16 inches is equal to 406 milimeters.  More than 300 milimeters per month is very common in India during the wet monsoon season.

River in Hoptown - Credit to Lou Willis.

Thailand monsoon - Credit to Frederic Poirot

Close enough to monsoon weather for me!

14 inch icicle

Man-made Global Warming is a joke. Cue the fool himself, Al Gore. He explains to us how a warmer planet creates more severe snowstorms.

“In fact, scientists have been warning for at least two decades that global warming could make snowstorms more severe. Snow has two simple ingredients: cold and moisture. Warmer air collects moisture like a sponge until it hits a patch of cold air. When temperatures dip below freezing, a lot of moisture creates a lot of snow.”

Ice-covered roads

Assuming that the pendulum is swinging back toward more severe winters over the next 10 years. What are school districts going to do if this is the new status quo? This could be the excuse for eliminating the long summer break; except when kids pass out because they were caught riding the bus in triple digit temperatures. There is no right answer when the district leadership has to consider the possibility of sue-happy parents looking to get their payday.

Snow days were nice when I was in school but I think Christian County calls off school way too often. Especially when main roads are clear and only secondary roads are slick. It doesn’t matter if twelve inches of snow fell this week I still have to drive in it. There were plenty of semi-trucks still driving today. If a truck driver can still haul his load then so can a school bus. The school buses should have a snow route and parents would meet the bus half way on a main road. My plan is not rocket science but it does require adults to act like adults.

First snow of Winter

Shock! Really! There was snow in the forecast and when I woke up this morning there was snow on the ground. Amazing!

The general rule in Kentucky is to believe the opposite of what the forecast tells you when there is the possibility of snow. Significant snow accumulation is usually nixed when temperature and moisture don’t come together simultaneously. If it’s cold enough there will not be enough precipitation or it will be too warm and it falls as rain.

4.5 inches in the Rain Gauge

You can watch the Little River grow to be the not-so-little river online. Your tax dollar at work.

I said yesterday I would build a snowman if I had enough material to work with but what fell turned out to be dry powder not very suitable for packing together. Interesting note that there was more snow on my car than on the ground. The hood actually had 7 1/2 inches.

* SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 4 TO 7 INCHES ARE EXPECTED ALONG AND SOUTH
  OF A LINE FROM MARBLE HILL MISSOURI TO CALHOUN KENTUCKY. CLOSER
  TO THE ARKANSAS AND TENNESSEE STATE LINES BORDERING KENTUCKY AND
  MISSOURI...AMOUNTS MAY APPROACH 8 TO 10 INCHES...WITH LOCALLY
  HIGHER AMOUNTS POSSIBLE. SOME SLEET MAY MIX IN WITH THE SNOW AT
  THE BEGINNING OF THE EVENT...BUT PREDOMINANTLY SNOW IS EXPECTED.

With that kind of forecast I expect to be building a very fat snowman tomorrow. In my lifetime Hopkinsville has never had 10 inches of snowfall at one time. It’ll suck though if after all the hype and scaremongering we only get a measly inch or less.

Mullins, a retired state employee, was one of seven landowners who shared $65,000 in what is believed to be the first sale of carbon credits for trees in Kentucky. That means they were paid for allowing their trees to do what comes naturally: Absorb carbon dioxide. [...]

Here we have the other half of the carbon trading marketplace. The Blue Heron buys carbon credits to sooth their guilty conscience. Then that money is paid out to men like Rodney Mullins who are laughing all the way to the bank. For those who live on this planet men are paid for their time and labor but in BizarroWorld men are paid for the work they are NOT doing. When the coal plant burns fuel to produce electricity the trees will absorb it for as long as they remain alive. This mechanism has worked for a very long time without need for a government subsidy. The Blue Heron should ask why are they paying to finance another man’s lifestyle of NOT doing something.

MACED had been planning to sell credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange. But carbon credits are trading very low there now as that emerging market waits to see what Congress will do about climate legislation.

Proponents say that if that legislation includes a cap-and-trade plan, it will bolster a market in which companies that put carbon into the atmosphere pay landowners for allowing their trees to absorb carbon.

Translation: The carbon credit market can’t sustain itself unless it is made mandatory by government fiat. Again I ask how does taxing carbon producers and subsidizing landowners improve the carbon absorption on the landowners’ property.

Walking down the main drag was very entertaining though.

We haven’t had floods in the Hopkinsville area, but it has rained every day for the last week or more. When it isn’t raining, the sky stays gray. [...]

I suppose this spate of rain is an equinox storm or as it was called in older times, a “line storm”. According to Bulfinch’s Mythology, the cooler weather that’s coming after the line storm is a signal of a cool winter that will last until the next equinox.

I like the anecdotal evidence that Mrs. Netz dug up. I’m already convinced that we will have a colder, snowier winter this year. President Obama spoke a bald-faced lie when he said that shrinking islands were causing hordes of climate refugees and greater conflict around the world. Looking at the photos posted at Prairie Bluestem inspired me to go out this morning when there was thick fog to take some of my own.

All three photos were taken at an intersection on a country road in Christian County.