Summer of Death

 Not great

Louisiana’s record-breaking summer has had fatal consequences. Sixteen people in the state died in June and July from heat-related causes, according to the Louisiana Department of Health.

Six of those deaths were in June, and 10 were in July, said Kevin Litten, the health department’s press secretary. Those two months alone have already surpassed the state’s average of 10 heat-related deaths a year from 2010 to 2020, according to a 2023 state analysis. 

On top of that, Louisiana has already shattered its annual average for heat-caused emergency department visits. From April 1 to July 29, there were 3,305 visits, compared to 10-year annual average of 2,700, said Dr. Alicia Van Doren, a preventive medicine physician working with the health department on tracking heat injuries and deaths.

She attributes these high numbers to record-temperatures driven by climate change.

“It truly is a public health problem,” Van Doren said. 

As concerning as those numbers are, “all of this is an undercount,” she said. That’s because exposure to heat doesn’t always end up in medical charts or death records.

The public health problem is only getting a minimal public response at the moment. The city has struggled to open public pools and we've already noted they can barely keep the air conditioning on.  Also at the beginning of summer, there was some discussion about getting some public "splash pads" that have been popular in other cities put into operation here. Other ideas were floated, including "reducing vehicular traffic" although that's not going in the right direction either, apparently.

Otherwise, see this press release for a list of safety tips and "cooling centers" where the public can go and find relief in the air conditioning... usually.

Why are they making them work with no a/c?

S&WB loves to take out their mismanagement problems on ratepayers and line employees. What else is new?

Congratulations to us

Breaking all the records

So much for that fall-like weather. The high temperature in New Orleans on Monday (Oct. 15) matched the historic record for that day, peaking at a balmy 90 degrees just after noon, according to National Weather Service data.

Not a lot of people are old enough to remember this but it did, in fact, snow here this year. 

Maybe it's time to run the weather like a business

Despite the ever present creeping doom of climate apocalypse providing the backdrop, we still only have a couple acceptable ways of complaining about the weather.  Even when we observe the change, "you know back in the day, it used to get nicer this time of year..." we sound like cranky old men.

Most commonly we use our disgruntled customer voice. "90 degrees and muggy is not what we ordered for October.  Get your manger on the phone." Maybe this is why we're on the verge of privatizing the operation.

Some of the people that Trump has nominated for key government posts Lewis views as deeply troubling.

Take Trump's choice to head National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Commerce Department agency that, among other responsibilities, oversees the National Weather Service. For that critical position, Trump has chosen Barry Myers, who is CEO of the private forecasting service AccuWeather. As Lewis points out, AccuWeather repackages the weather service's own data and sells it to private concerns for a profit. Myers at one time argued that "the government should get out of the forecasting business." In other words, you want to know if it's going to rain tomorrow? Or which way that hurricane is tracking? Well, buy our app, or subscribe to our forecasts. Myers has yet to be confirmed.

We're almost through it

It's okay, guys. We are doing a good job. Do not listen to the haters.

To no one’s surprise, the Gulf of Mexico coastal areas lead the way in oppressive conditions. Louisiana is the epicenter of summertime oppressive weather. Why does Louisiana have higher areas than say Dallas, Mobile or Atlanta? Remember that winds over 10 mph disqualify an observation from counting as oppressive. Louisiana has very light winds in the summer. Also, the dew point temperature is consistently high in the Lower Mississippi River Valley. Lower dew points tend to mix down to the surface as you move away from the Gulf of Mexico. Even when temperatures are under 95°F, there is a strong likelihood that the heat index or dew point criteria will be met in the northwest Gulf coast region.

That study also produces a map where Louisiana appears as," large pulsing red blob on the country's underbelly," as NOLA.com's Jenniefer Larino describes it. 

But, look. We are a hardy folk here. And the thing is almost over now.  Really, we've almost made it through the truly "oppressive" part of the year. Of course, if you are like me, you probably won't start to feel that way for at least another two months. Which is why I like to stare at the charts. Somehow it helps.

The stupid season

We are in it now.

Can't cool off this summer? Heat waves can slow us down in ways we may not realize.

New research suggests heat stress can muddle our thinking, making simple math a little harder to do.

