June 1st:
Just moved to Texas!
Now this is a state that knows how to live!!
Beautiful sunny days and warm balmy evenings.
What a place!
It is beautiful.
I've finally found my home.
I love it here.
June 14th:
Really heating up.
Got to 100 degrees today. Not a problem.
Live in an air-conditioned home, drive an air- conditioned car.
What a pleasure to see the sun everyday like this.
I'm turning into a sun worshipper.
June 30th:
Had the backyard landscaped with western plants today.
Lots of cactus and rocks.
What a breeze to maintain.
No more mowing the lawn for me.
Another scorcher today, but I love it here.
July 10th:
The temperature hasn't been below 100 all week.
How do people get used to this kind of heat?
At least it's kind of windy though. But getting used to the heat is taking longer than I expected.
July 15th:
Fell asleep by the community pool.
Got 3rd degree burns over 60% of my body.
Missed 3 days of work.
What a dumb thing to do.
I learned my lesson though.
Got to respect the ol' sun in a climate like this.
July 25th:
The wind sucks.
It feels like a giant freaking blow dryer!!
And it's hot as hell.
The home air-conditioner is on the fritz and the AC repairman charged $200 just to drive by and tell me he needed to order parts.
July 30th:
Been sleeping outside on the patio for 3 nights now.
$225,000 house and I can't even go inside.
Why did I ever come here?
August 1st:
It's 105 degrees.
Finally got the air-conditioner fixed today.
It cost $500 and gets the temperature down to 85.
I hate this stupid state.
August 3rd:
If another wise guy cracks, 'Hot enough for you today?'
I'm going to strangle him...
By the time I get to work, the radiator is boiling over, my clothes are soaking wet, and I smell like shit!
August 5th:
Tried to run some errands after work. Wore shorts,
When I sat on the seats in the car, I thought my butt was on fire.
My skin melted to the seat.
I lost 2 layers of flesh and all the hair on the back of my legs and butt.
Now my car smells like burnt hair and fried butt.
Aug 6th:
The weather report might as well be a darn recording.
Hot and sunny...Hot and sunny...Hot and sunny...
And the weatherman says it might really warm up next week.
Doesn't it ever rain in this darn state?
Water rationing has been on the last six weeks.
My $1,700 worth of cactus might just dry up and blow over.
Even the cactus can't live in this heat.
August 8th:
Welcome to HELL!
Temperature got to 110 today. Cacti are dead.
Forgot to crack the window and blew the windshield out of the car.
The installer came to fix it and guess what he asked me???
"Hot enough for you today?"
August 10th
My sister had to spend $1,500 to bail me out of jail.
Freaking Texas...
What kind of a sick demented person would want to live here??
Will write later to let you know how the trial goes...
(I stole this from my cousin Mendy's blog)
Seriously, we are 59 days over 100 degrees for the year. We will break the record of the heat wave from 1980. I have never in my life seen it this hot and dry. Hopefully will not again.
A few weeks ago, we stood around watching the Space Station buzz overhead, a bright light zipping through the sky, I got intrigued and spent a considerable amount of time on Nasa's Website. By the way, it was fun to point it out to Jackson and be able to honestly say, "that's a rocket ship." To which he replied, "WOW MOM, a real rocket ship? That's cool!!!"
Photograph courtesy of: NASA JPL/Bill PatzertArticle from http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/24jun_wildweather/
Author: Dauna Coulter | Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never
Remember to have heard; man's nature cannot carry
The affliction nor the fear … from Shakespeare's Tragedy of King Lear
La Niña is getting the blame for this spring's crazy
The United
And while La Niña likely did have some influence in the winter, NASA climatologist Bill Patzert says that it's waning; instead, what he calls "La Nada," is really to blame for the intense weather we've seen in 2011.
"La Niña was strong in December," Patzert said. "But back in January it pulled a disappearing act and left us with nothing — La Nada — to constrain the jet stream. Like an unruly teenager, the jet stream took advantage of the newfound freedom, and the results were disastrous."
The jet stream is a high-speed air current that is essentially an atmospheric fence where cool, dry air meets up with warm, moist air — two of the main ingredients for severe storms.
La Niña and El Niño are opposite extremes of a great Pacific oscillation. Every two to seven years, surface waters across the equatorial Pacific warm up (El Niño) and then they cool down again (La Niña). Each condition has its own distinct effects on weather.
The winter of 2010 began with La Niña conditions taking hold. A "normal" La Niña would have pushed the jet stream northward, pushing cold arctic air (one of the ingredients of severe weather) away from the lower United States. But this La Niña petered out quickly, and no El Niño rose up to replace it. The jet stream was free to misbehave.
"By mid-January 2011, La Niña weakened rapidly and by mid-February it was 'adios La Niña,' allowing the jet stream to meander wildly around the U.S," Patzert said. "Consequently the weather pattern became dominated by strong outbreaks of frigid polar air, producing blizzards across the West, Upper Midwest, and northeast U.S."
Before tornado season, Patzert told OurAmazingPlanet that we should hope for a re-emergence of La Niña to bring about a mild tornado season. But the disappearance lingered into spring — and things got ugly.
Wild weather
Strong winds carrying warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico met cold jet stream winds blowing in from the west. The two air masses were stronger than usual this year, and when they mixed, they fueled the intense thunderstorms that spawned the tornadoes that have rocked the country.
