Seriously, how the hell was your week?

Overt Pert Alert

As I was coming home from a very early Wednesday morning session at 8AM, tiny motes were being blown across College Station Road by a fierce wind, lit by sun rising beneath a large dark cloud. I can probably be forgiven for wondering what grass was now liberating its progeny - it was, after all, in the area of a very nice naturalized planting - but probably not for taking another thirty seconds to realize it was a snow shower.

It lasted through my drive home, about thirty minutes and over 14 miles. I don’t think any flake survived impact but it was quite a nice sight.

The rain has been good to us this month - we’ve had 4.88 inches over five well-spaced 1-2 day rain periods, and that’s 0.35 inches above normal for February. Here’s Goulding Creek, six months apart.

With the caveat that “the drought” and “the effects of the drought” are two different things, even during the greatest effects of the drought, the greenery is startling compared to the same area a few days ago. While there may appear to be water here, and there is water, it was still, thin, stagnant, and only a trickle of any flow. And that was a relatively wet part of the creek.

August 23 2007

February 24 2008

Aug 28 2007

Feb 24 2008

Here’s one of the several markers I put in place last summer. I specifically chose a threshold position for this one, on the verge of being dry and covered with water, and yet which I knew was well within the creek bed. We’ve gone from zero inches of water, to about 5 cm by the end of December, and are now at 12.5 cm. That’s still low, but at least you can now hear the creek as you approach it!

So February joins December 2007 as delivering a surplus of rain. Not a great surplus, but enough to deliver the appearance of normalcy. And that’s the danger - things look back to normal enough to forget that we haven’t otherwise hit a normal month of rain since October 2006 (and that only because it’s our driest month, and therefore easy to master).

Once increased warmth raises vapor pressure and the trees wake up and begin that evapotranspiration stuff, then we’ll see that this is something of an illusion. We don’t, after all, have snow melt around here!

I couldn’t resist mentioning this very fine new hole observed a few days ago. It’s about six by twelve inches, so it’s a fairly large one. It’s been dug next to a modest sweetgum, into and around the taproot system.


Looks like a nice place to live! Hope they don’t have a subprime!

This morning a comment was made on an earlier post of April 20 2007 that presented two salamanders. Am I glad that I don’t use that silly facility that closes out comments after a certain period of time? You bet. Am I glad that I’m familiar with Kurt Vonnegut’s favorite query; kindly, gentle, and relentless as you please: if this isn’t nice, then what is? Oh yes.

And I don’t want that comment to get lost, since Wally identified the animals that we were never able to come to clear conclusions about, in our deliberations at the time. So here’s the comment, and many thanks to Wally:

Ok, so the black salamander isn’t Plethodon teyahalee, but it’s a member of the Plethodon glutinosus complex. They’re incredibly common, and they used to be called just Plethodon glutinosus until Richard Highton split them up into somewhere around 15 different species based on genetics. They all look identical, and you can only tell them apart by running them through a DNA sequencer. P. teyahalee lives way up in the mountains, and this is definitely not it.

The reddish one is a Red Salamander (Pseudotriton ruber). They’re fairly common, too, but completely unrelated to Plethodon glutinosus. They live entirely in streams whereas glutinosus is always terrestrial. Finding both of them means you’ve got some good, clean forest and water, though!!!

I’m actually quite pleased that these are common, as it underscores future discoveries of different species. And as easily found bioindicators for two different environments, aquatic and terrestrial, they’re indispensible. I’ll be watching for them in the next few months to see (in particular) how they survived the dry conditions since the beginning of last summer.

And a reposting of the photos:

Slimy Salamander, Plethodon glutinosus complex:


Red Salamander, Pseudotriton ruber:

Last night, around between 7 and 8pm, I set up the camera to attempt photographs of passing satellites. I’d used fresh elements to identify some likely candidates, and determined a convenient star where they’d be passing at a particular time.

Here’s Vanguard 2, launched in 1959 and TLE Number 11 out of more than 30,000 currently listed. It was 680 kilometers away and in the frame below is moving to the upper left.

The jiggly line at the beginning (mid right) is probably due to camera shake damping down after I pressed the shutter release.


Notice that it’s not possible to get a greater exposure of the satellite trail by increasing exposure time. I was using 5 seconds exposure, but the important aspect was that I had the ISO as sensitive as possible, 1600, and the aperture fully opened to f/4.

The satellite “trail” is not exhaust or anything like that - it’s the satellite itself being imaged continuously as it moves across the field. And that’s why increasing exposure time won’t help.

Here’s a rocket booster still up there since 1999, an SL-8 R/B. This time it’s moving to the lower left, and again there’s a shutter release jiggle. in this photo, and in the one above, I opened the shutter when the satellite was already in the field of view, and that’s why it seems to appear out of nowhere.



Naturally I had to get a few images of several small sections of the sky. And these are small - only 10-15 deg across, about the size of your fist when held up to the sky at arm’s length.

Three pairs of photos, each with a map and the following photo, which is itself linked to a larger one:


Mars was at the zenith, and is currently at the confluence of three constellations: Taurus, Gemini, and Orion. There was still a little light in the sky, and that probably explains the bluer cast of the smaller stars.



This is a lovely region in Taurus, the Hyades cluster. The bright central star is Aldebaran, or Alpha Tauri. It forms the upper left tip of a lopside “V”. All the stars here are very luminous and large, and most are about 160 light years away. Since they’re so close in the sky as well, it means that they’re also very close to each other, and must present a brilliant night view to anyone located in the cluster itself.



Finally, the region around Theta Aurigae, which was the site for one of the passing satellites and turned out to be a very nice starfield as well.

This is one of those odd posts that I write to myself, and then hem and haw over whether I should actually post it. It seems that people get awfully huffy over things like this, but what the hell.

It’s odd to think that when I was 2 years old there was only one object placed in orbit by humans, and now there are arguably hundreds of thousands, if you count debris. Satellites and satellite-tracking has been an ongoing interest of mine for many years now. The exercise challenges my above average but still comparatively rather mediocre mathematical and programming skills, but it is rewarding to be able to look up with a pair of binoculars and see the fruits of success passing overhead.

To start with, there are now many sophistocated satellite tracking programs, but to use them you require an input of what is called a two (or three) line element: a TLE, for short. This information contains the inclination, arguments of periapsis and right ascension, mean motion, eccentricity, and other numbers that allow calculation of the satellite’s position. It’s all just analytical geometry and basic physics.