"There's evidence that our brains are susceptible to temperature abnormalities," says Joe Allen, co-director of the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment at Harvard University. And as the climate changes, temperatures spike and heat waves are more frequent.

It must be affecting me already because even though I can see on the chart that we're basically halfway through the worst of it, I, you, and everyone know in our guts if not in our brains that September is going to suck.

The math says it's supposed to start getting cooler then but it will not.  It never does. It just makes you hate the hot even more once it has overstayed itself. 

Anyway, I started typing this thinking I would share some good news about how the worst will be over soon and I've already almost forgotten that was the point. See what I mean about stupid season?  Also, hey remember that it snowed this year?  The palm trees still aren't all the way back from that, even.  I spotted these green tops on Saturday.

Guess it is summer time now

Temperature gets up above 90 and well...

Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta posted on Facebook that he was told that Entergy experienced and overload issue on a substation transformer.

Entergy says crews are out working to restore power.

Those are not crews. They are paid actors.  Definitely don't need any upgrades to the transmission infrastructure, though.

The War On August

We're just a couple of days in but our pals at Rouses are just as ready to fast forward through this shit as we are.

Late Spring

Crawfish season is just about to pass peak. Consider this a friendly reminder if you haven't done your boil yet. We got ours in yesterday just before the weather turned hot again. Just another week at best before the real crap part of the year sets in. Use it wisely.

This is fine

Sure, every summer seems like the hottest, grossest summer ever. But this summer might actually have been that.

During one of the country’s hottest summers, New Orleans quietly set a mind-boggling record. On 43 nights, the temperature did not drop below 80 degrees in New Orleans, according to the Louisiana state climatologist.

It blows the previous record out of the water — 13 nights in 2010. It’s also incredible considering in an average summer, New Orleans has just 2.1 nights at or above 80 degrees.

Yikes! Do they know why?

Why is this happening? In short, man-made climate change.

Don't tell the governor, though. He's still not sure climate change is really man made.

It is very hot

Summer in New Orleans is always bad. When it's not raining, it's hot. Right after it rains, it immediately gets wet hot which is the worst kind of hot. Except for the times it occasionally rains fire. 

Anyway, if you think it's unusually hot even for us, even for now, you aren't imagining things.

According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, March April May June 2016 was the hottest March   April   May June on record, going back 136 years. It was a staggering 1.28°C 1.11°C 0.93°C 0.79°C above average across the planet.^* The previous March April May June record, from 201020142015, was 0.92°0.87°0.86°0.78° above average. The good news, such as it is, is that unlike previous months, June 2016 didn’t shatter the previous record; it just edged it out in a statistical photo finish. But don’t let that distract you from the important issue: The Earth is way above average in temperature, and overall that temperature is increasing all the time.

Last night the Republican convention one of the featured speakers was West Virginia Senator Shelley Capito. Senator Capito spent her time on stage railing against President Obama's and Hillary Clinton's approach to regulating fossil fuels.

President Obama arrogantly proclaimed he would slow the rise of the oceans. He introduced and implemented sweeping environmental regulations without Congress' approval and without any consideration for the economy. These unilateral actions are ill-informed and frankly unconstitutional.

Actually it's not that at all. If anything, Obama and Hillary aren't doing nearly enough.   

But for some who study climate change the only shame is this: Obama’s plan does not go nearly far enough. It’s meek and dangerously self-congratulatory, sapping the movement of urgency while doing almost nothing to maintain the future habitability of the earth.

“The actions are practically worthless,” said James Hansen, a climate researcher who headed NASA’s Goddard’s Institute for Space Studies for over 30 years and first warned congress of global warming in 1988. “They do nothing to attack the fundamental problem.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he wrote, when asked if the plan would make continued climate activism unnecessary. Obama’s plan, and for that matter the proposed plan Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, he continued, “is like the fellow who walks to work instead of driving, and thinks he is saving the world.”

Hansen suggested a gradually rising fee for fossil fuel extraction, collected at the port of entry or, in domestic cases, the place where the material actually comes out of the ground. “As long as fossil fuels are allowed to (appear to be) the cheapest energy, someone will burn them,” he wrote in an email to msnbc. “It is not so much a matter of how far you go. It is a matter of whether you are going in the right direction.”

