November (Fashionably Late) Blue Duck Weather News 2013

November 2013 Weather News!

On November 7th, reportedly the strongest storm to ever hit landfall on this planet bore down on the Philippines. Super Typhoon Haiyan had sustained winds of 195mph with some gusts reported at 235mph! This storm equaled a Category 5 hurricane producing waves fifty feet high. At one point the storm was five hundred miles wide.

Your fine staff at Blue Duck Weather don’t usually report the aftermath of a storm, the cleanup or rebuilding efforts. It sometimes takes years. But in this sobering issue of Blue Duck Weather you will read, despite the best international intentions, food and relief can be delivered but getting it where it is needed is quite another challenge. Lawlessness becomes law. Disease becomes rampant as all systems break down and fresh water more valuable than gold, as valuable as life itself. The damage of this massive storm and the aftermath shows how a society can break down in a matter of days.

Features in this amazing issue of Blue Duck Weather are rubber ducks inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame!, one hundred dead elk on a ranch and what happened?, a boy found with a chicken on his neck, a fire fact for this year that may surprise you, the difference in Thanksgiving turkey weights twenty four years ago and now!,

The average temperature on the Land for November was 60.95 degrees. The average for Talking Trees and Antelope Hill was 42.02 degrees.

An amazing rain month in just a few days brought the yearly total to 7.51”, putting us on target for an average annual rainfall. Read it about it more in this issue of Blue Duck Weather.


11-1- A lightning strike may have caused a pipeline to rupture that spilled 20,000 barrels of oil in a North Dakota wheat field.

Ninety two African migrants die of thirst after their trucks broke down in the middle of the Sahara Desert before reaching Nigeria.

11-3- A Swedish man climbing and skiing on New Zealand’s tallest mountain has fallen two thousand feet to his death.

11-4- Tropical Storm Sonia moving quickly toward the southern tip of Baja. “Life threatening flash floods feared.”

40mph winds topple trees on top of cars at a dealership in Peoria, Arizona.

An Indiana man hunting deer fell sixteen feet from a tree stand last Saturday and is paralyzed from the chest down. Doctors feared he would never be able to breathe on his own again. Family wanted the man to be brought out of sedation and told of his condition. They wanted him to be able to decide for himself if he wanted to live or die. The (brave) man decided to die with his family and friends beside him once the breathing tube had been removed.

11-7- Super Typhoon Haiyan headed straight for the Philippines with 195 mph sustained winds “gusting” to 230mph. The storm is five hundred miles wide producing waves fifty feet high.

11-8 Haiyan is said to be the most powerful storm on the planet ever to hit land. Twelve million people are in its path. This monster is big enough to cover most of the United States!

11-9- Twelve hundred feared dead in the Philippines and all systems are down- water, power,travel and communciations.

And this just in from the Lovely Mrs. Blue Duck: Hunters find one hundred dead elk on a 75,000 acre ranch north of Las Vegas, New Mexico. Officials are puzzled as natural causes including poison are ruled out. Further testing found “pond scum” or a neurotoxin produced by algae in warm, standing water. When animals dring they can be dead in minutes to hours from respiratory arrest. (If I saw this in the wilds hunting I would just hang my head and cry.)

Bighorn sheep will be reintroduced to the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, Arizona. About thirty from the Kofa Mountains north east of Yuma will be captured and relocated. The last heard that lived in the Catalinas died out in the 90s. Suspected causes of the demise were urban development, predation by mountain lions, disease and human impact from higing and bringing dogs into the area. (just shoot the dogs!)

RUBBER DUCKS INDUCTED INTO THE NATIONAL TOY HALL OF FAME. ONLY 53 TOYS SHARE THIS HONOR!

11-10- Front Page Headlines: 10,000 Feared Dead…..horror, devastation in Philippines. “Storm surges high as trees.” Deaths mostly dy drowning and collapsed buildings. The city of Tacloban the hardest hit and all structures are damaged or destroyed. The airport there is a “muddy wasteland of debris with crumpled tin roofs and upturned cars.” The airport’s tower windows are shattered and helicopters flying in and out at the start of relief operations. The city’s two largest malls, grocery stores and gas stations are destroyed or looted. The winds were like a “747 flying just above my roof.” One reporter said the storm surge was like the Tsunami in Japan. A half million people are displaced.

