- Phoenix woman killed by daughter’s pit bull when she was attacked feeding it.
It was a warm winter but it was a warmer spring this time last year in Phoenix. On this day it was 92 degrees, 86 degrees today.

3-16- Cliff rescue in Papago Park, Scottsdale, Arizona today. Rescuers had to rappel a three hundred foot cliff to get to a man who was combative and angry at being rescued. (Maybe he didn’t want to come down?)

3-17- 48mph winds in Winslow, Arizona and 44mph winds in Prescott. Wind advisory issued until 7:00 p.m. (Sad but as dry as it has been I am already thinking wildfire possibility.)

Another transplanted bighorn sheep found dead in the Catalina Mountains near Tucson.

Maple syrup season in Massachusetts typically begins at the end of February. It has been so cold sap will not dry and may not for two more weeks.

3-18- Low pressure system spreads snow from Montana to Wisconsin.
Winds of 50mph from Kansas to west Texas. Fire danger high.

Sea levels will rise more now that the last stable portion of Greenland’s ice is no longer stable. For the first time in 25 years since 2003 the ice loss has tripled. Greenland’s ice sheet is the world’s second largest and covers 80% of Greenland’s surface.
Paris bans half of cars on the roads for a day to combat smog. Cars with even numbered license plates ordered to stay off the road and 700 police man control points with 4,000 tickets handed out.

3-19- Major dust storm in Texas caused by drought conditions. In Lubbock wind gust up to 55mph produce zero visibility.
A Texas man is the first this year to die from a fall at the Grand Canyon. He was trying to retrieve a hat when he fell 350’ from the South Rim near El Tower Lodge.

3-20- The first day of spring and a sight to behold near Carney, Nebraska. 40 million birds are migrating near the Platte River with thousands of snow geese and cranes.

3-21- From the Lovely Mrs. Blue Duck comes this amazing, frightening but true account: A man sitting in a ground blind with his son hunting wild hogs in Georgia almost shit his pants when a rattler stuck its head into the blind. The son shot the fucker in the head with a .22 pistol. This creature from Hell was 9.5’ long, head 5.5’’ wide, fangs 2.5’’ long and the beast had the bones of three little pigs in its stomach.

Two dead after a landslide this morning in Washington and six injured. Sixteen homes destroyed and Route 530 between Arlington and Darrington is closed. The cause is believed to be ground water saturation from heavy rains earlier this month.

A controlled burn out of control as a firestorm is created by a dry whirlwind of burning tumbleweeds in Colorado.

Three quarters of all lightning fatalities are when people are engaging in outdoor activities. Fishing ranked the highest, with camping second, boating third and finally golf. The odds of getting struck by lightning in any given year is one in one million. But odds in a lifetime are one in ten thousand.

3-23- A dozen people are missing from the landslide in Washington yesterday. It is being called a square mile of devastation. No warning at all with fifteen feet deep of rocks and mud. The mud is like quicksand and even some rescuers are trapped. Thirty homes are destroyed or damaged.

Early spring in the Phoenix area with five rattlesnake bites in February and one in March.

Fish eating ducks hit hard by the severe winter from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. The hard ice kept them from eating minnows. These ducks will only eat meat, not bread crumbs and shit domestic ducks eat. One conservationist counted 950 dead in one outing. (Let’s take a few moments of silence for our dead quack brothers and sisters.)

Twenty five years after the Valdez oil spill in Alaska the effects remain startling. The shrimp are slowly coming back but the crabs and herrings have not made a return.

Prospectors able to find gold during January and February when streams and water holes are dry from drought. Gold has been exposed that was not explored previously.

Rescue in a frozen river in Des Moines after a seven and twelve year old boy trapped on ice.

3-24- Now eight dead and one hundred missing in the Washington landslide. 50 structures wiped out.

An avalanche has killed three skiers at the mountain resort used for the Sochi Olympics. The avalanche occurred a day after it opened to tourists after the Olympics and the Paralympics are finished.

Folklore or science? Over eight years CAP has spent 798,600 dollars to fund a small scale cloud seeding operation in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Water agencies in California and Nevada joined CAP in funding the program. Silver iodide particles are shot into the clouds hoping to produce snow. A ten to fifteen percent increase has been noted.

3-25- Out of nowhere a Sever Dust Storm Warning is issued for Maricopa and Pinal counties until 7:00 p.m. Red Flag Wind Warning issued for southeast Arizona tomorrow.

The coldest the North East has seen since 1993-1994. Snow accumulations are breaking records. The reason is a persistent high pressure ridge over Alaska, the Yukon and the northeast Pacific Ocean deflected the jet stream across the North Pole down through Canada and into the United States.

Blizzard conditions in Cape Cod, East Main and Nova Scotia. Blinding snow squalls from Michigan to east Tennessee. 4.5’’ of snow in Flat Springs, North Carolina.

Officials in Zion National Park in Utah have found the body of a BASE jumper. It is the third death in two months in the park by parachute. It is illegal to jump in this park but brave fools do it all the time.

Sadly the death toll keeps rising in Oso, Washington from the landslide. Now fourteen deaths confirmed and the rescue mission is turning into a recovery mission, one hundred and seventy two unaccounted for. One theory is a small earthquake may have loosened the hillside behind the tiny town. Some homes not swept away buried to the rooftops in mud.

