Amount of water vapor in the air.
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Cloud cover is keeping a warm blanket over much of the country this morning. MetService Metereologist Mads Naeraa-Spiers told Tim Dower that it was a very warm night, with many regions seeing 20 to 21 degree temperatures. He says the cloud will burn off, so much of the North Island will be warm/hot and muggy today. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
New Zealanders tucking into bed tonight will find it harder to fall asleep thanks to soaring temperatures, MetService has forecast an 'incredibly warm' and muggy night across much of the country. Heat alerts have been issued for the lower North Island, with Upper Hutt reaching a maximum temperature of 29°C while the overnight temperature in Auckland is not forecast to drop below 17°C for the next 10 days. Sleep expert Leigh Signal, a Professor in Fatigue Management and Sleep Health at Massey University, spoke with Charlotte Cook.
The unsettled pattern continues as we head into the middle of the month, but it turns drier this week.
NWR598 and Muggy keep the host chairs warm, Denham presents one of his audio stories featuring Rusty while Lachlan and Courtney review the Hornby Hogwarts Express!This week's episode was anchored by Tom DenhamFeature Song Of The Week: Highland Girl (Carson Marenka)Visit our new website: rightontrackpodcast.orgKeep up to date with Right On Track on:FacebookInstagramTwitterYouTube Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A Dose of Dave is a series of bite sized podcasts featuring me on my own. A regular stream of consciousness (nonsense). They're only about 5-10 mins long. If you wish to contribute to the podcast you can here: - https://www.patreon.com/bullshitdetective
A delightful coffee date goes terribly wrong when Dave finds his car is a crash victim.Dave maneuvers the painful car repair process and in the process meets Muggy Lee Bear-paw, a member of the Cherokee Nation. Quite a guy.As we can't seem to find enough time to sit down together, we're revisiting a couple early episodes to fill up a half-hour. These include:- Another look at Loser Lotto, Del's surefire system to pick the wrong Lotto numbers. Dave still doesn't understand. Season One episodes 6 and 8.- Dave and Del discuss strange foods they've eaten in Iceland and Africa. Season Two episode 1.- Dave recounts his trips to the Andes in search of tungsten. Season Two episode 7.Give us your thoughts: BUCKSTWOOLD@GMAIL.COM Find us on Twitter: @twooldbucks1Leave a Voice message - click HERE
Hello, Welcome back to Turf Talk, James & Lewis are back to preview this weekends action at the DRF as well Grade One action at Sandown. They talk through all of the graded races at Leopardstown and try and pick which Mullins horse will win the big races. James has a strong fancy in the Dolos Race and it isn't the former. Lewis thinks the Irish have a strong chance in the Scilly Isles! As always thanks to bensounds.com for their music. Hope you enjoy!
As it's our last interview of the year, we had to bring you all something special - an exclusive, debut interview, from one of the most talented young artists in the country, 'Muggy Mugzz'.Feedback is always welcomed and valued, so please do let us know what you think by commenting, and be sure to like and subscribe.- DiSCOVERY's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/discovery_rapp- Muggy's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/muggy_mugzz/?hl=en- Host's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawriewilsonThanks - DiSCOVERY
Episode 69 (lol nice) is here! Of course we didn't forget, no ma'am, no sir, we tiptoed around the subject until it stared us deadass in the face and hot damn when we got down there it was a gorgeous treat. Are there other meme-able numbers? How clean is the patented Pacific Northwestern sad horniness flowing through the city of Portland these days? Can we ever truly know if you goblins don't continue writing thirsty late night missed connections on Craigslist? Listen in and learn the ways of the mutually upside down heart.
Bob Campbell has been sipping on the Rapaura Springs 2022 Sauvignon Blanc to keep cool in this muggy weather for just $19.99 a bottle. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
It's never easy, is it? The Minnesota Vikings at one point in this game had more 3 & outs than first downs, but found themselves leading comfortably by the end of the game, mostly by virtue of three turnovers in the Vikings' secondary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
BUFF BROS 2022 WK 4 SEG 1- On the heat & injuries, sloppy offensive play, and missed defensive opportunities in Miami. Ken Dorsey's outburst.
Last week, Lauren Sommer talked with Short Wave about the dangerous combination of heat and humidity in the era of climate change and how the heat index can sometimes miss the mark in warning people how hot it will feel. That reminded us of producer Thomas Lu's conversation about relative humidity with Maddie Sofia. He digs into why some meteorologists say it's important to pay attention to dew point temperature and how moisture in the air and temperature influence the way our body "feels" when we're outside. (Encore)
https://www.patreon.com/HammeringDown In this episode of Hammering Down, I talk about Legion's match up with a red hot The Miami FC IN the Muggy 305. Legion look to continue their winning ways. Do they do it? Let's talk about it. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/hammering-down/support
Hello listeners, and welcome to The City Report Podcast! On this week's episode, Amos is joined by City Report regular Alex Brotherton, as the two rejoice on England Lioness legends Ellen White and Jill Scott, while previewing the upcoming men's UEFA Champions League group stage draw! If you enjoy the show, please consider following/subscribing on the platform of your choice. Follow us on Twitter! https://twitter.com/cityreport_ https://twitter.com/cityreportpod https://twitter.com/AmosMurphy https://twitter.com/alex_brotherton
Spanners and Trumpets are joined by the voice of the London ePrix Chris Stevens and Dutch journalist Jules Seegers as they sort the Missed Apex Mailbag. From favorite F1 feeds to Ferrari strategy struggles, from aero regs evolution to the F1 pipeline predicament, no viewer parchment goes unmarked in this, the latest episode of Missed Apex Podcast.COME iRace with us!!! iracingmember | Missed Apex PodcastSEASON PASS Season 6. Missed Apex iRacing Series | Missed Apex PodcastPlease consider supporting us on patreon. We exist only because of our patron support:www.patreon.com/missedapexOr use our Tip Jar to support our 2022 advertising campaign and help us grow the podcast https://missedapexpodcast.com/tipjarSpanners Ready Spanners���� (@SpannersReady)spanners@missedapex.netMatt Trumpets mattpt55 (@mattpt55)matt@missedapex.netChris Stevens Chris Stevens
Several Local Communities Told to Boil Their Water, San Diego's Supply of Monkeypox Vaccines Remains Limited, Search Continues for Missing 16-Year-Old, Sheena Says Expect the Tropical-like Weather to continue for a Few More DaysSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
In this episode of the TIBRpodcast special guest Muggy joins Host Seven Mitchell to discuss his resume, come up into battle rap, Hitman holla new project and more . TIBR Merch: https://www.thisisbattlerapclothing.com/ TIBR podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6kWTCXpiUeOomMNiAX93q3?si=Oxo-K6M6QCWl8YxFjP-yqw TIBR podcast on Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-is-battle-rap/id1525783008 TIBR Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/T7MRADIO/?ref=share_group_link TIBR on Twitter: https://twitter.com/_tibr?s=21&t=jVKYC_H2mtgwu6HKDAIEaw TIBR on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmgVrQJ_9lriOZQHVDSykPw FOR TIBR MERCH, SOCIAL MEDIA, AND MORE CLICK THE LINK BELOW: https://linktr.ee/thisisbattlerap #battlerap #thisisbattlerap #urltv #kotd #rbe #chrome23 #gtx #battles #freestyle #rapbattles #battlerapper #sevenmitchell #kdoz #hiphop #lyrics #bars #punchlines #jayblac #piperboywilliams #angryfan007 #hiphopisreal #15mofe #vadafly #jimz #battlerapfanatic #otfmz #rap #dmedetroit #blackcompassmedia #jayblac1615 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisisbattlerap/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thisisbattlerap/support
Both Roxy and Echo were a pair of panting, blonde rugs on the rickety wooden porch. Each would occasionally nip at a buzzing insect. They looked about as miserable as could be. I wondered if they would shed some of their coats. I wondered if they would eventually adapt. If Krista and I would. If anyone is looking to move internationally and can't bear to part with their pets, contact Elaine! She is the best: https://m.facebook.com/petrelocationinternationalFollow us for updates!@theghostmodernist@thekristamethodSupport the show