Those TLEs, and there are tens of thousands of them, are updated on a daily basis and available through Space Track, which took over from the Orbital Information Group (OIG) a few years ago. You do have to apply and register for a login, and there are rules for usage of the information you gain access to. I’m pretty sure I’m not breaking any of those rules here, for the consequences sound even more terrifying than a letter from the IRS!

I should disclaim that for a couple of years around 2000 I was on the SeeSat-L mailing list, and contributed a number of my own nefarious observations. Other unrelated demands on my time caused me to unsubscribe, but I maintained my interest and since then I recently re-subscribed. This group of amateur (and I use that word in its most literal sense - a lover of whatever it is) satellite observers has been in the news recently, and is simultaneously admired and deplored¹ for its activities.

On Wednesday night, coincident with totality of eclipse of the moon by the earth, the US Navy shot down a spy satellite that had failed soon after launch in mid-December 2006. While it may have been news to the vast majority a week ago, the failure of the satellite, USA 193, was noted by Reuters in January of 2007, a month after launch. The SeeSat-L group had already over a year ago noted oddities in the orbit that implied failure, and the prediction of decay by March 2008 was made here, well over a year ago. While Space Track does not publish military satellite information, the SeeSat-L observers do take observations and keep track of those, hence: ¹ .

Out of deference to sensibilities I won’t post the image of USA 193’s orbit at the time of its destruction around 10:30pm EST. But it was over the southwest of Hawaii at the time and its orbit took it northeastward over Prince George in in British Columbia, Canada a few minutes later, where some of the re-entering fragments were apparently observed. You can be sure that if we hadn’t been under cloudy skies that I would have been out watching for re-entries as the track of the former satellite took it over us at 2AM a few hours later. And now that skies are clear, I’ll be taking a look as the last orbital elements present the opportunity at 1:30AM on Sunday morning.

I should also note that the SeeSat-L observers predicted the launch of the missile to destroy USA 193 two days earlier, on Feb 18. The US military issued, as it is required to do, a NOTAM, Notification to Airmen (sic), to avoid a very large area southwest of Hawaii. The path of USA 193 coincided with the timing of this NOTAM, and was evidence that the takeout was planned for that window. And as it turned out, SeeSat-L were right on the button.

The aforementioned NPR report is quite good in its summary of the situation, which included a protest by China and Russia. China declared that the US was presenting a double standard since the US had protested China’s destruction of one of its satellites in January of 2007. Let’s take a closer look at that, armed as we are with all this information.

China’s Feng Yun satellite was an old weather satellite, launched in 1999 and by 2007 essentially defunct. The motivation for China’s destruction of this satellite was apparently to test anti-satellite measures. The satellite was in orbit with a closest approach of 800 kilometers above the earth, and so posed no danger because of possible reentry. (The USA 193 satellite was 250 kilometers above the earth, uncontrolled, contained a frozen hydrazine fuel supply (at least), and so at least theoretically posed that potential danger.) Just so you know, the International Space Station is generally situated about 340 kilometers altitude.

Certainly the destruction of either satellite impelled fragments both into higher and lower orbits. But the already low orbit of USA 193 meant that most fragments de-orbited. The higher orbit of Feng Yun meant that the majority of those fragments, numbered probably in the tens of thousands, are still in orbit. Here’s a depiction of at least some of the fragments, numbering over two thousand over a year later, as of early this morning:


The above figure is perhaps less alarming because it only shows the many fragments of what used to be a single satellite. The orbital tracks show a much more honest depiction of the potential danger to other orbiting satellites, including ISS (the red areas are those in the shadow of the earth).


We probably won’t know the tracks of the USA 193 fragments, since Space Track almost certainly won’t publish them (uh, how are fragments a military secret?). It’s probably fair to say that quite a good number will not only stay in orbit, but will in fact be propelled by the explosion into a higher orbit. The Pentagon cheerfully proclaimed that the fragments were no larger than the size of footballs. Well, my friend, when you’re the International Space Station, for instance, and a fragment the size of a football, or even smaller, and made of metal rather than pigskin, AND travelling at a relative velocity of five or six kilometers per second hits you, I suppose you know it. So in that respect the Pentagon is being disingenuous, banking as it is on the perception that a football is not very dangerous.

Ultimately the question boils down to - was it necessary? Disregarding the entertainment and promotional values, and ignoring perforce the relative lack of information on payload because this is a military satellite and such information is not to be forthcoming, it’s hard to say. Certainly the media had fun with this - it wasn’t quite as hysterical as Skylab was decades ago, but they do the best they can. The already low orbit says that the consequences are not likely to pose the danger by collision of other satellites as China’s destruction of a harmless satellite much higher in orbit. But as for the hydrazine danger, the power supply that we cannot know much about, all that’s a matter of opinion.

¹The SeeSat-L group consists of members who enjoy the challenge of observing satellites. Basically they’re (we’re) old farts who sit out at night in lawn chairs regardless of the cold with a stopwatch and a star map. Later they (we) go inside to talk to our computers. There are those who might see this as pathetic, but the New York Times isn’t interviewing them, right?

Many enjoy the additional challenge of noting the times and positions in the sky of satellites about which we are not told and are not supposed to know anything about. They translate these into orbital elements. There are folks who may not like this, though they know precious little about it, and it certainly annoys the military, but a good case is made here that the annoyance is misplaced. Besides that no one, even here, has succeeded in outlawing looking at the stars, worrying about this is, at worst, a tempest in a teapot. At best, the observers are so astute that (as I’ve documented) they can provide conclusions about safety considerations that others are not able to come to. It strikes me that if the SeeSat-L group had not been following this satellite for the last year it would have been *awfully* tempting for the military simply to have not said a word about it.

And how’s your weather?

Here, rain started yesterday around noon, fell all afternoon and last night, and will continue through tonight and into Saturday morning. It’s the first time in a long time that I can remember something other than Thermally Convected Thunderstorms, or The Front Moves Through It, both of which offer only a short patter of rain. This is a satisfactorily cool, long and pronounced several days of constant yet gentle precipitation. Already we’ve had 1.5 inches. A tour of Goulding Creek seems to be in our future.

Still, a reminder, in case you forgot:



All that blue across the equatorial Pacific east of Australia tells us that a La Niña is present.



Although the NOAA Summary, from which these figures were captured, has told us repeatedly over the last six months that conditions were developing and deepening, it’s only in the last month that the bottom row of numbers turned blue. That’s because there have to be five in a row at or below -0.5 before a La Niña is actually declared. So suddenly it’s official - we’ve been in a La Niña since late last summer.



The effect of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle is seen worldwide, but NOAA only treats the US here in its depiction of expected departures from normal precipitation and temperature.