11-11- “The World is Responding”- the Philippines is in a “National State of Calamity.”

11-12- Water born disease and the lack of fresh drinking water now the big concern in the Philippines. The death toll has now been downgraded.

Season’s first snow in the Midwest and Northeast.

A long time employee of an animal sanctuary killed by multiple bites from a cougar. The 36 year old died of “devastating injuries to back and neck.” She was inside the mountain lion enclosure when she was attacked.

11-13- “Desparate”- 73 nations ready to bring relief to the Philippines. Cebu City is foodless, waterless and lawless.

11-14- Mobs overrun a rice warehouse in Tacloban. A wall collapsed and eight are dead as crowd forced its way past armed guards and took off with sacks of grain. Grocery stores and gas stations will not be re-stocked because of fear of looting. Massive amounts of food and water on nearby islands but it can’t be moved in large amounts because there is no fuel for trucks or roads cleared. The UN reports the death toll is 4500 and will rise. (Hunger makes good people do desparate things, especially for their families. I’m sure killing for food is not out of the question as the days drag on .)

11-15-“Brutally hot and humid” One week later 3600 dead and 1200 missing. Two million are displaced. There is no clean drinking water for thousands.

11-16- Tornadoes slam central Illinois today in the community of East Peoria. 53 million in ten states are at significant risk of thunderstorms and tornadoes. 50 homes destroyed in Brockport, Illinois leaving four dead. 89 unconfirmed tornadoes reported today.

In the Philippines two million are homeless, 3800 dead, 1250 hurt and one thousand missing from Super Cyclone Hayian. There is a mass exodus from Talcoban. Now the grave concern is Measles, Typhoid and Polio outbreaks.

11-18- Hardest hit from tornaodes yesterday Washington, Illinois with eight folks killed. Two EF4 tornadoes confirmed in Illinois never seen before. These types of storms usually happen in the spring and summer. “The whole neighborhood is gone” said one resident of Washington. These fast moving storms affected twelve states in one day.

Philippine president says he will camp in Talcoban until he sees more aid coming in. (Good man, get out there in the human misery!)

And this one is from the Lovely Mrs. BlueDuck: Some forty days into Obamacare and 269 people have signed up in New Hampshire. During the same time period in that state 281 moose permits were issued.

“A social service supervisor and a nurse face child abuse charges after an 11 year old North Carolina boy was found handcuffed to a porch, shivering in frigid temperatures, with a dead chicken around his neck! (?).

11-20- Flooding rains kill 16 in Sardinia, Italy. 17.3 inches of rain in twenty four hours, half the amount normally received in a year. The mayor says the ferocity is a “water bomb” with bridges down and water ten feet deep.

Flooding in Vietnam kills 41, 80,000 forced from homes and 400,000 homes affected.

11-21- From his secluded location in Colorado RyDuck reports a high of 60 degrees yesterday with 14 degrees this morning!

And in The Valley of The Sun there is a one hundred percent chance of rain for tomorrow.

11-22- 1.65 inches of rain on The Land. 1.3 inches of rain recorded at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, shattering a forty year old record of .05 inches of rain in 1973. The White Mountains received seven inches of snow and the Snowbowl above Flagstaff received 10-16 inches.

11-23- 2.44 inches of rain on The Land in just over forty eight hours, a qaurter of our annual rainfall!

Mount Charleston in Nevada receives fifteen inches of snow with more water content in this storm than all of last year for the mountain!

The death toll in the Philippines is 4919 poor souls and 1611 still missing.

11-24- Four feet of snow in the Four Corners region!

The U.S. government for the first time has enforced environmental laws protecting wildlife from wind energy facilities. They have won a million dollar settlement from a power company that pleaded guilty to killing 14 eagles and 149 other birds at wind farms in Wyoming.

11-26- The number of wildfires this year hit a thirty year low in the United States despite the most tragedies in eighty years. 43,000 fires reported across the country so far this year, well below the average 68,000 fires. One contributing factor was a very active monsoon pattern in the Southwest that brought moderate to heavy rainfall. The July through September period was the wettest in the Four Corners region in 119 years.

