September 2012 Weather News!
Welcome to another exciting edition of Blue Duck Weather. I would like to take a moment to show gratitude to the brilliance of the Lovely Mrs. Blue Duck. It is she (not me of course) who set up this fantastic weather blog! To date there have been 5,119 page views of this incredible blog worldwide! From the United States to the Netherlands and Russia folks around the world are discovering the real truth in weather journalism. Please pass the torch and share Blue Duck Weather with your friends, enemies, uncles and aunts. Post a comment and I promise you will receive a reply from your brilliant Editor in Chief of this fine publication. Thank you so much for your support and readership.
In this exciting edition of Blue Duck Weather you will read the following:
Eighty three thousand dollars to treat a woman for scorpion stings in Chandler, Arizona, the long lasting effects and damage of even a “minor” hurricane, thousands of dead, huge swamp rats wash onto shore after Issac, worldwide health alert for visitors this summer at Yosemite National Park, west Sedona, Arizona bear encounter, the actual place the hottest temperature on the planet was recorded and when, the last roaring gasp of Arizona’s monsoon season (not by the official calendar date), where we can get enough energy to power the world, BP makes the news again with more oil turning up on Gulf Coast beaches, a little known fact about the distinction between hurricanes and typhoons, a wildfire churning up radiation from old mines, bizarre fire tornadoes, a half billion dollar weather tracking satellite fails for “no reason”, a man who jumps into a tiger cage to “become one” with the beast, a town of one hundred thousand in Texas about to impose water restrictions so severe they will ban the use of fresh water to fill swimming pools and more news you never knew or cared about.
The average temperature on The Land in September was 81.68 degrees and it was twelve degrees cooler at the end of the month than the beginning. Hallelujah! The average temperature at Talking Trees and Antelope Hill was 60.89 degrees. Summer is ending!
The Land received 1.47” of rain in September. We have had enough rain this monsoon season to sprout real, live dense patches of grass despite the heat. For the last several years the desert has looked like a moonscape except for the ever present mesquite, palo verde and creosote. For the year The Land has received 5.24” of rain, most of it during this monsoon. To date Phoenix has received 3.36” of rain.
You will read more in this edition about the effects of the monsoon runoff and the surrounding lakes but it ain’t pretty for my beloved Roosevelt Lake; 51% full, Pleasant is 55% full, Mead 50% and Powell 58%. Now let’s get on with the Weather News!
9-1- Residents of St. Tammany Parish north of New Orleans on Lake Pontchartrain are ordered today to evacuate immediately. According to authorities the failure of a lock along a canal is “imminent.” Three hundred and sixty thousand people are still without power from Issac.
Drought stricken Missouri and Illinois receive some much needed rain relief from the remnants of Issac.
Most of Montana has had a dry, scorched summer. There are ten uncontained fires burning in the state. The 19 Mile wildfire has destroyed a dozen homes.
This is Billings hottest summer on record with 47 days with temperatures above ninety degrees. The normal is 29.
Three people in Idaho are electrocuted in a ditch trying to rescue a dog.
Some Cape Cod beaches are closed this Labor Day weekend due to shark sightings.
9-3- Two rescued on Camelback Mountain in Phoenix by helicopter due to dehydration.
Wildfires in Nebraska and South Dakota triple in size from three days ago.
4,000 acres on fire in the Angelis National Forest. Twelve thousand people, including campers for the holiday weekend, are forced to evacuate.
Six days after Issac first hit 125,000 still without power in Louisiana. 2500 still in shelters. 65,000 people have applied for Disaster relief.
9-4- One inch of rain last night in a brief amount of time in Apache Junction, Arizona. Flooding in San Carlos and Kearny.
9-5- St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix has sent 41,000 pounds of emergency food and baby formula to a New Orleans food bank. This was done despite supplies down 50% compared with last year.
La Place, Louisiana is blaming fortified New Orleans levees for pushing flood waters into outlying areas. 17,000 homes are damaged from Issac.
Heavy rain, up to three inches hit’s the East Coast from Issac.
Tropical Storm Michael, continues to grow in the Atlantic.
Leslie, the 6th named storm forms in the Atlantic. It is 465 miles south west of Bermuda.