And that’s why we in the south hate La Niña. Even though we can’t really explain last summer’s extraodinary heat and drought that way, the promise of more of it through Summer 2008 is daunting. It’s hard to view February as hot and dry but our average highs this month have so far been over 8 degF above normal. Interestingly the lows so far have been only 2.4 degF above normal, likely because of a preponderance of fair, heat-leaking skies at night. And we’ve had several days of Class 5 fire weather, extreme fire danger.

I hardly need tell anyone in most of the Western Hemisphere that the night of February 20 provided us with a very nice total eclipse of the moon, assuming, of course, that your skies were clear. We made it by the hair of our chinny chin chins.

By 9PM (EST) when I emerged from work, the umbra of the earth’s shadow had already taken a bite out of the lower left of the moon. I used the CELLPHONE to call Glenn and remind him, and enjoyed the drive home.

The temperatures were cool, 45 degF, and there were light clouds in the sky, portending the possibility of several days of rain, a phenomenon we haven’t seen in a year, but mostly they didn’t obscure the only total lunar eclipse we’ll see until late 2010. I set up the camera on a tripod and fielded a call from sister Susan, who was watching the eclipse from Tallahassee. I must say that I love my sister’s agile mind and her notice of these sorts of things. I am *such* a good influence . And she is too.

About 9:40PM, most of the moon was occluded by the umbra, with a brilliant sector still remaining in penumbra-diminished sunlight. I had to close down the aperture fully for this shot, and with a 5 second exposure still had an overexposed glare from the lit portion of the moon.


At 10:15 the moon was totally, though lopsidedly, eclipsed. By this time its dimness required that I open up the aperture somewhat, still with the same 5 second exposure.

The red hues are typical of a total lunar eclipse, and this one was red indeed. The light reflecting back from the earth that lights the eclipsed moon is deficient in blues, which have been scattered by the earth’s atmosphere, and so to our eyes the red-rich light is what survives reflection back to us.


I pulled back on the telephoto to get a much more exposed shot of the sky field around the moon. Saturn is at the lower left, and the bright star above the moon is Regulus, Alpha Leonis. The other stars are labelled in the linked image.


Skymap Pro has a number of nice ancillary features, including the ability to project the earth’s shadow onto the sky. This shows the situation around 10:15PM, soon after total eclipse commenced. The moon is a yellow circle within the dark gray of the umbra, and the light gray of the penumbra surrounds that. From our vantage point in Georgia, the moon more or less rolled around the bottom of the umbra and then out of it.


A nice apparition! Eclipses happen whether humans want them to or not, and I like the idea of millions of people enjoying the same such thing at the same time that I did.

Just a few images of a red-tailed hawk caught a couple of days ago during a walk down to Goulding Creek. These are more of the results of Experiments with Photographing Birds Under Nonideal Conditions than anything else!


I wish our resident birds weren’t so shy. We see the hawks frequently, but always at a distance. I think I’d flushed this one from a hunting perch nearby and it was just wheeling about a bit overhead before taking off for more isolation.

If I had been looking in this area in the late fall I might have found these emerging fresh, but now they’re mature and overwintering:


They’re the fruiting bodies, and dramatically large and hard they are, of Sweet Knot, Globifomes graveolens, aka Polyporus graveolens. This particular set is growing on a dead Sweetgum stub, and indeed it is listed in various places as a wood rot of Sweetgums, among other trees.


There isn’t a huge amount of information on the internets (and some of it is referenced as the understandable but incorrect spelling of “globiformes”, including a Wikipedia entry). Fortunately my Audubon Mushrooms book does have an entry.

It’s a polypore, and therefore a member of that group we see most typically as “shelf fungi.” The range seems to be eastern half of the US: New York to Alabama and Midwest. Here it seems to be just a saprobe, feeding off the dead tree stub, but it’s also a disease-causing fungus of living trees so maybe that’s how the tree died.

I’ll have to watch these on into the year to see if there are any changes, or fresh emergences.

Thanks for yesterday’s suggestions, which choices included our choice of the WVFD logo, #1. This differed from 2 and 3 only in the font and word placement, and in A and B only in the words and moon appearance.

#1 was the original letterhead logo that former Chief Phyllis Jackson and her husband Jeff came up with years ago. There was probably some sentiment for it for that reason, but some did like a more ferocious presentation. Everyone thought N and O were just a little too cute, and M looked like it was burning up little people, which was probably not the best idea to push, under the circumstances. So it was the old running wolf with the broken back left leg that made it.

I was ambivalent about the lettering font, but am happy with the choice. The references to Oglethorpe Fire Station 4 have to do with a future (someday) merging of the 14 Oglethorpe County VFDs into a single entity. In that event we’d be (as we are now) Station 4, but would retain our Wolfskin name. Some of the VFDs here are already incorporating this future into their logos, but we figured that in that someday future it was a hit or miss as to whether our choice today would conform anyway.

It was one of our newer members, Brian, who took matters in hand in the last month. He had the decals properly formatted, and then printed up. He was determined to have at least the tanker done by last Thursday’s business meeting so he drove down to Cumming to pick up the logos and he and I spent Thursday afternoon on them, completing the business 30 minutes early.


The entire logo came on three decals that had to be positioned carefully. They’re considerably reflective!


With two trucks and two doors, that makes four complete decals. Notice that Brian also had the foresight to realize that one of the logos on each truck had to be a mirror image of the other, otherwise one door would have the wolf running away! It was just about dark by the time we finished the tanker.


On Friday afternoon we completed the pumper, whose doors are shaped a little oddly compared to the tanker. Not to but mention the margarita green paint color, which made the color selection difficult. That green, btw, wasn’t some arbitrary choice but rather an alternative emergency vehicle alert that has been considered because it doesn’t quite distract passersby as much as red does. At least that’s what we’re told.


It was late afternoon with a declining but still bright sun. Nonetheless we had to have a good reflective photo of the new logo. Boots and logos by Brian!


The knocker is leant to us by Forestry, as all the County brush trucks are, so we didn’t feel like we could deface it.

On this Valentine’s Day, and a happy one to everyone, of course, a post updating everyone on the goings-on at Wolfskin Volunteer Fire Department.

Over the 15 years Glenn and I have been associated with WVFD, we’ve had various fire trucks come and go. But in the last couple of years three vehicles have settled in to become our well-used and generally reliable apparatus. There’s the super tanker, of course, our newest acquisition. And the Margaritaville pumper, the unfortunately painted gift from Oconee County, which had the North Oconee VFD logo on it for the longest time. And then there’s the knocker, our brush truck for wildland fires.