11-27- An EF2 tornado has been confirmed from last night’s storms in North Carolina. Three people injured and condo damage in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina.

Heavy snow in New York and Michigan. 34mph winds expected in New York City tomorrow. It may affect the Macy Day Parade floats and balloons.

The average weight of a Thanksgiving turkey in 1989 was 19 pounds. Now it is 30 pounds. (What does that say about us?, just look around you.) (Mrs. Duck adds....google why and you might start raising your own birds. As for 30 pounds...uh, never seen one.)

The state of Arizona is cracking down on poaching of rare reptiles. Gila monsters get can get 1500 dollars on the black market. Poachers come from as far away as Australia and Germany. The monsoon season is a favorite time for poachers. “All of that water hitting the ground get the animals moving. People drive at night and using headlights and flashlights to spot reptiles on the move.” There are also 13 species of rattlesnakes indigenous to Arizona.

11-28- A reward is offered for the killing of a spike elk out of season along Highway 87 in the Coconino National Forest in Arizona. The carcass was found intact and was left to waste. (Especially at a time when the meat could have been donated to a food bank if legally taken.)

11-29- An animal handler is recovering in a Sydney, Australia hospital after being attacked by a Bengal tiger at a zoo owned by the family of late wildlife expert Steve Irwin. The tiger dragged the handler into a pool and bit his shoulders and neck during a show two days ago. The man was wearing a poncho and the tiger may have mistaken him for its “favorite chew toy.”

11-30- A six month old Pit bull is found in an apartment rubble nine days after the tornado in Washington, Illinois. The pooch is hungry and scratched but will be fine.

Well, my faithful readers, that wraps up another mind blowing edition of Blue Duck Weather; a relatively inactive month of weather reporting limited to a few pages instead of the novels I usually write. The Lovely Mrs. Blue Duck will be happy, and I am sure you will be too!

This month’s weather song is “Tornado” by Little Big Town.

Until next month when the wind howls out your name remember Pioneers took bullets. Settlers took land.


The Distinquished, honorable Professor MR Blue Duck.










































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































November 2013 Weather News!


On November 7th, reportedly the strongest storm to ever hit landfall on this planet bore down on the Philippines. Super Typhoon Haiyan had sustained winds of 195mph with some gusts reported at 235mph! This storm equaled a Category 5 hurricane producing waves fifty feet high. At one point the storm was five hundred miles wide.

Your fine staff at Blue Duck Weather don’t usually report the aftermath of a storm, the cleanup or rebuilding efforts. It sometimes takes years. But in this sobering issue of Blue Duck Weather you will read, despite the best international intentions, food and relief can be delivered but getting it where it is needed is quite another challenge. Lawlessness becomes law. Disease becomes rampant as all systems break down and fresh water more valuable than gold, as valuable as life itself. The damage of this massive storm and the aftermath shows how a society can break down in a matter of days.

Features in this amazing issue of Blue Duck Weather are rubber ducks inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame!, one hundred dead elk on a ranch and what happened?, a boy found with a chicken on his neck, a fire fact for this year that may surprise you, the difference in Thanksgiving turkey weights twenty four years ago and now!,

The average temperature on the Land for November was 60.95 degrees. The average for Talking Trees and Antelope Hill was 42.02 degrees.

An amazing rain month in just a few days brought the yearly total to 7.51”, putting us on target for an average annual rainfall. Read it about it more in this issue of Blue Duck Weather.


11-1- A lightning strike may have caused a pipeline to rupture that spilled 20,000 barrels of oil in a North Dakota wheat field.

Ninety two African migrants die of thirst after their trucks broke down in the middle of the Sahara Desert before reaching Nigeria.

11-3- A Swedish man climbing and skiing on New Zealand’s tallest mountain has fallen two thousand feet to his death.

11-4- Tropical Storm Sonia moving quickly toward the southern tip of Baja. “Life threatening flash floods feared.”

40mph winds topple trees on top of cars at a dealership in Peoria, Arizona.