A “Giant Water Taxi’ is used to transport 30 million salmon due to the drought in California. The fish are transported over three hundred miles to the San Francisco Bay area.

3-26- The Valley of the Sun (Phoenix area) is coming out of its second warmest winter with an average of 60.2 degrees. “For a city that lives in a perpetual state of psychological heat management. Summer is either coming or it’s here, such a warm streak so soon after the first days of spring can make it feel like we’re skipping right past it.

Twenty four dead and many missing in Oso, Washington from the tragic landslide. One county official “People in the path knew the risk and sometimes catastropheis just happen.” One theory is a week earlier a very weak earthquake hit the region may have ultimately caused a six hundred foot wide wall of cliff to crumble.

A massive forest fire knocks out power to most of Venezuela’s capital. Fourteen hours later many parts of the city without power.
Eighteen hundred year old human bones found in Colorado City, Arizona last fall are confirmed. A group of kids were playing found leg bones poking through the earth. The rest of the remains were found sitting up in a fetal position a few feet underground.

3-27- Sixty nine mph winds in Winslow, Arizona. 38mph winds in Sedona. And on this date in 1988 Phoenix had a record high temperature of 100 degrees. (Please don’t remind us of what will be here soon enough. It is fucking cruel.)

There is a square mile of debris in Oso and the National Guard has joined the search for victims in the mud and rock, estimated at 15 million cubic yards. 49 homes are buried and 176 folks are unaccounted for.

A major snowstorm is hammering the East Coast from Virginia to New England. Massachusetts has blizzard conditions with 80mph winds!
Two firefighters die in a Nine Alarm fire in Boston with 45mph winds, twelve are injured.

3-28- You read if first in Blue Duck Weather about the planned flood of the dry river bed below the Morales Dam in Mexico. Yesterday was the fifth day of 4200 cubic feet per second to be released until May 18th. American and Mexican scientists to see how much water it takes to reach the ocean and how much one spring “flood” can restore.

A very rare tornado in Sacramento, California. A dozen homes are damaged and a debris field 300 yards long is left behind.

Severe dog bites in Arizona have increased 139 percent from 2008 to 2012. A third of the victims were children under 13 years old.

A new set of eyes is watching the mountain top snow packs in Colorado and California. In a new mission NASA has equipped a twin engine plane with high tech equipment to make regular surveys. At an altitude of 20,000 feet the “Airborne Snow Observatory” measures snow pack’s depth and water content with precision. (It is good to see this fine agency continue its scientific pursuit of things important to our survival even if the space program was cancelled by the fucking government for the sake of free enterprise. In other words for the lack of money to fund a very vital program to help map mankind’s future.)

3-28- Hopes are slim now for more survivors in Oso, Washington. In areas the mud is forty feet deep! Officially 17 dead and 90 missing.

3-29- The Secret Fire in burning in the Coconino National Forest near Sedona, Arizona. Eight acres have burned with winds at 18mph and humidity at a normally summer level of 17%! Red Flag Wind Warning issued for northern Arizona tomorrow.

In the devastated town of Oso, Washington now a Flash Flood Warning is issued. Seattle, Washington shatters March rainfall record with 8.89 inches, 263% above normal. The previous record was all the way back in 1950 at 8.40”.

2071 record lows set this month in the North East. 6.7 inches of snow today W. Virginia. One inch of rain in Washington, D.C. and 2.34 inches in Green Haven, Maryland.

England’s public health agency reports that two people have caught tuberculosis from a pet cat. First time the bacterial disease has been documented to spread from cats to humans. (The Lovely Mrs. Blue Duck would kill me if I mentioned what I would like to regarding cats.) (YES SHE WOULD)

3-31- There are now two wildfires burning in the Coconino National Forest in Arizona. (God help us, it is only March.) Red Flag Wind Warnings issued for tomorrow in northern Arizona.

Oso landslide had no warning but the wall of mud had seventeen seismometers picking up its impact from as far away as 170 miles!
March ends with a blizzard shutting down travel across the northern plains tonight. Close to forty million people will be at risk of violent and dangerous weather as the Tornado Risk Zone grows from Texas to Indiana.

And on a “happy note” to end this brilliant piece of weather reporting the United Nations reports that climate change could change human civilization. Wheat and corn worldwide is declining. Lack of food and water will cause political crisis. No one and no place is immune.

Always a bonus in Blue Duck Weather we try to add a weather song relevant to the month’s weather stories and all else that fits. This month for your listening pleasure if you can find my obscure shit is “Washed Away” by Tom Cochrane.

Until next month remember Pioneers took bullets, Settlers took Land.
The Honorable Doctor of Horse Shit MR Blue Duck

February 2014 Blue Duck Weather News

February 2014 Weather News!

What an unbelievable weather month around the world! In the North East U.S. it’s being called the “angry winter of 2014.” So much snow and record cold a new depressive disorder is being named for it. In the West, for the first time in history, California ranchers and farmers may receive no water allocations for their crops this spring. (Remember no farms no food) On one day during the Sochi Winter Olympics it was warmer there than Florida! Some say the weather there was the biggest adversary to the athletes.

And here in the Arizona desert we are experiencing temperature and fire condition not normally seen until April and May. No rain for over two months, rattlers already crawling and temperatures twenty degrees higher at the end of the month than the beginning. What the hell is going on?

