July 2010
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Gotta love the Clinton County MO Sheriff’s report

My favorites this week are:

7/15    02:06  A very large size snake was just captured by Casey’s in Lathrop; City Officer responds to pick it up and take it back to its owner…..NO THANK YOU!!

7/20   16:54  Man calls and reports that he has 3 skunks in his yard wants to know if we can help; Yes, we can offer advise- stay out of the way of the stinky spray

7/22   18:13  TCAD and Lathrop Fire are needed to help a patient with a rubber ball in his nose

         19:09  Man calls to report that he just witnessed someone smoking while pumping gas into their car.  The man confiscates the cigarette butt for DNA purposes.  We explain to the man that he has to sign a complaint since our officer did not see the person do it.  The man proceeds to throw a grown man tantrum and is hoping the person blows up next time.

         21:27  Hit and run accident with the victim now chasing the suspect down the road

The 22nd was quite the day, it wasn’t even a weekend or a full moon.

This and many more reports concerning tractors, drunks and guns can be found at LathropMOonline

Looking up in the night time sky.

For those that look up after dark, here are a few things this week worth heading out for in the beautiful Trimble, MO and Smithville Lake area.

Courtesy of SpaceWeather Mars, Venus and Saturn will be doing a little visiting together in the night sky right after sunset all week.  Later this week they will be lined up like this.

skymap_north

From Spaceweather.com

“SUNSET PLANETS: Mars and Saturn are converging with Venus to form a skinny triangle in the sunset sky. When the sun sets tonight, go outside and look west. Venus pops out of the twilight first, followed by Saturn, then Mars. Dates of note include July 30th and 31st when Saturn and Mars are only 2o apart. Sky maps: July 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31.”

Also, the X-37B (experimental space plane/satellite/weapon) will be doing a few flyovers this week.  The most notable is on:

July 27th at 8:57:07 X-37B will rise in the west until it peaks at 9:00:23 at 58 degrees elevation in the South Southwest sky and then disappears in the East SouthEast at 9:03:40.

Conspiracy Theory on the Satellite here!

 

No space station flyovers until the 1st of August.

There will be a few bright Iridium flares this week of –5 or brighter magnitude:

July 27th at 5:56 in the morning looking up 72° to the SSW, July 27th at 11:33:52 pm looking up 14° WSW, July 28th at 11:36:53 looking up at 11° to the WSW and for you early risers on the 29th of July at 3:49 in the morning looking up at 26° to the SE.

For a more detailed look at Satellite flyovers please visit:

Satellite Fly Overs for Trimble, MO

or sign up at

Heavens Above

Better late than never

Here are the weather stats from June.

This was the hottest June we’ve had since moving here in March of 06.  The avg. temp for the month was 77 degrees.  The next hottest June was 06 at 75.2.  The highest temp was 92.6 on the 22nd and the coolest temp was 59.8 on the 6th.  Neither of these were records for June.  The highest June temp has been 97 on 6/23/09 and the lowest June temp was 51.7 on 6/9/07.

We had 5.84” of rain in June.  All of the rain fell in the first 3 weeks of the month and we had no rain the last 9 days of the month.  There have been two other times this year that we went 9 days without rain.  There hasn’t been a 10 day or greater stretch without rain yet this year.  The was the second wettest June that we’ve had.  The wettest was June of 2007 with 7.24′” and the driest was June of 06 with 2.24′”

Webcam pic of the month.

Junewebcam

A new post already!

Ok, so it’s been a month and a half since I updated this blog.  For that I apologize.  It’s been a pretty busy month and a half that has kept me from posting.  That’s a lame excuse but it is the only one I’m giving.

To cover the month and a half lapse we start off with a storm chase the week before Memorial Day.  Here’s a few pics from the Chasecation.  Nothing too exciting, there is some decent video that I don’t have time to edit that will in all honesty never be posted, but even that isn’t much better than these pics.  This trip did feature just about the largest a funnel cloud can be without being a tornado, the shortest rainbow I’ve seen and the brightest rainbow I’ve seen.  In a few days I’ll post some info on the places to stay and eat in the Great Plains that we discovered on this trip. (Blog to do #1)

June was pretty much about the garden.  We did one quick chase on a Friday evening that I’ll post soon.  (Blog to do #2)  During that chase we came across this Winery that I didn’t know existed.  We’ll have to go back and check it out in greater detail in the very near future.  (Blog to do #3)

Back to the garden.  It’s been fully planted and everything is doing pretty darn good.  Potatoes and garlic seem to be the exception.  The potatoes did well last year but have all but died this year?!?!  I also didn’t know that garlic was supposed to be planted in the fall.  So we have some pretty small garlic bulbs.  I’ll get some current pics up in the near future.  (Blog to do #4)  I have some pics but they are now about 3 weeks old.  We ate the first Roma tomato last week.  By the way, I hate raw tomatoes.  I love fresh salsa and pico, but I hate tomatoes by themselves.  Anyway the tomato tasted good, I still won’t eat one by itself.  Made the first batch of salsa strictly from the garden tonight.  Cilantro was the exception as the heat has caused it to bolt so we had to use some nasty cilantro from Big-V.  However, the tomatoes, onions, serrano peppers and garlic were from the garden.  It also made for good sauce on the tacos.  There are hundreds of tomatoes growing as well as hundreds of several varieties of peppers.  The cantaloupe and watermelon are blooming.  The onions are ready to be harvested and the f@#!ing crabgrass is invading.

We had our 4th annual Independence Day party on the 3rd of July.  I don’t know why I picked the 3rd instead of the 4th but it is a good thing that I did.  We had some rain on the 3rd but a lot on the 4th.  We went through 40+ pounds of brisket, one 12lb pork tenderloin, 1/2 slab of ribs (received in a trade for some brisket and a beer), and a case of hamburgers.  There was not one bite of meat left over.  The party went well with no one getting hurt too bad.  Next year I’ll do 4 full briskets and one pork tenderloin.  FWIW, on the first party we had 3 pork tenderloins and 1 brisket.

To wind down what is becoming a long winded post I’ll give a quick synopsis of the vacation we took this week.  We didn’t want to take a long or expensive vacation after having the party last weekend so we ended up going to see the Zac Brown Band in Fort Wayne, IN.  Reader’s Digest version.  It rained in Hannibal, MO, we found a decent winery in IL (Blog to do #5), Springfield, IL is really only for Lincoln history buffs (BTD6), Fort Wayne, IN was a pleasant surprise (BTD7), it costs $6.10 in tolls to get through Chicago to see Gary and Coco.

(BTD7) is going to be posting the Iridium flares and Space Station flyovers that we go out to watch quite often.

Garden Finished

Planted a mound of cantaloupe, a mound of watermelon, 7 sweet bell peppers, 2 jalapenos, 2 ceyennes, 3 pablanos, 1 super chile, 6 serranos, 2 habaneros, 1 scotch bonnet and 1 caribbean red pepper today to finish the garden.  Pics to follow in a day or two maybe.