High overcast again this still-dark early Sunday on California’s north coast, and most-likely will play out like the last week — clear with a chilly wind.
One cup of espresso-blend coffee, and half-way through a Guayaki yerba mate, the morning news scouring sucks, not pleasingly at all.
Mainly, just crash and fall.
Not really a single major story that stirs caffeinated interest, other than the new normal of special events — weird-ass weather and some kind of game this afternoon.
Always some game going on — football, this time, I think.
(Illustration found here).
One surprise, for me anyway, today is Groundhog Day — Ha!
And reportedly, in Punxsutawney, Pa., Groundhog Phil saw his shadow early this morning, which ‘means winter will extend well into March according to folklore.’
We all laugh, a collective head shake — according to folklore be it.
Also via folklore, it seems Chris Christie is following the narrative of a thug mentality, much like Dick Nixon, and got twice-booed yesterday:
The once-immensely popular Christie, his glow lost to scandal, sat stone-faced as he was razzed in Times Square for a typically upbeat Super Bowl event.
“You made it across the bridge?” howled one heckler as the problem-plagued Christie — in a navy Windbreaker and black scarf — sat impassively on the stage at Broadway and W. 43rd St.
And for me, it’s the best feel-good news story of the week.
Another sort-of-like that occurred not far from I sit on my ass — supposedly this guy runs his Dodge truck off the 101 freeway on Friday. The vehicle cascaded down a deep embankment, slammed into a concrete drainage drain. Apparently, the driver hauled ass.
Some photos and the story at our best online news source up here, the Lost Coast Outpost — with this:
A witness reportedly saw the driver stumble out of the cab and said to him, “You’re drunk.”
The man admitted as much before running away, Pagliuco said.
Law enforcement arrived shortly thereafter and is now looking for the driver.
A comedy moment, much like the whole Christie public-spectacle-balloon bust, but more humane, and kinda normal.
And like, too, kinda normal the sun is up, but no sunshine. The sky is much more overcast than I figured in darkness a little while ago, and we might even get some moisture — we’ve a 20 percent chance of rain forecast for today, but that’s near-about nothing.
Last week, too, we were reassigned drought status:
Drought intensity in Humboldt County has shifted from severe to extreme, according to data released this week from the U.S. Drought Monitor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
A week ago, only the very southern portion of the county was considered in extreme drought conditions.
The drought monitor also shows 10 counties in the state undergoing exceptional drought conditions, the monitor’s highest drought intensity.
Though Wednesday’s rainfall offered a brief respite from the dry conditions, National Weather Meteorologist Shawn Palmquist said today that an area of low pressure may bring rain to the North Coast on Saturday night through Sunday morning.
“At this point, the majority of the rain will stay offshore,” Palmquist said.
Palmquist said the North Coast will be experiencing “dry conditions at least through (next) Thursday.”
Just hilarious — Not!
Joe Romm at Climate Progress on Friday discussed global warming and the impact on the California drought, and concluded:
Finally, a 2009 NOAA-led paper warned that, for the Southwest and many semi-arid regions around the world, “the climate change that is taking place because of increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop.”
Impacts that should be expected if we don’t aggressively slash carbon pollution “are irreversible dry-season rainfall reductions in several regions comparable to those of the ‘dust bowl’ era.”
When the climate changes, it ain’t gonna change back.
And so much for humor…