As this planet is spinning madly on its axis weather is bound to change regardless of the politics of global warming but some of the extremes reported in the past editions of Blue Duck Weather, and this edition, are extreme.

Leaving politics and economics aside Blue Duck Weather attempts to report the facts only, as they occur with a bit of sick humor thrown in to keep you sane. And how weather does play into the economic impact on the world probably doesn’t have a price tag that is even imaginable. I knew it to be true instinctively but never thought or read about it in the context I am about to present.
Energy Poverty- 3.5 million people lack adequate access to energy. 4 million people die each year from energy poverty. Millions around the world must choose between paying for food or power. This is the world’s number one human and environmental crisis. This is “where the rubber meets” the road in terms of economies, world powers and weather. Without the cooperation of the weather for sustainability all else is not possible.

Read about a thief taking advantage of icy weather, what SAD means, the state with the worst drought in five hundred years, possibly the worst drought in Arizona in five hundred years according to one scientist, the warmest winter Olympics on record, tornadoes with snow on the ground!, a snake handling pastor who gets his just rewards and so much more in this exciting edition of Blue Duck Weather!

The average temperature on The Land for February was 58.95 degrees. The average temperature at Talking Trees and Antelope Hill was 45.82 degrees.

There was no rain and hasn’t been any since December 20th, 2013.

The low water level in Lake Powell is startling at 41% and will ultimately affect the water rationing that will happen in California. Lake Mead is 48% full, Pleasant is 76% full and Roosevelt 48%. If the great lakes of the southwest turn into piss holes we are fucked!

2-1- For the first time in California’s history there were 407 wildfires last year, a new and terrible record. Indians and Catholics alike are performing rain dances in the state. (I would like to see what a dance party with the two together would be like.)

During California’s most severe drought of all time state officials announce they won’t allocate water to agencies that serve 25 million people and one million acres of farmland. This is the first time in the 54 year history of the State Water Project that it has taken such drastic actions. It was taken to conserve the little water that remains behind the dams in the state. (What does this mean anyway, water not sold to neighboring states? Is there a water war in our future?)

Prince Charles has called people who deny human caused climate change as a “headless chicken brigade” who is ignoring overwhelming scientific evidence.

So far Chicago has had four and a half feet of snow this season, thirty nine inches in Detroit.

2-2- Third warmest January on record in Phoenix, Arizona. But on this date in 1939 there was .05”of snow in Phoenix.
And with a major winter storm in the plains Pux. Phil says six more weeks of winter for weary citizens of the Midwest and Northeast. (He was shot to death for this prediction.)

A man (bastard) is accused of using a tow truck to steal cars that were abandoned in Atlanta last week after the snow storm and traffic jams.

2-3- The storm that dropped a foot of snow in Texas and ten inches in the Ohio Valley is headed to the Northeast, with thousands of flights cancelled.

2-4- Second winter storm in a week to dump a foot of snow in the Northeast and Midwest. The storm will impact 32 states and two thousand miles. Winter Storm Warnings are posted from the Rockies to southern Maine. More Americans under alerts than any storm of last year. Every business is shut down in Kansas with the warning “Stay Home!”

A German shepherd on a walk with its owner is swallowed up by a ten foot deep sink hole that suddenly opened in a park in New York. Firefighters dug a hole wide enough at the top to get in and rescue the dog. When they pulled the pooch up from the watery hole the dog “owner” said “It was a beautiful thing. He was wagging his tail and looking at all the people.”

A ten year old girl is in serious condition after being impaled by a metal rod while sledding north of Baltimore, Maryland.

2-5- Arizona snow pack is only 15% of normal. (God, it’s going to be a brutal summer if rain or snow doesn’t come quickly.)
From his frozen location in Colorado RyDuck reports 18 below zero last night with a wind chill of thirty below. (My duck ass would be frozen solid.)

Millions of people without power and one hundred and fifteen million affected in 32 states from this latest storm. In Maine, Pennsylvania and New Jersey it is snowing two inches per hour. Ten inches of snow in Boston with forty five inches so far this season.

2-6- Power lines snapped by ice and snow and four hundred thousand without power in Pennsylvania. The power company says it is the worst winter storm ever for the state and emergency conditions are declared.

Snow level drops to five thousand feet in Arizona but not much is expected.

In Sochi, Russia on the eve of the Winter Olympics it is fifty degrees. In some parts of the United States it did not reach the freezing mark.

A chemical smell is still in the water after the spill in Charleston, West Virginia even as residents have been told the water is safe to drink.

2-7- Two hundred and twenty two thousand still without power in Pennsylvania.
Two inches of snow at Sunrise, Arizona and five inches at Snow Bowl. And here in the parched deserts it has been 49 days with no rain.

An earth science professor at the University of Arizona says tree ring records this water year, which began October 1st, really stands out as one of the worst single years for drought in the last five hundred!

“Seasonal Affective Disorder.” A serious and severe type of depression far worse than the cabin fever associated with “winter blues” has been “discovered” in the United States. It is because of the continuous cold and dark days of winter.

2-8- 1.11’’ deficit in the “rain bucket” in Phoenix for the year. Usually an inch of rain falls in January and February.
This is the halfway point for winter in the northern hemisphere.