"The jet stream — on steroids — acted as an atmospheric mix master, causing tornadoes to explode across Dixie and Tornado Alleys, and even into Massachusetts," Patzert said.
This year, a monstrous tornado hit Joplin, Mo., killing more than 150 people. That tornado was classified as an EF-5, the most intensely damaging on the Enhanced Fujita tornado damage scale. The Joplin tornado is the deadliest single twister to strike the United States since 1953.
This year's tornado season is now tied for the fifth deadliest on record. [Related: The Top 5 Deadliest Tornado Seasons.]
The historic tornado season has combined with devastating floods to look more like disasters from the early decades of last century. The last time any spring in the United States was remotely this severe was in 1927.
The massive snowpack melt, combined with a lot of rain this spring, caused waters to swell along the Missouri River and its tributaries. To relieve flooding pressure, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has said they may be forced to release water from reservoirs until mid-August.
Climate connection
All this because of a flaky La Niña?
"La Niña and El Niño affect the atmosphere's energy balance because they determine the location of warm water in the Pacific, and that in turn determines where huge clusters of tropical thunderstorms form," said Robert Schneider, of the Storm Prediction Center. "These storms are the main energy source from the tropics influencing the large scale pattern of the jet stream that flows through the U.S."
Schneider said that the very strong and active jet stream across the lower United States in April "may have been related to the weakening La Niña conditions observed over the tropical Pacific."
And of course, looking at an even broader picture, there's this million dollar question: Does any research point to climate change as a cause of this wild weather?
"Global warming is certainly happening," Patzert said, "but we can't discount global warming or blame it for the 2011 tornado season. We just don't know ... yet."
Now, what is La Nina you ask...(I told you, I am hot. I have spent alot of time figuring out why I am hot and when I will likely not be hot any more).
La Niña http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Ni%C3%B1a
La Niña is a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon that is the counterpart of El Niño as part of the broader El Niño-Southern Oscillation climate pattern. During a period of La Niña, the sea surface temperature across the equatorial Eastern Central Pacific Ocean will be lower than normal by 3–5 °C. In the United States, an episode of La Niña is defined as a period of at least 5 months of La Niña conditions. The name La Niña originates from Spanish, meaning "the girl," analogous to El Niño meaning "the boy."
La Niña, sometimes informally called "anti-El Niño", is the opposite of El Niño, where the latter corresponds instead to a higher sea surface temperature by a deviation of at least 0.5 °C, and its effects are often the reverse of those of El Niño. El Niño is famous due to its potentially catastrophic impact on the weather along both the Chilean, Peruvian and Australian coasts, among others. La Niña is often preceded by a strong El Niño.
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Effects
The results of La Niña are mostly the opposite of those of El Niño; for example, El Niño would cause a wet period in the Midwestern U.S., while La Niña would typically cause a dry period in that area. At the other side of the Pacific La Niña can cause heavy rains. For India, an El Niño is often a cause for concern because of its adverse impact on the south-west monsoon; this happened in 2009. A La Niña, on the other hand, is often beneficial for the monsoon, especially in the latter half. The La Niña that appeared in the Pacific in 2010 probably helped 2010's south-west monsoon end on a favourable note. But then, it also contributed to the deluge in Australia, which resulted in one of that country's worst natural disasters with large parts of Queensland either under water from floods of unusual proportions or being battered by tropical cyclones, including that of category 5 Tropical Cyclone Yasi. It wreaked similar havoc in south-eastern Brazil and played a part in the heavy rains and consequent flooding that have affected Sri Lanka.
Recent occurrences
There was a strong La Nina episode during 1988–1989. La Niña also formed in 1995, and in 1999–2000. A minor La Niña occurred 2000–2001. The La Niña which developed in mid 2007 and lasted until early 2009, was a moderate one. NOAA confirmed that a moderate La Niña developed in their November El Niño/Southern Oscillation Diagnostic Discussion, and that it would likely continue into 2008. According to NOAA, "Expected La Niña impacts during November – January include a continuation of above-average precipitation over Indonesia and below-average precipitation over the central equatorial Pacific. For the contiguous United States, potential impacts include above average precipitation in the Northern Rockies, Northern California, and in southern and eastern regions of the Pacific Northwest. Below-average precipitation is expected across the southern tier, particularly in the southwestern and southeastern states.[1]
However, an El Niño returned in May–June 2009 and lasted until April 2010. The effects of El Niño in 2009 were already being seen in the fall of 2009 as the remnants of Tropical Storm Ida strengthened into a powerful coastal storm.[2][3]
A new La Niña episode developed quite quickly in the eastern and central tropical Pacific in mid-2010,[4] and lasted at least until early 2011.[1] This La Niña, combined with record-high ocean temperatures in the north-eastern Indian Ocean, has been a large factor in the 2010–2011 Queensland floods,[5] and the quartet of recent heavy snowstorms in North America starting with the December 2010 North American blizzard. The same La Nina event is also a likely cause of a series of tornadoes of above-average severity that struck the Midwestern and Northwestern United States in the spring of 2011, and is currently a major factor in the drought conditions persisting in the South Central states including Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. [6]
"La Niña" events between 1950 and 2011.[7] 
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