You can easily see the rivers have peaked upstream at Hahira and Skipper Bridge, may be peaking at Foxborough, but the Withlacoochee is still rising downstream at Quitman.
Many of the same factors that cause the prolonged extreme drought we’ve been having (deforestation, impervious surfaces, climate change) also produce flooding when we get a little rain. The flooding map by NWS Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service, Weather Forecast Office Tallahassee, FL, 2012-08-14 shows minor flooding on the Withlacoochee River at Skipper Bridge Road.
LOWNDES COUNTY, Ga.—Due to rising waters and the issuance of a Flood Warning by the National Weather Service, Lowndes County Emergency Management continues to monitor rising water levels on the Withlacoochee River at the Skipper Bridge Road stream gauge site.
Currently, the water level stands at approximately 14.3 feet and is expected to crest this afternoon at approximately 14.5 feet.
While a flood warning is in effect, the only area flooded at these levels are woodland areas near the river. Historically, flooding does not affect local roads and/or residences until water levels reach approximately 17 feet.
Lowndes County Emergency Management will continue to monitor conditions and additional updates will be distributed as new information becomes available. While there is no cause for immediate concern, citizens are encouraged to remain aware of their surroundings.
Baseload nuclear plants can’t take the heat! Meanwhile, zero stories of solar plants shutting down due to heat. Quite the opposite: more sun, more solar power!
Several nuclear plants on the U.S. East Coast shut down by early Wednesday and New York’s Consolidated Edison power company reduced the voltage in parts of Manhattan as the obsessive heat wave stressed the region’s power system.
Despite the shutdown of four giant nuclear reactors in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and South Carolina, the power systems delivered the juice needed by the regions’ homes and businesses to keep air conditioners humming on the projected last day of a brutal heat wave.
Then there’s this excuse:
Although the heat makes it more difficult to use the warmer river water to cool power plants and can stress power lines due to high usage, the reactors did not necessarily shut due to the heat.
They shut down due to faulty sensors, leaks, or unknown causes, and that’s somehow better?
Meanwhile, solar just keeps generating. I’ve never heard of a wind plant shutting down due to heat, either.
Remind me again, why is Georgia Power’s and Southern Company’s bet-the-farm risk on new nukes at Plant Vogtle a good idea? Wasn’t it supposed to be about dependable power?
A heat wave baking the eastern United States in record temperatures is set to continue on Sunday after deadly storms killed at least 12 people, downed power lines from Indiana to Maryland and left more than 3 million customers without power….
Utilities in Ohio, Virginia and Maryland described damage to their power grids as catastrophic.
Driving north Friday, the temperatures kept getting hotter. John C. Griffin recorded these temperature signs, used here by permission. Friday 29 June 2012:
Record heat wave with triple digits in Macon, Georgia on Riverside Drive at Arkwright Road Photography by John Griffin (c) 2012 All Rights reserved
I can attest it was still over 100 in Macon after dark Friday.
And it only got worse Saturday 30 June 2012:
Arkwright Road at Riverside Drive – I-75 Exit 169 – Macon, Georgia Record Heat Wave Photography (c) John Griffin All Rights Reserved
Nearly 4 million homes lost power early Saturday across the Midwest as a fierce line of thunderstorms and winds pounded the region after record-setting temperatures.
The storms moved east from Indiana through Ohio and into West Virginia, according to utility companies. Virginia was hit with power outages to more than 1 million homes.
The outages come as tens of millions in the central and eastern United States are battling a sweltering summer.
Thirty years ago the Internet demonstrated distribution and decentralization is the way to avoid widespread outages. That's what a smart grid would give us. I can say by experience that if many of those homes and businesses had solar panels with batteries, they could weather 10 hours or more of no grid power with no problem. My solar panels and batteries have done that for my house for years. Yours could too, and you could be selling excess power to people and businesses that don't have panels, if Georgia Power would let us change state law to let us.
And hey, with wind power, in a storm you'd have more power!
Temperatures Friday soared past 100 degrees Fahrenheit from Kansas to Washington, with scorching conditions expected to continue through the weekend and beyond.
It was 107 degrees in Macon, Georgia yesterday at 7:30 PM. So what's Georgia Power doing about solar power in Macon? Still studying it, according to Josephine Bennett in NPR a year ago:
Georgia Power's Carol Boatright says for 18 months researchers will collect data and then ask the following questions.
How about this question, Georgia Power and the Southern Company and Oglethorpe Power and all the EMCs: Will you wait until Georgia is without power until you deploy solar power, or get out of the way so we can do it ourselves?
Our high schools and college graduates mostly have to go somewhere else, because jobs here are few and many of them don’t pay enough for a decent living. Should we not care enough about our families and our community to come up with strategies that grow existing businesses and attract new ones that will employ local people?
We need discussions and strategies that involve the whole community, going beyond just the usual planning professionals, to include all groups and individuals with information or opinions, whether they got here generations ago or last week: for fairness and for freedom.
The Industrial Authority focus group meeting I attended Wednesday was refreshing, because their consultants asked the opinions of people some of whom previously had to picket outside. The previous day, VLCIA Chairman Roy Copeland said this strategic planning process was a long time coming. I agree, and while nobody can say what will come of it at this point, I hope it does produce a real Economic Development Strategy.
Lowndes County Emergency Management Agency Director Ashley Tye correctly predicted no tornadoes and quite a bit of rain for when Tropical Storm Debbie made landfall. He also mentioned our chronic drought, and Commissioner Richard Raines was surprised about that.
Raines asked:
What kind of conditions would it take for us, because you and I talked a couple of weeks ago, and I was I was surprised when you said that. I guess there’s a difference between drought and extreme drought. What kind of rain conditions would we need to get out of that, I guess in terms of inches, for the water table….
Tye answered:
For them to officially declare us out of the drought, the latest numbers I’ve seen were about 15 inches over the next 30 days, or over the next 3 months, it would have to be like 25 to 30 inches. So we still need a lot of rain. But every little bit is going to help. With the rain we’ve got recently we’re better off than we were, but we’re still technically classifed as in extreme drought.
TS Debbie and south Georgia extreme drought —Ashley Tye Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC), Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 25 June 2012.
He said you can get it as close to him as Quarterman Road.
I can attest to that because I have 3 megabit per second DSL,
due to being just close enough to Bellsouth’s DSL box on Cat Creek Road,
but most of Quarterman Road can’t get DSL due to distance.
There are some other land-line possibilties, involving cables in the ground
or wires on poles.
Then there are wireless possibilities, including EVDO, available from Verizon,
with 750 kilobit per second (0.75 Mbps) wide area access from cell phone towers.
Verizon’s towers could also be used for WIFI antennas,
for up to 8 Mbps Internet access, over a wide scale.
Internet speed and access —John S. Quarterman
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 8 May 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
…Lafayette, Louisiana,
Bowling Green, Kentucky,
Lagrange, Georgia,
and
Thomasville, Georgia.
They use it for
public safety,
education (Wiregrass Tech, VSU),
and
It attracts new industry.
If you want knowledge-based industry,
they’re going to be expecting Internet access not just at work,
but at home, whereever they live.
