Cowboy Who?

Headlines

• The Atlantic will remain quiet for the foreseeable future.
• Though there are no specific risks, if you had to watch somewhere through month’s end, it would be close to home, in the Gulf or off the Southeast as a wetter, cooler weather pattern takes shape.

Atlantic dormancy

As noted last week, post-Beryl, things are quiet now in the Atlantic. I’ll point you to Michael Lowry’s daily newsletter today to explain why, but in a nutshell, we’re in a hostile background state to tropical activity right now.

The Atlantic is dealing with plentiful Saharan dust and dry air, which tends to inhibit tropical development, in addition to the hostile background state of generally broad sinking air.

If you had to watch for something…

What should we watch for over the next week or two? We have to ask the question, right? The answer is nothing in particular. I always tell people to never just ignore the tropics in summer because stuff can sneak up on you. To that end, I would say it’s probably best to keep at least a side eye on the Gulf or off the Southeast coast in case something homegrown could develop, be it from a cluster of thunderstorms or a tail end of a cool front. That isn’t an uncommon way to spin something up, and in fact the overall weather pattern looks conducive to cooler and wetter weather near the Gulf Coast over the next week or two.

That’s some impressive rainfall across a lot of the South, including north of 300 percent of normal in Texas. To be abundantly clear, above normal rain near the Gulf does not mean anything from a tropics standpoint, but if I were watching one thing in particular over the next couple weeks, that would be it. A very low risk to be sure, but never quite zero.

I’ll stop it here for today. Our next update will be Wednesday. As long as time allows, we’ll also talk a bit about water temperatures and La Niña development, and I also want to go back to Beryl and touch on the obvious fallacy of “it’s only a category one.”

In brief: We’ll have one more pretty quiet day before rain chances begin to increase. This will lead to cooler weather and healthy, daily chances of rain beginning this weekend and continuing into much of next week. It won’t feel terrible for midsummer.

We managed 94 degrees at Bush yesterday and 93 at Hobby as fairly typical mid-summer weather continues. We’ve got one more day of it, and then the rumblings of change begin.

Today

Copy and paste yesterday’s weather for the most part.

Wednesday

Look for the day to start as a repeat of Monday and Tuesday, but by afternoon, shower chances will begin to increase. Scattered showers and storms are likely. Call it about a 30 to 40 percent chance or so. I might say that the highest chances will be south and east of Houston tomorrow. We’ll check in on this obviously tomorrow morning. Highs should peak in the low to mid 90s with lows in the 70s.

Thursday

We will have an additional 40 to 50 percent chance of afternoon thunderstorms. Prior to that, expect a mix of sun and clouds with highs in the low-90s. Lows will be in the mid-70s.

Friday

Here’s where I’d begin to expect scattered to more numerous showers and thunderstorms and some locally heavy rain. Temperatures may struggle to get to 90 on Friday, depending on the exact coverage and timing of storms.

Weekend

Both Saturday and Sunday should see scattered showers and thunderstorms each afternoon. All of this will be caused by a cool front that should stall out, or really kind of wash out in our area. The location of the stall will help determine the exact focal point of storminess into the weekend, but most areas should see at least some rain between Thursday and Sunday and some areas will see several rounds of it as well.

Next week

It’s too soon to get super specific, but we will be seeing numerous shower and storm chances next week, at least through midweek before perhaps easing up some toward next weekend. We will probably have multiple days with highs failing to reach 90 degrees due to cloud cover and rain. Despite this, there will be little relief from the humidity which should remain high. So nighttime lows will continue to remain in the 70s. But the periodic rain and storms and the overall cooler air mass should help lead daytimes to feel not terrible for late July.

We may also get a round or two of Saharan dust next week, and any rain can aid in minimizing those air quality impacts a bit too.

