Best Of

https://www.azfamily.com/2025/07/07/arizona-dps-troopers-rescue-florida-man-who-thought-he-was-georgia/?outputType=amp

The last 3 feet of a widow maker, 12" wide from the neighbor's tree across the street is pinning my car to it's parking spot. The rest of it is hanging by a thread to the tree and resting on the cable and phone lines. Street is closed until the DPW can clear it tomorrow. It has to weigh at least 1,000lbs. Been an interesting day.

Turns out my wife actually suffered a mild concussion in her bicycling accident. She'll be off work for at least the rest of the week.

I think there could be improvements to flood warning systems. The weather authorities track heavy rainfall in upstream basins, and they issue watches and warnings, so I think they should have dedicated flood warning sirens similar to tornado sirens, especially in areas where larger groups of people gather at the rivers, public access areas, canoe outfitters, summer camps.

They do this in the deep canyon areas at least two popular TN state park areas that I know of. At Rock Island SP there's a dam just upstream from some trails and if they plan to release more water, they will use a siren to get people to evacuate the trails in the low areas. And at Cummins Falls SP people hike down into the deep valley to reach the falls and there is an orientation meeting that hikers are required to attend. They let us know that "in the event of rising waters due to heavy rains upstream, there will be a siren", and they even have an area where you can grab lifejackets and climb straight up the bluff using ropes that are permanently placed.

River areas are low with often high surrounding terrain that cause bad radio and cell coverage, so I figure adding dedicated sirens for larger groups of people during severe flood warnings would more likely wake people up and give them a better chance to escape before it is too late.

Over the past few weeks, I have put down 65 bags of mulch…… And came up one short.... off to Lowe's