Residents in Tonopah, Arizona protest Hickman’s Family Farms plan to build a farm factory holding 2.2 million stinking ass chickens. Residents want an environmental impact study to determine the impact to health and natural resources. This little community is twenty miles west of Buckeye and residents are simply beside themselves with rage.

A Las Vegas pet shop owner is seen on a security camera setting her store on fire with 22 puppies inside. She was handcuffed, jailed and a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar bond posted. (Get a fucking rope!)(Mrs. Blueduck is totally willing to buy the rope)

A nationwide propane shortage is due largely to the bitter cold and has struck an Indian reservation on the Dakotas’ border. A healthy sixty one year old woman was found dead in a rundown mobile home with an empty propane tank. The morning she died the temp was the same inside as outside the home, one degree above zero. Hypothermia is the suspected cause as the woman had tried to remove some of her clothing before she died.

2-9- “Drought Fears Laid Bare- Alarming Dry January Fuels Greater Worry about Arizona Wildfire Season, West’s Water Supply”. Zero snow recorded in forty four measurement stations in northern Arizona, the first time in thirty years. .01’’ of rain along the Little Colorado, two percent of normal!

Much welcome rain to parts of California. Warm, moisture packed system from the Pacific Ocean known as the “Pineapple Express”. Seven inches of rain in Marin County, three inches of rain in San Francisco and San Jose. Four feet of snow on top of Lake Tahoe Ski Resort. But Southern California is as dry as a bone.

In Portland, Oregon three days of snow brings freezing rain and people told to stay home.
2.9” of snow at the Seattle Tacoma International Airport breaking a record for this day.
115,000 still without power, lights and heat from ice storm several days ago in Pennsylvania and Maryland. (Those poor folks have to be miserable. I hope they all have fireplaces with plenty of wood stocked.)

2-10- Eighty percent of the Great Lakes are frozen but just how thick the ice is a major safety concern.
60 degrees in Sochi, Russia, warmer than Indiana.

The governor of Georgia declares a State of Emergency for the next two days due to pending ice storm. Schools are closed and emergency shelters are being put up.

Britain’s worst rainfall in 250 years (!) has stranded some residents in Moreland on a forty square mile patch of land since Christmas!

A search resumes today for a man who jumped from an icy Interstate bridge into a river to avoid a skidding tractor trailer in Arkansas. He was among three who left their vehicles after an accident. All three quickly jumped and two rescued.

Rescuers stayed overnight with a stranded hiker near Salome, Arizona. A man and two women wearing light clothing had gotten trapped on a ledge. It was too dark when rescuers reached them so they parked their asses until morning. “Always be prepared. You don’t know what’s going to happen when you are hiking.”

A zoo in Copenhagen kills a healthy giraffe because rules imposed by the European Zoo Association to deter inbreeding. Among seven others at the zoo “Marvin was put down with a pistol because there already were a lot of giraffes with similar genes in the breeding program” The meat was fed to carnivores at the zoo. (Fucking mankind loves to play God whenever there is an opportunity in the name of science or religion.)

2-11- Approaching ice storm in the South described as “catastrophic by the National Weather Service. An event of historical proportions.” A State of Emergency is declared in five states.
Warmest Winter Olympics on record in Sochi, Russia.

2-12- All flights into Atlanta have been cancelled Metro Atlanta devoid of traffic as everyone stays home. One half million without power. And folks in North Carolina walk away from their cars with six inches of snow; more in one day than an entire year.
This time last year it was well below freezing in Phoenix. Now they are flirting with record high temperatures.
Sochi is warmer than the continental U.S. at sixty degrees. It is colder and snowier in parts of Florida!

A Polar bear in a German zoo dies after eating a purse and coat that fell into the enclosure.

2-13- 81 degrees at The Land, twenty degrees above normal!
One hundred million affected in fourteen states with the latest “Super Storm” that has fifteen hundred miles of snow embedded in it. One million travelers affected. 800,000 without power. Both Washington airports closed. Pennsylvania breaks a 140 year old record with four snow falls of four inches or more. Fifty inches of snow so far. National Guard called.
And in sunny Sochi it is 70 degrees.

“The Angry Winter of 2014.” In Pennsylvania there is a one hundred car pileup on black ice with twenty people injured. Some drivers stuck for six hours. Twenty one deaths are blamed for the latest storms in the South and North East.

A Rabies Advisory is issued for Pima and Santa Cruz counties in southern Arizona. Since January 1st, thirteen rabid skunks have been identified. There were only seventeen in these two counties all of last year.

2-14- High temperature records broken in Kingman, Grand Canyon, Flagstaff and Prescott, Arizona. It has been two months with no rain in Phoenix. January and February are critical to this state’s annual rainfall.

From her secluded location in Montana, LaurieDuck reports being snowed in for ten days with her family and livestock.

In New York a pregnant lady loading groceries into the trunk of her car with her husband is struck and killed by a snowplow. Her baby boy was successfully delivered by an emergency C section and doing well. 9.5’’ of snow had fallen before this tragic accident.

2-15- High temperature record of 86 degrees in Phoenix breaks the 83 degree record set in 1977.

88% of the Great Lakes are frozen. They hold one fifth of the world’s fresh water (as polluted as that might be.)
Finally, impressive snow in California mountains. Four to six feet of fresh snow in the Sierras since last week. The same has fallen in the mountains of Colorado and Utah.

