h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One of the roads on my short commute (10 miles) buckled in yesterday's heat. It might affect my drive home, but I hope not. The marquee signs were still up this morning indicating the detour, but the barrels looked like they had been moved back out of the way, so I'll double check the Waze and DriveTexas websites before heading home.

Is that an unusual occurrence? It doesn't look like the temperatures were exceptionally hot down your way yesterday. IAH just made scorchio and there was a 105° heat index reading.

Meanwhile Beryl's track has shifted a tad more north even just since my last post a few hours ago and is making a beeline for Jamaica. Still too early to say how it'll affect Texas.

Even the UK met office has included Beryl in its latest "deep dive"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftAqiSav6lg

Yesterday was the hottest day of the year with temps at 99 and the heat index at 109. Roads buckle around here occasionally, especially on the scorchio days. The road that buckled yesterday was newly laid, fancy concrete. I suspect they didn't have sufficient expansion joints. This road was a nightmare during construction. It was repaving existing road, widening it and moving it to make room for an overhead elevated bypass to avoid all the little town (Kemah & Seabrook) red lights. It's passes east of "Clear Lake" which is neither clear, nor really a lake (more of a lake shaped bayou). The Johnson Space Center is located on the north shore of Clear Lake. I live south east of Clear Lake further along the bay. If I have to detour from the bridge that crosses the "Clear Lake Entrance" from Galveston Bay, which lies between Seabrook & Kemah, I have to go around to the west end of it and cross the official bayou part called... you got it, Clear Creek. (You couldn't see your hand 1 foot under the water in either of these.) That route takes me about 10-20 minutes longer and passes through an absolute mess of an intersection that was once dubbed "The Five Corners before they reworked it. It's where two roads intersect and a third road T's into one of them nearby. So, the "5 corners" were actually six. Now the third road also crosses the one it T'ed before and now curves and T's the other beyond that. (Think of a lower case 'h' with a crossing line through the two legs.) So now I guess you could call it the 10 corners. Are you already thinking like I was that they should have just made it into a traffic circle!? They should have, but there is a large Shell gas station in the middle.

On my way in this morning, I noticed that the marquee signs are still up, so the buckling must be further along on the surface road. I think what they're doing is diverting all THRU traffic over the bypass and maybe have an actual closed road in town, but I didn't notice it driving the other direction yesterday.

I can't remember the last time I was able to access my MP page without getting a Cloudflare page. I go through My Space now.

Scorchio no.6 (6th consecutive)

Heat index: 104

Yesterday 77/102 (actual: 77/102)
Today 76/101
Thursday 78/102
Friday 77/101 (20% chance of rain)
Saturday 78/100 (20% chance of rain)
Sunday 77/99 (20% chance of rain)
Monday 78/91 (50% chance of rain)
Tuesday 76/90 (60% chance of rain)

Yesterday's departure from the historical daily average: +5
Average min/max for today's date: 74/95
Record high temperature for today: 103 (2018)
Record low temperature for today: 60 (1924)

Much of the Rio Grande Valley and inland as far as Austin is in the forecast cone of Beryl now, with the RGV directly in the path as of this morning. The way things have been going for the past several days that path could move further east before it arrives.

Obviously the cone isn't as big as the storm and the forecast is still liable to change but its arrival is likely to have a big effect on our weather here as reflected in the forecast for early next week. 87° and a 60% chance of rain in July? Oh yes please.

Scorchio no.7 (7th consecutive)

Heat index: 105

Yesterday 76/101 (actual: 78/101)
Today 78/102
Friday 76/100 (20% chance of rain)
Saturday 77/97 (40% chance of rain)
Sunday 77/98 (20% chance of rain)
Monday 77/90 (60% chance of rain)
Tuesday 75/87 (60% chance of rain)
Wednesday 74/87 (60% chance of rain)

Yesterday's departure from the historical daily average: +5
Average min/max for today's date: 75/95
Record high temperature for today: 105 (2009)
Record low temperature for today: 62 (1924)

Scorchio no. 8 (8th consecutive)