Hot, Muggy & Stormy. WEDNESDAY: 7/20/22
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Isolated Storms on the Way. THURSDAY: 6/16/22
Hot and Muggy! WEDNESDAY: 6/15/22
Full Circle (The Podcast) - with Charles Tyson, Jr. & Martha Madrigal
A Moment In Black History (Despite White Folks Trying It); The Teenagers are Leading The Way; An Insurance Company Without A Spine; Republican Lies Have Immediate Real-World Effects; Discovery+ Opens The Book of Queer...And More! Sojourner Truth Project Website: https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/ The Philadelphia Orchestra Website: https://www.philorch.org/ FIFTEEN MINUTE FAVE: "Trampoline (feat. Missy Elliott, Bia and Doechii)" https://music.apple.com/us/album/trampoline-feat-missy-elliott-bia-and-doechii/1613326281?i=1613326283 Fifteen Minute Faves Playlist: APPLE MUSIC: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/fifteen-minute-faves/pl.u-b1LDCylLlGk SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1KduJUHxf2LbcB4jmL4gEx?si=554e45cbc18049d9 -- Please Subscribe and Give Us A Review (5 stars or more, preferably!) SUPPORT US ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/fullcirclethepod VISIT OUR LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/fullcirclethepod PROMO: Doom Generation Podcast - https://www.doomgenerationpod.com/ Download and use Newsly for free TODAY from www.newsly.me and use promo code FULLC1RCLE to receive a FREE 1-month premium subscription. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/full-circle-podcast8/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/full-circle-podcast8/support
A Steamy Memorial Day. MONDAY: 5/30/22
CBS47/FOX30 FIRST ALERT FORECAST – MON. MAY 16TH METEOROLOGIST ALYSSA PEJIC WOKV RADIO The WOKV Weather Meter for Today: 9 TODAY: Partly sunny, hot & humid with an isolated afternoon t'storm. High: 90 TONIGHT: Partly cloudy & Muggy. Low: 66 TUESDAY: Partly sunny, hot & humid with an a few afternoon t'storm. High: 91 WEDNESDAY: Partly sunny with an isolated afternoon shower. High: 92 THURSDAY: Partly Sunny with an isolated afternoon shower. High: 95 FRIDAY: Partly Sunny with a few afternoon storms. High: 92
3:36 Customers of the Week 14:14 Current Events 49:10 UFC Picks 58:14 Bonus Show
CBS47/FOX30 FIRST ALERT FORECAST – WED. APRIL 13th First Alert Meteorologist Garrett Bedenbaugh WOKV RADIO The WOKV Weather Meter for Today: 9 TODAY: Partly Sunny with Humidity Increasing. High: 84 TONIGHT: Partly Cloudy. Low: 64 THURSDAY: Partly Sunny. Few Afternoon Storms. Muggy. High: 87 FRIDAY: Increasing Clouds, Afternoon storms. High: 82 SATURDAY: Partly Cloudy, Afternoon Storms. High: 83 EASTER SUNDAY: Partly Sunny. Afternoon Thunderstorms. High: 83
Hello, Welcome back to Turf Talk, The DRF takes centre stage this weekend showcasing all the Irish starts including Honeysuckle, Gallopin Des Champs and Chacun Pour Soi. Over in England we have the Grade One Scilly Isles and Contenders Hurdle at Sandown. As well as a competitive Handicap Hurdle over three miles. The Towton is at Wetherby and some nice racing up at Musselburgh. As always, thanks to our partners RatingTheRaces.com and thanks to bensounds.com for their music Hope You Enjoy!!!!!
Busy work day. Went by very quick. Muggy as hell and too many flies outside. Gross. Shocked myself deliberately on the electric fence the other day to test it for Troy and Kellie's [redacted's] mum. I need to re-pot some plants. I've been watering some of these way too much I realised today. My avocado plant is going well though. So cute. Like a cartoon. I love it. Went for a swim after work. I had been umming-and-ahhing about which beach to go to. [girl who I went on a date with a couple years ago] said in a DM to go to Stingray Bay. I defied this instruction and went to Worm Bay. When I was walking in, I saw a dead wallaby in the shallows. Didn't want to be near it so I went to Stingray Bay as I'd been told in the first place. There was some smoking ceremony/aboriginal dance thing happening. Watched and smelled that. The water was so clear. Trippy-clear. Could see through waves. So cool. Floated around for a while. Tried to do pro-bono in the evening but hit a snag. Beddy byes. M: 4. E: 5.
www.themidnighttrainpodcast.com Hello, you crazy, beautiful bastards. And happy new year. We hope your Christmas or whatever holiday you chose to celebrate was a great one. As you probably know, we took the week off to be with our families, and this week we're back with another banger, as the cool kids say. We are hopping back into the dark, twisted world of UNSOLVED true crime—the best and only way to serve that horrible cold dish. We know you guys love that shit, and so do we. Of course, not in a weird "sitting alone in front of my computer masturbating to unsolved terrible crimes" sort of way, but in more of a "gee-whiz Mr. Wilson, that's interesting, I'd like to learn more" kind of way. And with that out of the way, let's get into today's episode on the Jennings 8! The Jennings 8, sometimes also referred to as the Jeff Davis 8, is a series of unsolved murders in Jefferson Davis Parish in Louisiana between 2005- 2009. And for those of you wondering, no, Moody wasn't living there yet. So he's been cleared of this one. This one. Two of the victims had their throats slit; the other six were in such a bad state of decay that a cause of death could not be determined, but asphyxiation is thought to be the cause. Law enforcement would have you believe a serial killer was on the loose but is that really what happened? Or was something crazier going down? Let's take a look at the unfortunate victims first. The first body found was that of Loretta Lynn Chaisson Lewis. She was 28 and last seen on 05/17/05 in Jennings, Louisiana. Her body was found in the Grand Marais Canal 05/20/05 and floating in Grand Marais Canal's east fork, a few miles southwest of Jennings. She was partially clothed and shoeless. The advanced decomposition caused difficulty identifying and collecting evidence, and an autopsy found Loretta had no physical injuries. A toxicology report showed "high levels of drugs and alcohol" in her system, but no cause of death was determined. Investigators believe she may have been in the canal for three to four days. The second victim, Ernestine Patterson, was a mother of four and a lifelong Jennings resident. The 30-year-old was last seen on June 16, 2005. On June 18, her body was discovered in a drainage canal off LA Highway 102. She was partially clothed, and her throat had been slit. The death was ruled a homicide, and two people were arrested and charged with 2nd-degree murder but were later released due to "lack of evidence." She worked at Iota State University. The third victim was Kristen Elizabeth Gary-Lopez. Kristen was last seen alive by friends and family on March 6, 2007. By all published accounts, Kristen was involved in a high-risk lifestyle of drugs and prostitution. Because it was not unusual to not hear from her for extended amounts of time, she was not reported missing until ten days later. On March 18, a fisherman discovered Lopez's utterly nude body in the Petitjean Canal, a rural area near Cherokee Road right off LA 99, about 10 miles south of the town of Welsh. Investigators felt her body had been placed in that location but killed elsewhere. According to autopsy results, the cause of death for Kristen Gary Lopez is undetermined. However, toxicology results showed elevated levels of drugs and alcohol in Lopez's system. In May 2007, Frankie Richard and his niece, Hannah Conner, were arrested in connection with Lopez's death. Richard and Conner were also questioned about the other deaths before Lopez's body was found. Richard was reportedly seen with three of the victims in the last days of their lives. Charges were eventually dropped due to insufficient evidence and conflicting witness statements. Also arrested in May 2007 was Tracee L. Chaisson. The police booked her on Accessory After the Fact charges. Chaisson was the person who reported Kristen missing. Investigators believed she knew where the body was when she made the report. Like Richard and Conner, charges were dropped against Tracee Chaisson due to lack of evidence and conflicting statements. Whitnei Charlene Dubois, 26, was last seen on 05/10/07. Her remains were found 05/12/07 at the intersection of Bobby and Earl Duhon Roads, approximately five miles outside of Jennings, Louisiana. According to the family, "Whitnei enjoyed listening to music, absolutely adored her daughter, was tough on the outside despite her vulnerabilities within, and left a lasting impression on all those who knew and loved her." The nude body of Whitnei Dubois was found 05/12/07 near the intersection of Bobby and Earl Duhon Roads, approximately five miles outside of Jennings. Investigators believe she had been dead "a couple of days." Officials never determined the cause of death, but high levels of alcohol and drugs were found in her body. Her family has doubts about the investigation into her death. Whitnei's sister Brittney Jones wonders, "why haven't we been questioned? Why haven't we been asked when was the last time we saw our sister? Where her whereabouts was? Why haven't we been asked about the evidence? Why haven't we been contacted?" Lolita Doucet, her aunt, believes Whitnei and the other victims were dismissed as women who lived high-risk lifestyles involving drugs and prostitution. 