Electricity Providers

[Rafe]

Temperature records started being kept in Houston in 1889. The official high yesterday was 103. Previous record was 99 in 1909. The high today hasn't been finalized yet, but the forecast is for 104. Previous all-time record for September 7 was in 1963 when it hit 98. Forecast for tomorrow is 105. Previous record was 100 in 1907.

This has officially beat 2011 as the hottest summer on record, and August 27 set the hottest temperature ever recorded in Houston with 109 (it got to 111 at my house).

We're not just setting records, we're smashing them. I haven't talked to any HVAC folks here, but I gotta think that their business is going absolutely nuts. With lows getting down only to around 80 on a good day, the radiant heat absorbed by the house hardly ever gets a chance to dissipate; our A/C has constantly been running full-bore. I have to believe that a lot of systems have crashed under this kind of stress-test. We've been pulling pretty consistently 355 to 370 kWh per week.

We've had little splash-and-dash showers here and there, but I checked the official county rain gauge less than a mile from my house and it shows precisely 0.00 inches of rain in the past 30 days. There's no option to view other increments larger than that; it goes from 30 days to one year. But I guarantee it's been at least 60 days since any moisture has fallen from the sky here.

It actually looks like a meaningful front is going to pull a widespread 0.5" to 1" of rain across much of the area over Friday night and into Saturday morning, and we sure need it.

And to add to the Bidenomics front, just got my auto insurance renewal today, and it's jumped $400 for 12 months with no claims, no tickets, no nothing.

[PriestTheRunner]

So when they start spouting GLOBAL WARMING!!!1!!!1!1!!

Just remember this article and several like it: https://www.space.com/tonga-eruption-wa ... warm-earth

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/tonga- ... atosphere/

The Tonga explosion was January 2022. Combined with this year's El Nino, it makes for interesting science.

50 million tons of water vapor from Tonga's eruption could warm Earth for years

The explosive event increased atmospheric water vapor by 5%. <My note, I believe this actually would up around 9% of total atmospheric water content>

More than eight months after the underwater volcano near Tonga erupted on Jan. 14, scientists are still analyzing the impacts of the violent blast, and they're discovering that it could warm the planet.

Recently, researchers calculated that the eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apa spewed a staggering 50 million tons (45 million metric tons) of water vapor into Earth's atmosphere, in addition to enormous quantities of ash and volcanic gases. This massive vapor injection increased the amount of moisture in the global stratosphere by about 5%, and could trigger a cycle of stratospheric cooling and surface heating — and these effects may persist for months to come, according to a new study.

Tonga's eruption, which began on Jan. 13 and peaked two days later, was the most powerful witnessed on Earth in decades. The blast extended for 162 miles (260 kilometers) and sent pillars of ash, steam and gas soaring more than 12 miles (20 km) into the air, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

...

And

Tonga Eruption Blasted Unprecedented Amount of Water Into Stratosphere

The huge amount of water vapor hurled into the atmosphere, as detected by NASA’s Microwave Limb Sounder, could end up temporarily warming Earth’s surface.

When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in the South Pacific Ocean also blasted an enormous plume of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The sheer amount of water vapor could be enough to temporarily affect Earth’s global average temperature.

“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said Luis Millán, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. He led a new study examining the amount of water vapor that the Tonga volcano injected into the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere between about 8 and 33 miles (12 and 53 kilometers) above Earth’s surface.

In the study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, Millán and his colleagues estimate that the Tonga eruption sent around 146 teragrams (1 teragram equals a trillion grams) of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – equal to 10% of the water already present in that atmospheric layer. That’s nearly four times the amount of water vapor that scientists estimate the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines lofted into the stratosphere.
...

[wheelgun1958]

But, but, cow farts!