The Daily Bucket is a regular feature of the Backyard Science group. It's a place to note the things you've seen in the natural world around you. Whether it's weather, bobcats, fish, bugs, meteorites, climate, birds, flowers, or old rocks, nothing is too big or too small, if it's part of the natural world, this is the place to talk about it. So please let us know what's going on in your neighborhood and whereabouts that is.
Here's a quick bucket to get today's conversation started. When the weather gets interesting, traffic cams can tell us what's down the highway. How far away is the ice and snow? Are the roads passable?
During the January 29 winter storm in Atlanta, the cameras revealed multitudes of scenes like this one:
On Wednesday, with people staying at home, and the highways being treated before the ice arrived, the highways looked like this instead:
The freezing rain caused many of the images to be framed with icicles.
My favorites, from an artistic point of view, were from cameras whose lenses had iced over. They aren't very useful for studying traffic, but they're fun to look at.
All images are courtesy Georgia Department of Transportation.
The icy weather barely made it to Macon. All day Wednesday, the temperature hovered a degree or two above freezing as sheets of cold rain fell. After dark, ice began to accumulate, but by then the storm was winding down. We only received a light coating of ice. My home lost power for about an hour Thursday morning when an icy pine limb fell on a power line in my neighborhood. By noon, the ice had melted, and the sun began to peek through the thinning clouds.
Your turn. What's happening in your area?
"Green Diary Rescue" is Back!
After a hiatus of over 1 1/2 years, Meteor Blades has revived his excellent series. As MB explained, this weekly diary is a "round-up with excerpts and links... of the hard work so many Kossacks put into bringing matters of environmental concern to the community... I'll be starting out with some commentary of my own on an issue related to the environment, a word I take in its broadest meaning."
"Green Diary Rescue" will be posted every Saturday at 1:00 pm Pacific Time on the Daily Kos front page. Be sure to recommend and comment in the diary.