23-year-old LaConia Shontel "Muggy" Brown was last seen on May 27, 2008. Around 2 am on May 29, a Jennings police officer discovered her body lying on Racca Road, leading to the police firing range. Although in a rural area, Brown's body was the first found within the city limits of Jennings. She would become the 5th victim of the Jennings 8. LaConia was clothed but had no shoes on. Her throat had been slit, and someone had doused her body with bleach. Brown was wearing a white, tank-top style shirt stained from white to pink. Police believed the stain to be blood and that some type of liquid had diluted it from red to pink. They discovered more evidence and potential leads in this case than in any of the previous deaths since Brown's body was found about six hours after it was left on the road. LaConia's family stated that she may have known something horrible was about to happen to her and that she was living in fear just days before her death. She was a lifelong resident of Jennings and attended Jennings High School. Crystal 'Shay' Benoit Zeno, 23, was last seen 08/29/08. Her remains were found on 09/11/08 near a dry irrigation canal a few miles from Jennings, Louisiana. Crystal was employed with Sonic in Lake Arthur until May 2008, when she moved to Jennings. She enjoyed spending time with her daughter, fishing, singing, and listening to music. She was a people-person, who also enjoyed spending time with friends. According to her parents, Shay was diagnosed with bipolar at 12 and started using drugs early to cope with the illness. On 09/11/08, hunters reported a foul smell in a wooded area to authorities. The remains of Crystal Shay were found around 3:00 pm on the LaCour Road levee, off LA Highway 1126, a few miles southeast of Jennings. Due to the advanced state of decomposition, she was not identified with DNA until nearly two months later, on 11/07/08. Her death was ruled a homicide, although the cause of death and toxicology reports have not been released to the public. Crystal, who went by "Shay," was married and had a young daughter. She also knew many of the other victims, including Brittney Gary. 17-year-old Brittney Gary became the 7th and youngest victim. Brittney walked out of the Family Dollar Store in Jennings, never to be seen alive again; sometime after 5:30 pm that day, she was abducted. Thirteen days passed as her family, and a concerned public held out hope that Brittney was safe and would be located soon. Sadly, on November 15, 2008, her deceased body was found in a grassy area outside Jennings. According to her family, Brittney loved to swim, hang out with her friends, and listen to music. She enjoyed spending time with her friends and family and was a friendly and loving person. She was also trusted by the third victim Kristine Gary Lopez. She also knew several of the other victims. Necole Jean Guillory, 26, was last seen on 08/16/09. Her remains were discovered on 08/19/09 near the westbound I-10 exit in Egan, Louisiana. She was a resident of Lake Arthur, and according to her family, enjoyed listening to music and loved being outdoors. Necole's remains were discovered on 08/19/09 by a highway worker mowing grass. She was left between mile markers 72 & 73, near the westbound I-10 Egan exit (between Crowley and Jennings) in Acadia Parish. Mark Dawson, Acadia Parish Coroner, ruled the death of Necole murder by probable asphyxia. According to Necole's mother, shortly before her daughter's disappearance, she'd asked her what kind of icing she wanted for her birthday cake. Necole replied it didn't matter because she wouldn't see her birthday. Unfortunately, her premonition was correct: her body was found just days before her birthday. She also confided in her Mom that police killed the other young women, and it would only be a matter of time before she ended up dead too. Holy shit! What the hell is going on down there? Ok, so those are the unfortunate victims in the case. Did a serial killer kill them? In December 2008, Officials formed a multi-agency investigative team (MAIT) of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to solve the killings. At the time, there were seven dead women, and the reward for information leading to the guilty party's arrest was increased from $35,000 to $85,000. From the outset, the task force was searching for a serial killer. "It is the collective opinion of all agencies involved in this investigation," said then Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff Ricky Edwards, who was flanked by FBI agents, Louisiana State Police, and sheriffs from neighboring parishes at a press conference announcing the task force's inception, "that these murders may have been committed by a common offender." In 2012 the new Jefferson Davis sheriff claimed they still had no evidence that these deaths were all related or even homicides. Now, he may be technically correct, but most find this incredibly hard to believe, given the evidence and connections. At the time, most people chalked this up to the work of a serial killer preying on sex workers. If you're interested in serial killers, you'll know that this is not unusual. Many serial killers get started by killing sex workers as they are viewed as less important and less likely to be missed. Killers believe they can easily get away with murders of women who partake in this work line because nobody cares about them. As far as suspects go, some were arrested and released, as we've mentioned earlier. However, one man believes that this was not the work of a serial killer. Writer Ethan Brown spent several years investigating this case and had discovered some interesting things in the process. Buckle up bitches. This is about to be a crazy ride! In one article he wrote for medium.com, Brown says, "Over the past two years, I have obtained and reviewed hundreds of pages of task force witness interviews, the homicide case files on several of the victims, the Jeff Davis Parish sheriff's office's and Jeff Davis Parish district attorney's files on all of the victims, federal and state court records, and the complete personnel files of the cops and sheriff's deputies at the center of the case. I have interviewed friends and family of all eight victims, as well as some of the possible suspects. The details of the Jeff Davis 8 case can be murky; the connections between victims, suspects, and police tangled. My investigation, however, casts serious doubt on the theory that the Jeff Davis 8 is the work of a serial killer." Brown goes on to say, "One fact is clear: local law enforcement is far too steeped in misconduct and corruption—and this extends to the task force, which is dominated by detectives and deputies from the sheriff's office—to run an investigation with the integrity that the murdered women and their families deserve after nearly a decade in which no one has been brought to justice." One reason Brown doesn't believe this was the work of a serial killer is the connections between all of the victims. Generally, serial killers kill victims who have no relation to other victims. However, the women themselves all knew one another intimately. Some were related by blood (such as cousins Kristen Gary Lopez and Brittney Gary) or lived together (Gary bunked down with Crystal Benoit in South Jennings just before being killed in 2008). They solicited prostitution at the Boudreaux Inn, a now-shuttered motel in Jennings that, with its sloping blue metal roof and nondescript white façade, could be mistaken for a storage facility. The inn was ideally situated in Jennings's heady drugs and sex trade—just off a 400-mile stretch of Interstate 10 connecting Houston to New Orleans, favored by marijuana and cocaine traffickers and prescription-pill "doctor shoppers"—and cops were there on a near-nightly basis for busts. Loretta Lewis, the first victim, was the subject of several complaints to the police based on her activity at the inn. Brown also says, "It wasn't simply that they traded their bodies at the same address. According to my reporting, all but one of the victims—Ernestine Patterson—were associated with