The problem is that we’ve never had our own logo on any of these vehicles, something presented on the driver and passenger doors that addresses our very own WVFD. It’s been an increasingly appreciated downer, and so it was decided several months ago that something should be done. Glenn came up with some logo possibilities, and I present them here for your evaluation and selection.



I realized that Glenn had missed some opportunities that would make any of our 13 fellow Oglethorpe County VFDs drool with envy, and so add them here. Unfortunately, none of them made the cut:



(To be honest, we’ve already made our selection, and it’s now on the doors of two of the fire trucks. I’ll present those tomorrow. Perhaps we should ask that you choose the ones that you hate the most abhorrently! Then we can all have a good laugh if that’s the one we picked.)

A few photos from the last few days, addressing the important issue of tree cavities and holes. The attractive trio on the left, including the relatively fresh one at the bottom, were found on a Black Walnut, Juglans nigra, on the floodplain at Goulding Creek.

A dramatic series of very large holes on a Loblolly Pine, Pinus taeda, just upland of the Kat Sematary. Surely these must have been made by a determined Pileated Woodpecker.


This hole, in an ailing large Shagbark Hickory, Carya ovata, has long captured my attention. I was almost certain that I could spot something in it from the ground, but apparently it’s just the wood grain inside.


A very nicely crafted hole in a Sourwood, Oxydendrum arboreum.


A varmint, headed in the right direction.

I surprised several turkey vultures. Cathartes aura, yesterday morning on what turned out to be a 3-hour very slow walk. They were congregated, about 9AM, in a group of white oaks across the creek from me at the top of the far ridge a couple hundred feet away. Two flew immediately but the third stuck around and went through vulture ablutions:


Walk this way, please.

Georgia and Missouri rule! But what happened to Alabama?

Introduction

This is a US-centric post, and apologies to those outside our increasingly bizarre borders, but hopefully not so much of a political rant, just a set of observations. Conclusions at the bottom. OK. Rant at the bottom.

NOTE: If you use these figures, please download them to your own server, DON’T hotlink to them. Otherwise you’re gonna get a nasty antihotlink image instead.

Materials and Methods

Data were obtained for the primary elections for the years 2000, 2004, and 2008 through CNN. CNN did not have total registered voters for 2000, and I used the US Census Data to supplement that. CNN’s 2004 primary data did not include Illinois and Alabama, not sure why that would be. Of course there were no Republican primaries in 2004. If you don’t know why that is, please don’t grace us with your ignorant comments, for you will have been so busted.

I limited the analysis to a choice among the states voting in the primaries on a single day, Super Tuesday, Feb 5 2008, in order to minimize the influences of varying primary election dates. I limited the choices among those states to seven states based mainly on their conducting open primaries, and not caucuses, and on data availability. Nonetheless I did include California (a semi-open Democratic and closed Republican primary) and New York (both primaries closed). Wikipedia has a good discussion of the open, semi-open, semi-closed, and closed primary here. Note that in an open primary you don’t know how many “Democrats”, "Independents", or “Republicans” voted, you just know how many voted for a Democratic or Republican candidate. In a closed system, “Independents” cannot vote, only those registered for their party can vote within their party. In a semi-open system, anyone can vote but you have to declare your party of interest prior to voting. I wanted to minimize the influences of the closed system, but included New York and California anyway for comparison’s sake.

(And by the way, take a look at that referenced Wikipedia page on Progressivism in the US. A lot of things we take for granted were fought for by progressives - women’s right to vote (19th Amendment, 1920), direct election of US Senators (17th Amendment, 1913), recall of public officials, and particularly relevant here: direct primaries. Yes, there was a time, not so long ago, when party bosses presented us with a candidate. Complain about the primary process if you will but only in the last century have we been allowed to vote to choose our own candidates.)

Note: I compared the US Census Bureau data for 2004 voter registration with that of CNN, the only two years where both report it, and they do not match perfectly. So the percent figures utilized in the first figure below for 2000 may not be perfectly accurate, however (assuming CNN’s tallies are correct) the proportions in the last two figures should be independent of any differences in total voter registration.

And no, I did not cherry pick. You’d be a fool to suggest that, considering that (barring, perhaps, Utah) the ultimate “red” states Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee are three of the seven considered! One does not cherry pick Georgia, Alabama, and Tennesse for inclusion in making a progressive point.

Results

Here is the percent turnout of registered voters by state, in the last three primary cycles of 2000, 2004, and 2008. I’ve perversely placed those four states we sometimes call “red” on the left, and those three we call “blue” on the right. If you can’t read the percent figures on this smaller figure, click it to get a somewhat larger one.

That upper left panel looks *mighty* nice!


Several interesting things here. There has been a consistent and strong increase in turnout among those voting for Democrats in the presidential primaries every cycle since 2000, a trend that is especially marked for the “red” states. New York doesn’t do so well, but I suspect this has more to do with its closed primary system and confidence as a “blue” state. Republicans? Not so good for those turning out to vote for Republicans. I’ll make the comparison more directly below but excepting Alabama in particular, Tennessee somewhat, and Illinois and Georgia remaining essentially the same, voter turnout for Republicans has declined between 2000 and 2008.

So let’s compare the Democratic versus Republican turnout in 2008 versus 2000. Here I simply divided, for each party, the 2008 percent turnout by the 2000 percent turnout (recall that the Republicans did not hold primaries in 2004, and the admonition against commenting if you weren’t aware of that).

This figure, then, shows the magnitude of increase in primary turnout in 2008, compared to 2000, for Democrats (blue) and Republicans(red).


Republicans held their own in Georgia and Illinois, but turnout for Democrats increased 2.5-fold in Georgia, the largest increase in Democratic turnout of any examined state. Missouri is not far behind, with a 2.2-fold increase in turnout, and this is true for Tennessee as well. Even in Alabama Democratic votes increased by nearly 1.8-fold, but Republicans increased their vote by almost 2.5-fold, and I’ll get to that shortly. In California, Missouri, and New York, votes for Republicans declined significantly.

Here’s another view of the data, this time comparing the turnout for Democrats vs Republicans by year. Here I divided the percent turnout for Democrats by that for Republicans, in 2000 (red) and 2008 (blue).


Only in the case of Alabama has the 2008 Democratic primary vote not exceeded that of the Republican one, and in all but the case of Alabama (and arguably Tennessee) there have been spectacular increases of Democratic turnout over Republican turnout between 2000 and 2008.