Heat index: 105 (Bergstrom 107)

Yesterday 78/102 (actual: 79/101)
Today 76/100 (20% chance of rain)
Saturday 79/96 (60% chance of rain)
Sunday 76/98 (10% chance of rain)
Monday 78/85 (70% chance of rain)
Tuesday 73/84 (80% chance of rain)
Wednesday 73/92 (40% chance of rain)
Thursday 74/92 (40% chance of rain)

Yesterday's departure from the historical daily average: +5
Average min/max for today's date: 75/95
Record high temperature for today: 105 (2009)
Record low temperature for today: 62 (1924)

Beryl's path has shifted further east and it looks like Houston will get more of it now.

Scorchio no. 9 (9th consecutive)

Heat index: 103 (Bergstrom 105)

Yesterday 76/100 (20% chance of rain) (actual: 78/101, no rain)
Today 79/96 (60% chance of rain)
Sunday 77/99 (10% chance of rain)
Monday 77/84 (90% chance of rain)
Tuesday 73/93 (40% chance of rain)
Wednesday 73/94 (40% chance of rain)
Thursday 75/94 (50% chance of rain)
Friday 75/95 (20% chance of rain)

Yesterday's departure from the historical daily average: +5
Average min/max for today's date: 75/95
Record high temperature for today: 104 (2005)
Record low temperature for today: 62 (1924)

No h2g2 this morning.

Beryl's path has shifted even further east and the eye is not far off the coast at the time of writing (Sunday afternoon).

No scorchio yesterday, but barely. I just missed the rain yesterday going home from work. I got extremely lucky with the buses and had a very short wait for the transfer, got home about five minutes before the heavens opened. Mind you, it could have been even worse. Bergstrom, which is closer to where I work, had 2.34" of rain, 2.1" of which fell in the hour after I left work. That's some heavy rainfall, and an umbrella would have been pretty useless.

Heat index: 104 (Bergstrom 108)

Yesterday 79/96 (60% chance of rain) (actual: 75/99, 0.34")
Today 77/99 (10% chance of rain)
Monday 77/89 (50% chance of rain)
Tuesday 72/97 (20% chance of rain)
Wednesday 75/95 (40% chance of rain)
Thursday 74/95 (20% chance of rain)
Friday 75/95 (20% chance of rain)
Saturday 75/95 (10% chance of rain)

Yesterday's departure from the historical daily average: +2
Average min/max for today's date: 75/95
Record high temperature for today: 104 (2005, 1914)
Record low temperature for today: 63 (1924)

Heat index: 100

Yesterday 77/99 (10% chance of rain) (actual: 74/95, no rain)
Today 77/89 (50% chance of rain)
Tuesday 75/96 (10% chance of rain)
Wednesday 75/97 (20% chance of rain)
Thursday 74/97 (20% chance of rain)
Friday 74/94 (20% chance of rain)
Saturday 75/95 (30% chance of rain)
Sunday 76/97 (20% chance of rain)

Yesterday's departure from the historical daily average: 0
Average min/max for today's date: 75/96
Record high temperature for today: 106 (2009)
Record low temperature for today: 64 (1924)

How did you fare yesterday BG?

Yesterday 77/89 (50% chance of rain) (actual: 78/96, trace of rain)
Today 75/96 (10% chance of rain)
Wednesday 76/98
Thursday 74/97 (20% chance of rain)
Friday 74/94 (20% chance of rain)
Saturday 75/94 (20% chance of rain)
Sunday 76/97 (10% chance of rain)
Monday 78/98 (10% chance of rain)

Yesterday's departure from the historical daily average: +2
Average min/max for today's date: 75/96
Record high temperature for today: 106 (2022)
Record low temperature for today: 67 (1905)

Not too bad, considering...
We got wind gusts in excess of 100 I believe.
No flooding! We received 6 inches of rain. At least 6 inches that didn't blow out of the rain gauge.
We had no damage to our buildings.
We have no power or internet and cellular service is VERY spotty, only occasionally do I get a TXT or email notification. Mostly no signal or internet.
We had plenty of broken tree limbs in the yard, with a couple of large ones still hanging.

