Lots of folks in Florida are watching Tropical Storm Fay, of course, and for obvious reasons - the potential for damage is great especially if Fay delivers a blow to the Tampa Bay area from the southwest. But as hydrologists in Florida have pointed out, also it’s been two or three years since the peninsula has received a good tropical storm dump, and that’s one of the main ways the Florida aquifer gets recharged.

I’m watching for similar reasons - well mostly for reasons of potential rainfall. But it’s developing that a strange combination of pressure systems developing in the west and east could cause Fay to stall over east Georgia for a period of several days, and so there’s a considerable flooding hazard should that happen. We’ll know more by Wednesday or Thursday.

Over an 85-year period the rainfall in our area due to tropical storms averages 2.6 inches per year (with a very large range, of course).

Here’s the rainfall I’ve estimated due to tropical storm remnants for the last few years. Since 2004, a banner year with 13.2 inches of rain due to tropical storms, we’ve had only one tropical storm with reasonably certainty of having had direct impact on rainfall. Parentheses mean it’s not clear to me that we could really attribute the rainfall to anything other than coincidence. And so it’s a double whammy that since 2006, at least, we’ve had a combination of both a decrease in normal rainfall and in contributions from tropical storms.

Data on tropical storm tracks and timing comes from Unisys.

TS (Year)	Rainfall (inches)
Bonnie(2004)	2.12
Charlie (2004)	0
Frances (2004)	3.86
Ivan (2004)	3.52
Jeanne (2004)	3.74
Cindy(2005)	4.12
Arlene (2005)	(0.95)
Alberto (2006)	(0.11)
Ernesto (2006)	(0.75)
Barry (2007)	(0.49)

Need rain?

A little fluff for today, to balance out the admitted lack of fluff which constitutes the small price, and yet imparts the surprisingly consequential reward for saving the planet . Anyone who does this knows what I’m talking about and if you don’t know what I’m talking about then you probably don’t do it.

Another plug for hanging your clothes out on the line, instead of stuffing them into a power-hungry dryer. Besides the 10 or 20 or 30% reduction in power usage (depending on how careless you are otherwise) you get a free therapy session, least that’s how I see it. Everything looks great on the weather maps until you’ve finished, and then little storms start popping up all over the place. Never fails. Hint - don’t take them in until the rain actually starts falling. You will be teased if you are premature, and the desperately needed rain will not fall. This is a serious power play between you and the weather. Your many power-hungry dryer-using neighbors will not benefit from your efforts. Once you’re satisfied that you’ve fooled the elements, then have an inside line with a ceiling fan to complete the chore. You are of course not using air conditioning, right?

You knew, of course, how cool Georgia is, but even I did not know that I was near the neck of the woods where freezers with gorilla suits inside prowl about, awaiting discovery by wily disabled police officers and their clever friends. You can discover by googling their names just how cleverly they can outfox those naysay reporters who might try to convince us that this is Bigfoot in north Georgia, rather than simply a gorilla suit in a freezer. Perhaps *this* is the source of the mystery sounds!

Another cool thing is Tropical Storm Faye, now over Haiti, projected for the time being to interact considerably with Cuba, and to perhaps upgrade to Hurricane One status as it zooms up the west coast of Florida and smack into Tallahassee on Wednesday. The good news is that however disorganized it is it may be bring tropical storm rain into Athens on Thursday, and wouldn’t that be special? It would - it’s been several years now since we’ve had any significant amount of rain dumped on us by a tropical storm.

This tiny butterfly was fearless, and intent on sipping on a couple of drops of moisture on my CELL PHONE. It perplexed me (and maybe I’m being optimistic by thinking that I’ve solved it). Its insistence on keeping its wings together fooled me into looking at Hairstreaks (despite the lack of “hairs”), and even Blues (though we don’t have many of those). Its antennae, though hooked and clubbed, aren’t particularly so, and so Grass Skippers was the last thing I thought about, despite the chunky body and big round eyes.

Once I thought “skippers” and heaved a sigh of impending premonition (if that’s not redundant) at the vast numbers of Bugguide photos to go through, it turned out to be much easier than I deserved to find a match. At first I thought it might be Cobweb Skipper, Hesperia metea, one of the Branded Skippers. But now it looks much more like a Lace-winged Roadside-Skipper, Amblyscirtes aesculapius.