Discussion

Post-Super Tuesday I found that I had some questions that were not being answered by the mainstream media, so decided to go after the answers myself. How well did the Democrats do in terms of voter turnout? Answer (for the states selected): astonishingly well in all seven states, four “red” and three “blue”, with turnout approaching what you’d see in a November presidential election. Republicans? With the exception of Alabama and Tennessee, no particular increase over what we saw in the 2000 primaries.

Why look at primaries? Well, for one thing, the November election hasn’t happened yet, silly. The other thing is that primary voter turnout, when not inhibited by a closed process, can be indicative of the magnitude and direction of voter interest, and is a concrete bellwether requiring as it does a little more effort than answering a bunch of questions in a poll conducted over a telephone. A large turnout in a primary is an investment. This year’s primaries, pulling on Feb 5 numbers that approach those of a general election, indicate an extremely high interest among those voting for Democrats, and considerably less for those voting for Republicans. In Missouri, California, and New York Republican voting, and presumably interest, has declined, and in Georgia and Illinois (funny that we could group those two together!). Republican interest has been simply maintained where it has not declined. Note that that doesn’t mean that there’s a high interest among Democrats alone - in an open system we have to add Independents and crossover Republicans - whoever votes Democratic - to that list, and with the exception of Alabama and possibly Tennessee the differences are voting Democratic.

What we’re seeing here, I think, is an astonishing result in Democratic voter interest, and especially in at least two of four states that have traditionally voted Republican. Now I wonder why that could be ?

Beyond the obvious backlash against the last seven years of an incompetent, corrupt, criminal, ignorant, and law-breaking Administration with totalitarian leanings? Well, Democrats actually have a pair of exciting candidates, so exciting that the vast majority of Democrats intend to vote for whomever wins the nomination, regardless of whom they’re interested in right now, with ¹this caveat. Republicans? Not so much.

As for what happened in Alabama, I’ve no immediate explanation. Alabama voted for Huckabee and Obama, same as Georgia, so no difference there. But something got the Republicans excited. What was it? Obama? To a certain extent Tennessee is also a question mark.

Conclusion

“Red” states Georgia and Missouri experienced vast turnout for Democratic candidates in the primaries, overwhelming a static turnout for Republicans. Democratic turnout was also higher in Alabama and Tennessee, but in those cases, Republican turnout too was higher than in 2000. This makes the case for interesting developments in the possibility that the “red” states of the last decade or two may be trending away from that sorry designation. Currently Missouri and Tennessee (as well as Arkansas, which didn’t feature here due to incomplete data) are considered to be “battleground” states, but if Tennessee is, I can’t see how Georgia could be excluded from that grouping.

And now, my concluding rant. (Don’t worry - I have the same rant for those brave gays and lesbians who flee to hide in gay ghettos.) It’s against those wimpy “red” state Democrats who, after each election, declare that they’re going to move to a “blue” state. (Or leave the country, *snicker*.) Boo hoo. Sure, it must be nice living in a “blue” state, but really: *what good are you*? You’re not *needed* in “blue” states. Those states *already* vote “blue”, and you’re just comfortable there.

The results here in Georgia, and in Missouri, and even in Alabama and Tennessee, can only be attributed to those who stayed behind in “red” states and helped to change their complexion, no thanks to the wimps. And in the end, if Democrats want to win presidential elections, you’re going to have to provide some kind of effort in influencing “red” states, otherwise we’re just going to get another Bush disaster. Flouncing out in a pique isn’t gonna do it.

Georgia and Missouri, at least, seem demonstrably to have risen to the forefront of that effort, and I congratulate them. I think Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and his "50 State Strategy" has a lot to do with it, you go, girl. In that sense some progressives helped us out by direct political action. In the end though, and drawing just a bit from personal experience here in very red Oglethorpe County, I think most of us did it simply by providing an alternative example, little by little, among reasonable people who just happen to think conservatively. Which is not something that we could have done by moving to California or New York or Illinois.

If we get a Democrat President in November, it will certainly be because of the continued presence of the “blue” states, and grateful we all are for that. But that’s just treading water: a real victory will come because some of the “red” states switched sides, and that will only be because of what’s been done within those states.

¹And so this caveat: Here (click on the map and follow the link to the full exit polls) you can find a breakdown of the demographics in the primary voting for whatever state you might wish to look at. I did this for Georgia and for Alabama, for other reasons. My second cousin, not at all removed, Joe Openshaw in Bessemer, AL, posed the question: “Obama won by 34% in Georgia, but only by 14% in Alabama. Are we that different than Georgia?”

From those demographics it appears that in both states the black vote was overwhelmingly in favor of Obama, just about 90%. (The difference, to address Joe’s question, and if you can trust exit polls, appears to be that way more whites voted for Obama in Georgia, plus an age bracket difference.)

That means that Georgia’s outcome in the general November election may well depend on the final nominee. If it turns out to be Clinton, she is going to have to work really really hard to keep that black vote excited.


Final note: This analysis only addresses the presidential primaries. I suspect that Georgia, at least, will remain “red” at the state level. Well, that’s our misery, and none of yours.

Piggybacking a bit on the post of a couple of days ago, here are a couple of possible examples of phytotelmata. They’re both tiny cups formed at the base of young sweetgums. I say “possible examples” because these particular ones don’t hold permanent water bodies unless we are experiencing actively moist conditions. However they’re clearly microenvironments that probably do maintain a much higher moisture and humidity level most of the time.

The first one has some problems with rot. Maybe it’s not fully formed, and the decay has not reached the barrier tissue yet. Still, it contains a thin layer of compost that supports various mosses and emerging seedlings, probably of ephemeral spring annuals.


This one is much more nicely formed. The emerging seedling seems to be well protected here.

This has been on my mind for some time now. How do muscadine vines (Vitis rotundifolia) manage to get way up there? This younger vine has clambered up and established itself at a point 25 feet off the ground.

As have these much older and larger vines.


I’ve looked for examples to support several hypotheses. Smilax, for instance, climbs mostly by producing overarching branches that encounter a supporting structure. Fresh shoots can support themselves for several feet before falling over, hopefully onto something. That doesn’t seem to be the case here - I don’t see any muscadine vines groping in the air.

Another possibility is that they grow up the trunk of the supporting tree and then at some point after attaching high in the air release their hold on the tree. There are grasping branchlets up the length of the vine in the first photo, but that doesn’t necessarily address the issue. And I don’t find intermediate examples of vines in the process of release.

Still, I think it’s the most likely explanation. And what would prompt a release? From the lower photo, I’d think that as the lower portion of the vine grows and puts on weight, it eventually drags the upper portions from a weakly held position against the trunk, eventually freeing the vine. Whatever the case, an empty space in the canopy becomes occupied dramatically.

