Tag Archives: weather

Somethin’ Bad Must a Happened

Posted on by

SomethinBad4275

In our travels around the country we’ve noticed a disturbing trend regarding old buildings. They tend to fall down. It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s one of those wooden, Northern Territorial designs found in remote Montana and Wyoming, or one of the adobe styles found in the desert areas of the Southwest, if you see an old building it is likely falling down. Due to the universality of this phenomenon we were sure Somethin’ bad must a happened.

We were puzzled by this and began comparing it to old buildings in Europe and other oddly foreign places where they’ve had old buildings for years and they don’t fall down. OK Some in upper England fall down and just lay around in a pile of rocks, but we chalked that up to the fact that they have VAT on everything over there.

Why then do ours fall down. We’re a lot smarter than they are. We’re better looking. We don’t have to suck up to royalty and aristocrats and other door knobs that hang out over there. What’s happening then. We build other good stuff that doesn’t fall down. Why are we archaeologically challenged?

We posed that question to a couple of archeologists we found scratching in the dirt along side the road. “Oh My Gosh!” they answered, “Really? Like falling down flat and stuff?” when we asked our question about deteriorating buildings. “Yes,” We said, “completely coming apart, totaled, like that motel room in Daytona you guys had over Spring break. Just a pile now.” They were speechless. We thought it was because they were overwhelmed by the social implications of our infrastructures disintegrating but it turned out they were struck dumb because they couldn’t figure out how we knew about the motel room in Daytona. Upon further questioning it turned out that they weren’t even archaeologists like we thought at all, but two college students collecting beer cans and trash along the road as part of a work release program. We thought those sticks with the nail in the end were an archaeologist’s tool but it was just standard State-issue roadside cleanup implements.

We then went straight to the horse’s mouth, or the archaeologists mouth in this case, and found real archaeologists at the University of Montana. We were not going to be fooled again by people that just looked like archaeologists but didn’t know archeology from a hole in the ground. These guys wore glasses, talked good, and had name tags that said Archeologist on them so we knew we had the real thing.

They were surprised and somewhat startled by our questions and it wasn’t until we began supplying them with photographic proof that they would venture an opinion. The older one, who we thought looked smarter and a lot like an archeologist that would be in the movies remarked that he could make some definite comments regarding the image above, and why there appeared to be some deterioration going on.

“Number one” he said in a deep resonant voice and a far away look in his eye, “was that whoever built this structure made one major mistake. They built it out of dirt, and to my trained eye, they used cheap dirt. Probably procured at rock-bottom prices at some low-end dirt retailer. Not to mention names, but perhaps someone like Dirt Depot. You can tell that by the fact”, he went on learnedly, removing his glasses for emphasis, “that the dirt didn’t cling together as it should have, there’s no clingy-ness or ‘adhesion’ to use an archeology word, and as a result it fell down. We don’t use dirt much these days in building for that simple reason. That and it is nearly impossible to find good quality building dirt anymore at a price someone who is willing to live in a dirt house will pay.”

“Number two, and this is very apparent if you look closely at the picture. Whoever the contractor was neglected to put a roof on the structure. This is of paramount importance when building any kind of building someone would live in or spend any time in. A roof keeps the weather from falling into the building from the top due to gravity. It stops it and sends it to the outer edges of the roof, which again to use an archeology word, is where the ‘eaves’ are located, and the weather, presumably moisture, drips off the top of the building onto the ground making a mess around the outside of the structure, but it does keep it off of the occupants inside and prevents it from soaking and saturating the walls, which has been proven by numerous tests will often make them collapse due to internal muddiness and loss of structural intent. It is my belief that is what happened here. No roof, muddiness ensued, building fell down. Pretty clear-cut to us trained in this kind of stuff.”

We had several more “Yeah, But…” questions but these were busy guys and soon they were off to do archeologist things in some god-forsaken wind-swept desolation that these guys like to hang out in. We yelled our thanks as they drove off in their jeep and one cheerfully waved a pick axe at us in farewell. We weren’t entirely convinced of our experts opinion but as we had no more time to spend on this problem and we were hungry we decided to do lunch. We passed by several restaurants built with this dirt type of construction for one that was made out of cinder blocks. We figured this was much less likely to fall down around our tacos than the dirt ones. If you are in the market for Western real estate we highly recommend a cinder block building or even a well made double-wide with tie-downs. You’ll be a lot happier a few years down the road.