The species detail from Butterflies and Moths of North America shows a range in the south and east quadrant of the US, so that works well with the wing patterns. Not a lot known about this species, apparently, although the larvae apparently feed on Cane, Arundinaria, and we do have Arundinaria gigantea, Giant Cane, around here. The adults may favor Elephant’s Foot, now just in flower, and that’s one of those secret Asteraceae that is peculiar in so many ways, not the least of which is that it really really likes our area. This skipper may be in decline as habitat is destroyed, according to the B&M of NA link, so maybe we’re doing the right things here.

Wow. This has gotten long, and I’m hesitant to do this for two unrelated reasons, but I’m going to go ahead and post it anyway.

A few days ago I mentioned that I had, with Glenn’s help for previous years, completed the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) reports for our fire department, 2003-2008(current). I threatened to report on the statistics that I derived from an examination of an excel listing that I made with my own two hands and I always make good on my threats. There are, actually, some insights to be realized from this kind of thing.

To review - ours is a small department that covers an area of about 36 square miles. From the late 90s to the early 00s it was down to two or three dedicated individuals and virtually no one else. Phyllis Jackson, the fire chief through 2006, determined to pull the fire department back together and in 2003 called a meeting of everyone who had ever been a part of it. This turned out to be a very successful strategy, and everything that follows is a result of that. In 2005 she was instrumental in obtaining two major grants that paid for new turnout gear, and for a new engine, a tanker that carries 2500 gallons of water.

Our particular area is populated by an interesting mix of folks - a portion consists of professionals who commute into Athens for their jobs, and the other portion consists of residents whose families might have been here for generations. We have members from both these groups and yet we always have this feeling that both groups have a great deal more potential in actively participating. That’s an issue these statistics don’t speak to.

Now we generally expect that there will be somewhere around 4-6 individuals who can be relied upon to do all the things that are necessary to answer a fire call: communicate with 911, be capable of driving an engine, be able to accomplish the necessary things at the scene, and so forth. I think the statistics below generally reflect this previously gut feeling.

The analysis below is only of fire calls - a similar one could be done of training and I intend to do that. And then with those two analyses there’s a third set of statistics that can be generated when training and fire calls are linked together.

The data for 2003-2005 are not so reliable as to particulars - there were few names of firefighters attending calls, who came in what vehicle - and so I’ve excluded them from the figures below. Actually 2005 was getting there in terms of accuracy but there are enough holes to where I shouldn’t include them.

Here’s a plot of 16 firefighters and their attendance at fire calls from 2006, 2007, and what we’ve so far experienced in 2008. I’m not going to name these individuals, except to point out a few things about those I’ve indicated by numbers.

Individual 1 sets the standard for everyone, and that actually precedes these data back to 2003.



Individuals 2 and 3 have improved significantly in this current year, but there’s a difference that we should be worried about. #3 attends our weekly training meetings, and #2 does not. This has a number of repercussions that have to do with risk and effectiveness.

#3 generally knows what to do and how to keep from getting in the way of others. He knows how to keep from getting hurt, and is able to predict what is needed from beginning to end. From the point of view of a safety officer, #3 is generally capable in low frequency moderate risk operations - things that may come up that we don’t have a lot of practice with, that may be additionally dangerous. He knows how to communicate with his fellow firefighters, which is pretty damned important.

#2, on the other hand, is likely to be safe only in the realm of high frequency low risk operations, that is things we do all the time and aren’t very dangerous. He hasn’t trained and is vague on communicating with his fellows. He’s enthusiastic, but doesn’t always know just what to do or what needs to be done, and that’s simply because he hasn’t been attending training.

(One of the things Glenn and I learned as a result of safety officer training was this concept of risk versus frequency. I won’t say much about it here except to note that volunteer fire departments are much more of a safety risk because of the low frequency events - those seldom-encountered instances that can snatch you baldheaded in an instant. Volunteers simply don’t encounter them as often as professional fire departments do, whether in practice or in training, and are less familiar with handling them. We try to address this in training, but really, the best we can do is train once a week. And not even that - folks who don’t attend training don’t even get that familiarity, which is why I mention it. Professional fire departments train every day and have many, many more fire calls than we do.)