the same fixture of the Jennings underworld: a 58-year-old oil-rig worker turned strip-club owner named Frankie Richard. "We shared something," he said of the murdered women, his voice so raspy it sounded as though he had been gargling rocks. "When we were at the lowest point of our life, and no one wanted to have anything to do with us, we had something to do with each other. And that means something to me. Them girls were my friends no matter how fucking low my life was. And I was their friend no matter how fuckin' low their life was." Richard described the city of Jennings when the killings began: "It was wide open… The drugs, the prostitution, the bars, the crooked cops." Since the early 1990s, there have been nearly 20 unsolved homicides, including the slain eight women, in Jefferson Davis Parish, a statistic any competent sheriff's department would regard as both a shallow clearance rate and an astonishingly high murder rate for a small area. As for suspects, Brown had found several while going through the reports from the task force and interviewing witnesses. In 2007, Frankie Richard himself was briefly charged in the Lopez killing, but those charges were dropped after witnesses provided conflicting statements and an essential piece of physical evidence was mishandled. Richard died in 2020. Byron Chad Jones and Lawrence Nixon (a cousin of the fifth victim, Laconia Brown) were briefly charged with second-degree murder in the Ernestine Patterson case. But despite several witnesses implicating them, the sheriff's office did not test the alleged crime scene until 15 months after Patterson's murder and found it "failed to demonstrate the presence of blood." That messed-up crime scene work contributed, in part, to the collapse of the case against the two men. According to case files, Jennings street hustlers with connections to Richard were suspected in the deaths of some of the other women. Brown claims no credible suspects outside the Jennings drug circle have been found, yet the official narrative is still that of a serial killer. Another strange connection is that the murdered women of the Jeff Davis 8 (aka, the Jennings 8) provided information to law enforcement about other Jeff Davis 8 victims—and then turned up dead themselves. For example, Laconia Brown (the fifth victim) was interrogated about the 2005 killing of Ernestine Patterson (the second victim). Brown, the article author, obtained by a task force report in which one witness claims that Brown, the murder victim, spotted the body of Loretta Lewis (the first victim) floating in the Grand Marais Canal before Jerry Jackson discovered her there in May 2005. In 2006, detectives investigating Lewis's murder interrogated Kristen Gary Lopez (the third victim). "She knew what was going on," Melissa Daigle, Lopez's mother, told Brown. She trailed off, tearing up at the memory. "They were scared, them girls. I think she knew about it and was too scared to say." Brown also claims that he discovered that all of the women at one point had been informants for local law enforcement regarding the Jennings drug trade. When Brown confronted Sheriff Edwards with the allegation that the Jeff Davis 8 were informants, the sheriff stammered a non-denial. "I wouldn't respond," he told me. "If they were informants, I would still continue to protect their anonymity. I don't know that's the truth. I won't comment on it." Brown writes that at the end of 2008, a Jennings prostitute warned task force investigators that Necole Guillory "might be the next victim." Guillory was known for her street savviness, and in 2006, when she was 24, she savagely attacked a sex customer with the handle of a sledgehammer. Brown says of Guillory," I've reviewed the parish district attorney office's case files on Guillory, and in at least six cases, the charges against her ended in a nolle prosequi (a legal term meaning "be unwilling to pursue" on the district attorney's part). Though there is no record of Guillory's cooperation—excluding a theft case in which she agreed to testify against her codefendant—snitches routinely have charges nolle prossed in exchange for their off-the-record cooperation." "Necole knew a whole lot," said Frankie Richard, "about a whole lot." Necoles mother Barbara would tell Brown, "She was always paranoid," "It got to the point where she did not want to go anywhere by herself," she said. "I think she could feel that they were closing in on her." With her 27th birthday approaching, Guillory refused even to entertain the idea of celebrating. "I bought some icing and cake for her birthday," Barbara recalled. "She said, 'Momma, it doesn't matter—I'm not gonna be here.'" Guillory also had her four kids placed with relatives. A task force witness supports the claim that in her final days, she "was scared of someone," but she would not say who and that she "knew who killed the girls." Barbara believes that her daughter was murdered because she witnessed local law enforcement corruption or misconduct or worse. "She used to tell us all the time it was the police killing the girls," Barbara said. "We'd say, 'Necole, a name. Something. Write a letter and leave it somewhere. Let us know. We can help you.' No, momma. It's too far gone. It's too big. I'd rather y'all not know nothing, that way nothing can happen to y'all… She knew, she knew, she knew, and that's why they killed her." Brown writes that several other families of victims have similar stories. He says, "Gail Brown, a sister of the fifth victim, Laconia "Muggy" Brown, told me that just before Muggy was killed, she worriedly informed her family that "she was investigating a murder with a cop; the cop wanted to give her $500 to tell what happened." Gail put it as bluntly as Barbara Guillory: "She knew what was going on," she told me, referring to her sister's work as a cooperator. "I think it was a cop that killed my sister." Taskforce witness interviews corroborate the Brown family accounts; one was noted as saying that "Laconia Brown told her that…three police officers were going to kill her." According to Brown, the Jennings police force and Jeff Davis sheriff's offices have been plagued by misconduct for years. Veterans of Jennings' streets trace the unwinding of local law enforcement back to the '70s when they say cops began getting involved in drug trafficking. But this is not merely street gossip. In March 1990, two local men burglarized the sheriff's office, making off with a staggering 300 pounds of marijuana. According to court documents, investigators interviewed one of the burglars. He named a surprising pair of accomplices—Frankie Richard and a man named Ted Gary, who was then chief deputy sheriff. (Officials brought no charges against Richard and Gary.) From sheriff's using parish funds to purchase personal items illegally, to unlawfully and purposefully stopping cars with out-of-state plates, to improper dealings with inmates, and even the murder of one officer and his wife by another officer, things were getting pretty nuts. In October 2003, eight female Jennings cops filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court against Jennings police chief Donald "Lucky" DeLouche, a gaggle of male cops, and the City of Jennings, alleging widespread acts of sexual violence and harassment. Among the allegations in the complaint: a captain who shook his penis at female officers, saying, "You know I like to lick pussy, I can numb it all night," and forced oral sex on a female officer, as well as a lieutenant who waved a knife at a female officer, warning, "Girl, I'll cut you." In January 2013, former Jennings police chief Johnny Lassiter was hit with a battery of charges after a Louisiana State Police audit found $4,500 in cash, 1,800 pills, more than 380 grams of cocaine, and several pounds of marijuana missing from the department's evidence room. In December 2007, Sergeant Jesse Ewing received word that two female inmates at the city jail wanted to talk about the unsolved homicides (at the time totaling four). He was stunned by what he heard: Ewing said both women told him that "higher-ranking officers" had been directly involved in covering up the murders. Brown claims Ewing had long been wary of his fellow cops, and he feared that the audiotapes would simply vanish, just as drugs and cash had a way of disappearing from evidence. So Ewing handed the interview tapes over to a local private investigator named Kirk Menard, who rushed copies to the FBI's office in nearby Lake Charles. Brown goes on to write, "Ewing's gambit to grab the attention of the feds backfired. The tapes ended up right back with the sheriff's office–dominated task force, and Ewing's fears of retaliation turned out to be justified. As a result, the parish district attorney charged Ewing with malfeasance in office and sexual