Finalizing Our Report

Posted on by

Final2608

Over the last few days we have been sharing items from our semi-annual inspection report of Yellowstone National Park. Every year we have made the arduous journey from The Institute compound, I mean campus, to our favorite national park to provide the public at large a comprehensive overview of the conditions and state of the various park elements. This year was no different. We worked hard to cover every line item on our report, no matter how small or large it appeared to be, we were up at the crack of noon, trudging into the park with all of gear, sometimes doing with only three or four cups of tea and a huge but hearty breakfast, to get everything done that we needed to do that day.

As noted in our opening post the park passed its inspection with flying colors, but as in every year we have produced this report, the park has been noticeably different each year. Some years, it is the year of the wolf, where you find yourself tripping over them as they scramble to be included in every picture. Some years It is the year of the bison where they deliberately have calves in plain sight, right in front of you, even though the park is rated G. Other years it is the year of the bear, that was this year with the bears so plentiful, some were being excluded from the many pictures taken because they weren’t deemed attractive enough by the more discerning viewer, who wanted only the most photogenic bears in their view finders. I know that seems unfair, but life is unfair, and often unkind.

This year the overall atmosphere of the park was, the year it rained forever. It rained everyday, sometimes three or four times at once. It was hard on our equipment, hard on our interns who had to sleep under the Mothership due to them smelling like the dumpster out behind our favorite Italian restaurant, hard on our ability to stay focused and get our work done. Hard to figure out a way of presenting this in a way that would engender sympathy for us doing a job that most folks would kill for, and whining about a little rain. Well quite a bit of rain actually, but even so.

But in many ways it was amazing. The weather in the park although volatile, is usually incredible. Bright blue skies, huge towering clouds, intense colors, incredible blooms of flowers everywhere you looked, everything approaching perfect nearly all the time. It was a  welcome change to see the park under different conditions. To see magnificent storms blow up in moments and have rain so heavy you couldn’t make out the buffalo herd standing twenty-five yards out in the meadows. Normally placid rivers became raging torrents of water, filling their banks, turning small waterfalls into Niagara’s, then just as suddenly stopping, leaving only the sound of raindrops falling from the trees. Places where the mist and fog changed into some kind of fairyland where sound was muffled and huge pine trees would suddenly loom out of the mist as you walked through the woods. It was different but magnificent.

It seems there is change in the park, but then that’s not surprising, seeing as how there is change in the world every where we look. The image above, taken along the Firehole  river as you traveled south towards Old Faithful, represents the endless changes in the conditions at the park this year. It is just clearing after a major downpour that had everyone pulling off the road as the windshield wipers couldn’t handle the amount of water falling. The sun is trying it hardest to break through the clouds, unsuccessfully this time, but long enough to get some of that late afternoon light to shine down on the herd as it grazed. The stark trees in the foreground add a melancholy look to the image but they are just symbols of the change happening every day here in the park. Tomorrow they’ll be gone but will be replaced by saplings that are sprouting around their roots. So will some of these buffalo grazing peacefully. Wolves, impossible winters, old age, all will take its toll but if you look closely you’ll see the bright orange of this years calves. They’ll be here next time, older, bigger, ready to take their place in the herd, filling in the spots that are vacant.

Although there has been a valiant attempt to show you the many different items on our inspection report we have been able to show you only a few of them. This is primarily due to space and time constraints, and partially due to the inability of The Director who will often start a project like this only to wander away and be found staring at a bug or something. Totally oblivious of his responsibilities as the chief creator of this report. But as in many other projects we have explored here at The Institute somehow it all gets done. You may be saying to yourselves ” Wait just a darn minute here. Does Yellowstone National Park really need to be inspected twice a year. Or are you just doing this because you get off on being up there, having fun, misplacing interns, watching animals, taking pictures, meeting new people, saying ‘Hey!” to those you already know, getting goose bumps while listening to the Lamar wolf pack howl. We want to know.” To that we can only answer “You figure it out, Einstein.”