It sure would be nice if Hillary actually were the indomitable anti-carbon monster the coal and oil lobbyists writing RNC speeches make her out to be.  Maybe then we'd actually be doing something about the weather today instead of sitting here complaining about it.

Hang in there, guys

We're just about to get the worst part behind us.



Things start happening again soon. The Saints report to training camp in 22 days.

Is the Greenway Open Yet Dot Com

Yes. Yes it is open. Keep off the green part, though. 

City Councilwoman Susan Guidry said she first learned of the project while still in evacuation after Katrina, said it became her first priority after her election and teared up Friday morning as she spoke of “generations of children to come who will be learning to ride their bikes on the Greenway.” The path was not easy, she said — residents are still asked to stay off the unpaved areas until the grass finishes taking root this spring — acknowledging the delays that postponed the project’s grand opening even this year.

“We said this was going to open in the summer,” Guidry said, joking about the unusual heat of a late November morning in New Orleans. “Does it at least feel that way?”

Right, so if you're a casual cyclist, you might want to wait until the hot weather goes away before you visit.  Should be the middle of January sometime.  

July

Hot.  Damn hot.  Gonna get hotter.  Also nature is pretty much just all up in your face.



Don't go outside if you know what's good for you.

It was a dark and sunny day

New Orleans in the summertime. Ruinously hot all day until that thunderstorm rolls in and ruins everything in a different way.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Not if you mean New Orleans in late summer, you better freaking not.

Digest mode

Busy day. Busy time of year in general, really. Here are some more half-assed bulleted blurbs to fill the space in the meantime.

• This Digby post about the White House caving to cheap bullying idiots is all well and good but until we draw the logical conclusion that it means the failed White House occupant needs to be replaced with someone who will actually stand up to this shit then we're not going to learn anything constructive from it.



• Mayor: N.O. needs a new City Hall
  The Chevron building is still available, of course. I wonder if the City Council will agree to buy it for this mayor... and what the rationale will be.
  
  Meanwhile, this Mayor remains committed to his very critical priority of raising money to make commercials with.

  NEW ORLEANS -- New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu is continuing his pitch for millions from BP to promote tourism.
  
  The mayor appeared Sunday morning on CNN, talking about tourism and saying local and state leaders will continue to push the head of the compensation fund, Kenneth Feinberg, to make sure Louisiana business owners are made whole as quickly as possible.

  And you know he's got a point. It's expensive to lie pretty enough to make all these dead fish go away. Maybe BP can help them do that too.



• Speaking of dead fish, check out Bob Marshall's feature from the front of Wednesday's T-P: Louisiana blue crabs are tough, but Gulf oil spill might be tougher
  
  

  "Forty percent of the most productive stations are within the confines of the oil spill," said Vince Guillory, a biologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, which manages a fishery that produces about 30 percent of the nation's blue-claw crabs, a crop with a reported annual economic impact of $237 million.
  
  "We are quite concerned that we will see significant mortality of larvae as they encounter oil or dispersants."

  
  
  Dad had a hard time finding fresh crabs this past weekend, but the boil came out nice and pretty anyway.
  
  



• Senate subcommittee OKs $35.6M for coastal restoration
  Uh oh. Hope they're not raiding Road Home for this too.



• James Gill on Senator Vitter's Birther pander
  
  

  Vitter was not about to confuse matters with the truth, and did not hesitate to play to the gallery. "I support conservative legal organizations and others who would bring that to court. I think that is the valid and most possibly effective grounds to do it," he said.The birthers could only see that as an endorsement, although anyone with a lick of sense knew Vitter was faking it. Whatever the voters want, Vitter will fake. As soon as it became obvious that a roomful of voters wanted stupid, Vitter obliged.




• The Greater New Orleans Community Data Center has published a new report intended to measure the potential job cost of the oil disaster along the coast. Here's a quick description of the report culled from GNOCDC's newsletter

  This data is meant to serve as a baseline against which the impact of the oil spill can eventually be measured.
  
  In addition, it provides much needed information on residential patterns along the coast, many months before the Census 2010 headcounts are to be released. This data can be useful for nonprofits and state agencies planning services for coastal populations.
  