Due to relentless ice and snow storms in the U.S. this winter there have been more flight cancellations than in twenty five years. Seventy five thousand domestic flights since December 1st with fourteen thousand this week
Six people have been killed by avalanches this week in the West. Avalanche Warnings have been called out for much of the West. On track for the most folks killed in twenty years. Rapid, heavy snow and unstable snow pack are to blame.

2-16- 84 degree high in Phoenix ties record set in 1977. And this prompts more warm weather mountain rescues in Phoenix. A thirty year old man rescued at Echo Canyon due to heat exhaustion. (Just fucking stay home if you are not prepared!)

Six weeks of nonstop rain in southern England. A taxi driver in Britain killed when his car was crushed by falling block from a building during 85 mph winds.

A “freak wave” also broke five windows on a cruise ship killing and 85 year old man.
There is record snowfall in Japan, more than in fifty years.

“Winter’s Toll.” One foot of snow in New England and 125,000 still without power.

2-17- Eighty-eight degree record high in Phoenix.

Four acre fire near Saguarho Lake.

Rain soaks ranches in drought stricken Honolulu.

January had the most rain since 2005.

Six inches of snow and white out conditions in Chicago. 1350 flights cancelled.

11th bighorn sheep found dead in the Catalina Mountains near Tucson was killed by a mountain lion. Thirty-one sheep were reintroduced to the area in November.

A snake-handling pastor in Kentucky shown in the reality show “Snake salvation” dies after being bitten by a snake. He refused treatment and later succumbed at his home.

2-18- The brush fire near the Salt River two days ago quickly turned into an inferno. It started small but soon 50 foot tall flames jumped a sixty foot wide footpath. “Tinder box conditions not normally seen until May.”

Early onset of 80’s bringing out the rattlers out, not usually seen until March or April in the Phoenix deserts. “Snakes don’t work off a calendar, it’s all about temperatures.” And when they come out they are fucking hungry and mean!

With record amounts of snow cities are running out of salt to treat the roads. Connecticut and Rhode Island declare States of Emergency. They are blasting salt quarries around the clock. (I would like to know what happens to all of that salt when everything melts.)

2-19- One year ago today the snow level was down to two thousand feet in Phoenix. The rare freezing rain event that looks like snow caused many to believe it was in the desert.

Brush fire near Prescott has burned one hundred acres. It was started by someone burning dead tumbleweeds.

Record high in Nashville of 78 degrees and thirty states have tornado warnings posted. This storm system extends from Canada to Georgia and the south side of it is warm, moist air.

2-22- Sixty seven days with no rain in Phoenix.

Tornadoes devastate a town in northern Ohio blowing the roof off of a high school gym.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has announced that many California farmers caught in the drought can expect to receive no irrigation water from the federally run Central Valley Project. “The grim levels so far prove that the state is in the throes of one of its driest periods in recorded history.”

2-24- Snowmobiler dies in an avalanche on the Idaho-Montana border. Two others were buried but rescued in time. One man was found with only his head above the snow.

Warm weather, stupidity or both? Air rescuers get a teenager off Squaw Peak in Phoenix after he “began struggling on the trail.”

2-25- Radiation from the tsunami in Japan almost three years ago and the nuclear power plant shutdown is expected to reach the North West coast by April. Levels will be monitored.

2-26- Detroit, Michigan has had its harshest winter in sixty years. With six and a half feet of snow and one hundred days below freezing, this city tops two dozen of the hardest hit.

USDA to spend three million dollars to provide food for the nation’s struggling honeybees. This will help farmers and ranchers improve pastures in five states.

2-27- 69 days with no rain may be over as a major storm is expected to move through Arizona with snow level dropping to seven thousand feet.

Forty nine out of fifty states below freezing. White out conditions in Buffalo, New York. Ice floes from the Hudson River to Wisconsin.

“High Alert”. Mandatory evacuations east of Los Angeles. Recent fires mean mudslides from heavy rains. All of L.A. is under a Flash Flood Watch. The snow pack in the state is seventy five percent below normal. (This is not good news. It doesn’t matter how much moisture they get from this storm. Summer is on the way.)

2-28- The system in California is being called the “West Coast Hurricane.” It has the swirling eye of a hurricane. Some places had had more rain in the past two days than an entire year. One thousand homes evacuated due to mudslides.

Deep freeze from Kansas to Massachusetts will affect one hundred million folks.

Snow squalls cause a 96 vehicle pileup north of Toronto, Canada.

On a very tragic and sad note your staff at Blue Duck weather reports a six year old girl freezes to death outside of her apartment in Minnesota. Although she was dressed warmly the wind chill had driven the temperature down to 42 below zero. (Mother Nature loves us but she will kill us if we let our guard down.)

The song for the month, although it is not a weather song but adds to the calamity of this month’s weather, is “What the Hell?” by Paul Thorne.

Until next month remember Pioneers took bullets. Settlers took land.
The Honorable, Distinguished, forgettable MR Blue Duck.

Blue Duck Weather News, January 2014

January 2014 Weather News!

Happy Quacking New Year my faithful readers from around the state, the country and the globe. I have noticed by the blog summary of reader location many of you are our friends in Canada. Understandable as so many of you make a second home in sunny Arizona. I am sure as you read the temperatures and averages for the month of January in Phoenix and surrounding areas you are blue with envy and wish to get right back here to the blissful winters we enjoy. And then get your asses home when the first glint of a hundred degree day is on the horizon.