Twenty thousand dead swamp rats wash up on the beaches of Mississippi. The surge of water from Issac drowned them. They are a giant rodent introduced from South Africa. Most are glad to see the giant fuckers dead! (Mrs. Blueduck would like to know why anyone would want to see them alive and why would you introduce giant swamp rats to our country?)
9-6- At approximately five p.m. this afternoon .60’’ of rain fell on The Land in about twenty minutes. As your official weather spotter it was my duty to report it to the National Weather Service. Their guidelines are to report anything over one half inch of rain in thirty minutes. Needless to say it flooded with water making the desert look like a lake and the streets turned into torrential rain runoff. I can always tell when it is “no man’s land” and for how long. Until the lights of cars crawling their way down the road, hours after flooding, do I know it is time to give the Lovely Mrs. Blue Duck the “green light” to come on home when she is caught north of this mess.
There was also a fifteen degree drop in temperature in fifteen minutes.
Thirteenth Dust Storm Warning in Phoenix this summer. A wall of dirt twenty miles wide overtakes the Valley like a crawling halocaust. Flights from Sky Harbor conduct “ground stops” and are not allowed to take off.
Rain helps with the 4180 acre wildfire in the San Gabriel Mountains north east of Los Angeles.
9-7- A wild weather morning in the east Valley and Tucson, Arizona! Three inches of rain in Mesa at Broadway and Higley. Sixty five nursing home patients had to be moved out of flooded rooms. One school cancels football game. A fifty two year old woman was swept to her death in a flooded wash in Tucson. Her husband managed to escaped the car with a broken pelvis and was rescued alive.
2.91 inches of rain recorded at Sky Harbor Airport for the monsoon season so far, above the normal average of 2.77”.
Last night’s “massive dust cloud billows over Phoenix skies” makes national news.
A family hiking in west Sedona encounters an “aggressive” black bear and her cubs within twenty feet. The woman was terrified and used “moutain lion roars’’ to scare the poor bears away.
A world wide alert is issued for visitors to Yosemite National Park this summer. 29,000 people are at risk of contracting the Hanti Virus and two have died so far. The infections have been located to park cabins and tents.
9-8- High dew points in Arizona have persisted lately and according to one meteorologist they may persist through the winter. “Our dew points have stayed elevated as we are transitioning into El Nino condition could mean a wetter winter.”
Hurricane Leslie downgraded to a tropical storm in the Atlantic on a path toward Bermuda.
A rare tornado swept out of the ocean hit’s a beach front neighborhood in New York City today causing damage.
Two adults and an infant died in their mobile home after it was blown into a ravine in Nowata County, Oklahoma. Another man was killed when straight line winds flipped his semi onto a cement barrier trapping him inside. 17,790 people without power.
A cussing cockatoo violates noise law in Warwick, Rhode Island. Neighbors complain that the bird constantly cusses them out. But the neighbor’s just happen to be the woman who owns the cockatoo’s ex husband and his girl friend.
9-9- Flooding kills 132 folks in Nigeria and has displaced 36,331 people since July. (And we think our monsoon season gets rough.)
9-10- Sixty power poles down from high winds in Yuma, Arizona thousands without power.
There are 110 fires burning in central Washington state.
Idaho’s 408 square mile Mustang Complex fires are still burning after being started by lightning in July. Just yesterday hundreds evacuated.
9-11- NEVER FORGET THIS FATEFUL DATE!
A cool high of 77 degrees at The Land today with .64 inches of rain in the last twenty four hours. The total this month is 1.47 inches. Let’s try and kill the fucking drought we have been in for twelve years.
So far 2012 is the hottest on record for the United States.
Two women arrested in Pima County, Arizona flood rescues. Both, in separate incidents, are charged with reckless driving with children on board into flooded washes. They are also being charged for child abuse.
A new study claims there is enough energy in the wind to satisfy the world’s energy needs.
9-12- Flash flooding in Vegas with 45 homes damaged in the south east part of the town. 1.75 inches was recorded downtown, the wettest day on record.
