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

There's a mozzer in here this morning

We had a pretty good storm pass over Austin this morning around 6am, but of course I was already awake by then, as I am every damn day Judging by the radar it looks like you had an impressive line of storms come through Houston about an hour later, BG.

At one point I had to open my eyes to see if my A/C was still on. It was; I just couldn't hear it over the sound of the rain. So far, we've received about 3.5 inches this morning.

You had the a/c on this morning? How warm was it in Houston?

It wasn't. For most of the night the compressor is idle and just the fan is blowing. I like the air circulating and the white noise.

23 February. It was 72°F when I arrived at work this morning... *Before Dawn*

And we had a local high around 85°. ¿ Double you tee eff, mayn ?

I've slept with the balcony door open for the past two nights. Yesterday we made 88F, today it was 91. In February. Typically the coldest month. I had to go to work with the a/c on standby. In February.

Tonight it's going to be 46, and 61 tomorrow. A full 30 colder than today. Oy!

Correction: today's maximum was 92, and it felt like it.

Well would you Adam and Eve it.

After the midweek heatwave (and when it makes 90F+ in February you can rightfully call it a heatwave) mentioned above, which coincided with my cooking days, it's been much cooler - in the 60s mostly, and 40s at night.

Today, my Friday, we're still in the 60s. Tuesday and Wednesday, my cooking/baking days, 78 and 75 respectively Mind you, it does carry on over Thursday (79) and Friday (78) before dipping back to the 60s on Saturday.

But there's no global warming.

Speaking of which, a fellow at the pub who normally seems level headed, tried to argue climate denialism with me last week. I pulled up some factual sites on my tablet including http://www.skepticalscience.com/ which I find to be very thorough and well cited. The next time I saw him he handed me a USB thumb drive with about two dozen URLs. I haven't had a chance to look at more than a couple of them yet. I'm not enthusiastic about doing so. Although, the first one I looked at may have supported the fact that 97% of actual climate scientists agree in anthropogenic global warming. The next one I looked at though was a list of tired, easily refuted arguments with no citations.

This campaign against actual evidence and science really disheartens me. It really does make me wish for a second head to bang against a wall.

We're in a period of transition, coming out of 2000 years of religious domination, power and brainwashing, moving into a more enlightened period. There's going to be a backlash for a while on the part of the reactionaries. Seems like there always is at times of great change.

The trees around here are already growing leaf buds. Some even have a flush of bright green leaves on them, which I reckon is about a month ahead of schedule.

That'll be us done with winter then.

Around here the first sign of spring is the hatching of the crane flies. They're thick already.

Yeah, we're getting plenty of those too.

Funny... I always associated them with the end of summer in the UK.

Slept with the balcony door open again last night. In February. It looks like I'll be doing the same thing for the next three nights if the forecasters are on the ball. High 70s to low 80s for the next four days. I'm starting to get anxious about the coming summer.

Apart from anything else I haven't been primed for it with a winter! I need a period of cold weather the way certain seeds need a frost before they germinate, or Brussels sprouts need a freeze in order to sweeten them up. My natural rhythms are out of whack

It's been 70F/21F for the past 12 hours, except for a massive jump to 71 around 10pm last night.

We dropped from 75F to 57F in the space of an hour this afternoon, and now we're down below 50 It rained a bit too. Plenty more of that to come, by all accounts.

We've had 1.26" of rain today. I think most of it fell on me while I was waiting for the bus that didn't come

How can it go from 45F and pishing down with rain on Friday, to 82F and sunny on Tuesday? Bloody nora.

Well, we've had 2.05" of very welcome rain so far this weekend I just wish it hadn't been *this* weekend. Plus the clocks go forward tonight so we lose an hour. In between the two busiest days of South by. Fantastic.

It'll be nice to have lighter evenings though

It looks we've already had getting on for half the rain we had all last year in the first two months plus ten days of this, but it's nowhere near enough yet to make up the deficit. I'm hoping for a good storm season this year. We haven't had a really good one for a while.

7.30am and already there's thunder around.