It Is Thursday And We Are Still Heavy Duty Storming In Texas

That's my closed in stormy view at 11 this morning. We have now been storming here in Fort Worth and North Texas for about 17 hours, give or take a few.

This is the worst Mother Nature behavior I can remember in a long time. The caretaker of the Haltom City creeks is having a lot of extra worrying being forced upon her today, due to Mother Nature and the inept local powers that be who have done nothing to fix the Haltom City creek flooding woes in all the time since their deadly flash flooding a couple years ago.

The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center has just issued a Severe Thunderstorm Watch until 6 pm.

I had planned to go to Veterans Park in Arlington and then to Arlington's Chinatown. I don't think that is going to work out.

This is the first good test of how all that new paved parking at the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium is going to affect runoff into Johnson Creek. Johnson Creek flooded into Six Flags, even before the Dallas Cowboys removed a lot of acreage of water absorbing land, replacing it with water repellers, like asphalt and a huge stadium. I'm guessing 6 inches in 2 hours and we'll be looking at a Dallas Cowboys Stadium caused massive flooding of Six Flags.

That'll be interesting. I suspect the Johnson Creek problem will get fixed before the flooding problem in Haltom City, that has killed people, gets fixed.

Rosa Discovers Reason Fort Worth's Santa Fe Rail Market Failed.

One of the real interesting aspects of getting comments to my blogs or my Eyes on Texas website is the extreme range in the quality of the thinking that goes in to making the comments.

Some are so inarticulate I can't fathom where they get the idea that they want to be expressing themselves. Some get themselves so upset, with no understanding that there can be all sorts of points of view on any given subject. Or that, maybe, they are having a comprehension problem.

The most amusing, of the worst of the comments, is the commenter will use insults to buttress their, well, non-existing argument. Because the low end of the spectrum commenters seem to be a bit on the dim side, I always think they must often be told the same type vitriol they are directing at whatever web thing they are upset about.

Like this morning I got a classic that should make all thinking Texans freshly concerned about the state of education in this fine state. The commenter is named Rosa. Apparently Rosa came upon the webpage I made regarding Fort Worth's long defunct Santa Fe Rail Market or as Rosa called it "Dante fe put mix market."

Rosa seems to think that me accurately describing Fort Worth's lame, little, overly hyped and falsely advertised attempt to have a public market modeled after Seattle's Pike Place Market, is what caused its demise.

Yeah, I'm sure me accurately describing that boondoggle caused its demise. The demise had nothing to do with the fact that there was no there there. That when locals visited they shook their heads and walked away, disgusted at the disconnect between how Fort Worth's propaganda mouthpiece, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, had irresponsibly misrepresented that travesty, and the reality they experienced when going to the time and bother of visiting the travesty.

Below is Rosa's comment about my disgraceful, tacky website and my moronic, idiotic thoughts. See if you can count how many spelling and grammar errors Rosa makes. I gave up, it was hurting my head, likely due to sleep deprivation...

What a disgraceful tacky website. I take it that you are not a happy fort worth person.your an idiot who cares if a town wants to say they are the best at sow Thing(yea it may not be true)but that where pride of The city comes from moron negativity also breaks things down like say Dante fe put mix market being constintley compare to pike but you obviously took point after point to tear it down no wonder it really never took off.I lived in tacoma for 2 years and visited Seattle on several occasions. I still missed my hometown one thing snobby liberal Seattle can't say they have is nice sweet people like fort worth does.

Texas Thunder Booming All Night & Insomnia

It's been a loud, rough night here in my Fort Worth zone of Texas.

I must have misunderstood the chattering TV weather guys. I thought I heard that yesterday's storm that rolled in to my location about 6, moved on east and was done, once it moved past ones location. I heard nothing about more incoming.

The worst of it did pass quickly, maybe an hour of heavy wind and rain and thunder. But, then a few hours later it started up again, not so much with the wind, but heavy rain and thunderstorming.

I didn't even try to go to bed til after midnight. Partly due to uploading a video of the storm to YouTube, which had some complications that took longer than normal. If I remember right it was almost quiet when I finally went to bed.