#4, with a moderately good attendence record, “took a sabbatical” in 2008. #5 moved away in Jan 2008, but both are interesting for their 50% attendence record prior to that. They both had full time jobs and so it’s difficult to get that percentage up because a fire call can come anytime. And yet despite full time jobs they still managed to attend half our fire calls up through 2007. That’s in contrast to Individuals 1 through 3 above who are generally available most times.

The individuals occupying the low portion of the graph are a mixed bag. Some are simply unreliable - not many, but some. Some also have full time jobs, and additionally may live much farther away - we have several very competent, very hardworking folks who live up to 15 miles away. Sometimes their pagers don’t go off because of distance. In 2008 at least two had jobs outside the state this summer, and have not been around, though they would have attended fire calls had they been here.

This second plot concerns the number of privately owned vehicles (POV) that are used to get to a fire, compared to the number of firefighters who arrive at a scene. As you might expect for a volunteer fire department the ratio of POV to firefighters is extremely high. This graph seems busy, because I’ve included all our calls, with numbers of firefighters and numbers of POVs.

You need only concentrate on the red linear trend.

I find this important for two reasons. First, having had safety officer training I know that for volunteer fire departments the most accidents are encountered while getting to the fire in privately owned vehicles. Second, there’s the ecological aspect - Glenn and I live only two miles from the station but with one exception everyone else lives farther away. It means that four miles is absolutely the shortest distance one drives, and it’s probably more like ten or more miles for any given fire call, since most of our volunteers will go straight to the fire rather than bother dropping by the fire station to see if the three of us who drive need any help.



And so that red line shows that the ratio of POVs to firefighters has gone up at considerably in the last four years. We really need to think about that. It’s a safety issue primarily, and it could be tweaked by encouraging members to go to the fire station first and then carpooling to a scene.

(I’ve made some inroads here that may cut down on POV driving as well as ensuring that more firefighters stop by the station first. It’s really hard to get firefighters who don’t drive an engine to stop by the station first - they’re excited and want to get to the fire, despite the fact that most are useless without an engine to be attached to. That those of us who really could use some help in closing up and locking up, thereby saving significant time, doesn’t make much impression. I’ve begun sending out a calendar with the times that the three closest drivers canNOT be available to drive. This notifies others that they MUST come by the fire station first, in order to drive an engine, for those who can drive. It actually seems to be working.)

Here are three tables that offer us a little more information that may help us, or at least give us some insights as to what’s been going on since 2003.

The first tabulates absolute numbers, and mostly just shows the number of calls and amount of time per year that we spend doing this stuff.

I suspect our nominal calls per year would be somewhere around 20. 2003 was exceptional, for reasons I’ll get into later. 2008 has also been exceptional - we really have had fewer calls this year, and not for the reasons that marked 2003-2005. 2007, and to a lesser extent 2006, were very busy years with a lot of hours spent.

Year	Total Calls	Cancelled	Total FF	Total Hours	FF x Hours
2003	6	3	17	3.9	66
2004	15	4	63	21.8	1370
2005	15	3	62	10.7	662
2006	19	3	102	26.8	2729
2007	21	3	97	39.5	3827
2008 (so far)	7	1	35	9.2	323

This second table deals with averages per year. The first column, firefighters per call, documents the increase in the average number of firefighters responding. The second column shows an increase in the number of hours spent on fire calls, and it’s a little more mysterious but I think has to do with the fact that we were increasingly being called outside of our Wolfskin District, and I’ll have more to say about that. The third column is one with numbers that we like to keep low. It shows the wear and tear on firefighters. The more firefighters attend a call, the lower the numbers and the less individuals are working and stressing themselves out, since work is apportioned better. The good news is that those numbers remain relatively stable, but they are only averages over a year. The bad news is that when you look at certain individual firecalls those numbers can go from 0.3 to 2 or 3, when you have only a couple of three firefighters at a scene lasting six or eight hours, and for the firefighters involved the exhaustion is very evident.

Year	FFs per call	Hours per call	hours per FF per call
2003	2.8	0.6	0.2
2004	4.2	1.5	0.3
2005	4.1	0.7	0.2
2006	5.4	1.4	0.3
2007	4.6	1.9	0.4
2008 (so far)	5.0	1.3	0.3

This final table kind of pulls everything together and places our own selfish interests as a department in a new light. It’s the number of calls, absolutely and in percentage, that we were called to within our Wolfskin District. The good news is that in the last three years those percentages have gone down. Since we’re *always* called out for Wolfskin, a decreasing percentage means, in conjunction with the increased numbers of total calls, that we are being called out more and more to help in fires beyond our district.