I was hoping to find another of these, photographed a little better, but this one will have to suffice for now. I observed this insect on Feb 4. I tentatively identified it as a leafhopper.


And it is, it’s Speckled Sharpshooter, Paraulacizes irrorata, or a very close relative, and there are some nice photos at Bugguide.

University of Florida’s IFAS Extension page has a fine article on Sharpshooters, aptly named from their hiding behavior. And they streak off like bullets when alarmed.

Like all leafhoppers, sharpshooters feed with piercing mouthparts and so are at least potentially destructive of the plants they feed on. The above article has some fascinating things to say about xylem-water feeding, transmission of plant disease, and the parasitism of sharpshooter eggs and later stages by tiny wasps, twisted-wings (Strepsiptera), and fungus.

You couldn’t possibly declare spring to have arrived - we will certainly have many coldish days ahead of us. This morning the temp was 28 degF, for instance. But the days do warm themselves up considerably, there is considerably activity going on, and among that activity is the first flowering of the season, Red Maples (Acer rubrum):


These were being pollinated by the first flies of the season, some kind of hoverfly, a Syrphid. Of course, they looked like yellowjackets until I developed the images.


They’re not really the first flies of the season - I’ve noted quite a few tiny diaphanous mosquitoes and such emerging. But the syrphids I saw are the first of the more dramatic flies.

For a week now the titmice have been thinking about chasing each other around and we know what that leads to:




And yesterday I surprised myself at moving quietly enough to surprise our herd of turkeys. This time the group, at least a dozen of them, moved past me on the northwest slope of the knoll in an orderly fashion, single file. I suspect they loves them some Smilax.

The fierce storms that swept through the southeast yesterday and the previous night resulted only in interesting cloud formations, a tiny bit of thunder, and 0.29 inches of rain here. The photos of destruction in Arkansas, western Tennessee, northern Alabama and Mississippi and surrounding states are sobering. My sister lives in tornado-prone Jackson, TN, which was hard hit once again.

For some reason it seems to be this time of year when I start looking at holes in trees. Again enjoyed browsing through TreeDictionary, and particularly this wonderful three page article by Richard DeGraaf and Alex Shigo on cavity trees.

This isn’t a cavity tree, of course, it’s a ripped apart dead tree, a loblolly pine, probably. However it always strikes me as entertainingly quirky, as I pass by it. Coincidence of decay has created a sheltering cavity but it’s probably not very water tight! As DeGraaf and Shigo describe, cavities in trees are caused by some kind of physical damage, whether it is the loss of a branch or more extensive damage to the body, especially near the ground, caused by insects, fire, herbivores, disease, or other insults. But this is just the beginning of cavity formation.

A stable and welcoming cavity results when the tree successfully grows barrier tissue to wall off the damage from the main body. The barrier tissue is harder, denser, and probably more lignified wood, and will protect the main body from spreading infection by fungi, bacteria, and other critters that will congregate to the damage.

And it’s that rotting and decomposition of the damage, up to the barrier, that scoops out the damaged wood and creates a snug hole in the tree. Tree holes represent great opportunities for all kinds of occupation. The most obvious is use for shelter and nesting by birds, mammals of all sizes, and other vertebrate animals, but cavities also create microhabitats for other lesser-appreciated organisms.

I ran across this neat word: xylophagous, which describes a wood-eating organism, especially applied to beetles that may be found only in a cavity-forming situation. Some xylophagous insects may be pests, but xylophage enthusiasts would contend that wood consumed is minor by most species. And the larvae amount to food for woodpeckers, which themselves may result in the formation of cavities! Perhaps the most severe consequence of xylophagous insects is transmission of pathogens beyond the coping mechanisms of barrier tissue.

And here’s another fine word: phytotelmata. A phytotelma is simply a body of water contained by a non-aquatic plant, and so many tree cavities, as well as pitcher plants, bromeliads, and other plants that produce sheltered cups, traps, or hollows. In trees, we might call it “stumpwater”, and we have a number of trees with small to large hollows and cups that hold water on a near-perennial basis. These are important little habitats that can sustain myriads of protozoans and fly and other arthropod larvae. Mosquitoes, yes, but species that may not prefer humans and may not be found elsewhere. And with this rich diversity come the salamanders, frogs, and other amphibians that find a phytotelma to be a fine hospitable dinnertable and spa. I imagine that reptiles, birds, and other vertebrates will use these as water sources, too.

I haven’t done a specific photographic essay on phytotelmata, but I recollected a post that included a very pretty one, back in December 2005, in fact. Thank goodness for search routines! It provided me with a few moments of amusement.

This tree below, a box-elder (Acer negrundo, so a maple relative) doesn’t provide much of a phytotelma, as the cavity is in the early stage of formation and extends into the ground. What may have caused the extensive damage here? It looks like this could be two trees fused at an early age, with splitting of the fusion having occurred relatively recently. Whatever the cause, the damage is probably too extensive for the tree to survive it - you can see that a large branch has already fallen from one side.

Speaking of trunk fusions, and at the risk of rambling off-topic, this Post Oak (Quercus stellata) actually consists of seven trees that have fused together at the base. I’ve admired this formation for some time, and haven’t found much information on how it happens, but it appears to be the same process that leads to grafting of one plant part onto another. In bonsai technique, this may be called cross-fusion grafting, but googling the term only produces one hit, that one! Post oaks don’t get much respect, IMO. We have some magnificent huge ones in this county.

The species of tree around here that produces the best and most extensive cavities is, oddly, Tulip Poplar Liriodendron tulipifera, perhaps our area’s signature tree, IMO. I say “oddly” because most of the time we think of tulip poplars as growing straight and fast. But old trees acquire major major distortions and cavities, and can become quite gnarled and grotesque. This not-too-old tree has formed this vertically long cavity, beginning at about knee height. The rounded edges and smooth inside walls show it to be a successful walling off of the original damage by the barrier tissue, unlike that poor box-elder above. I have seen critters scampering up into what must be a continuation of the hollow well up into the tree.

And indeed, on the other side of this tree, about 15 feet above the ground, is this smaller hole. It may be the cavity formed by a branch falling off the tree, but again the edges are rounded and healthy, the signs of a successful formation of barrier tissue.

We’ve been having warm weather (yesterday’s high here: 73 degF), and I suppose that estivating mammals get up and move around. Here are two photographs, the left a blowup of the entrance hole and stuffing around the birdhouse in yesterday’s post, and the on the right, yesterday, a day later.


Clearly there’s been some activity in that 24 hour period.

OW (in comments) is right about the possibility of mice. I suspect they can get in anywhere, but it would be a chore for them for this birdhouse - it sits atop 6 feet of rather slick metal pole.