An Indiana man hunting deer fell sixteen feet from a tree stand last Saturday and is paralyzed from the chest down. Doctors feared he would never be able to breathe on his own again. Family wanted the man to be brought out of sedation and told of his condition. They wanted him to be able to decide for himself if he wanted to live or die. The (brave) man decided to die with his family and friends beside him once the breathing tube had been removed.

11-7- Super Typhoon Haiyan headed straight for the Philippines with 195 mph sustained winds “gusting” to 230mph. The storm is five hundred miles wide producing waves fifty feet high.

11-8 Haiyan is said to be the most powerful storm on the planet ever to hit land. Twelve million people are in its path. This monster is big enough to cover most of the United States!

11-9- Twelve hundred feared dead in the Philippines and all systems are down- water, power,travel and communciations.

And this just in from the Lovely Mrs. Blue Duck: Hunters find one hundred dead elk on a 75,000 acre ranch north of Las Vegas, New Mexico. Officials are puzzled as natural causes including poison are ruled out. Further testing found “pond scum” or a neurotoxin produced by algae in warm, standing water. When animals dring they can be dead in minutes to hours from respiratory arrest. (If I saw this in the wilds hunting I would just hang my head and cry.)

Bighorn sheep will be reintroduced to the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, Arizona. About thirty from the Kofa Mountains north east of Yuma will be captured and relocated. The last heard that lived in the Catalinas died out in the 90s. Suspected causes of the demise were urban development, predation by mountain lions, disease and human impact from higing and bringing dogs into the area. (just shoot the dogs!)

RUBBER DUCKS INDUCTED INTO THE NATIONAL TOY HALL OF FAME. ONLY 53 TOYS SHARE THIS HONOR!

11-10- Front Page Headlines: 10,000 Feared Dead…..horror, devastation in Philippines. “Storm surges high as trees.” Deaths mostly dy drowning and collapsed buildings. The city of Tacloban the hardest hit and all structures are damaged or destroyed. The airport there is a “muddy wasteland of debris with crumpled tin roofs and upturned cars.” The airport’s tower windows are shattered and helicopters flying in and out at the start of relief operations. The city’s two largest malls, grocery stores and gas stations are destroyed or looted. The winds were like a “747 flying just above my roof.” One reporter said the storm surge was like the Tsunami in Japan. A half million people are displaced.

11-11- “The World is Responding”- the Philippines is in a “National State of Calamity.”

11-12- Water born disease and the lack of fresh drinking water now the big concern in the Philippines. The death toll has now been downgraded.

Season’s first snow in the Midwest and Northeast.

A long time employee of an animal sanctuary killed by multiple bites from a cougar. The 36 year old died of “devastating injuries to back and neck.” She was inside the mountain lion enclosure when she was attacked.

11-13- “Desparate”- 73 nations ready to bring relief to the Philippines. Cebu City is foodless, waterless and lawless.

11-14- Mobs overrun a rice warehouse in Tacloban. A wall collapsed and eight are dead as crowd forced its way past armed guards and took off with sacks of grain. Grocery stores and gas stations will not be re-stocked because of fear of looting. Massive amounts of food and water on nearby islands but it can’t be moved in large amounts because there is no fuel for trucks or roads cleared. The UN reports the death toll is 4500 and will rise. (Hunger makes good people do desparate things, especially for their families. I’m sure killing for food is not out of the question as the days drag on .)

11-15-“Brutally hot and humid” One week later 3600 dead and 1200 missing. Two million are displaced. There is no clean drinking water for thousands.

11-16- Tornadoes slam central Illinois today in the community of East Peoria. 53 million in ten states are at significant risk of thunderstorms and tornadoes. 50 homes destroyed in Brockport, Illinois leaving four dead. 89 unconfirmed tornadoes reported today.

In the Philippines two million are homeless, 3800 dead, 1250 hurt and one thousand missing from Super Cyclone Hayian. There is a mass exodus from Talcoban. Now the grave concern is Measles, Typhoid and Polio outbreaks.

11-18- Hardest hit from tornaodes yesterday Washington, Illinois with eight folks killed. Two EF4 tornadoes confirmed in Illinois never seen before. These types of storms usually happen in the spring and summer. “The whole neighborhood is gone” said one resident of Washington. These fast moving storms affected twelve states in one day.