The California deserts, Utah and Navajo Land near Tuba City also hit hard. Highway 260 near Tuba City is closed. One hundred and fifty miles south east of Los Angeles in Coachella Valley one storm dumped 5.51’’ of rain in one night, more than their annual average rainfall.
A dike breaches in Santa Clara, Utah and thirty homes are evacuated.
BP wants to “aggressively” clean up oil exposed on Louisianna beaches by Hurricane Issac. This is remnants of buried oil from the massive well blow on April 20th, 2010. ( They have been spending millions of dollars on ad campaings on National news welcoming all of us to the Gulf Coast and how pristine it is. Someone once told me “the Devil is in the details.” Well, let me tell you the Devil is buried deep in the water and sand polluting every living thing is it exposed to.)
A nineteen year old fisherman in Sitka, Alaska spends the night in a four foot by four foot plastic fish bin after his boat was hit by waves, overturned and sank. A Coast Guard helicopter rescued him twenty four hours after his “chilly” ordeal.
Leslie moves out to sea after pounding Newfoundland with wind and rain. Thousands are without power and all flights at the island’s main airport are cancelled.
9-13- The Hopi Tribe in Tuba City, Arizona declare a State of Emergency from flooding.
Nearly one hundred years later, California’s Death Valley has been recognized as having the hottest all time record high on the planet. It was 134 degrees on July 10th, 1913.
National health officials are convinced this is the worst year on record for West Nile virus deaths in the U.S. since it hit in 1999. 1405 serious illnesses and 118 deaths have been reported across the country, mainly in Texas.
As the tourist season winds down eight people have died visiting the Grand Canyon this year. Most deaths are accidental, including falls, heat strokes and drowning. Suicides are also recorded every year. Last year there were twenty one fatalities, the highest in ten years.
9-14- Typhoon Sanba heading for Okinawa and South Korea with 145 mph winds, equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane. Earlier this week 178 mph winds made it a Super Typhoon. (Interesting fact: Named storms west of the International dateline in the Pacific north west ocean are called typhoons, not hurricanes.)
Highway 264 east of Tuba City, Arizona has been reopened after flooding washed over a bluff and washed out six feet of dirt below the road closing it.
Tropical Storm Kristy causing life threatening surf and rip currents off the coast of southern Baja, California and south west Mexico. (Surfers, grab your boards!)
9-15- Typhoon Sanba unleashes torrential rains in Manila and Okinawa with streets under six feet of water.
The eighth hurricane of the season, Nadine is born in the Atlantic east of Bermuda.
9-17- Typhoon Sanba pounds North and South Korea with heavy rain. One dead, 170 homeless and 67,000 without power.
9-18- Tornado alerts issued for the East Coast. Winds and rain have left 4,000 without power on Long Island, 15,000 in Connecticut and 28,000 in Washington and Baltimore. This same weather system caused flooding in parts of Tennessee when five inches of rain fell resulting in eight water rescues.
9-19- Ocean temperatures off the North East U.S. coasts reach record highs for the first half of 2012. According to NOAA the average water temperature from North Carolina to Canada is 50.50.
A Tornado Watch is issued for most of Maryland and a foot of rain has fallen in some areas.
Arctic sea ice reaches new low levels breaking a record set three weeks ago. “We are now in unchartered territory”, said the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The record low of 1.32 million square miles and nearly half the average extent from 1979 to 2010.
And wouldn’t this sight make you shit your pants?; fire torandoes in Australia have swirling winds that mix with wildfires taking flames thousands of feet into the sky.
9-20- Wind blown chunks of flaming bark forcing new evacuations in Washington wildfires. The evacuations happen as the burning bark falls on Mission Ridge, blown in by the Table Mountain Complex fires six miles away. One fire incident commander called the combination of conditions so late in September unprecedented in twenty eight years of fire fighting. 30,000 acres have burned with 4% containment.
Deadly storm kills five and injures 81 in Paraguay, South Africa.
9-21- The massive wildfire in Idaho has burned through three old mining sites containing “traces” of radioactive thorium and uranium. Environmental authorities plan to take air samples in North Folk. “This is new ground for us, but we are dealing with the issue at this time.” The risk of human exposure stems from the potential for radioactive material consumed by fire to become airborne. (Mix this with the fire tornadoes in Australia and you have Hell at your door!)
