The Perfect Backyard Weather Station

Everyone complains about the weather, even me. Although, I have a bit more tolerance than most for a couple of reasons: one, never complain or worry about things you cannot control; two, donot put all your eggs in one basket with the local weather guys. There is a better forecast from the National Weather Service, which the weathermen take their cue and add their spins. But the best forecaster that I have found is in a pole with a piece of tube or metal bolted to it. From the metal is hung a string with a stone suspended in a string sling. A sign near by list in one column the conditions and in the second column  the forecast. It is basically 99% accurate.

conditions                                                             forecast

stone is wet                                                                             rain

stone is dry                                                                     not raining

shadow on ground                                                                                sunny

white on top                                                                               snowing

can not see stone                                                                                       foggy

swinging stone                                                                                         windy

stone jumping up and down                                                                                   earth quake

stone gone                                                                                           tornado

This way, you know for sure! Happy Forecasting.

Balloons in a Tree

From The Ground Up

It was another beautiful spring day in Dallas. The temperature topped out at 81-degrees F and there was no wind or breeze. Flags hung limp on flagpoles on the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. The grass was a beautiful green against a medium blue sky. Yet, for me, it was a tad warmer than I like when I am out with the camera. A camera crew five-strong, with all their heavy and well-padded cases, were heard complaining also. They said they were "shooting Dallas" on a positive note as they headed down between the levees.

I have been rather anxious for spring this year.  I wanted to try out a couple of things on my old and trusty cameras. Well, camera in this case because the big Nikon over the winter is still in the hospital with a bad case of software malfunction. Nikon wants me to up grade. Funny thing about that, though. Nikon does not want to kick in anything toward the upgrade.  Over the years, I have known several AP photographers that have used the same equipment for many more years than I have used the new digital, but we have one thing in common: they liked shooting with their equipment and I like shooting with the cameras that I have. I'm not totally sold that I need 24 mega pixels or sensors twice the size with no mirrors, either. The case to be made is that cameras are kind of like an Apple i phone series 5 or 6. Apple wants to sell phones so before you learn all the features on your 5, you just have to have that new series 6! As my grandfather would say,"hogwash". That is were I am now with the decision on cameras. I'm not so sure that upgrades are always the right choice. Never-the-less, I was able to test out the adjustments and the adjustments worked just fine.

A bee sits on a flower with his wings folded.

This tree has been flowering for ages. It has about a 60 foot circumference

See, there really is water below the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge!

Maggie 2 Update

The Margaret McDermott Bridge on I-30 crossing the Trinity River. This is the second Signature Bridge as part of the Trinity Corridor Project.

The construction of the Margaret McDermott (Maggie 2) is moving along about the same pace as when the Margaret Hunt Hill (Maggie 1) was under construction. Crews were working. The work field is mired in mud with all the rain that has been falling and the melting of the snow and ice. Also, I was rather taken aback when I finally realized that the final height of the center arch was a bit lower than I first thought. While the Maggie 1 risers to 400 feet above the Trinity, Maggie 2 will not be that tall. It is estimated to be 250 feet above the Trinity, some 150 feet less than the Maggie 1, but still a significant and respectable height.

With the weather being cold, blustery and damp, attending the St. Patrick's Day Parade on Greenville was passed up for the second year in a row. After lunch my prescriptions were ready for pick up. While out, I drove down to the bridge, which looks almost like it did last week. Then, I took Beckley to Zang Avenue to Bishop Street. The trolley lines are nearly ready. The station drop-off and pick-up points now have the weather and wind shield covers in place.

On the way over, I was wondering with the festive mood going on in Lower Greenville, if the Bishop Arts District would be rather down in attendance. Much to my surprise, the crowds were big, the lines were long and parking was just as bad as in Lower Greenville. It was encouraging for city growth to see both areas "going strong". It also occurred to me that the Dart Trolley would probably get used a lot.Current thinking is that the trolley would be full most of the time if not all the time. Lower Greenville doesn't have that service and it wouldn't take much to run the Trolley from City Place down Henderson to Greenville. Since Klyde Warren Deck Park was so successful, and with the extension of the trolley lines along both ends of the park the "M" is going to have more riders this summer than expected, I bet. Remember also, it isn't that far to the Perot Museum, either.

All-in-all, Dallas has it together and is showing signs that make economics fun. The amount of  construction going on is really amazing, especially in roadways, airports, public transportation. The Trinity Corridor was, without doubt, the development catalyst equal to what DFW was for the city.