And then at some point after that the storming started up again, with everything but the wind worse than the first storm, I had 2 direct lightning hits. You know, where you see the lightning and hear the boom at the same time, with the boom hitting with a concussive force, like a bomb.

Which makes it really hard to try to get to sleep when you are in what amounts to a bomb shelter.

A tornado was confirmed to have touched down in Plano. Daylight needs to arrive before damage can be assessed. Thousands of people are without power. I am not one of them.

More storms are predicted for today. Right now it appears to be the calm before the next storm.

Well, ignore the previous sentence. I'd barely put the period on it when I saw a flash and a quick boom. It's starting up again. And another flash and boom followed that period.

I love this time of year in Texas.

June 10, 2009 Texas Tornado Thunderstorm

It's coming up on 11. I can see I am going to have another night of insomnia. Though the worst of tonight's storm has been over for a couple hours, lightning continues to strike and thunder continues to roll.

I took video during the worst of the storm with my new Canon camera. Trying to get that video off the camera failed a couple times. I had to do a re-start of the computer to get it to work. And even then it took a long long time. When it was done I saw why. The video was over half a gigabyte big.

After I'd made the video into a movie it was just a bit over 42 megabytes. YouTube is processing the video right now. In the video you'll be watching the storm from my balcony window. In the background you'll hear the nonstop TV weather guy chatter on channel 5. You'll hear mention made of a tornado being spotted.

Big Storm Hitting Knocking Power Out

Power has gone out 3 times. Very windy. Big hail. Picture taken at just before 7. Getting very stormy. TV out.

This is being the worst storm we've had for awhile here in Fort Worth.

I'm hitting the publish button and turning this off.

Wednesday Night Windy Lightning Hail Storm In Texas

I can hear thunder rumbling to the west. I'm seeing lightning flashes in the distance.

The National Weather Service issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning a few minutes ago. It should be here soon. I have already heeded the warning to be in a sturdy shelter and not near a window.

Below is the NWS Warning....

Bulletin - Eas Activation Requested Severe Thunderstorm Warning National Weather Service Fort Worth TX 608 PM CDT Wed Jun 10 2009

* Severe Thunderstorm Warning For, Denton County In North Central Texas, Parker County In North Central Texas, Tarrant County In North Central Texas, Wise County In North Central Texas

* Until 715 PM CDT

* At 608 PM CDT, National Weather Service Meteorologists Detected A Line Of Severe Thunderstorms Capable Of Producing Golf Ball Size Hail, And Destructive Winds In Excess Of 80 Mph. These Storms Were Located Along A Line Extending From 5 Miles East Of Bridgeport To 4 Miles South Of Springtown To 21 Miles Southwest Of Cool, And Moving East At 45 Mph.

* Severe Thunderstorms Will Be Near, Decatur, Weatherford, Reno And Briar By 615 PM Pelican Bay, Azle And Aurora By 620 PM Willow Park, Pecan Acres And Hudson Oaks By 625 PM

For Your Protection Move To A Sturdy Shelter And Stay Away From Windows Until The Storm Has Passed.

If You Are Caught Outside, Seek Shelter In A Strong Building And Stay Inside, Away From Windows Until The Storm Has Passed.

This Storm Has A History Of Producing Destructive Winds And Large Damaging Hail. Seek Shelter Now Inside A Sturdy Structure And Stay Away From Windows!

Insomnia & A Punch Drunk Drive In Texas

Night Two of my latest Insomnia Outbreak was not too bad. I went to bed well past 11 and got up a bit before 4 this morning.

My synapses seemed to be firing with some accuracy, so I was a blogging maniac this morning. I was even able to think clearly enough to figure out two words to play in my ongoing word game with the Scrabble Queen of the State of Washington.

I was a bit concerned to learn this morning that there had been 2 more earthquakes in my zone of Texas. Even though I was awake for a lot of the night, I did not feel the earth move.

My one longtime reader may remember that since it is Wednesday I probably went to Southlake and likely went to Sprouts Farmers Market. My one longtime reader would be right.

I tried to snap pictures of the bizarre "Air Pollution Alert" signs I see each week on Davis Boulevard. I don't quite get what one is supposed to do with these alerts. Right after the first alert that nitrogen tank with a warning sign, that I've mentioned previously, still sits about 5 feet from the road. I tried to snap a picture of the tank when I drove by, but my timing was off.