misconduct. (One of the female inmates claimed that Ewing touched her inappropriately during the interview. Ewing denies it, and that charge was dismissed.) Brown says, "Ewing and I sat in his trailer in the Paradise Park development in Jennings in July 2011. He is a short, wide-shouldered man with a cleanly shaved head, a graying goatee, and the bulky frame of a rugby player. Ewing decorated the trailer with little more than a TV set and a couch—a no-frills lifestyle that he blamed on employment troubles since his termination after 20 years on the job. "I felt screwed for doing the right thing," he said." Although the tapes were never made public, Brown says he had listened to them in their entirety. He claims they provide highly specific information about the murders of two of the prostitutes—Whitnei Dubois and Kristen Gary Lopez—as well as local law enforcement's alleged role in covering up Frankie Richard's role in at least one of the killings. The first inmate says that a prostitute named Tracee Chaisson had told her that she was there when Richard and his niece Hannah Conner killed Dubois. They'd all been getting high, and when Dubois refused Richard's sexual advances, he "got aggressive, he started fighting with her, and when she started fighting back he got on top of her and started punching her." According to the inmate, Chaisson then said that Hannah held her head back and drowned her. The two inmates told another story about a truck and a conspiracy between Richard and a top sheriff's office investigator to destroy evidence in the Lopez case. The second inmate said Richard put Lopez's body "in a barrel," and used a truck to transport it. The truck, she said, was later purchased by "an officer named Mr. Warren, I don't know his exact name, he bought the truck to discard the evidence." By "Warren," the inmate meant the sheriff's office chief criminal investigator, Warren Gary. The first inmate had also spoken of Lopez's body, a truck, and an officer named Warren. Public records would seem to corroborate the second witness' account. On March 29, 2007, Warren Gary purchased a 2006 Chevy Silverado truck for $8,748.90 from Connie Siler, a Richard associate who had just been hauled into the sheriff's office for questioning in the case of a bad check. On April 20, Gary resold Siler's Silverado for $15,500, a nearly 50 percent profit in less than one month. (Siler, in turn, used profits from the sale, $3,207.13, to pay the parish district attorney's office for the bad checks she had issued.) Gary's truck purchase was possibly illegal and definitely unethical—the Louisiana Board of Ethics fined him $10,000 in the incident. "What [Gary] did with that was wrong," former sheriff Ricky Edwards told Brown. "Buying from an inmate, that's what was ethically wrong." He insisted, however, that his office "had no clue that [the truck] was even part of evidence [in the Lopez case]. That didn't come out until way after the fact." Brown says there is some reason to doubt this claim. According to their reports, investigators knew that Siler was one of the last to see Lopez alive. In addition, Paula Guillory, a former detective in the sheriff's office who was later investigated for her ties to the Jennings drug scene, recently spoke to Brown and told him, "We knew that Connie Siler's vehicle was probably involved." In a town where everyone was related and where the atmosphere had the feeling of a vicious family feud, it was Paula's then-husband Terrie Guillory, the warden at the jail, who brokered the Siler truck deal, according to the ethics board report on Gary. (Note: That he shares a last name with one of the victims is not a coincidence: Necole Guillory was his cousin.) Because of Warren Gary and Terrie Guillory, two members of law enforcement, the Lopez case lost an essential piece of physical evidence. Because of Terrie Guillory, one suspect found herself with an alibi. And because Conner refused to flip on Richard, and Chaisson had changed her story repeatedly, the charges against all of them were dropped. Brown writes, "Put simply: The statements from the two female inmates portrayed Richard and his associates working with the sheriff's office to dispose of evidence in the Lopez case. Yet the sergeant who took the statements was forced out of his job, and the allegations were ignored by law enforcement." A review of hundreds of pages of task force investigative reports by Brown reveals a series of witness interviews where local law enforcement was implicated in the murders. However, these allegations have never been made public. Danny Barry, a 12-year veteran of the sheriff's office when he died in 2010 at the age of 63, was named a suspect by at least three separate task force witnesses in a single day of interrogations in November 2008. "Deputy Danny Barry would ride around on the south side with his wife," one witness said. "And they would try to pick up girls….[Barry's vehicle was] a small blue sports car…Barry would drop off his wife, Natalie, and she would get the girls. The couple would 'spike' a drink and then take the girls back to the Barrys' house…." One witness even told investigators that "Danny Barry had a room in his trailer that had chains hanging from the ceiling and that a person could not see in or out of the room." What the fuck? There was only one task force interview with Barry on February 25, 2009. He wasn't questioned about the abundance of allegations against him, and there hasn't been any substantive follow-up investigation. Brown goes on to write, "As the murders in the parish crescendoed in 2009, Guillory participated in a raid on Frankie Richard's family home. This was part of a sprawling investigation by the sheriff's office into a drugs and theft ring that Richard, his mother, and Teresa Gary (the mother of the seventh victim, Brittney Gary) were later charged with running, in which guns, jewelry, and rare coins had been pilfered from residences across Jennings. Yet when Guillory turned over evidence, nearly $4,000 was missing. So the theft case collapsed under the weight of serious law enforcement misconduct." "Guillory denies that she stole or disposed of evidence in the case. She told me that she realized the money was missing when she was cataloguing the evidence from the raid and immediately contacted her superiors. (Warren Gary, the former chief investigator who had purchased the truck allegedly used to dispose of Lopez's body, helped catalogue the evidence, which is another troubling coincidence.) She was sent home from work and, even though she offered to take a polygraph test regarding the missing money, she was promptly fired by Sheriff Edwards. "I never even gave my own side of the story," she told Brown. Yet again, the charges against Richard were dropped. It was a break that he relishes to this day. "I'm not mad at that," Richard told Brown when he asked him about the missing evidence in his case. "In fact I thank her for doing that. If she had handled her business right, my momma would still be in jail." Most of the murdered women seemed to know about the other prostitute killings. But at least one victim from the Jeff Davis 8 witnessed a killing at the hands of state and local law enforcement during a drug bust in Jennings that went awry. During a drug bust brought on by a tip from a snitch, Leonard Crochet, a pill dealer, was shot and killed by Probation and Parole agent John Briggs Becton. Briggs Becton told Crochet to show his hands, and, according to a statement he gave later to investigators, Crochet "then made a sudden movement with his hands toward his belt line." Believing that Crochet was reaching for a weapon, Briggs Becton fired his departmentally issued Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun, with a single shot striking Crochet in the chest. According to a later statement by a fellow Probation and Parole agent at the raid, Briggs Becton approached Crochet's body, muttering, "Oh shit." Briggs Becton called an ambulance to the scene, and the inhabitants at 610 Gallup were taken into custody and transported to the Jennings Police Department for questioning. Police investigators concluded that they were "unable to locate any items near Crochet's location in the residence which could have been construed as a weapon. Further, no persons inside the residence at the time of the shooting, whether law enforcement or civilian, could provide any evidence that Crochet had brandished a weapon." That July, a parish grand jury heard prosecutors make their case that Briggs Becton committed the crime of negligent homicide. However, they came back with a decision of "no true bill"—no probable cause or evidence to show that Briggs Becton had committed a crime. Could this be the reason the Jennings 8 we're killed? It is one theory suggested by some in the parish. "The