The heat will be our biggest problem for a few days (hopefully fewer than more). My parents' emergency, natural gas powered generator failed... again. The lid blew open and rain did something bad to it. We're running a little Honda 2000W inverter to run the refrigerator and freezer, a fan, a light, the TV and satellite, and cable modem/telephone. We have no internet service regardless. I have my generator running my A/C in my camper trailer, but it ran out of gas (I hope that and not another fuel issue, the tank looked dirty/rusty) after only 4 hours. I may rig up an external tank. If my parents generator get fixed, I'll move downstairs and take the cats with me for a few days. I hope they'll be OK today while I'm at work with no A/C or fans, just the windows open. It might get into the high 90s in my apartment today. They've got plenty of water and several window sills to sit in.

I'm glad to hear that everything is (mostly) alright. I hope it isn't too long before the power comes back on. I know someone who's on the opposite side of Houston. He posted on Twitter after 10 hours of no power. That was Monday afternoon I think, nothing since then.

Heat index: 100

Yesterday 75/96 (10% chance of rain) (actual: 74/98, no rain)
Today 76/98
Thursday 74/97 (10% chance of rain)
Friday 74/93 (20% chance of rain)
Saturday 76/91 (20% chance of rain)
Sunday 76/97 (10% chance of rain)
Monday 76/98
Sunday 76/98 (10% chance of rain)

Yesterday's departure from the historical daily average: +1
Average min/max for today's date: 75/96
Record high temperature for today: 110 (2022)
Record low temperature for today: 63 (1905)

Cellular service is still really sketchy. I've BARELY been able to keep my streak playing Waffle.

The storm came through here around 4am. at least that's when I really noticed my apartment shaking from the wind. I think it was about 6am when I heard the unmistakable BOOM of a nearby transformer blowing. My parents' power went out about 8:30am. I noticed when their generator came on and then shortly followed by the sound of it going off. The strong winds opened the lid and rain killed it. We stared at the blinking lights and randomly toggled switches and pressed the buttons a few times Monday to no avail. When I got home yesterday around 5pm, I took a closer look, now that condensation hand cleared from the LCD screen, and saw that I not only had to hit [STOP], but that I had to follow that by hitting [ESCAPE] to clear the error that was keeping it from restarting.


I'm amazed that a CAT 1 storm has so heavily cratered the cellular networks, all of them. I'm on a TXT group for work and I kept seeing notifications of almost everyone being 'not available'. That's still happening two days later. I'm at work now so I'm using the government's interwebs and sometimes stepping outside this faraday cage of a building to pick up better cellular and sometimes wifi.
Dad's internet came back up with the power this morning so I can at least borrow his if my power is still off. We have competing ISPs. So I should have no problem playing Waffle when I feed the cats their evening meal.

My internet (and a lot of other people's around here) was off for three or four hours yesterday, because of a downed tower in Houston they're saying, and adding 'third party' probably to deflect some of the blame. The whining and the conspiracy theories in the news reports of the outage are mind boggling.

Scorchio no. 10

Heat index: 98

Yesterday 76/98 (actual: 76/100)
Today 74/97 (10% chance of rain)
Friday 75/92 (20% chance of rain)
Saturday 75/90 (20% chance of rain)
Sunday 76/97 (10% chance of rain)
Monday 76/97 (10% chance of rain)
Tuesday 76/99 (10% chance of rain)
Wednesday 76/99 (10% chance of rain)

Yesterday's departure from the historical daily average: +3
Average min/max for today's date: 75/96
Record high temperature for today: 109 (2022)
Record low temperature for today: 62 (1905)

I didn't notice any attention given to the cellular outages in the limited local news coverage I've seen or heard this week. There is tons of coverage of the power outages. An estimated 3 million were out Monday, down to 1 million now I think.

I managed to find a news article about the spotty coverage.
http://www.chron.com/news/article/cell-phone-service-houston-19562925.php