Radar Image of Purple Martins Spreading out at Dawn

Summer Sucks / Favicon Added

FWD Climatology Report

Just for the record, the highs the coming week are predicted to be up to 108 or 110. NOOOO!! 

Quick Catch-Up and Cartoon

Very sad personal news. My mother unexpectedly passed away on June 27th at the age of 84. The Arlington Amateur Radio Club (AARC) kindly sent a lovely arrangement for which the family has extended its appreciation and sincere thank yous. No choice but to just move on. It probably sounds strange, but I served as Net Control for the Arlington Monthly Siren Test Net the day after her funeral, which was a week after she died. Doing something else helped distract me for that short while. (Check out my other blog if you'd like to read more about what a wonderful woman Mother was, see a photo of Mom and one of my brother and young great-nephews playing a brass trio tribute at graveside services, etc.)

Weatherwise in DFW: Second warmest June on record, but highest low temps on record (trend continues!) Yesterday was #17 consecutive day >100 and  #24 or 25 for summer so far. No relief in sight  To quote NWS: "we will need several more weeks of 100 degree temperatures to rival the impressive heat waves of 1980, 1998, and 2006." www.srh.noaa.gov/fwd. It will likely take a tropical storm in the Gulf to break the high pressure system that is stuck on top of us. The 9-month period from September to end of June driest on record. Can't even get any pop-up showers!

Last night RACES Leadership Council meeting: Gerry (Tarrant County RACES liason), is putting together a soon-to-be required Training Class for new RACES members and those needing to renew membership. Also in the works for this fall is a special meeting between RACES Council, Net Controllers and Mark Fox (possibly others) from the NWS FWD to discuss communications between them and RACES. They issued many more "potential for severe weather" warnings this spring that produced little if any actual severe weather than they've done since I've been involved. Don't know if that is due to new criteria, out of an abundance of caution, or CYA, but between midnight and dawn  there's not many (if any) spotters going to get out unless something really bad is about to hit us. We ran those as ARES Nets so ANYONE with any storm report could do so. Except for requests for reports, between 3am and dawn it was mostly dead air. Needless to say, as Net Control I didn't get any sleep at all.