victims were being killed because they were present when Leonard Crochet was killed by the police," one witness told task force investigators. "The girls were being killed because they had seen something they were not supposed to see." Even Richard connected the Crochet killing to the murdered women: "Most of them girls was at a raid…when that Crochet boy got killed. Most of the girls that are dead today were there that night." Brown obtained a witness list from the Louisiana State Police on the incident. He says, "it reads like a who's who of players in the Jeff Davis 8 case, including the third victim Kristen Gary Lopez, Alvin "Bootsy" Lewis (the boyfriend of the fourth victim, Whitnei Duboisi, and the brother-in-law of the first victim, Loretta Lewis), and Harvey "Bird Dog" Burleigh, who later told Dubois' older brother Mike that "I'm close to finding out who killed your sister" and was then found stabbed to death in his Jennings apartment. His murder, too, remains unsolved." The slaying of witnesses appears to be a pattern in Jefferson Davis Parish. Soon after Crystal Shay Benoit Zeno (the sixth victim) was found in a wooded area in South Jennings in September 2008, a tip was called into the parish district attorney's office from a 43-year-old Lafayette man named Russell Carrier. Carrier said that he had seen three African-American men exiting the woods. Richard associate Eugene "Dog" Ivory, Ervin "Tyson" Mouton (who is named as another possible suspect in the Lopez homicide in the task force documents), and Ricardo "Tiger" Williams. On October 10, 2010, Carrier was struck and killed by a Burlington Northern Santa Fe Train in Jennings early in the morning. Police Chief Todd D'Albor said that "for whatever reason," Carrier laid on the tracks and was run over. God damn, this shit is nuts! Brown concludes his article with information about one of the leading players in the case, Frankie Richard, whom we've talked about a lot. Brown writes of Frankie, "Though Richard was well aware that I was deeply investigating the Jeff Davis 8, he never turned me down for an interview and didn't flinch when I confronted him with my reporting—he has a knack for explaining away bad facts and constructing theories on alternative suspects." Deceased deputy Danny Barry is also a favorite. "All these girls or most of these girls was found within a three-mile radius of Danny Barry's house," Richard told Brown. "Since he been dead, nobody died. All these motherfuckers on the sheriff's department are some crooked sons of bitches." Brown describes one interview with Frankie as follows "On an unusually warm and muggy late spring night in 2012, Richard sat shirtless, exposing his meaty upper body, on a pair of rockers on the front porch of his family home in Jennings. He has expressionless brown eyes, a thick head of black hair streaked with gray, and a salt-and-pepper goatee. He was trying very hard to project the image of a wrongly accused, down-on-his-luck, sobered-up former hustler. "I was a dope addict, a coke head, meth head, alcoholic, no-good sonofabitch," Richard told me. "But I'm determined to get my head on right. I'm one year clean from meth and 100 days clean from alcohol and cocaine after 42 years. That's a long fuckin' time for a motherfucker like me." Brown continues, "Standing nearby, on the ground below, was an associate of Richard's, a towering African-American man in his 30s wearing baggy jeans and a white T-shirt. At one point, he interrupted the conversation to warn me that the story I'm working on will likely put me in the crosshairs of local law enforcement. "You a bold-ass little man, dog," he said. "Don't get caught in Jeff Davis Parish at night." Brown continues about Frankie Richard: "That Richard continues to sit atop what police files and my own reporting suggest is an empire of drugs and prostitution is no spectacular stroke of luck. He is a prized informant who, according to task force documents, has provided a steady stream of intel to investigators. (Richard was debriefed in 2008, which Brown says challenges another official narrative: that no one is talking to the multi-agency investigative team, and that all investigators have is a series of unhelpful dead ends.) He goes on to say, "Criminal activity sanctioned by high-level law enforcement is hardly uncommon; a 2011 FBI report concluded the agency gave its informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times that year. Richard would push back against the snitch label vigorously. But, in May 2012, Kirk Menard, the private investigator, sent a pair of female witnesses who said they had tips in the killings related to Richard to the task force offices to be interrogated. "Do not worry about Frankie," one high-ranking task force investigator told the stunned women, "because he works for me." According to the witness account, the investigator added that Richard has a task force–issued cellphone. Menard forwarded me an e-mail he sent to the task force outlining his concerns about the interview. Nearly two years later, he has yet to receive a response." Brown says that the possibility that Richard is just circumstantially connected to all of the eight murdered women has also been undermined again and again. Soon after charges against Richard in the 2007 Lopez slaying were dismissed, he and associate Eugene "Dog" Ivory—who is, according to task force witnesses, a suspect in the murder of Crystal Benoit—beat a rape case in which, according to case files, Richard allegedly told the victim, "If you tell anyone, bitch, you will end up like the others." Brown also recounts another story relayed to him: "One night, not long before Richard and I met, Beverly Crochet, the sister of slain drug dealer Leonard Crochet, was leaving Tina's Bar, a South Jennings haunt frequented by the Jeff Davis 8. Tracee Chaisson, the former prostitute who was once charged with being an accessory after the fact of second-degree murder in the slaying of Kristen Lopez, approached her in the parking lot. "When I was walking out with my ride," Crochet told me when we spoke several weeks later on the front porch of her home, which is just down the street from the Richard family home, "she was screaming out the car with some black people, 'You're gonna be number 9.'" Crochet said she reported the incident to the task force. She cleared her throat nervously. "I could tell you more," she said, "but I'm scared. I'm scared for my own life." The Jeff Davis 8 killings, she said, "started right after" her brother Leonard was killed. "Right after. All them girls were in there at one point. They were all in there for two days in and out." Brown concludes his article by saying The Jeff Davis 8 case is begging for a takeover by the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. They had intervened in a now-notorious New Orleans Police Department case from 2005, where cops shot and killed innocent bystanders on the Danziger Bridge in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Brown claims his investigation raises several genuine questions about the prevailing serial-killer theory of these murders. It also indicates that local law enforcement is a hindrance, not a help, to a resolution being reached. Whatever the truth, these eight women, and their surviving families, deserve a fresh inquiry by an outside investigative body. Holy shit! What seemed like a pretty clear-cut case on the outside; Serial killer preying on sex workers turned into THAT fucking crazy story. Wow. What do you all think? Fucking nuts, huh! The case remains unsolved, and if the things Brown uncovered are accurate, we will most likely never get to the bottom of this! Movies: Top ten drug horror movies, keeping with the drug theme http://www.theblood-shed.com/top-10-drug-horror-movies/
Margs (our mum) makes her debut, Joel (Ange's son) makes pasta in the background and there is a really interesting chat about a gooch. Ange brings a brilliant rant about influencers and their language. Ruth gets us thinking about an interesting fact she heard and there is a particularly silly chat about the word vibe. Ange tells us more about her therapy and how this is going. The girls made their This Morning debut this week and if you haven't seen the interview it is still available to watch again via catch up. You can find the girls on Instagram @ruth_corden and @angecorden, you can find the podcast on both Facebook and Instagram just search Finding the Funny. We love hearing from you so get in touch. Finally if you are new here, we would love it if you could rate, review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Hot & Muggy. TUESDAY: 9/14/21
It's late summer. Muggy buggy hot and sticky. Kevin Short has a track record of success during these tough events. "Tough tournaments are the easiest to win". Think about that..
