(West Elmwood, Texas) The commute to the UrbanSurvival office this morning was deemed treacherous and writers were urged to stay at home and offline if possible as the Great Texas Blizzard of Ought ‘14 swept through the Outback Region overnight dropping billions of flakes.
“I haven’t seen this many flakes since the 2012 elections,” one local resident told us.
Forecasters, who have named it “Winter Storm Klink” immediately attributed the storm to the effects of global warming.
One forecaster, Mortimer Snerd of the Fort Worth forecast office said it was the worst storm he’d seen in his whole career since being hired on in late 2013 .
Another weather expert, Dr. Phil Dirt or MazinWeather, proclaimed the source of the storm as the “Oklahoma Effect Snow.”
As he explained it, cold weather from the Polar Vortex presently centered over Durant, Oklahoma mixes with warm moist air from Guadalajara, Jalisco State, Mexico.
“We’ve complained to Immigration and Customs Enforcement a zillion times,” explained Dr. Phil. “We know that they have a political agenda at the management level, but Texas needs stronger border weather enforcement. All it would take would be a higher wall. Without it, we could be facing rain from illegally immigrating moisture this spring.
The East Texas Outback was particularly hard-hit by the storm, with some area’s reporting up to a sixteenth of an inch of the dangerous spawn of Klink.
The heavy snowfall overnight may also have contributed to a massive regional power interruption that lasted nearly a 1/10th of a second at the height of the storm. Local power officials blamed the especially noticeable power bump Thursday night on excessive downloading during the storm.
“We had terrible load problems about 8:17 last evening” said utility spokesman George Westinghouse. “Even though the Texas grid is independent from the other four power regions in the country and we produce more energy than most other nations, there’s only so much load we can support,” he confirmed. “The flash outage was likely due to a slow switching relay at the Coldmutha switch yard combined with too many people downloading videos, making dinner, and having their sound systems up to high,” he explained.
Working on the clock, crews had restored power to 100% of the areas 2,387 residents in 96 milliseconds, although some families reported outages lasting at long as 134 milliseconds.
Government officials in Bradford, Montalba, and unincorporated districts Brushy Creek and Elmwood are holding an emergency meeting at Bubba Jean’s Café in Bradford once roads are passable. Around at 8:30 this morning they’ll meet with the public to discuss storm recovery efforts.
“We may petition County Judge Elbert Johnson for an emergency declaration. Once that’s done, a state declaration should follow as a matter of course. Things are that bad out here,” said Elmwood activist Willy Survive. “As soon as that’s done, we expect federal aid will follow which means FEMA and Xe forces should arrive within weeks to enforce peace during the storm recovery operations. “Things are so bad, I think governor Perry call up NORTHCOM right away,” said Survive.”Besides, we need a disaster area tax break for local agriculture on 2014 taxes…we haven’t had a decent break since Ike.”
All ready, there have been reports of scattered looking, and minor thefts. Anderson County Sheriffs are investigating a black cat named Zeus suspected stealing mouthfuls of cat food from an American tabby, Ms Puscilla, up in the headwaters region of Mound Prairie Creek, a known refuge for the endangered Sasquatch last reported there in 1921.
In Washington, Concerned Friends of Cryptoarcheology have organized a demonstration outside the White House today to underscore the Obama administration’s lack of concern the Mound Prairie Sasquatch plight..
East Texas tree farmer George Ure took this reporter on a tour of his farm at daybreak to survey the extensive damage caused by the storm.
Pointing to a surviving stand of trees he explained that he was not able to find smudge pots in time to prevent extensive damage to his crops by the wintry blast.
“We reckon there’s been a loss of maybe half a million pine needles, already,” said Ure. East Texas pine needle exports account for as much as 1/1000th of one percent of Anderson County agriculture exports and officials are worried about the ripple effects on the US Balance of Trade.
Farmers, like Ure, are so desperate for additional smudge pots that prices of them on eBay are running up.
Forecasters have some relief in store for the region in their long range forecast with temperatures expected to zoom up into the mid 60’s by Saturday.
Reporters covering the disaster are running low on supplies, as well. The officials meeting at Bubba Jean’s have announced some liquid writing supplies should be available at Gaines’ Package Store in Palestine by 11 AM.
Elsewhere, we understand cooler weather is in store for the Northeast.
[No horses were injured during the filming of this report.]
Seriously: Skydiving
George II, a/k/a “The Headless Skydiver” made it back from his five-day adventure down at Skydive Spaceland.
Shown right doing is his soon-to-be-patented back-flip exit from a Twin Otter at 14.5.
Reader Steve did send in a correction about the sport which involves voluntarily leaving the safety of a perfectly good airplane which makes no sense whatsoever to George the elder…
George,
If G2 continues as he has been, there is little chance that some whuffo-chic will ‘get her hooks in him’. The sport tends to consume your energies, and you tend to self-select the significant others that you associate with. There has been more than a few relationships that received the “Its either me or skydiving” line, resulting in a lot more skydives.
Cheers,
Steve
1st jump 1969
Total jumps 4000+
Hmmm…the sport has its own lingo, turns out. UrbanDictionary has the definition of a “whuffo” over here….
My reluctance to trust nylon instead of 6061 aluminum is based on 220 pounds of reasons and the sentiment is echoed by reader Fred:
Your talk about not wanting to take up skydiving reminded me of my late father. He was a private pilot too with about 10,000 hours in the air. His sister (my Aunt Geneva) asked him if he wore a parachute when he was flying. His response was that he didn’t, because he might get excited some time and jump out. Said he’d rather just take his chances on landing it somewhere.
Yessir, a man after my own liver. That’d be chicken liver. From reader Hal…
i’m an old guy with about 200 jumps a number I have arrived at by doing too few jumps over too many years. I would qualify for a class c license if I went that route, which I have avoided.
There is a concept called “air time” which is how much time you spend in freefall multiplied by your number of jumps. 50 jumps times 2 minutes free fall equals a little over an hour of “airtime” which really isn’t that long.
To even consider base jumping with an A license is simply crazy. I cannot imagine any serious jumpmaster would advise any jumper to attempt base jumping at that level of experience. Keep in mind that base jumping is often done without a reserve simply because at that shortened altitude a reserve would never have a chance to open. He’s already had 2 reserve rides? A lot of people would consider that to be a high number but hey if you have to go to reserve not too many skydivers will fault you. ( It may also have something to do with renting gear).
Skydivers fly their chutes just like pilots fly a plane. So the old adage remains: there are old pilots and bold pilots…
Yesterday’s regaling of the sport also got this base jumping note from reader Paul:
Hi George,
The BASE jumping you mentioned in your column as being a high antenna on the Gulf Coast could be the LORAN-C antenna tower in Raymondville.