“‘I am not a senator, a governor or a former cabinet secretary,’ J.D. Vance wrote on the first page of ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ by way of establishing his regular-guy bona fides. That was all true in 2016, when Vance was a former Marine and Yale Law School graduate with ‘a nice job, a happy marriage, a comfortable home and two lively dogs.’ His memoir reads a little differently now.” – Critic A.O. Scott, New York Times, 7/15/24

“What separates the successful from the unsuccessful are the expectations that they had for their own lives Peter Thiel’s money and how willing you are to lie for it. Yet the message of the right is increasingly: It’s not your fault that you’re a loser; it’s the government’s the Left’s fault. And it is.”

“If you believe that hard work pays off in no-fault divorce, then you work hard your wife might leave you. If you think it’s hard to get ahead even when you try, then why try at all? If you don’t, she can’t. I’m a genius.”

“Whenever people ask me what I’d most like to change about the white working class, I say: ‘The feeling that our choices don’t matter’ ‘Mexicans.’”

“For kids like me, the part of the brain that deals with stress and conflict processes empathy is always activated off.”

“I may be white, but I do not identify with the WASPs of the Northeast, so I deserve to be in this country.”

“Regular church attendees commit fewer crimes, are in better health, live longer, make more money, drop out of high school less frequently, and finish college more frequently than those who don’t attend church at all. And that’s why I think women should stay in marriages with men who beat them. I just want them to be healthy.”

“People talk about hard work all the time in places like Middletown Ukraine. You can walk through a town where 30 percent of the young men were killed by the Russian military work fewer than twenty hours a week and find not a single person aware of his own laziness.”

“Psychologists call it ‘learned helplessness’ sociopathy when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life that I was destined for great power and would stop at nothing to achieve my goals.”

“How much of our lives, good and bad, should we credit to our personal decisions, and how much is just the inheritance of our culture, our families, and our parents who have failed our children? Mine was all me. All personal decisions. I did great. This was supposed to be in the original draft; I’m annoyed my editor cut it.”

“Today, people look at me, at my job, and my Ivy League credentials, and assume that I’m some sort of genius, that only a truly extraordinary person could have made it to where I am today. With all due respect to those people, I think that theory is a load of bullshit. And they’re right. This was also supposed to be in the original draft.”

“I once ran into an old acquaintance at a Middletown bar who told me that he had recently quit his job because he was sick of waking up early. I later saw him complaining on Facebook about the ‘Obama economy’ and how it had affected his life. I don’t doubt that the Obama economy has affected many—Obama is Black, after all, and that’s always a red flag—but this man is assuredly not among them. His status in life is directly attributable to the choices he’s made, and his life will improve only through better decisions, like mine, because I am better than him. Actually, this was also cut from the original draft and is unrelated to my current campaign, but I think the message is still an important one for readers.”

“I want people to understand how awesome upward mobility really feels. And I want people to understand something I learned only recently: that Republicans are actually pretty gullible! They bought my bullshit! I could literally be vice president soon, which means I could be president soon! You’re not going to believe me (because why would anybody?), but this was ALSO supposed to be in the original draft. But then my editor was like, ‘Do you really think you’re going to be vice president soon?’ And I was like, ‘You’re just another loser who doesn’t believe in me! I have no moral bottom; I will do anything to get ahead. Watch me, bitch, watch me.’ for those of us lucky enough to live the American Dream, the demons of the life we left behind continue to chase us.”

“Nothing compares to the fear that you’re becoming the monster in your closet.” Actually, this one holds up. No notes.

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I have a coworker — let’s call him Sergeant Duke — who is a pretty nice guy. We’re in the military, are the same rank, and have a similar level of experience. Aside from a personality clash with one other coworker, Sergeant Duke gets along with everyone, is good at his job, and doesn’t make a big fuss.

Except for one small thing: dear Sergeant Duke has diagnosed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and has to instruct me (and everyone else) on EVERYTHING. Here are just a few examples:
* the best route to get to my house (he lives in a different town)
* how to call the local clinic to make an appointment (while I was on the phone with them making an appointment)
* what classes to take for my degree (he’s in a completely different program at a different school)
* how to map a printer, where the post office is, how to eat to lose weight/gain muscle, etc…

I must stress that in not a single one of the instances have I asked for guidance. He simply seems to feel that he knows best when it comes to everything and must give his input.