  The brief also highlights some important findings about the economic importance of our coast. Specifically:
  
  * High concentrations of jobs appeared in many coastal areas prior to the oil disaster. In fact, the coastal periphery was second only to urban areas as employment nodes.
  
  * Plaquemines Parish was home to 11,687 jobs but only 6,950 resident workers in 2008, indicating that people in neighboring parishes rely on this especially vulnerable parish for their livelihood. Oil-related impacts on the economy of Plaquemines parish, therefore, could reverberate region-wide.
  
  * In Lafourche Parish, worker residences were more clustered in northern and central areas, while jobs tended to locate at the southern end—namely Port Fourchon, a key node in the regional petroleum and offshore economy.
  
  * Among southeast Louisiana parishes, Terrebonne had the highest absolute number (6,089) and percent (11.5) of jobs in the oil and gas industry, far more than even the urbanized New Orleans metro parishes with much-larger populations. These jobs were particularly concentrated in two Houma zip codes that together are home to over 5,500 such jobs—more than double the number of oil and gas jobs in downtown New Orleans.
  
  This brief is based on 2008 Census Bureau data from company payrolls. As such it does not capture the thousands of self-employed fishermen not included in company payroll data—indicating that coastal Louisiana is even more important to job creation than our numbers suggest.

  
  
  Stick that in your crab soup along with your 11,000 some odd job losses associated with the Avondale closure and suck it down.
  
  Meanwhile, Businessweek insists we're still bucking the trend (sort of)



• Finally, a few signs that summer is in full swing. First of all, it's hot. Damn hot. How hot? So hot the streets are melting. Here's a typical New Orleans summertime asphalt sinkhole I found on Carondelet street the other day.
  
  
  
  A few years ago, in nearly the same spot, one opened up that was big enough to swallow a car.
  
  The good news is it's almost time for Saints camp which brings all sorts of ridiculous distractions including new posts from the Ashley-nominated Moosedenied.
  
  The bad news is we're getting into the thicker part of storm season. And this has brought with it even thicker food metaphors.
  

  A tropical disturbance in the Gulf oil spill would act as a mixing agent for oil and water.
  
  --It's a process known as "emulsification."
  
  --It would create a mayonnaise-like mix of three or four parts water and one part oil.

  
  
  Mayonnaise. No remoulade?

The only surefire hangover cure I know of

Run that sucker off. A quick four miles will do the trick. I don't care how hot it is out there. Said hangover was acquired last night at Igor's where we came accross this piece of artwork.



I think it's the dog on the roof that really makes the thing work. Anyway, it seems like kind of a lame idea to have a hurricane party with no actual hurricane. The last time I attended a hurricane party at Igor's we were expecting Ivan to at least bring us a little rain. (Although it hardly even did that.)

I declare Summer (un)officially over

I took the bike in to work today for the first time since that late July through early August phase when we had the 100 degree temps go on for weeks. Since today we're relaxing in the cool, balmy 90's, and since There are no tropical cyclones at this time, and since tonight, we are expecting to see actual real football played, I believe it is time to move right on in to Autumn. Who's coming with me? If you are, you should immediately go home and turn off your air conditioner.

Update: And now my bike has a flat! That should teach me to dictate to the seasons.

Nice Weather

Something feels different out there today. The heavy hot moist air we're so familiar with this time of year has been replaced with a gentle warm but dry breeze. The regularly scheduled afternoon thunder-of-the-gods rainstorm hasn't materialized and the day is calm, quiet, and pleasant. It's almost as though some outside force were acting on the conditions here; sucking all the moisture and energy down into some kind of....

Uh oh!

A broad area of low pressure in the Gulf bears watching...if only due to possible increased rain chances over the weekend. We're also focusing on a wave in the Southern Caribbean.

The wave in the Caribbean Sea will be investigated by the Hurricane Hunters later today, and there is a possibility of it developing into a depression.

The area in the Northern Gulf could also become a depression, but any development is expected to be slow to occur, if at all. It will mean some rain along the Gulf Coast this weekend, mainly along the Alabama and Florida coastline. Right now the models are keeping us dry on Saturday, but any shift to the west would mean more rain around Friday and Saturday. Stay tuned.