Philippine president says he will camp in Talcoban until he sees more aid coming in. (Good man, get out there in the human misery!)

And this one is from the Lovely Mrs. BlueDuck: Some forty days into Obamacare and 269 people have signed up in New Hampshire. During the same time period in that state 281 moose permits were issued.

“A social service supervisor and a nurse face child abuse charges after an 11 year old North Carolina boy was found handcuffed to a porch, shivering in frigid temperatures, with a dead chicken around his neck! (?).

11-20- Flooding rains kill 16 in Sardinia, Italy. 17.3 inches of rain in twenty four hours, half the amount normally received in a year. The mayor says the ferocity is a “water bomb” with bridges down and water ten feet deep.

Flooding in Vietnam kills 41, 80,000 forced from homes and 400,000 homes affected.

11-21- From his secluded location in Colorado RyDuck reports a high of 60 degrees yesterday with 14 degrees this morning!

And in The Valley of The Sun there is a one hundred percent chance of rain for tomorrow.

11-22- 1.65 inches of rain on The Land. 1.3 inches of rain recorded at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, shattering a forty year old record of .05 inches of rain in 1973. The White Mountains received seven inches of snow and the Snowbowl above Flagstaff received 10-16 inches.

11-23- 2.44 inches of rain on The Land in just over forty eight hours, a qaurter of our annual rainfall!

Mount Charleston in Nevada receives fifteen inches of snow with more water content in this storm than all of last year for the mountain!

The death toll in the Philippines is 4919 poor souls and 1611 still missing.

11-24- Four feet of snow in the Four Corners region!

The U.S. government for the first time has enforced environmental laws protecting wildlife from wind energy facilities. They have won a million dollar settlement from a power company that pleaded guilty to killing 14 eagles and 149 other birds at wind farms in Wyoming.

11-26- The number of wildfires this year hit a thirty year low in the United States despite the most tragedies in eighty years. 43,000 fires reported across the country so far this year, well below the average 68,000 fires. One contributing factor was a very active monsoon pattern in the Southwest that brought moderate to heavy rainfall. The July through September period was the wettest in the Four Corners region in 119 years.

11-27- An EF2 tornado has been confirmed from last night’s storms in North Carolina. Three people injured and condo damage in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina.

Heavy snow in New York and Michigan. 34mph winds expected in New York City tomorrow. It may affect the Macy Day Parade floats and balloons.

The average weight of a Thanksgiving turkey in 1989 was 19 pounds. Now it is 30 pounds. (What does that say about us?, just look around you.)

The state of Arizona is cracking down on poaching of rare reptiles. Gila monsters get can get 1500 dollars on the black market. Poachers come from as far away as Australia and Germany. The monsoon season is a favorite time for poachers. “All of that water hitting the ground get the animals moving. People drive at night and using headlights and flashlights to spot reptiles on the move.” There are also 13 species of rattlesnakes indigenous to Arizona.

11-28- A reward is offered for the killing of a spike elk out of season along Highway 87 in the Coconino National Forest in Arizona. The carcass was found intact and was left to waste. (Especially at a time when the meat could have been donated to a food bank if legally taken.)

11-29- An animal handler is recovering in a Sydney, Australia hospital after being attacked by a Bengal tiger at a zoo owned by the family of late wildlife expert Steve Irwin. The tiger dragged the handler into a pool and bit his shoulders and neck during a show two days ago. The man was wearing a poncho and the tiger may have mistaken him for its “favorite chew toy.”

11-30- A six month old Pit bull is found in an apartment rubble nine days after the tornado in Washington, Illinois. The pooch is hungry and scratched but will be fine.

Well, my faithful readers, that wraps up another mind blowing edition of Blue Duck Weather; a relatively inactive month of weather reporting limited to a few pages instead of the novels I usually write. The Lovely Mrs. Blue Duck will be happy, and I am sure you will be too!

This month’s weather song is “Tornado” by Little Big Town.

Until next month when the wind howls out your name remember Pioneers took bullets. Settlers took land.


The Distinquished, honorable Professor MR Blue Duck.