He also has a habit of telling me what to do when our supervisor is out, even though we’re the same rank:
* “You can go ahead and take your lunch at eleven if you want.”
* “You can leave now for your appointment if you like.”
* “I’m going to be out the rest of the day so just go home at our regular time.”

I understand it’s somewhat out of his control. And he’s a great guy. He wants everyone to succeed and wants the job to get done. It’s just that I find the constant direction-giving to be a nuisance, even though I know it’s mostly harmless. And it’s not as if I’m being targeted particularly, I just sit closest to him in our office.

I’ve recently gotten some bad health news and I’m worried about him finding out because I don’t want to hear what he has to say on the matter. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t speak to him very much at all.

How can I politely set boundaries or redirect Sergeant Duke when he gets into one of these spiels? The last thing I want is to harbor any resentment towards him when I know it’s likely almost impossible for him to control.

What happens when you tell him to stop?

Ideally when he meddles you’d be saying things like:

* “I don’t need advice on that, thanks.” (Feel free to leave off the “thanks,” depending on how annoyed you are.)
* “I’ve got this covered. I’m not looking for input.”
* “You don’t need to tell me when to take lunch.”
* “Please don’t tell me things like when to take lunch.”
* “Please let me manage my own schedule.”

If he keeps going after you’ve told him to stop, feel free to say, “I’m not going to keep discussing this” and turn away. You can say this cheerfully! It’s clear that you mostly like the guy and don’t want to make things tense with him, and this might sound awfully chilly when you picture it your head — but you can say it warmly and just decline to keep engaging without it having to be a big confrontation.

If you try all this and it doesn’t change his behavior, well, you tried. It probably won’t change his behavior, in fact, if he’s struggling with a compulsion — but it may slow him down and, if nothing else, you’ll be putting up a boundary for yourself. You can’t control what he does, but you can put up a clear boundary on your side and then decline to engage.

That said, if he tries to discuss your bad health news, please go ahead and be more aggressive. It’s fine in that situation to say, “I do not want to discuss this, and I need you to not bring it up with me again.” If he keeps trying, that’s worth escalating. You’re kind to want to be understanding that his behavior stems from a medical condition, but that doesn’t mean he gets to trample all over your medical privacy (and nor would that be considered a reasonable accommodation for OCD).

ROCKVILLE, MD—Calling the Frosted Flakes cereal mascot the most constant and supportive force in his life, local man Dylan Harney told reporters Tuesday that Tony the Tiger remained the closest thing he had to a father figure. “Every morning growing up, I’d wake up and be greeted by that strong but caring cartoon…

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MILWAUKEE—Giving the senator a moment to collect himself, aides reported this week that a sobbing Marco Rubio was refusing to come out of the bathroom stall to give his speech at the Republican National Convention. “Aw, Marco—you know, being vice president isn’t everything,” said Rubio’s chief of staff, Jessica…

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My social media feeds are filled with heartwarming tributes to my all-time favorite Houston columnist, Ken Hoffman who died this weekend.I said in a recent interview on the 90.1 KPFT "Houston Hour" with Mister McKinney and Heidi Vaughan, that my whole blog is just ripping off Hoffman's TV column work...he just did it way better.  And I could never write the fantastic non-media columns

According to state filings, the utility is restoring power at a relatively quicker pace than after prior storms. Texans are still fed up.

Nearly a million Texans were still without power on Friday. And the utility company with the most outages was facing threats of violence.

Beryl exposed how vulnerable the electric infrastructure is to failure, leaving residents angry and at risk.

Abbott demanded that the utility company produce a plan by the end of July outlining how it will improve power reliability ahead of future storms.

More than 200,000 CenterPoint Energy customers without power struggle with the heat one week after Hurricane Beryl swept through southeast Texas.

A group of news organizations including The Texas Tribune had sued for access to the records.

“It is incredible that such an act can take place in our country.” — Donald Trump, writing on Truth Social after an attempt on his life, 7/13/24

It is a sad time in American history, folks. A crazed gunman attempted to assassinate me, Donald Trump, in an act of hatred and violence that sits in stark contrast with the political era of hatred and violence I have single-handedly created.

