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Monday, April 16, 2012

State of Emergency: Florida on Fire

Florida's Drought now in 7th Year
Many Lakes at Historic Lows
State of Emergency
Executive Order
The order goes on for 12 pages like this.  Read it all at this link
Florida Wildfires State of Emergency Order
When Will it Rain?
Climatologically we should not expect significant rains before the June 1 beginning of rainy season

Formula for Calculating the Beginning
of Rainy Season

Warm Nighttime Temperatures (67-70° F)
+
High Humidities (dew points in the 70°s)
=
Rainy Season
Normally around June 1

This year's rains have been nonexistent

Read more about calculating beginning of
Florida's Rainy Season at
Dozens of fires continue to burn across the Florida peninsula today

Everything You Need to Know About Florida Wildfires
Florida Dept of Agriculture 
Current Fire Conditions


The fires continue to generate a thick pall of smoke across Florida.  Above: NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of the thick smoke from its orbit in space.  The fires appear as red squares and smoke from the fires appears a light brown color.  Other small plumes of smoke can be seen from smaller fires.



Florida has entered a state of emergency as firefighters battle more than 100 wildfires that are raging throughout more than 20,000 acres in the state — from the northern border, to the Panhandle, to the southern tip.

Gov. Rick Scott issued the state of emergency order Tuesday, allowing regional and local agencies to redirect their personnel to fight the wildfires and enlisting the help of the Florida National Guard. The order also puts Florida in a position to receive assistance from the federal government.

State officials say less than a month into the spring season, large swaths of South and Central Florida are approaching drought-like conditions.


Yeah, that's a lot of wildfires.  92 total active wildfires affecting 16,293 acres with 70,000+ acres burned year-to-date

The current forecast calls for mostly sunny skies, dry weather, and breezy conditions for the foreseeable, forecastable future.

We're Following:


We've Read:
It’s sprayed on home gardens, Little League Baseball fields and, most heavily, the corn, soybean and other crops of the Central Valley of California. More than 10 million pounds of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weedkiller Roundup, are applied in California each year, according to government figures. Now, after a yearlong legal battle, California’s environmental health agency has announced that it will list Roundup as a known carcinogen.
 The Cutting Edge Fashion Draped (or not) 
on Benjamin LeDuff

For the past decade, sand sculpture artists have gathered every year in Tottori, Japan, at the world’s only indoor sand museum, to mount an exhibit of intricate tableaux. Image: Ko Sasaki.  Review:  Japan's Sand Museum
Human in Negative
Marcos Domingo Sánchez
Contemporary Fashion 
and Fine Art Photograpy
Marcos Domingo Sánchez
on Stephen James (or is it Stephen Hendry) or is it
You decide
One summer day, a Kazakh herder in northwest China noticed a giant black boulder that he did not remember seeing before in the grasslands where he raises sheep and cattle. He left it there, and it sat undisturbed for more than two decades. But in 2011, local officials declared the rock a meteorite and hauled it away, arguing that natural resources were state property. So the herder and his sons decided to sue. “The meteorite wasn’t made on land, or even on the earth,” the family’s lawyer, Sun Yi, said in a telephone interview from Shanghai. “It’s from outer space, so it should belong to the person who first discovered it.” Photo above: Kenjiebieke Reamazhaen in 2011 with the meteorite on his family’s land in the Xinjiang autonomous region. He is the elder son of Juman Reamazhaen, the herder who found the meteorite. Image: Teliewubieke Juman
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