So I asked myself in my state of weather reflectivity for the past year, what was the biggest weather event or the one that had the most impact on me? Tragically and sadly enough it was the Yarnell Hill Fire that killed 19 young men. A perfect, monster killer weather phenomenon if there ever was. The news is nonexistent in most of the country about that terrible day in June but the aftermath is just beginning here in Arizona. Law suites, who was wrong, wrongful death claims, land claims calling out for negligence in predicting and fighting the fires and the terrible property and home loss folks took on that hot day in June, OSHA safety investigations, independent investigations and the list goes on. And how the tragedy of the fire is blamed on climate change, unchecked land clearing of combustible fuels, too many people building in areas that shouldn’t be built in, unchecked growth and on and on it goes.

I feel so sorry for the families of these men. Young mothers and children orphaned by the loss of their husbands and fathers. If any good comes out of it perhaps it will be the study of why this happened and it may help it from not ever happening again. Perhaps the families of these men will benefit with some peace knowing the boys died loving what they were doing. And perhaps the investigation will lead to better communication, fire science, commander preparedness and air support. The bottom line, in the ever changing weather, it happened because of the “perfect storm.”

It is a brand new year as far as calendars go. And by the months in our years we generally know what to expect with weather. When it will be autumn, winter and spring we gauge the approaching weather generally. Mother Nature has a different calendar she loosely adheres to but often scoffs, kicks at, ignores and basically does what she wants to. Her calendar is based on the rotation of earth, the temperatures of the oceans and seas and the firestorms that happen on the sun. She is her own Queen answering to no one except the gravitational pulls on the axis of this planet. She can love us, hate us and kill us.

In this brand new edition of Blue Duck Weather, the month of January leashed record cold and snow in parts of the U.S. A “polar vortex”, a term I had never heard of, was in effect a high level frigid hurricane originating out of the Arctic. It played havoc on millions and as it moved farther south it brought two states on their knees. Two and a half inches of snow in Alabama and Georgia seems like nothing to you hardy folks used to dealing with feet of snow but I can completely understand how it brought two big cities to a standstill. It all depends on what you are used to.

And then there is California dealing with summer like wildfires and a drought so unprecedented in modern times it is going to result in drastic actions. Water cut offs lead to water wars, even if it means in these modern times attorneys and not guns (I hope.) “Liquid Gold” as water was named hundreds of years ago in the arid southwest. I just hope this type of gold doesn’t rise to a thousand dollars an ounce.

Your fine staff at Blue Duck Weather has been methodical in reporting monthly water levels in the biggest of lakes in Arizona and the South West. We have seen for some time “the writing on the wall.” Lake Powell is at its lowest level since it began filling. Water rationing or ridiculously high water prices are on the way. And believe me they will not just affect California.

Enough New Year’s preaching. Before we get on to all the weather news that fits let us get the boring but necessary weather statistics out of the way.

A very cool average temperature on Land for the month of January at 52.06 degrees. (We will be longing for this in a few months!) Talking Trees and Antelope Hill did not have the usual twenty degree spread in temperature due to the elevation difference between the mountains and here. The average temperature was 43.32 degrees.

There was no rain for the month on The Land as well as Phoenix. Not a good start.

The lake levels are Mead at 48%, Pleasant at 71%, Powell at 41% and Roosevelt at 48%.

1-1- Blizzard Warning for Long Island and Albany, New York. Heavy snow in the Great Lakes with six inches on the ground. Six hundred flights cancelled in Chicago.

1-2- Winter Storm Hercules is a brute! New York declares a State of Emergency with approaching blizzard. Wind gusts up to 50 mph. International Falls 42 below zero this morning! First major winter storm is being called a “monster” affecting one hundred million in twenty states. “This is the big one.” Coastal flooding in Boston. Thirteen hundred miles of highways are littered with stalled trucks. Four inches of snow fell in Indianapolis in four hours.

A Russian research and “cruise “ship ice bound and stuck in Antarctica. Fifty-two scientists and tourists are on board.

1-3- Nine deaths are blamed in the North East on winter storm Hercules. One was a woman suffering from Alzheimer’s who froze to death when she wandered away from her rural New York home. JFK airport in New York closed this morning at six a.m. I-14 in New York and Long Island closed at midnight. Twenty inches of snow in Massachusetts, fourteen inches in Boston. Winter Wind Chill Warnings issued for 22 states. Cold predicted behind this storm not seen since 1980. Twenty-five below zero in Antigo, Wisconsin. All schools in Minnesota will be closed Monday.

1-4- What at least 25 states are experiencing is known as a “Polar Vortex”, literally a high level arctic hurricane. Forty three below zero in Bismarck, one below zero in Oklahoma City.

1-5- With the wind chill is forty below in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Minneapolis schools closed for the first time in seventeen years. Two train engines freeze on a track from Detroit to Chicago. Wind chill warnings posted from Montana to Alabama. Raw steak and hamburger left outside freeze solid in fifteen minutes demonstrating what exposure of skin to the cold will do. (I guess this is the opposite of frying an egg on the sidewalk like we demonstrate when it is over one hundred and fifteen degrees.

