In The Vortex

Author: David Drummond

  • Fishing at Lake Alan Henry

    And now for something completely different…

    In rare form, I unplugged from most of the world for a change and headed down to Lake Alan Henry this weekend when Steve Miller called me up on a spur-of-the-moment fishing trip. This was the first trip to this lake for both of us. He has summed up the trip well in his blog so you can read more about that there. Steve is a great fisherman with plenty of experience. Me on the other hand, I am lucky if I ever catch anything, I just like to get out there for the peace and quiet and feed the fish expensive bait. This was a chance for Steve to teach me a thing or two about artificial bait fishing. I caught my first ever bass fish (2 smaller ones) and a couple of crazy perch, but it was fun! Steve did quite a bit better on the bass than I did however.

    Steve Miller sports a fish at Lake Allen Henry

    We also got in a lot of great hiking and exploring some back roads and hiking trails and found some really cool hidden away spots. One of our favorites was this huge cliff that dropped almost straight down into the water. I don’t know how high it was, but it was definitely HIGH! This is a view of it from the side…

    The Cliff at Lake Alan Henry

    And this was the view…STRAIGHT DOWN! Would have gotten a nasty scratch from falling off that!

    The Cliff at Lake Alan Henry

    We also saw a good sized rattle snake Steve has pics of over on his blog and in general had a nice relaxing time, despite the 300+ boats coming and going resulting in a huge traffic jam at the boat dock requiring Lubbock Police to sort it out. Despite the huge crowd, almost everyone was well behaved and we were able to hike back in to some area where most people didn’t tread. The nice thing too was we were able to scout out some great fishing spots from the shore that we want to take advantage of on a weekend that isn’t a holiday and less people around. There are also some GREAT primitive camping sites that are spaced out enough among the ample vegetation to give you plenty of privacy. I am looking forward to another trip there despite my attempted recovery today from Ultra Violet Radiation Poisoning!

  • Hurricane Dean Costing Millions in Texas

    As some of my readers know, I have been keeping up with the status of Hurricane Dean in the event of a potential landfall in South Texas, as a possible hurricane chasing opportunity. It’s been clear to me for at least a couple of days now that Dean is posing no threat to the Texas coast, and will be heading in to mainland Mexico. Even a layperson to weather can see that for themselves just by reading and looking at the graphics on the Hurricane Prediction Center website.

    Hurricane Dean Track

    For several days now I have been monitoring the local news and ham radio discussion lists about the preparations going on for possible evacuees coming to Lubbock. Similar preparations are going on all over the state. Earlier on, this was a prudent move to start preparations to be sure, as it did appear there was at least a 50/50 chance of a strike in south Texas. However, as the forecast track and model data has come closer to the event, it has become more and more clear that Dean will NOT hit Texas at all.

    Now, you would think once the forecast track of the storm was becoming more evident, preparations that had begun would start to stand down. The reality is, just today President Bush declared an Emergency in Texas and ordered FEMA to move.

    FEMA Administrator Paulison has ordered mission assignments completed to ensure critical resources and operations as needed from other federal agencies are brought to bear in support of Texas. FEMA has made 26 mission assignments to other federal agencies and American Red Cross for support of Tropical Storm Erin and Hurricane Dean.

    What a tremendous waste of people time, money, energy and resources! I could understand had this been done several days ago, but as I said, it’s been pretty clear for at least a couple of days that Dean was not going to pose a threat to Texas. That action was taken TODAY, the same day the graphic above comes from. The millions of dollars (if not Billions) spent on these operations is nearly impossible to get your head around.

    In Texas, South Padre Island has already been declared in a State of Emergency (keep in mind that this is HUNDREDS of miles from where hurricane force winds are currently expected to be). Texas Department of Criminal Justice is already evacuating several prison facilities in the south Texas area. In addition, uniformed personnel with hundreds of buses and aircraft have been moved to and readied for evacuation efforts in an area where much of the population does not have their own transportation.

    So why is this happening? One word, Katrina. After the well deserved spanking that the federal government received for their slow response to Hurricane Katrina (or lack thereof in some cases) they have shifted to polar opposites and now are seriously overreacting. The good side to this I suppose is this makes for a good dry run for when the next Hurricane DOES indeed come into the U.S. coast. I guess one could surmise that this was all a big public “show of force” to ease the American public’s thinking that the government is indeed ready to do things right this time.

    Could I be wrong and Dean make a last minute turn for Texas? It’s a huge longshot for that to happen, with the high pressure ridge expected to stay north of it and strengthen, it’s highly unlikely. Sadly, while we have all of these resources in place in Texas, I doubt much of them will make their way in to Mexico, which is going to take a tremendous beating TWICE, once on the Yukatan, and again on the central mainland.