Note : To those of you tuning in late the following posts will catch you up on preceding events. There is no extra charge for this service, it is included in the cost of admission. We know you don’t want to miss a minute of our fascinating but undocumented report.

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/the-words-out/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/yellowstone-passes-inspection/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/ghosts-in-the-darkness/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/you-dont-see-that-every-day/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/now-are-the-foxes/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/into-each-park-some-rain-must-fall/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/through-the-keyhole/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/reflectivity/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/resolvability/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/terminal-cuteness/

Hiding In Plain Sight

Posted on by

HidingMtEvans0587-0600

Mountain goats aren’t really known for being stealthy. They don’t have a lot of need to be. There aren’t that many predators up here at the top of the world at over 14,000′ to get them so they usually just hang out not caring very much about who sees them.

Yet Nature, who is in charge of animal protection here in this world, has chosen to give them life saving camouflage anyway. When you enlarge this image by clicking on it, and you know you should, you’ll see that even with them standing out in plain sight your eyes will drift right over them and you’ll often miss seeing them. This effect is even more pronounced when the herd is scattered out and the individuals take on the coloring and look of the boulder field they like to forage in.

Occasionally a coyote and on the rarest of occasions a mountain lion will find its way up here in the hopes of catching a lamb or a sick billy-goat but they’re usually so whacked out by the lack of oxygen up here that their efforts are half-hearted at best. Still the camouflage is there in case they need it.

This is Mt. Evans by the way, and it is 14,264′ up in the air. It is also one of the tallest of our national parks with all kinds of neat facts that you can read elsewhere about how cool it is. The road up here is not for the squeamish and will often involve some or all of the passengers in your vehicle crouching on the floor to avoid the sheer terror of the incredible drop offs just inches away from your tires. Drivers Pay Attention! Gravity is not your friend up here.

For those of you who are going to ask “Is that blue real?” the answer is no. It’s actually bluer than that. I had to tone it down in Photoshop from the real color because it is SO blue, and that is the famous Colorado blue you hear about, that my staffers walking by catching a glimpse of it on the monitor would be frozen in their tracks, stunned into immobility, so totally hypnotized by it blueness, that they would be paralyzed and fall over in what we call the Blue Coma. Since some of you may be viewing this on portable devices and doing things like walking or chewing gum I thought it best, in the interest of your safety, to bring it down into a more tolerable color.

Soon and that is in a couple of weeks, the ewes will start having their lambs and the tourists will start arriving to see them. The park opens later in the year than most other parks because this geography and weather up here are similar to arctic conditions. There’s tundra scattered around everywhere with arctic plants growing and biting winds and fast-moving storms that race in just to catch everyone unaware, so they, the people in charge of these places, want to give the inquisitive tourists every chance of making it up and back down alive. Plus the roads are mostly snowed shut until sometime in mid June. But life is an adventure and you’re alive or should be so jump in the old Celica and get on up to the top of the world. There’s views, and vistas, and far-reaching sights that will make you say “oh Wow” or even “Holy Moley” and you can see the Mountain goats hiding in plain sight. It’s worth it.

Twin Suns : Planet Earth

Posted on by

TwinSunsPlanetEarth2315click to enlarge

Every one has been complaining that this summer was one of the hottest on record and it was. We had drought, record temperatures, forest fires, unusual weather, irritated wildlife, irritated spouses, disgruntled outerwear manufacturers, happy soft drink purveyors, and just about every kind of social problem you could imagine. It was not a good year to be working on the chain gang under the hot Alabama sun. That blacktop just would not set up and the straw boss would only let you have so much water. Everyone blamed global warming.

Unfortunately global warming was only part of the problem. This is going to be difficult to confess but we’ve always been straight with you, our readers, and if anyone needs to know the truth it is you. As you know we have many different research programs going on here at the Institute, what we may not have fully disclosed due to advice from our attorneys, was that we have a program that is experimenting with “Interdimensional Travel”. We always use capital letters when we refer to it because it is like really important and it can’t be confused with other stuff we do that is kind of important but not quite so hazardous for the human race.