Due to that sleep deprivation thing, driving was fun, it felt like being punch drunk after 600 miles on a long Roadtrip. Speaking of which, my favorite nephew named CJ, was reading my Roadtripping Blog and a posting I wrote today about White Sands National Monument. I mentioned this was a stop on a trip that led to 4 days at the Luxor in Vegas. My nephew somehow misunderstood and thought I am currently on my way to Arizona and Vegas and asked if I'd pick him up on the way.

Maybe my nephew is being sleep deprived too, hence the confusion.

Two More Earthquakes Hit Cleburne Texas

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, I blogged about a 3rd earthquake shaking Cleburne, Texas, Monday morning, that I did not learn of til Tuesday.

Little did I know, even as I was typing the blogging about Monday's Cleburne quake, that quake #4 was shaking Cleburne with a 2.6 magnitude that shook at 5:16.

The 5:16 pm shaker prompted city officials to call an emergency meeting to hire a geologist to investigate the quakes and their possible cause being the fracturing of the Barnett Shale.

About an hour before the emergency meeting another quake struck at 6:19 pm at 2.1 magnitude.

The mayor of Cleburne, Ted Reynolds, said residents want to know if the earthquakes are related to natural gas drilling in town. I want to know if it is what is causing all the water leaks oozing out of the ground

SEO Spam Scam Watching In Texas

In 2004 I made a website for an older guy up in Tacoma. It was an e-commerce site. This guy was a handful. One thing after another. I made the website deal in August. He flew me back up there the following November. Because they couldn't get their email working. I had his website ready to go live in October. I told him it would take awhile for Google to properly index it. One week later he was whining that he'd had no online sales.

Then someone told him that you to have a certain amount of keywords, and certain meta-tags. I told him that this is no longer the case, that Google and the other search engines make their own judgment about content, that you can get penalized by jimmying the system with bogus meta-tags that did not match the content.

He sold things like Market Spice Tea and Space Noodles. By month 4 I had several of his products Googling at #1 and flying out of the store. This happened not due to doing some tricks with keywords, it happened because I injected a lot of specific content about the products.

Today I got an email from a relative I've not heard from in a long time. Offering to help this very blog you are looking at, telling me "Might I suggest you optimize DurangoTexas.com, Get some relevant ads up there and quit wasting space! Optimize your tags and drive some traffic to the site. It's time to make money!"

I was appalled. He was referencing this blog, but using my Eyes on Texas domain name to reference it. He told me I should at least specify the ads that are running. Which tells me he has no idea what he's talking about. Google generates those ads, the only control I have is placement and whether I want to allow image ads.

I think this blog has over 1400 postings now. Most people come to a single post after this blog shows up in a search.For instance, it shows up high with all sorts of search strings involving the Dallas Cowboy Stadium, and right now, Texas Earthquakes. And unfortunately, The World's Biggest Butt. Which, admittedly, brings up really bad ads.

There is a lot of website info out there with warnings to beware of SEO Spammers. According to one, the #1 indicator that it's a SEO Scam Spam is that they contacted you via email.

Anyway, that's the end of this day in Texas, a SEO Scam Spam from my dear little nephew.

Third Earthquake Strikes Cleburne As North Texas Continues To Tremble

Go here for the latest Cleburne Quakes.

The constant earthquaking here in North Texas has grown so common, I did not know til today that Cleburne was shaken, again, Monday morning, for the 3rd time in a week.

This time the earth moved at 8 am.

Monday morning's Cleburne quake was a 2.3 magnitude, making it less powerful than the previous two.

The latest quake struck about a mile west of Cleburne.

Today, the leak I told you about yesterday, was mostly under control. Today I asked one of the people working on one of the leaks why we are having so much leaking. She told me it's because the ground is moving. I asked, moving from all the earthquakes? She shrugged her shoulders, in a who knows type gesture.

Meanwhile, I think I'll start securing things as if I was still living in the northwest, in anticipation of the big one that may strike North Texas. This daily quaking reminds me way too much of the daily rumbles that led to the eruption of Mount St. Helens. I guess it is a very good thing that there are no mountains in the vicinity of the cracking Barnett Shale.