My How Time Flies: Ah 1 and Ah 2

It was mid May of 2013 when I first meet Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg in a very big white tent on the tarmac of the executive aviation area at DFW International Airport. The name of Bertrand Piccard was more familiar to me having followed his efforts to fly around the world or across the Atlantic in  balloons. Another, who I had known, had tried the balloon thing and splashed down in the North Atlantic bobbing around for three days until a Russian Trawler had picked him up and saved him from hypothermia. Karl was every bit excentric in that way but had made a few million along the way but was more excited about the adventure than money and the journey was just as excited. Racing in the latest of designs in sailing boats from New Zeland to New York was just as much fun to Karl and his sailing experience may have kept him afloat until his rescue. I'm just saying, it might have.

Still, meeting Andre and Bertrand was an honor for me and their own excentric personalities had propelled them across the United States in Solar Impulse 1 after lift off at Moffett Field in the Bay Area. They were very much aviators and had crossed paths with excentric aviators like Karl and Sir Richard Branson in more recent years beyond Lindberg and the Spirit of St. Louis. Albeit Lindberg's son today is a friend of both Andre and Bertrand and support their efforts.It's like Jack Lemmon once said:" If you are a success at what you do, you send the elevator back down as many times as you can."

Now, Solar Impulse 2 has begun its trip RTW (round the world), departing from Abu Dhabi to Oman on the first leg piloted by Andre. The second leg was Bertrand from Oman to Ahmedabad, India. SI2 is scheduled to land again in Phoenix as it makes it way around the earth. I am hoping that the trip will bring them to DFW again, although I cannot be sure at this point if that will be the case. Frankly, I really don't want to know at this early stage of their trip.

My best wishes to the two co-founders of this project, Bertrand and Andre, their wives and families, their chase teams, support teams in Morocco where their mission control functions. They proved that they can fly from the west coast of the US to the east coast and not use a drop of fuel. The bigger proof is the future of solar energy which I  support for the current generation and the generations to follow. Aviation has led the way for so long, it isn't surprising to see aviation leading again with bringing solar energy into the forefront once again. Congratulations on your RTW endeavor Bertrand and Andre. My prayers are with you all.

Co-Founder and Pilot Andre Borschberg at DFW International 24 May 2013 during Solar Impulse 1 "Flight Across America"

Co-Founder and Pilot Bertrand Piccard at DFW International 24 May 2013 during Solar Impulse 1 "Flight Across America"

Texas Wonderland, Scene 2

Under another Winter Storm Warning. Accumulations are for freezing rain, sleet and several inches of snow!

Honey Salvadori-- Hits a Home Run

"I think a photography class should be a requirement in all educational programs because it makes you see the world rather than just look at it." -- Author unknown

"Citizen journalism is about being in the right place at the right time." --Honey Salvadori

"Professional photography is about having the insight and analysis to know how to report a story and get beyond the superficial."  --Honey Salvadori

 Yesterday, over 2100 viewers submitted their photos to a local Fox News station. More yet came into the archives of the ABC and NBC and CBS affiliates.

But the real story did not come from the network affiliates rather, they came from the TxDot cameras that the affiliates aired or were pulled up on personal computers, notebooks and iphones in the hands of individuals. First came a day of sleet, freezing fog, mixed with freezing rain. That was a typical Texas nightmare on the roads. The next day came the light, fluffy, powder dry snow fall. That was just a pure nighmarish experience amplified.

Even the television stations put their "Reed Timmer" type "Intimedator" trucks on the road. Driving from miles south to miles north of the metroplex only to find that the 40-car pileup was only 17-car and later confirmed to be 15 cars total. Well, I guess if you count the two semi-tractor trailer rigs in the mess, the 17 number would hold water. But the TxDot cameras were the thing to watch. Seeing adult men and women on 2-3-4 and even 5 high tier flyways stuck-- get out of their cars-- and walk around on the roadways of major interstate highways was insane. To make things even more insane was to see cars turn around on the ramps and drive in the opposite direction thinking that they were going to get down and out of their current situation. Even police cars. Others, just choose to put their cars in reverse and back down the ramps with on-coming traffic coming at them.

Nothing proved to me more about how to spend federal highway dollars more usefully than this past Friday afternoon at the movies watching all that unfold. What needs to settle over any area that has traffic problems albeit congestion, winter weather, tornados, floods, hurricane, sandstorms or landslides is a massive educational program. It is obvious that there is little common in common sense. Too many school children have been graduated with 12-years of political correctness, wording of the pledge of allegiance, bringing cupcakes to school, dress codes, not allowed to bring medication and turn it over to the school nurse, or which teacher should be allowed to carry a handgun rather than teaching the basic reading, {W}riting and {A}rithmetic in school.

No one can get beyond the superficial anymore. One can have all the insight that there is to have but unless there is a fundamental element of not just having a degree but have a whole lot more  (and I mean more) thought of insight as to what to do with it once it is awarded, society becomes  more diluted. We really are not as smart as we think we are. It's a falsehood of education, big time. Take the teacher that must use her own money to buy supplies for her class verses the coach at the school that doesn't have to worry about outfitting his team with the latest fashions from feet to head and top to bottom. What is wrong with our educational system? How did we get so far off the basics?