“Interdimensional Travel” is really complicated and needs very smart people to work on it. You have to have graduated from an extremely intellectual college that does science and academics and stuff, not from a tech school or an online university, and have gotten at least C’s in all of your classes. This is important, we check. After all, a program that daily confronts the mysteries of Inter-dimensionality, Astral travel, time-warping, quantum mechanics, math, algebra, long division, Interdimensional Portal creating (remember that one because that one was pretty darn important) and other complicated stuff that is really hard to spell.

“Just what the hell happened?” you asked. Well it’s complicated. When you travel between dimensions you have to have a door, or more correctly, an “Interdimensional Portal” other wise how you gonna get over there, right.  Creating one is the tricky part, it’s where you use all that science and Math and stuff, and it has to be done very carefully and monitored constantly because if you make one little mistake it can end life on earth as we know it, so you need to pay attention. No taking breaks whenever you feel like it, no running off to the bathroom just because you have to go, no x-box, no sexting with your girlfriend, you’ve got to be on the ball and focused, above all focused.

One of the critical aspects of maintaining an “Interdimensional Portal” is that it is possible, no very likely, that if you can go through it, you can also come back through it, not just you but anything or anyone else that’s on the other side too. In other words its a two-way street, or door, so to speak. That’s why it is important to pick nice dimensions with friendly stuff in it when you open one of these cosmic doorways. We keep a list of all the dimensions that it is OK to go to and a list of all the ones that are bad. These lists need to be clearly marked on the top of the page in black highlighter, we use Bic ones for this, whether it is the good list or the bad list. These lists are then posted on the fridge where we keep the Red Bull so everyone knows what page we’re on.

The dimension we’ve been investigating lately is a close one proximity-wise, right next door to our dimension in fact, and it is very similar to ours with the exception that it is almost exactly 50 years behind us in comparative time. We labeled it dimension 23 left. So, no rap, no meth, lower taxes, lots of tie-dye, you only had three channels, all the usual stuff. The only kicker is that this dimension has two primary suns orbiting their earth. Yeah I know, cool huh? but the downside is it is a lot hotter over there, and that kind of brings us to the problem of our weather here in our dimension.

When you create your Interdimensional Portal you should only keep it open for as short a period as you can, after all its expensive and it creates a hell of a draft between the two places. Remember all those hurricanes we had last year? Due to lots of engineering and R&D we have been able to reduce our hardware needed to do all this stuff down to fit into a tuff-shed and a small storage unit. The machinery needed to create the Interdimensional Portal has been reduced to the size of a Sears 12v battery charger with an 11″ diameter cable running up over to a wall switch, similar to what you have in your home but about the size of a Volkswagen. It take two husky lads working together to throw this switch and it is a tough job. You need Pop-eye arms. Since this program is fairly new, only a few years old, we can’t pay much more than minimum wage to our researchers and occasionally a wimpy one sneaks through our extensive evaluation process. And that’s what happened.

It was a Friday night in early spring, there was free beer and all the burritos you could eat over at the dining room/mess hall and our people on duty were in a hurry to get over there before all the burritos were gone. The Portal had been open because we  had been ferrying over some hazardous waste and it needed to be closed. When you throw that switch that shuts the portal down you need to listen for the click it makes so you know it is completely closed. They didn’t listen for the click. The click didn’t happen. Since this click is about the same decibel level as a sonic boom it is hard to image how they missed it but they did. The portal was mostly closed but not all the way. This allowed what we call in the business, “leakage”. Unfortunately the leakage was in the form of the Electromagnetic Spectrum which is of course, X-ray ~ .01 μm, Ultraviolet ~ .1, μm, Infrared ~ 10 μm, Visible from .39 μm to .76 μm, Microwave ~ 100 μm’ and Radio wave >10 mm. In other  words, heat. And because there are two suns in that dimension that is why you are hearing everyone say “this summer is twice as hot as I remember from last year”.