I’ve cleaned out birdhouses with similarly blocked entrance holes, and on one occasion two flying squirrels emerged with the stuffing, so Pablo pegged what I was thinking about. The flying squirrels were *not* happy to be evicted in the middle of the day and took off running along the ground. And so one result is that I don’t clear out the birdhouses when they look like this.

Looks like whatever it is inside was active in the day between the photos.

On my expedition to the pond at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia, near Marker 12 on the Orange Trail I noticed a small population of plant skeletons left over from last year. Not following my own advice to determine the limits of a population before stopping for in-depth examination, I spent a good deal of time photographing the outlying individuals and wondering what they might be. They looked to be an annual, having a swollen base in the soil with only a few small roots, and leaving nothing obviously behind when gently dug or pulled from the ground. The haustorial-like root suggested, dare we think it, parasite! It turned out that about 5 meters down the path was a small sign containing the answer: Epifagus virginiana, Beechdrops.

From Weakley (2007): Epifagus virginiana (Linnaeus) W. Barton, Beechdrops. Mt, Pd, Cp (GA, NC, SC, VA): moist to rather dry forests under Fagus grandifoli; common. September-November. Nova Scotia west to WI, south to FL and LA. [= RAB, C, F, G, K, W, Z; = Leptamnium virginianum (Linnaeus) Rafinesque – S]

Along with the other 2000 members in its family, The Orobanchaceae (Broomrape Family), it is parasitic on roots. It has only scale-like leaves and the plant is generally pasty white because it does not make chloroplasts. These individuals were 20-40 cm tall and when in flower must have really stood out. As the genus name suggests, Epifagus is parasitic on American Beech, Fagus grandifoli.

Now, Beeches line the Orange Trail throughout its mile length to the pond, but only here are there Beechdrops within sight of the trail. One individual was even in the trail at the base of a small Beech. I noticed nothing to distinguish this particular area. Wild Ginger (Asarum sp.) abounded everywhere (one is in the photo above) and signs periodically indicated Wild Geranium, Geraninum maculata which will be breaking ground shortly. And Wayne has been keeping a sharp eye open for them at the Sparkle without success. Is this site really different, or is this the result of a recent single introduction which would have taken anywhere around?

And what, do you think, are the implications of this?

We went our separate ways, yesterday, Glenn and I. He is scouting for a good site for a laboratory-intensive plant course. He was apparently delighted with the Botanical Garden Orange Trail, which terminates at a defunct beaver dam just downstream of a wetland patch created by that very dam. That beaver dam has been replaced with a manmade structure, and you might ask why. The answer is that the State Botanical Garden of Georgia is located next to a pig farm, and essentially down-watershed of it. The creek in question runs into the Oconee very shortly at the point of the old beaver dam, and is high in nitrates (not too high for human needs, but high enough to tweak nutrient levels in the river adversely). The idea is to impound the creek just enough to hold the waters in the soil above the impoundment, and allow biological degradation of the higher nitrate levels before the creek water reaches the river.

Well, the point is again that he was delighted with the site, and in the next few months it is going to veritably blossom with plant life. It’s accessible with a modest hike, and our Botanical Garden is extremely generous in its ongoing interest in accomodating students and others in their observations and research.

(Question: do you have a Botanical Garden near you? Ours is truly exceptional, or at least I think so. It’s relatively old, occupies previously old forested land, and the majority given over to conservation of that forest present when it was established. There are a number of creeks that run through it, and the southeastern edge slopes from high elevation piedmont sharply down to the Oconee River, giving a number of fine ecosystems within a fairly small area.

A smaller portion is developed as actual “gardens”, planted with theme plants - international, herb, native understory. At one time a rose garden, a rhododendron garden, though those have gone defunct. These gardens and the developed portion of the BotGardens are clearly designed for those who don’t care, or are unable, to walk far. The rest of it is for us.)

Hopefully Glenn will post on his discoveries, because he made a very interesting one involving a parasitic plant species that I’ve been watching out for here at home but have not found.

I, on the other hand, stayed at home but did something a little different. Rather than wander as usual, I sat, or stood, as will become clear, for a couple of hours in an upland pine-hardwood transition area, armed with binoculars. Not camera, since Glenn had that, and though fortunate for him that he did, woe it was for me, since I didn’t get the excellent photos of two birds that appeared close by. A Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, my first here at home (although they have almost certainly been around all the time) spent much time investigating a large, thick muscadine vine. And I spotted a vireo - probably a Solitary Vireo. The continuous white “spectacles” around the eyes give the vireos away. Two pileated woodpeckers trumpeted whatever it was they were excited about, but they didn’t come close.

Birdwatching is somewhat contrary to my nature. It’s not because I can’t stay still, but because in the context of the woods I generally feel the need to keep looking, and therefore moving. This serves me well in some respects, but not for birdwatching. My progress in that manner creates a moving sphere of silence, as birds freeze and go quiet. Sit a spell, and I gradually seem to become invisible to them. The tufted titmice and chickadees lose their fear first. And then the calls of others return and things become interesting.

Sit? Or stand? If I sit, it’s hard to move without creating a disturbance, and I just know those old birds are creeping up behind me, providing a greener pasture on the other side. If I stand, well, you know, I get tired faster even though I can go for a long time in that position. I can also slowly turn around without making a lot of fuss about it.

Now I’m festooning myself with apparatus. Camera *and* binoculars? The binoculars are really necessary, but so is the camera. Which to put around my neck first, that it be most available? I could set the camera on the ground, but if I’m standing that means a fairly significant movement needed to pick it up, right at the time when I shouldn’t be disturbing whatever it is that I’ve spotted. Now I feel like a real nerd. Who could have predicted that so many decisions would have to be made?

I know I’m not telling you anything here, but it’s worth a brief excursion if only for the inanity. Two for one!

#1: If you’re from a larger willage than Arnoldsville, our home town, this entire left sidebar of advertisement clipped from one of the weather sites *might* make some sense. I’ll spare you the actual links, since I suspect an Arnoldsville Vacation Package is not at the top of your list.

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Captured from Google Earth, Greater Downtown Arnoldsville. Nope, no tummy tucks nor liposuction facilities here:




#2: Quite a number of sites seem to plug into a google search for any hint of interest in geographical places, especially if the search contains words like “lake”, "creek", or “river”. Click on their links, and these sites construct a pre-packaged link on the fly, inserting the target name of your search into sometimes bizarrely worded text. These sites always just happen to mention a few real hotels or stopovers, since that’s their raison d'etre. Unfortunately for both unwary visitor and owners, these sites aren’t sophistocated enough to indicate when the location is privately owned and jealously guarded. Google places them on the front page, so you won’t miss all the ensuing fun.

