Ten years of weather in three minutes

If you are interested in working weather magic, it helps if you have a sense of the natural weather patterns (because it is much easier to work inside the pattern than outside of it). It is also a nice to have this sense if you are Wiccan or occasionally attempt to divine the weather (because we all know that the weather on the news is wrong occasionally *wink*).

Hence my love for this video that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has made to celebrate the ten years of service (3788 days to be exact) of the GOES-12 satellite. The video is composed from 3641 full disk images of North and South America. It runs from the start of 2003 to August 2013 (GOES-12 was decommissioned on August 16th 2013).

For those who are curious, Katrina is at the :45 mark, and Sandy is at 2:50.

Kitty says it is cold outside

Let me in--it is cold outside.

Before you declare that I am heartless and cruel, just remember that I have been trying to convince Fierce Kitty (also known as Studio Kitty) to come live inside for the last two or three years. But he refuses because my wife insists that the doors must be closed, and there are three bully cats living on the inside of the house.

And where is all this snow and cold coming from? Did some weather witch decide that they were tired of the drought? If so, I wish that they would have done their spellwork before the Denver Water Board declared this year's watering restrictions.

Snow Day 2013 the second time around

Not a lot of snow here in the great fishbowl of Denver Colorado.

This morning I was awoken by a neighbor kid asking if I would like him to shove my sidewalk. I wasn't aware that kids still roamed neighborhoods looking for snow shoveling work. I told him, "No, I will shove it later." In part, this is true--and there was that hidden part of "I am so broke at the moment."

Of course, looking out the window right now, I am not even sure that I have to go out there and shovel. Well, at least, not the front. I still have to get the snow out of the passageway of death, that shaded section of the sidewalk that runs between the pottery studio and the house--the snow melts there, and then freezes making a passageway that only a Martian Ice Warrior can safely navigate.

So why so little snow here? Especially when up north of us, they got blizzard conditions yesterday. Well, I live in what I call the Denver Fishbowl--a small area that seems to not be completely connected to the rest of the weather in Colorado. Draw a circle on the map of Denver that includes the Denver Zoo and downtown Denver--and you have a zone that for some reason is a mini-microenvironment...it probably has something to do with the shape of the mountains to the west of us.

I have seen blizzards that nail everyone around us drop a mere inch here. Likewise I have seen severe rainstorms in the summer that only drown this area. It is like living in the fishbowl of a mad scientist...or maybe a mad weather witch.

Pray for rain in Colorado

There is absolutely no evidence that my cat has a drug problem.

Well, it is official--Colorado is dry and burning up. Seems like a typical summer to me. I am not sure how many wildfires are currently burning in Colorado, but it is definitely one too many.

I meant to do some gardening this year, as in plant some vegetables that my wife would promptly refuse to eat. Unfortunately, my (hopefully last as an undergrad) semester dragged on and was a grueling nightmare clear up to the end, so I did not start to garden nearly as soon as I should have.

Now, I can leave the water on all night and still be working with bone-dry dirt when I attempt to do anything out in the garden. It might be the result of the hundred degree days we are having.

So I am just mainly transplanting a few of the herbs that have proven to do ok with droughts, and seem to have secret plots to take over the world, to different spots. One of which is the Persian Catnip, a plant that my favorite cat has absolutely no problem with.

On one of the news groups that I belong to, a bunch of Colorado pagans and witches are doing a joint project in weather magic to try to bring rain to Colorado. And yes, I am going to be rolling up my sleeves also. If rain comes soon enourgh, I can still get some squash in before winter hits.

Feel free to critize my use of weather magic in the comment section--just remember that part of my training is Pennslyvania Dutch. Weather magic is perfectly acceptable to those who grow up in farming country.