Schools in Atlanta, Georgia closed tomorrow. Eleven inches of snow in Nashville and the temperature dropped fifty degrees in twenty four hours. Every state except Hawaii will have freezing temperatures.

50-50 chance of water shortages in Arizona by 2015. Water rationing possible.

1-6- Seven of Phoenix’s hottest years have happened since 2000. “Heat island effect and climate change” the culprits.

One hundred and eighteen year old record shattered with five degrees in Central Park, New York. Thirty one below zero in Chicago with wind chill. 45 below zero near the U.S. and Canadian border. Minnesota is colder than Antarctica today. Nine below zero as far as south As Atlanta, Georgia. Trains headed for Chicago are delayed overnight. Blizzard Warning with Lake effect snow with 40mph winds causing three foot drifts.

Waves up to seventeen feet high slam Britain’s southwest coast of Land’s End.

Fatal avalanched near Vail, Colorado kills one.

1-7- This week’s arctic cold has brought the highest ice coverage in 20 years.

1-8- Arizona Game & Fish seize two young tigers from backyard in Phoenix and Gilbert. The tiger’s appear to be siblings owned by the same man. They have been transferred to Out of Africa Wildlife Park in Camp Verde, Arizona.

1-9- Five people killed in U.S. avalanches this winter.


1-10- The Southern Hemisphere is experiencing the hottest temperatures on record and temperatures in Australia 122 degrees. Since December 27th records set in 34 locations. 50,000 bats have been killed by heat. Heat stressed baby bats are being hand fed in the Australian Bat Clinic in Queensland.

Three hundred thousand people are ordered not to drink, bath or wash with tap water in West Virginia. A chemical spill in the Elk River has contaminated water supplies. FEMA on way with emergency water.

1-11- Just days after the Arctic blast warm air spawns thunderstorms and isolated tornados in the South East. Strong winds from Eastern Alabama to North Carolina. 86mph winds at Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina. 45,000 without power.

Charleston, West Virginia has declared a State of Emergency due to contaminated water. 787 complaints of nausea, sweating. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board sending teams to investigate.

1-12- Fewest lightning deaths in the U.S. on record for 2013. Twenty three fatalities with Florida and Arizona leading with four each. Over the past 30 years approx. 52 on average died each year. From 2006 to 2012 males accounted for 82% of the fatalities. (Tells you what dumb asses we are as we don’t have the sense to get out of the weather.)

1-13- A one hundred pound tortoise has been reunited with its previous owner after wandering away over a year ago. It was found thirty miles away from Casa Grande in Hidden, Valley Arizona. A resident there cared for it until its microchip was checked to find the original owner.

1-14- Shooting wild buffalo with vaccine laced “bio bullets” to prevent the spread of disease to livestock would be too ineffective and expensive to justify. The capture and slaughter of 2300 bison that migrated into Montana this last decade will continue. The disease is called brucellosis and causes pregnant cows to prematurely abort their young.

1-15- The blast of snow and frigid temperatures of January 5th through 8th have caused “Frost Quakes” known as cryoseisms, a natural phenomenon from a sudden deep freezing of the ground. They open from the surface and result in the freeze thaw cycles which break rock due to high water presence. They have been reported around Toronto, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. Witnesses report that they sound like a bomb blast.

Wildlife monitors have accused Myanmar of failing to protect elephants after finding 30 tusks and thousands of pieces of ivory for sale at a market near China. Myanmar has the second largest population of elephants in the world of about 6,000. Laws forbid trade but violations are rampant.

1-16- For the first time since the Clean Air Act went into effect in 1970 the dust levels in Phoenix are down to acceptable federal regulations. Dust has been cut by 5% each year between 2007 and 2013.

Out of control wildfire in Southern California. State of Emergency declared with hot, dry and windy conditions. 3700 homes evacuated near Glendora, California. The Cody Fire is zero percent contained. Three have been arrested for starting an illegal campfire. Two thousand acres have burned.


1-17- State wide Drought Emergency called in California with “summer like conditions”. The Cody fire is 30% contained with five homes and seventeen structures burned.

1-18- Twenty nine days without rain in Phoenix with a .55 departure from normal.

1-19- The Cody Fire has burned 1900 acres and is 61% contained.

1-20- The Cody Fire is 78% contained.
Due to a 1977 law prohibiting the sale of rats and mice has caused a Butte, Montana pet shop owner to quit selling them and a third of his business is gone after seventeen years. He has also quit selling snakes too because rodents are their favorite meal. Animal Control in December told him a child complained of being bitten by one of his rats.

The Polar Vortex returns! An emergency declared for next winter blast from the Upper Midwest to New England. Propane shortages to heat seven million homes certain.

One inch of snow fell on this day in Phoenix in 1933.

1-21- Eighty-one degree high record in Phoenix today, fifteen degrees above normal. The high on The Land was 72 degrees. (Heat island effect in Phoenix in the winter or shitty air and dirt trapping the heat down?)

Twenty-five hundred flights cancelled. Mountains of West Virginia receive six to twelve inches of snow. Bitter cold behind this storm. Federal government shuts down in D.C. State of Emergency declared in nine counties in New York and Long Island. North east Philadelphia gets ten inches of snow, two and a half inches at Reagan International Airport. A “Weather Bomb” is being predicted.