This one, created just for me when I googled “Lake Oglethorpe” is particularly ironic, especially since it mentions Goulding Creek in conjunction:

Go to Lake Oglethorpe if you want to go to a nice lake.

- - Briefly about the area around Lake Oglethorpe:
and float down the rapids of Big Clouds Creek in a kayak. After a long day outdoors Comfort Suites Athens is a good place to spend a night or two and camping at Pine Lake RV Campground is always a good experience. This lake is so wonderful. Lake Oglethorpe is not the only place around here, Twin Lakes is a nearby lake and Lake Oglethorpe is
good enough to spend more than a day at, Oconee River Campground and Picnic Area is a good local campground. Goulding Creek is very near and is always a pleasure to visit and Fitzpatrick Hotel is a great place to get some rest. Whohoo, so much fun in one place! Lake Oglethorpe rocks! Get wet paddling on Rose Creek and visiting Ocmulgee National Monument is just something you need to do if you haven’t yet.

FYI: Go to Lake Oglethorpe and try paddling around without an invitation and you’ll be firmly escorted away. Persist and you may get to rest for one or two fun-filled days and nights in the Oglethorpe County Jail. Oglethorpe County Jail rocks! Same with Twin Lakes. Both are private property.

Here’s the monthly summary of the climate of the month of January, here in Athens and US-wide. NOAA’s finalized annual global report is here - be sure to click on the image for an excellent summary of events worldwide.

From the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center, this is a plot of mean temperature anomalies for the US. That’s the difference in the average temperature for this January above or below the average for January over many years, plotted in colors. The anomalies are in Fahrenheit.


The map has shifted considerably since December’s, especially noticeable for the Southeast. December’s high temperatures have given way to normal or even slightly cooler than normal temperatures across the Southeast. The Northeast from the Dakotas eastward saw anomalously high temperatures, 2-4 or even 6 degF higher than normal, in January. The Pacific coast continued its somewhat cooler than normal trend.

From the (click through to the monitoring maps from the left sidebar) National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center, this is a plot of mean precipitation anomalies for the US:


Rainfall was very abundant in the West in January, up to 2-fold higher than normal. US midsection, meanwhile, was lacking in rainfall with down to a quarter of normal in many places. A band of continuing drought spreads southwest to northeast throughout the Southeast US, continuing the 60% normal rainfall seen over the last two years.


For Athens:

Here is my plot of high temperatures for the month of January in Athens. As usual, the black dots are for the 15 years 1990-2005 (black dots), 2008 (green line), and 2007 (red line).


Temperature-wise, January was notable for its normalcy. January highs in Athens averaged 52.7 degF, 1.2 degF below normal. The average low of 32.0 degF was similarly only 1.7 degF below normal. January was a slightly colder month for us, with only 4 days higher than one standard deviation above the mean, compared to a normal 5.2 days. There were 7 days below one standard deviation below the mean, compared to a normal 4.6 such days in January.

It only seemed like January was a wettish month here in Athens. In the end we only got 2.6 inches of rainfall, 61% of the normal 4.25 inches. Already we are below the standard deviation, in peach, for the month and year.


And then, of course, were the several major disappointments when snow and ice did not materialize as expected. Whether the warm, moist air was too warm for the cold front, or the cold front was insufficiently cold, we had three periods of major tease in January, ultimately coming to nothing. Boo hoo.

I’ll continue to link to this neat prognosticator in which you can get variously timed precipitation and temperature outlooks. For us it shows declining rainfall over the next three months, and increasingly anomalously warm temperatures.

Geekstuff:
And the reason for that prognostication is La Niña, of course. NOAA’s weekly ENSO update: This is the seventh month of La Niña conditions in the Pacific, and NOAA is now for the first time labelling it as a strong event continuing well into 2008, possibly into the summer. A summer La Niña is a thing to dread, here in the Southeast. Go to the La Niña Extreme Event Risk figure to see what it might mean for you.

Finally, and to reiterate the link way above, NOAA has a neat State of the Climate product. By clicking on the year, such as 2007, you can get to monthly and even weekly reports and zero in on regional descriptions that are much nicer than my own.

More on the ISP problems at the bottom.

We’ve had rain, cold rain, the last 24 hours, amounting to 1.65 inches and straddling Jan 31-Feb 1. What to do about that? I found it pleasant.

Last night our fire training consisted of fast dress. If you take the Mod 1 course, one of the expectations is that you can don all protective gear, including turnout and breathing apparatus, in 2 minutes. The six of us who were there were pleased to discover that we could still do that. Each of us did find certain flaws in our turnout, but that’s why you do it.

As Andy (grandson of Secretary of State Dean Rusk during the Kennedy Administration AND candidate for Athens, GA mayor in the last election) said, relating his evening as he might tell it to a hypothetical friend, “I dressed and undressed. Several times. In front of a bunch of guys.”

As I mentioned previously, our former fire chief left us and moved to Michigan (he didn’t do this callously, understand). As we’ve re-organized the officers, I was made Assistant Training Officer. Therefore I turn in my yellow helmet for a red one, a “heady” promotion. We had a little ceremony last night consecrating the event. All I can say is that it involved a very heavy hook-headed crowbar, sort of like a Bo Peep crook from hell, and that I was told, “Don’t move.”

Since we returned from Jekyll Island on Jan 3, I’ve been rigorous in recording temperatures and weather conditions through the days. This isn’t something that most folks would care a lot about, but as Bev said, it’s documentation and so perfectly fair game. (Documentation of a number of things, including potential neurosis. Well, so be it. I mean, how do you stop once you’ve started?)

The small figure below leads to a larger one if you’re game. The red, blue, and green lines are explained in the figure. The predictions (green) are from Weather Underground’s updates from the National Weather service. I update them continuously for several days, but leave it as is in the early morning of the day you see.


I may add to this later, but for the time being, make of it what you will. It’s rich in interesting information, to me. Overall, our January this year was slightly colder on average during the day than usual, and considerably colder at night. That’s in contrast to the Januarys of the last two years, which have been extraordinarily warm, as I’ve already documented.

As for the ISP problems, well, they were very responsive two days ago to our inquiries. That’s good. Unfortunately it happened again today, as Mark noted in comments to the previous post (and thank you for that, Mark). In addition we’ve discovered that they’ve screwed up some of our site’s file structure, which has led to some of the ancillary programs that we run being unable to update files they were previously able to find. We’ll see how that works.