More Hot & Muggy. SUNDAY: 8/29/21
Going on a run and curious about how muggy it's going to be out? Maddie Sofia chats with producer Thomas Lu about relative humidity and why some meteorologists are telling us to pay more attention to dew point temperature, not relative humidity. Plus — how moisture in the air and temperature influence the way our body "feels" when we're outside. Click here for the National Weather Service Heat Index chart referenced in the episode.Follow Maddie on Twitter @maddie_sofia and Thomas @thomasuylu. You can email Short Wave at ShortWave@NPR.org.
TROPICS: nothing going on TODAY: AM Fog, Mostly Sunny with a Few Afternoon Storms South of I-10. HOT & Humid. High: 95 (Feels Like: 106-110+) TONIGHT: Partly Cloudy & Muggy. Low: 74 SAT: Partly Cloudy, HOT. A Few Storms. 74/96 (Feels Like: 109 - 112) SUN: Partly Cloudy, HOT. Scattered PM Storms. 73/93 (Feels Like: 108-110+) MON: Partly Cloudy, Scattered Storms. 74/91 (Feels Like: 100+) TUE: Partly Cloudy, Scattered Afternoon Storms. 73/89 WED: Partly Cloudy, Scattered Afternoon Storms. 72/89 THU: Partly Cloudy, Scattered Afternoon Storms. 74/87
Hot & Muggy! MONDAY: 7/26/21
Jim is joined by Langston Wertz Jr, Sports Columnist at The Charlotte Observer, to break down the hall of fame candidacy of former Charlotte Hornets point guard Muggsy Bogues. Jim and Langston first discuss how Muggsy was an icon in Charlotte in the 90s (5:47). Next, they talk about Calvin Murphy, Muggsy's stellar high school and college career, and how it isn't even close when it comes to Bogues owning the best assist to turnover ratio in NBA history (11:22). Finally, they discuss whether Muggy's size should play a factor in his hall of fame candidacy (25:32), before coming to a conclusion on whether or not Bogues to be enshrined in the basketball hall of fame (28:58).
Warm & Muggy! SATURDAY: 7/24/21
Hello Interactors,This week’s post is coming to you from Avon, Connecticut as we’re about to head north to Maine. We’ve experienced some unseasonably humid days (and nights), a waiter serving bug spray in Cape Cod, and a hot and sticky college campus visit in Rhode Island. I can hear the locals now, “Welcome to New England.”As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.Please leave your comments below or email me directly.Now let’s go…WHATA WET SUMMAI’ve become a weather wimp. Or, maybe I always have been. Summers in my native Iowa were hot and humid. I remember nights when the temperature would actually increase as I lay in bed, spread eagle, staring at the ceiling waiting for just a single puff of air to waft through my window. I’m not sure I was ever dry during those Iowa summer months.Humidity makes me sweat more than most. I’m sweating just thinking about it. Perspiring makes me perspire. So you can imagine what I was thinking this week as I, with my family, were descending a long hill downtown Providence, Rhode Island, with air so thick and a sun so hot that it felt like I was walking on a treadmill in a steam bath with a heat lamp over my head. As we approached the banks of the Providence River, we read a sign on one of the buildings that that visitors of the Rhode Island School of Design should check-in at the admissions building. You guessed it, it was at the top of the hill we had just descended. Just two steps up the hill and I had sweat gushing from my head. Part way we encounter a fountain. I soaked the cooling towel I tucked in my backpack and draped if over my skull and was rewarded with a cool tingling sensation down my neck. The bliss was short lived as we trudged up the final steps of the admissions building featuring a sweeping view of Providence and a sign on the door that read, “Closed”.The Northeastern region of the United States is known for its humidity, but July has been unseasonably wet. This is good news for the one thing that everyone agrees is more dreaded during summer than humidity. Mosquitoes. Cape Cod has been hit hard, especially the small town of Wellfleet. The fleet of white vans marked with the name “Mosquito Squad” parked in a lot on the way in to town should be the first clue this area is prone to these ‘Swamp Angels’. The word mosquito is Spanish for ‘little gnat’. I prefer ‘mini-beast’. Bart Morris of the Cape Cod Mosquito Control Project said, while spraying larvicide amidst clouds of mosquitoes, “This is about as bad as I've seen it…biblical in size.” Gabrielle Sakolsky has been with this organization since 1993 and she’s never seen a population boom like this. Dry air usually controls mosquito populations, but not this summer. It’s been a wild July in the Northeast. And it’s not over.Cornell University’s Northeast Regional Climate Center reports all but two days of the first half of July included a flashflood somewhere in the region. July kicked off with a tornado in Delaware and a week later New York subways were flooded. Then came two days of Tropical Storm Elsa with severe thunderstorms and torrents of rain. Connecticut, where we are now, and Maine, where we’re headed next, were hit with five inches of rain and flash flooding. The coasts were slammed with 67 mile per hour winds while New Jersey whipped up another two tornados as winds howled over 100 miles per hour. Then, on July 12th, 10 inches of rain dowsed southeastern Pennsylvania and parts of New Jersey causing major flash flooding. That’s a lot of extreme weather in less than two weeks. And a lot of moisture.In the first 15 days of July, portions of the Northeast have seen rainfall that is 300% above normal. The Cornell climate center tracks 35 weather sites that stretch from West Virginia to the south to northern tip of Maine in Caribou, which actually was only at 57% of their normal rainfall. Boston was another story. They were 574% above normal. You can see why the mosquitoes were doing a happy dance in Cape Cod. “Eight major climate sites experienced their wettest first half of July on record and another 17 of the sites ranked this July 1-15 period among their 20 wettest on record. In fact, for 12 of the major climate sites, it is already one of the 20 wettest Julys on record.” ABNORMAL MEMORIES OF NORMALIt’s hard to know what normal is anymore. But the climate change explainers at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) remind us their analysis includes previous normal weather patterns. They adjust for the effects of climate change periodically and the last time they adjusted was 2011. That’s when the baseline for normal had shifted from the period starting in 1971 and ended in 2000. They created a handy map that demonstrates what plants and animals already knew – the planting zones across the United States had shifted north in latitude and up in elevation as normal temperatures warmed over that 30 year period.The point of analyzing and reporting on weather normals is to reflect what is normal today, and not how the values have changed over time. So NOAA updates their models every decade or so to reflect the “new normal”. It turns out reporting and understanding temperature normals is easier than precipitation normals.NOAA has collected 10 sets of these U.S Climate Normals dating back to 1901. The map below shows how the United States has warmed over the course of these ten segments of time. The blue zones are areas where the temperature was cooler than the 20th century average and the red zones are those areas warmer than average.Looking at these maps tells the story anybody born between 1901-1940 will tell you – generally speaking, it used to be cooler. Though, unfortunately, they can’t really. It’s called generational amnesia and it inflicts all of us. As climate and energy writer David Roberts writes, reflecting the research from two researchers at Columbia: “”extremely hot summers” are 200 times more likely than 50 years ago. Did you know that? Can you feel it?” It’s also part of what is called shifting baseline syndrome. We can’t relate to the baselines of the past. That’s true for temperatures, plant and animal populations, and the more fickle baselines of precipitation. NOAA’s same 10 time segments for U.S. Climate Normals for precipitation don’t show the same gradual nation-wide pattern temperatures do. Even before climate change, precipitation patterns varied greatly across different regions of the U.S. Unlike temperature normals, where we can say its generally getting warmer, we can’t say it’s generally getting wetter or dryer over time. We’re stuck with the more unsatisfactory answer, “It depends.”Take the Southwest as an example. It’s easy to think it’s just been getting gradually drier, but it’s a mixed bag. For the first two sets, 1901-1930 and 1911-1940 it was wetter than the 20th Century average. And then the next four segments were dryer until the 1961-90 segment which shows a mix of wetter and dryer across a mix of zones. The two most recent