1-22- Yuma, Arizona sets an 82 degree record.
A woman in Papago Park in Scottsdale Arizona stuck in a cave all night after taking a sunset walk.

Thirty-three days in Flagstaff with no snow. The record is thirty nine days.

One half of the U.S. is under Freeze Winter Warnings. Schools are running out of snow days. Twenty below in Fargo, thirty six below in International Falls. Minneapolis schools closed with a wind chill of thirty eight below zero.
Winter storm alerts as far south as Rio Grande, Houston and San Antonio. All are expecting hard ice by tonight.

The expedition of 52 scientists and tourists set foot on dry land for the first time in three weeks since they were rescued from a ship trapped by sea ice. They made the final segment of their rescue journey on an Australian icebreaker. (Some are wondering who is going to foot the bill on the rescue operation that left other vessels trapped in the ice also.)

1-23- 58 degree record high low in Phoenix.

26 degrees in Lake Charles, Louisiana with light snow, sleet and freezing rain. Snow north of I-10 between Houston and San Antonio. Snow and whiteout conditions cause a 46s vehicle pileup on I-94 in Indiana killing three and injuring 22.

Twenty below in Chicago.

1-24- Twenty-five dead pilot whales found in southwest Florida. They came in at high tide and breached, all had empty stomachs and some were emaciated.

1-25- 19 degree low in North Carolina.

1-26- Blizzard conditions across the Dakotas with 54mph winds. Thirty three below in Bismarck.

The only road into Valdez, Alaska is blocked by an avalanche and flooding on the Lower River.

For the first time in one hundred years a new river dolphin species found in the Araguaia River in Brazil’s massive rain forest.

Rescue workers spend the night with an injured hiker in the Lost Dutchman State Park. A sixty-five year old woman fell and dislocated her shoulder. She was located at sundown but could not be airlifted until daybreak. The rescue workers stabilized her and kept her warm and hydrated.

1-27- January proving to be the coldest month this century in the North East. 50 below in the Great Lakes, 36 below in Minneapolis.

A crocodile apparently grabs and kills a twelve year old boy swimming with friends in a river in Australia. Officers are ordered shoot any croc over eight feet long in hoping of finding the boy’s remains. Another boy suffered severe bites to his arms fighting off the beast.

1-28- “Worst snow and ice in a generation threaten an unprepared South.” Snow predicted as far west as Austin, Texas to the Carolinas. This storm will effect fifty million people. Still to the north 24 below in Chicago, 18 below in Pittsburgh, 42 below on the Minnesota, Canadian border. The University of Minnesota shut down for the first time since 1978.

National Guard called to Alabama. Sections of I-10 closed in the south with three thousand flights cancelled or grounded.

And here in Arizona, 16 days in a row at seventy degrees or above in Phoenix.

1-29- Two and a half inches of snow in Atlanta. Children spend the night in schools. Traffic jams so bad that drivers left their vehicles and went to stores and churches to spend the night. Home Depot kept 14 stores open overnight.

Birmingham also hit hard. Thirty hour gridlock with 10,000 kids trapped in 16 communities. Twelve hundred vehicle accidents.” Paralyzed, Genuine Natural Disaster” as the National Guard helps.

Bolivia declares a National State of Emergency to deal with flooding that has killed 30 and left 26,000 out of homes.

And in Phoenix 40 days without rain. Flagstaff usually receive 20 inches of snow in January; so far none.

1-30- What led to snow chaos in Atlanta? Weather forecasts not accurate? State officials had plenty of warning. Storm warnings were issued two days before the storm. Miles of I-75 still have abandoned cars.

State of Emergency declared in California. For the first time in California history an “Exceptional Drought” warning has been issued. Snow pack in the Sierra Nevada’s is almost nonexistent. All people are urged to cut water use by 20%. Ten counties may run out of water in six weeks. January is normally the wettest month in California.

On this day in 1985 it was 66 below in Peter, Utah; the coldest temp ever recorded for the state.

“Urban sprawl, genetically modified crops and illegal logging” are blamed for an alarming decline in the number of monarch butterflies wintering in Mexico. The plunge had been so dramatic that the annual migration from the U.S. and Canada is in danger of disappearing for good.

BLM is looking for a shooter responsible for killing two wild adult burros. Officers believe the shooting took place about two in the afternoon in the Lake Pleasant herd management area. Burrow and wild horses have been protected under the Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burro Act of 1971.

Record high low of 58 degrees in Phoenix. 39 mph winds in Winslow, Arizona.
A Las Vegas man is claiming he has killed Big Foot in Texas and said he will be binging the legendary beast to Arizona to show it off.

1-31- The entire month of January has been at or above normal in Phoenix. Blowing Dust Advisory issued in Maricopa and Pinal counties. 52mph winds in Show Low and 49mph winds in Winslow. Flagstaff finally receives snow breaking a 31 day record of no snow.
Motorists left 2,029 cars on frozen, snow covered highways in Georgia from the recent ice storm. Most were picked up by yesterday.
California Water emergency getting worse. 25 million affected if reservoir water is cut off. Never before in history may “liquid gold” be cut off to 710,000 farmers and no rain in January, usually the wettest month.

Until next month when your cracked lips and blackened tongue are begging for water in California and you are begging for a warmer day in the northeast just remember, Pioneers took bullets. Settlers took land.

Your humble weather quack, the distinguished, honorable MR Blue Duck.