Grateful Dead

If Congress decides to cut food stamp programs it is a distinct possibility. Free food distribution centers will have less and fewer commodities will be available through the Ag. Dept. This could be a multi-year drought where all of these conditions worsen. Thank you, Republicans, for denying global warming for 30 years and putting us in this mess. (I used up this space because of a double post)

With the temperature slated to break a 120 year all-time record today in OKC at 114 degrees, fully half the country is declared to be in drought. Prices will increase for food substantially next year, if not in the fall. No relief in sight as of yet. I have no compunction about running my air-conditioner these days...

Good weather reporting, Anna. Yesterday was almost comfortable, with cloud cover and intermittent showers. 2 day rain total was 0.05", so a shower was more like a faint drizzle. Forecast calls for triple digits again starting today. Uggh Like Poncho Bill says, it's crunchy and brown and our municipal water folks are asking for reduced water use, to 3 days a week . Folks with automatic sprinklers haven't made the effort to modify their watering cycles... My granddaughter Willow is visiting from Ft. Collins (no more smoke and fire!), so she's learned to feel the difference between hot and dry to hot, dry and humid. I use the water from her kiddie pool to feed the shrubs and garden veggies. June's electric bill was over $200. Arrgh! For some reason the hundred or so winfd turbines west of Salina KS haven't been spinning lately to enhance the power coming from the many coal fired plants. Anyone know why the wind turbines are not being used?

it's gray and overcast!

Damn hot! This has gotta be the hottest summer on record for northern Ontario. No end in sight either. I stopped caring about my green lawn weeks ago. It is an unsightly brown and very crunchy. My hydro bill is sky high. The CA is worth every penny tho.

Yesterday's high temp. in KC was 88. That breaks a 20 day string of 90+ temps for the KC metro. area. The forecast? Temps. at or above 90 for as far as the eye can see. Good luck staying cool Ted! At least you don't live in Las Vegas or Phoenix or Death Valley. In N. New England we are sizzling in or around 90 with high humidity. I think it's time for a tube trip down the White River. Unfortunately the water doesn't keep the beer cold!

Poor Ted! The relief we've felt in the New England area -- morning lows in the high 40s -- didn't quite make it to the KC metro area. They had a "low" high temp. of 92 degrees last Monday and now temps. are headed back up to the triple digits. Man, that would just kill me! This makes more than 10 days of plus 90 degrees for those poor folks in the Plains. We'll be checking to see when you guys nose in under that mark. No end in sight. Other temps. around the country are staggering. Record highs almost everywhere except NE, where beautifully gorgeous endless summer continues unabated. We've been at the beach where water temps. are up this year already. You can now swim in Maine, which was an impossibility before 2000 unless you were a polar bear. In the rest of the country they are speaking of some really insane temps. like 127 degrees in Las Vegas. On average about 10 degrees more than the usual. Is this year the tipping point as far as Global Warming is concerned? I don't think from a scientific point-of-view a causal relationship can be proven but from a common-sense human and closely watched domestic animal point-of-view the case was closed long before this summer... Stay cool everybody! Alcoholic beverages are dehydrating. If you drink you should make every other one a 16 oz. water. Hey, if you don't believe me ask any EMT what shows up in the emergency room on hot days other than the elderly.

Hot Days In the blazing sun where I was observing the grape vines with their thick, sturdy and jagged leaves...I gazed upon them finding that the beetles had paired up and were all making love freely in the light of the sun. Ahhh Mother Nature and her subjects of love. The unbridled passion of beetles on a leaf to stray cats of the city. The heat of the day to the cool of the dark of night is her nudging of love to sweeten the journey and make a new morning to begin the heat again. It's going to be hot, like the day before. They'll do it again, like ornaments or earrings placed to be seen.

And I sure do remember. I think that one of the side-effects of A/C use is that I never get "hardened off" to the heat. I really do think that I'm less heat-tolerant after 6 years in central-air NC than I was when I lived in New England with no A/C and sleeping on the second floor of my 100-yr-old house with plenty of hot-and-humid summer days to go around.

Check out Robert Wuhl in the control room. I don't think he was acting. Robin ad libbed a lot of this movie.