periods, including 1981-2010, have been wetter than average. This regional precipitation variation is evident even in the Northeast precipitation numbers Cornell provided for the first half of July. Caribou, Maine was drier than usual while Boston blew the normal out of the proverbial water. Given how dry and hot the Southwest has been, recency bias – the tendency to favor recent events over historic ones – will probably will keep people from believing that is true; before, that is, generational amnesia and baseline syndrome take over. But some weather events leave a lasting impression. As it did for my father-in-law, John Pappalardo, who grew up in Winsted, Connecticut. In August of 1955, John’s sophomore year at the University of Connecticut on his way to becoming a dentist, the Mad River running through Winsted flooded. “There’s a reason we called it the Mad River”, John told me, as he recalled the images of the flood: “Our two story house was flooded with water as high as the thermostat on the wall. We stayed up all night on the second floor as water ran down our street. It took a full day before someone came by in a boat, rowed in our front door, and rescued us from the staircase. But we were lucky, my friend’s house was split in half. You could see the dishes sitting in the cupboard from the street, just as they had left it.”Two hurricanes in as many weeks had ripped through Southern New England. First came Hurricane Connie between August 11th to the 14th which dumped four to six inches in two days saturating the land with water. Then, three days later, on August 17th, came Hurricane Diane dumping nearly 20 inches of rain in two days. Both exceeded New England records. With the land already saturated with water from the first hurricane, the banks of the Mad River couldn’t contain the onslaught of water from the second. Thus began a cascade of flooding through Winsted, down the Mad River, and into the Farmington River – Connecticut’s largest tributary feeding into the Northeast’s largest river, the Connecticut River.EVAPORATION NATIONStretching 410 miles long, the Connecticut River Basin stretches through four New England states; it forms the border of Vermont and New Hampshire and divides Massachusetts and Connecticut. The river provides 70% of the water to New England; 41% of which comes from Vermont, 30% from New Hampshire and Connecticut, and the remainder from another six New England states. It collects water as far north as the Canadian border and spills it into the Atlantic Ocean to the south at Long Island, New York. Like much of the Northeast, a lush tree canopy covers 80% of the basin. It’s health is vital to the Northeast Region making it a target of study for the effects of climate change on the region.Laying awake at night here in Avon, Connecticut, tucked under a canopy of trees, saturated soil, and a mosquito dive-bombing my ears, the still presence of humidity surrounds my body and engulfs my mind. I contemplate animals like me sweating – perspiration; plants sweating – transpiration; and the soil sweating – evaporation. Just then, the rush of rustling leaves permeates the stagnant calm as buckets of rain come pouring down. Precipitation – the source of perspiration, transpiration, and evaporation. The trees, like me, struggle to transpire amidst the invisible gaseous vapors of humidity – the most abundant greenhouse gas there is. Humidity is the measure of the amount of water vapor in the air and is a primary player in the water cycle – and in cooling the planet. Just as sweat pulls heat from our body to be transported to the air, humid water vapors suck water and heat from animals, plants, soil, lakes, streams, and puddles and ferries it around the globe. Humidity is also invisible to the sun as radiation dances through the vapors and is absorbed by the earth. The soil in Avon is pregnant with fifteen days of record July rainfall and the sun’s stored energy radiates back into the atmosphere long after the sun has set; steaming me on the mattress like a plump white sticky bun. This nighttime reheating process explains why those hot Iowa nights would grow warmer as the night progressed. As the rich Iowa soil emanated stored heat, I wasn’t the only one sweating. So was the abundant Iowa corn. One acre of corn will transpire 3,000-4,000 gallons (11,400-15,100 liters) of water a day making significant contributions to the state’s humidity. Back here in Avon, the oak trees above me will contribute 40,000 gallons (151,000 liters) of water a year to the atmosphere. And I thought I sweat a lot. Scientists will sometimes combine the measures, and the letters, of evaporation and transpiration to form the term: evapotranspiration. Global climate models tell us evapotranspiration increases 2% for every degree of warming. Given global precipitation amounts must be balanced by evapotranspiration under a warming planet, it follows that the world should be seeing less frequent and shorter durations of precipitation. That is, we should also be seeing more and longer periods of dry days so that the atmosphere can be replenished with water vapors from evapotranspiration. But this is why it’s important to not just study the whole with aggregated data, but the highly variable parts as well with contextual data. Measures of specific regions can deviate significantly from a global mean. A 2014 study, quotes researchers from 2008 who “noted that over the period of 1895–1999, annual precipitation averaged over New England increased by 3.7% while the change of annual precipitation for individual states in New England varied between −12% and 29.5%.” This same study compared various sections of the Connecticut River Basin for each season. They analyzed the evapotranspiration, surface runoff, baseflow (stream flow between precipitation events), and soil moisture and found data to “support the theory that extreme precipitation events are becoming more common in a warming world.” Their “results show a clear increase in precipitation intensity for the Connecticut River Basin in the latter half of the 20th Century and early 21st Century.” While being careful to note it’s not always the case, they also find it “interesting to note” that “as precipitation intensity increases, frequency of precipitation is likely to decrease.”Another thing that kept me awake on that humid night in Connecticut was smoke. A good example of the nuanced and variable climate conditions regions can bring. Smoke from fires in drier areas of the Midwest United States, and parts of Canada and Pennsylvania drifted over the Northeast in a toxic smog that created an atmospheric red filter to the moon. A grim reminder of what may greet us in our return west to Seattle next week, through August, and well into October. Meanwhile, sorry Northeast, NOAA predicts “above normal precipitation is likely for the central and eastern Gulf Coast region and from the Appalachians to the Atlantic Coast” for August through October. Sounds like those mosquitoes will continue to do their happy dance.But before we head home, we stop in Maine to visit my sister and a couple more schools. Then back to water logged Boston to board a giant jet-fueled mosquito headed back against the prevailing easterly winds to the dry west coast. I’ll be ready to dry out in the mosquito-free air of Kirkland, Washington. Minus the smoke, of course. I also need to water the soil around the baby native ferns, firs, and vine maples I’m nursing to health in my nearby Kirkland park. Water that will start a cycle of evapotranspiration that, when combined with my perspiration, will form water vapors headed for the sky joining clouds drifting in from the Pacific Ocean headed east for more record setting precipitation in New England. Perhaps next year, they’ll be joined by my kids too. Subscribe at interplace.io
Hot & Muggy. THURSDAY: 7/15/21
Warm & Muggy. SUNDAY: 7/4/21
This is your current weekend weather update for 06/26/2021. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
This episode is also available as a blog post: https://darsword.wordpress.com/2021/06/21/muggy-monday/
Hot & Muggy. TUESDAY: 5/25/21
After straight-up demolishing a Chicago-style deep-dish pizza, Ryan and Eric sit down for this self-proclaimed “chill-cast”. Lend an ear as they discuss Pal Points Season 2, friendship peeing, and Captain Muggy Puggy himself (he's the chainsaw). --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thepalcastpodcast/support
Fey takes a commuter train and a bus to retrieve Dorian Gray. Muggy and smokey from American fires. Preparing to move north for the winter to live on top of a mountain. The traffic cops are in court today so Fey is testing the new rear struts in some corners on old tires. Lots of talk about how the suspension feels and weight transfer. Fey talks about air conditioning and fans on the car.