As a politician who’s built his entire appeal around saying deeply hateful things about anyone who opposes me, the deep-seated hatred we saw on display last Saturday evening is truly unimaginable. As a person who’s wished abhorrent violence upon reporters, protesters, political adversaries, shoplifters, and people who I just don’t like, the abhorrent violence of this weekend’s rally is difficult to comprehend.

At my public rallies, I’ve always done my best to rile up disaffected voters with needlessly violent rhetoric. So, imagine my shock when a disaffected voter showed up at one of my public rallies and committed a needless act of violence. Clearly, the temperature in this country has gotten way too high, which comes as a complete surprise to me, someone who has deliberately turned up the temperature for easy media coverage, meager political gains, and often just for fun.

Make no mistake, America, I do not want to live in a country where leaders regularly face death threats. That’s why I’ve spent nearly ten years helping to create a world where my supporters regularly send death threats to any Republican who criticizes me, call for my former running mate to be lynched, and storm the Capitol with the intention of kidnapping senators.

It’s just so sad to see violent political plots become downplayed and even legitimized, especially after I downplayed and legitimized the violent political plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. It’s simply heartbreaking to see that all the time and energy you’ve put into refusing to denounce hate groups who engage in voter intimidation and violence on your behalf has resulted in more widespread voter intimidation and violence.

Assassination attempts like the one that happened to me need to be firmly condemned and treated with complete seriousness by both sides of the political aisle. Just like when I half-heartedly condemned with complete unseriousness the assassination attempt on Nancy Pelosi after publicly mocking her about it in the middle of a rant about Democrats turning our cities into war-torn hellholes.

At this critical moment, my fellow Americans, we must come together and trust in our democracy—the same democracy I’ve repeatedly claimed is an illegitimate sham you shouldn’t trust and very recently tried to violently overthrow. We must stand united with the same Democrats I’ve tirelessly portrayed as corrupt, subhuman boogeymen actively trying to turn our country into a crime-ridden dystopia. And we must never tolerate the kinds of violence that I openly glorify on social media and have credibly been the direct cause of at least fifty-four times.

Because, at the end of the day, America is not about shooting at a presidential candidate. America is about being a presidential candidate and saying you could probably shoot people with absolutely zero consequences.

Reasonably sure that’s not how a bed bath works.

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BUTLER, PA—Groggy and bleary-eyed as he returned to consciousness, a terrified Donald Trump Jr. reportedly awoke in an ice-filled tub Monday to discover he was missing an ear. “Hello? Is anyone here?” said the 46-year-old son of the former president of the United States, stumbling over the side of the tub and opening…

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WASHINGTON—In response to the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania over the weekend, Congress moved quickly to pass legislation Monday that bans the civilian use of roofs. “As our country continues to reel from this horrific event, we in Congress have taken action by…

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WASHINGTON—In a damning report that raised pointed questions about the federal agency’s security procedures, an investigation by the House Committee on Homeland Security concluded Monday that the Secret Service failed to account for the nation’s 393 million civilian-owned guns while protecting former President…

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MILWAUKEE—In fiery remarks made aboard his private jet as he traveled to Wisconsin for the Republican National Convention, a defiant Donald Trump ridiculed his would-be assassin Monday, calling the individual a “horse-faced slut.” “Let me be clear, the shooter was a total fuggo who no one would fuck with a 10-foot…

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In brief: Today’s post offers some thoughts about the need for a reckoning with power distribution in the greater Houston area, and greater resiliency given the conditions we regularly experience. In terms of a forecast, we will see additional thunderstorm chances today and Saturday before a hotter and calmer pattern begins Sunday.

Is this CenterPoint’s ERCOT moment?

Three and a half years ago nearly everyone in Texas had a bogeyman for the power issues that bedeviled the state during the Valentine’s Freeze of 2021. More than 4.5 million homes and businesses were left without power, and at least 250 people were killed directly or indirectly by the freeze. Property damages in the state approached $200 billion when “rolling” blackouts never actually rolled. It was a disaster—both natural and manmade.