A large cargo of marble stonework that sank to the bottom of Poland’s Vistula River four centuries ago has appeared after drought and record low water levels.
9-22- First day or autumn and the high on the Land was 102 degrees with a dew point of 49 degrees. (Feel the “cool” in the breeze?)
The recent monsoon and seasonal rains have reduced the drought conditions in Arizona. 32% of the state is in severe or extreme conditions compared to 94% a month ago. But our desert lakes have not recovered. Roosevelt is down to 48% capacity from nearly full two years ago. Bartlett has shrunk to 50% down from 92% and Horseshoe Lake is dry.
On August 30th the Associated Press published a photo of a soaked, bearded man being helped by two rescuers in Slidell, Florida after he nearly drowned in flooding from Hurricane Isaac. The homeless man’s identity was not known. Because of the photo the man has been reunited with his daughters that he has not seen in 16 years.
A visitor at the Bronx Zoo in New York jumped from an elevated monorail and landed in an exhibit were he was mauled by a four hundred pound tiger. His injuries are serious.
9-23- The man mauled by a tiger at the Bronx Zoo said he wanted “to be one” with the four hundred pound animal. He claimed despite serious bites and punctures he got to “pet” the tiger. (This dude should be locked up for his own safety.)
Tropical Storm Miriam forms over the eastern Pacific 640 miles southwest of the southern tip of Baja, California.
9-24- A brush fire near San Diego destroys and damages 30 homes. The fire began yesterday in a densely populated area and has burned 2,000 acres. It is 10% contained.
A record 154 water spouts this year recorded over the Great Lakes. The old record is 94 set in 2003. The cause is a hot summer with very warm water.
Floods in India have displaced one million people and left 33 dead.
An avalanche has killed nine climbers on a Himalayan peak in Nepal with six missing.
Hurricane Miriam is a Category 3 storm.
9-25- Smoke from the San Diego fires settles over the Phoenix area.
Miriam weakens to a Category 1 hurricane.
A one half billion dollar satellite that tracks worldwide weather has failed for no apparent reason. Future forecasts may be less accurate. (?)
9-26- Tornadoes and golf ball size hail pound towns in southern Illinois. Three confirmed tornadoes.
A police officer shoots a pit bull in a Mesa, Arizona Target store. Employees had asked the dog’s owner to leave because he was sitting in the middle of an aisle with his dog for “quite some time.” When cops tried to speak to the dog’s owner he ignored them and was speaking on the phone asking his grandmother to pray with him. The dog attacked and bit an officer after an attempt to arrest the man. The man was tazed, the pooch was killed.
Ninety four thousand people in San Angelo, Texas are running out of water due to the prolonged drought. The city says it only has enough water to last one more year. On October 16th the city will enforce the highest levels of emergency measures; banning water of lawns, golf courses, gardens, close car washes and ban fresh water to be used to fill swimming pools. ( I recall in the early seventies Fountain Hills, Arizona banned the construction and filling of pools due to severe water shortages in the town. Ironic since the Verde River is only a few miles away.)
Residents in Globe, Arizona are urged to boil water for drinking due to the presence of E-Coli bacteria.
Arizona Game and Fish is on the look out for “serial” elk poachers in northern Arizona. It seems the bastard’s only goal is trophy antlers. Witnesses are urge to call “Silent Witness.”
9-29- Seven killed and hundreds evacuated after flash floods roared in Malaga, Spain.
9-30- The last “official” date heralding the end of the monsoon season in Arizona. (But due to the brilliant record keeping of your Editor in Chief the last blast was 9-11 or the day after, depending where you lived in this state.)
The ever important song of the month (and I hope you add all the songs we share with you to your vast song libraries) is Backwater Blues by the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band.
And the quote of the month may seem dark and mysterious but it is eloquent and beautiful in its own right. “Here in the last minutes, the very end of the world, someone’s tightening a screw thinner than an eyelash, someone with slim wrists is straightening flowers…….’’
James Richardson
Until next month always remember Pioneers took bullets. Settlers took Land.
The Distinguished, Honorable, PHD MR. Blue Duck.