I didn't have to use a single expressway ramp!!

I haven't been as cold talking pictures as I was with this one!

It's a known fact that photography sharpens and trains the eye. A photographer begins to look at the world much differently later on than early on, but it all starts at the very beginning of picking up a camera and looking through the view finder. As Honey said in her interview with Alamy, "citizen journalism is being in the right place at the right time", but seeing what you actually see, is a learned experience that most of us Americans are missing, while the rest of the world is not.

02March2015: corrected a previously edited sentence that did not remove the old error but incorporated it in the new correction.  "It's a known fact that photography training the eye." It should have read: "It's a known fact that photograph sharpens and trains the eye."

Ice Returns to North Texas Roads!!

The present conditions in the Dallas/Ft.Worth Metroplex is danger on the roads. Stay off the roads if you don't have to be out. There is between 0.5 of an inch to 1-inch of sleet and ice on the roads. The temperature is in the twenties so any melting from the pre-treating of brine and later the spreading of sand on the roadways has made for slick black ice driving

If you have lived up north, especially in the snow-belts around the Great Lakes, from northern Minnesota to upstate New York on down to the eastern seaboard, you would want to laugh at a little bit of ice on the roads here in Texas. As every one knows, the roads are not "salted" here in Texas. The next big question that every one ask next is: why?  That's a simple question but has a much more difficult answer. Some of it is technical. Some is financial. Some is political. Some is just plain stubborn thinking. When you get right down to it, however, the answer lies in basic physics and chemistry.

Concrete is one of the marvels of man-made useful products. It's contents are found in nature and in abundant supply. It's easy to make in large quantities. It's also very porous. That means liquids will be soaked up by the material. While that isn't a large-scale problem on roadways up north, it is here for two additional reasons. Most roadways up north are asphalt, but mostly concrete in Texas. Again, the why question pops up. Well, asphalt does not work so well in Texas sun when temperatures hit 100 plus during the summers. Although, there is new asphalt technologies helping that problem somewhat.

Concrete when exposed to the corrosive nature of salt wears concrete down much faster, especially when it is in bridgework, flyways and multi-level ramps. Gravity even helps the aging process along even more rapidly than on roadways.Have you ever seen an asphalt support column holding up an overpass? No, and  I don't think that you will, either. All that concrete needs reinforcing bar to strengthen the concrete structure. You don't have rebar in the asphalt roadways but you do in the bridgework over topographical elements roadways over valleys, rivers, railroad tracks and other criss-crossing roadways etc.,etc.Then, there is the hundreds of miles of open roadways from one side of the state to the other that requires concrete roadways and that requires reinforcing bar as well.

While rebar is not always "blue" when used in roadway and bridge construction, "rust" is not a cause for rejection on such projects. In fact, rust has an adhering effect to concrete. Yet, the government and state departments of transportation require a rubberized coating called "epoxy" on rebar used on federal and state highways financed with  federal construction dollars.  Not only does it run up the cost of the rebar significantly, it also doesn't stop the concrete from creating weak spots around the rebar and with heavy traffic over bridges, gravity takes it toll  on big chunks of concrete falling onto the roadways below. That is a life-threatening situation that is a totally undesirable situation.

The next thing to consider is that here in Texas, the big bottle necks occur on the three,four and even five tier high roadway interchanges and the more numerous one and two tier roadways. Dallas has some 5,000 bridges or more while Ft. Worth has some 3,000 plus bridges. That is far more bridges per square mile than most major cities in the US. When TxDot builds or re-engineers a major interchange, the cost of those products can be one-billion plus dollars. In the last 15 years in north Dallas, I have seen more than a hand-full of these construction projects. The projects are not really upgrades, rather they are major re-engineered or totally new and this is just catching up with the growth while planning into the future 50-years or so.The growth rate for the Metroplex has been reported as adding a minimum of 1,000 new residents per day. In the last 15-years, I have seen major stretches of farm land for miles become  solid-rooftops with a distance between homes being about the width of the average subcompact car.

Reinforcing Bar without Epoxy Coating

TexDot puts the bridge population in the Metroplex at 7500 and counting!

There are also reports that developers are now within 25-miles of the Red River!  Before that happens however, I see east, west and southern growth taking over more that what I see currently.

Rock salt on that many bridges and 14-16 lane roadways would break-the-bank in maintenance alone. So, take the little wintery mix and stay home and enjoy the fireplace or just read a good book! It all makes sense to me now and I'm not ready to see rock salt on my car any time soon!