The underlying issue was power generation, in particular the failure of power plants under extremely cold conditions, and an insufficient supply of natural gas for power plants. The reasons for this lack of preparation are complex, and partly political. The bottom line is that the organization tasked with supplying the vast majority of the state’s electricity and managing the grid, ERCOT, received the majority of the blame. This led to a reckoning for ERCOT and, at least theoretically, reforms that will prevent future issues. So far, so good.

The failure of Houston’s power grid during the derecho in May and, most recently Beryl, is a distribution issue rather than a generation issue. There was plenty of power available, it just could not be delivered to residents. There are three electricity distributors in the Houston region: CenterPoint, Texas-New Mexico, and Entergy. However by far the largest distributor is CenterPoint, which has drawn the lion’s share of angst and anger since the outages began early on Monday morning. Let’s face it, being without electricity, especially in the middle of July in Houston, is absolutely miserable.

We have been pretty clear here at Space City Weather that the region should not have experienced such widespread outages. Beryl knocked out electricity to more customers than Hurricane Ike did in 2008. At Beryl’s peak, 85 percent of CenterPoint customers lost electricity. This matters because Ike was much larger and more powerful than Beryl, and brought hurricane-force sustained winds across large chunks of the Houston metro area. I’m not saying Beryl wasn’t a nasty storm, but its winds were quantitatively, and significantly, less than those of Ike.

I am far from an expert on the distribution infrastructure that delivers power into homes. It is complex, and I salute the linemen working long hours to restore service. However, Houston’s electricity distribution system is not working. It is failing us. Many residents have now experienced two prolonged outages in three months. I realize that CenterPoint can no more control the weather than I can. But after Hurricane Ike our system should have been hardened for future similar (and lesser events, like Beryl). I realize there are no easy solutions, but there are things we should be studying and the implementing, such as concrete poles, underground lines, microgrids, and other ideas.

Whatever company officials and politicians say in the coming days, the harsh reality is that our transmission system failed the Beryl test. Badly. And if we do nothing it will happen again and again.

Just as ERCOT faced a reckoning after the great freeze, our distributors need a reckoning after Beryl. The status quo, and political leaders who enable it going forward, are unacceptable. What we have seen this week is unsustainable for a city that bills itself as the energy capital of the world.

Friday and Saturday

Parts of the Houston area saw rain showers on Thursday, and some of these developed into fairly strong thunderstorms. A few locations just west of downtown picked up 1 to 1.5 inches of rainfall. This overall pattern of plenty of moisture in the atmosphere and an unstable boundary will persist today and Saturday. Therefore we are likely to see a similar pattern for the next two days, with showers developing near the coast later this morning and migrating inland this afternoon. Unfortunately, a few areas within these stronger storms will see lighting and briefly strong winds.

The upside to this pattern is partly to mostly cloudy skies, with cooler temperatures. Highs both days will be around 90 degrees, with light winds from the southeast. Overnight lows will generally drop into the upper 70s.

Sunday

By the second half of the weekend, high pressure should expand into Southeast Texas, setting the stage for a warmer pattern. We can expect mostly sunny skies and high temperatures in the mid-90s. Rain chances will be low, perhaps 20 percent, but not non-existent.

Next week

Hot, full-on summer weather arrives next week and our region will need electricity fully restored to cope. We are looking at highs generally in the mid- to upper-90s for most of the area, with mostly sunny skies. The first half of the week should be rain free, although chances for some scattered showers arrive during the second half of the week. Rain chances may improve further by next weekend as some sort of dying front approaches the region. We shall see.

To the extent possible, have a great weekend everyone. After a long period of activity, this site will go quiet on Saturday and Sunday, and then following our normal schedule of daily posting next week.

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Just put some moose antlers on the oil derricks, the kids will love them.

WASHINGTON D.C. – In the wake of Joe Biden’s debate performance and Donald Trump surviving an assassination attempt, a report from the University of Toronto political sciences department recommends you start getting ready for 4 years of insanity now. “Breathing exercises, stretching, developing a mantra that will drown out the sounds of fascism on the […]

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