I know, I know, don’t write me about this, the feds have been all over our butts constantly, like this is some big deal or something. We changed the switch, now a Girl Scout could throw it, a pair of brownies even, so that problem is not going to happen again. There’s a bill in Congress to raise the minimum wage again, that should help us recruit better people. Sometime stuff happens. The government does crap like this all the time and you don’t hear everyone jumping in their face. Anyway that’s why it’s been so hot lately. Sorry.

Thor’s Revenge

Posted on by

ThorsRevenge9797click to enlarge

Well it looks like we can’t have one damn holiday go by without some kind of self-induced catastrophe happening. Many of you who have been following the progress and accomplishments of the Institute are aware of our meteorological department and the amazing progress we’ve been making in the area of manufactured weather.

Manufactured weather is not  a new subject, there are others dabbling in this field, the US government, Leroy and Maurice, the 4-H club in Elkhart Lake, Indiana, and others, but I’m proud to say none have made the strides we have here at the Institute.

This is due in great part to the efforts of our head meteorologist, Thor. We don’t have a lot of background on Thor, he just appeared one day and took over our small, mostly unused weather station and began to manufacture weather. The rest is history, or as close to it as you can get around here. Things were going very well until we began to notice small changes in our weather pattern. The occasional tornado where none had ever been recorded before, small but destructive Tsunamis that occurred on some of our larger reservoirs, a dust storm that buried nine farms east of town so deep that all you could see was the top of the truck antennas sticking out of the sand and some other events that can’t be mentioned due to ongoing litigation.

Thor was called into the directors office and asked to explain some of the events that were occurring. His answer was to set the directors desk on fire with a small lightning bolt, or maybe it was a bic lighter, it all happened so fast we couldn’t tell, and scorch the office cat. That’s when we knew we had a problem. This whole weather making thing had made him drunk with power.

Intoxicated with his ability to create havoc he retreated into his laboratory and locked the door. We tried to get in to control him but the door, one of those sliding patio doors with the screen door that sticks, stuck as soon as we tried to open it and we were helpless. All we could do was lean up against the screen and watch as he worked his madness.

Unknown to us, Thor had been jilted by one of the local girls that lived in the small quaint village you see in the image above and he was crazy, crazy with rage. He would have his revenge. The poor unsuspecting village is the same one that grew up to support the growing needs of the Institute and of course we feel an obligation to keep them safe so they can continue to support us in the manner to which we’ve become accustomed. But now here we were, helpless, all we could do was watch as Thor sent lightning strike after lightning strike against the helpless serfs, I mean citizens below.

We knew we only had minutes to solve this terrible problem and save all those helpless folks below. Lots of ideas were quickly passed around and just as quickly rejected, mostly because they were unbelievably stupid, but one idea was put forth that might save the day, or night actually, by now. It seems that the laboratory was a building that was on its own electrical meter and due to an oversight by our business office the bill hadn’t been paid, so the power had been shut off. Rather than pay the bill our maintenance staff had simply run a 50′ extension cord to the next building and was running off their power.

The solution then was simple, send one of our most expendable staff members, I mean volunteers to go over, grab the cord and pull it out of the wall. This was done by simply performing Rock, Paper, Scissors until one staffer was left and then pushing and kicking her until she ran over and bravely jerked the cord out of the socket. The flash of the plug leaving the socket was spectacular, I mean totally freaking incredible. It was like one of Thor’s lightning bolts.

That did it. The storm immediately abated, the lightning stopped and other than the fact that over half the village below was burned to the ground everything ended well. We couldn’t find Thor even though we looked and looked. It was as if he vanished into thin air. Lucky for him because the authorities have some pretty tough questions for him. Our gallant but brave staffer is in ICU but is not in critical condition, we’ve graciously given her a five-day medical leave of absence to recover before we post her job online. We’re just thankful here that things weren’t worse than they were. This could have been really bad, not to mention damaging to the institute’s weather modification program. But due to the quick action and firm direction and leadership of the Institute’s director this mishap was handled with extreme professionalism. Thor’s job as head meteorologist has been posted online so if you know anything about weather and you’re interested in working in a lively but fun environment send us your resume. Who knows the job could be yours.