Year	Total Calls	Wolfskin Calls	Wolfskin Portion
2003	6	3	0.50
2004	15	11	0.73
2005	15	12	0.80
2006	19	10	0.53
2007	21	9	0.43
2008 (so far)	7	3	0.43

Here’s why that matters. The high percentages up through 2005 indicate that we were basically only called when there was a fire in our own district. There’s a reason for that - the years including and prior to 2003 indicated to 911 and surrounding districts that we were not reliable (no shame to our eggs - there were perfectly good reasons for this). Starting in 2006 we began getting more calls actively made to us that referred to fires outside the district. That’s a clear indication that 911 and surrounding fire districts began actively asking for our help in fires to which we have automatic aid and mutual aid, and that’s very very good.

And that requires a little more explanation. Wolfskin has automatic aid understanding with three adjoining districts. That means that if there is a structure fire in any of those areas we are automatically called by 911. Structure fires are priority one.

We have mutual aid with five other fire districts, including a part of Clarke County and a part of Oconee County. That means that we may be called at those districts' discretion. (Actually we may be called even outside of those five districts, if it’s a biggun.) And so what we see in the above table is that there are more and more such automatic aid and mutual aid calls to us, from 2006 onward. And that’s a fine thing to recognize - a numerical indicator that we are recognized as valuable.

So what have I gained from this, and has anyone else gained anything? To take the latter point first, I think our department understands that things are looking up.

I’m hoping that we’ll consolidate POVs to some extent, by encouraging more firefighters to converge on the station than going directly to the fire. It’s probably a lost cause but I’m still hopeful.

Mostly though - and I go back to the very first figure above - I think I see some pattern in those individual attendance rates.

The folks who attend the most are the ones who have a specific job to do. There are exceptions - the young and boistrous, full of enthusiasm and willing to tackle everything.

But for those who are not, I think it’s intimidating in an operation like this to simply expect everyone to do everything. Challenge each firefighter with one or a few things specific and constrained that they know they can do and get good at. And then they’re much more likely to go to a fire, and to participate in training, perhaps. As they gain confidence then they go to a fire with an increasing number of skills that they’re able to do.

A slow-moving wet airmass from the southwest, triggered by a cold front from the northwest, produced gently falling rain after midnight. It amounted here to 0.43 inches at 7AM CoCoRaHS time. It’s our first August rain this year, and should lower us out of the Level 5 fire danger we’ve been living with for the last week.

I don’t think it’s any secret that I’m particularly taken with vines, nor that one of my favorites is Climbing Hydrangea, Decumaria barbara. This led to the naming of the floodplain area Woodvamp Alley.

But I’ve only gotten fleeting glimpses of the reproductive structures, here, for instance, when I spied some of the birdcage-like fruits only 15 feet off the ground. The problem is that the vine seems to produce flowers only after it has climbed to unreachable heights.

An event last March, the falling of a loblolly pine down at the creek, brought Decumaria close to us, although I didn’t realize it at the time. The vine had established itself in the tops of the pine, and when it fell the pine fell across the creek in such a way that the vine remained undamaged, attached, and still in the air, five feet off the ground.

Early last June it flowered, the first I’ve been able to see:



The flowers are not particularly eyecatching or attractive, but they are good enough to have resulted in a nice cluster of developing fruits by early August:



The longitudinal sutures you can just make out along the length of the fruit will split upon drying to produce the japanese lantern effect later on. The seeds are rather amorphously shaped, longer than wide, and about 1-2 mm long, so they slip out easily in between the bars of the cage:



This species, native to the southeast, is remarkably free of “pests”. The lepidopteran host plants database contains no entries of larvae feeding on Decumaria in the US. The only mention of pests I could find was feral pigs uprooting vines. That’s not a particular problem around here but I wouldn’t be too surprised to find that armadillos, which appeared here a couple of years ago and are now quite abundant, would fulfill this role.

It’s probably worth noting that it is possible to find websites the deplore this plant as invasive.