El Nino
I can't swing a dead cat without hitting a story online about a super-duper El Niño weather pattern falling upon us this winter and the misery it's going to bring us all. And the more extreme the weather forecasts are, the less I tend to believe them.
The weather forecasters, for one reason or another, tend to exaggerate weather forecasts so they at least sound interesting, if not downright dangerous. So perfectly normal summer afternoon thundershowers tend to be forecast as lightning-infested storms with the possibility of large hail and dangerous tornadoes. And if you live in a place like Miami, Florida, it's very normal to see on the weather maps that every rain squall off the coast of Africa could quickly and easily turn into a Category 5 hurricane in a matter of days, so stay tuned to Channel 4 for the latest updates on this potential disaster.
Unfortunately for the local weather guessers, this extraordinary El Niño doesn't look like it's going to have any terrible effects on the United States, but it may affect some other countries, so expect to see plenty of weather reports about what's going on in Turkmenistan and Outer Mongolia.
There is something that might affect me: Arizona is predicted to be cooler and wetter than usual in the winter, and since that's when I'm normally there, it could have an impact. Being cooler doesn't really bother me since I own a coat, but wetter weather usually means more cloud cover, and cloudy weather definitely affects my life since I live on sunshine. Anything that affects my sunshine will be detrimental to my solar panels and their electrical output.
So if any of that turns out to be true, this was a very opportune time for me to have two battery banks and two separate solar systems, both on the roof of the camper and portable solar panels out in the yard, to keep my two battery banks charged. And since that gives me almost twice as much power as I had last winter, when I had problems keeping my batteries charged, this winter should be smooth sailing no matter what that old superduper party pooper El Niño does.
Theboondork
Purple Flower.
A small piece of the 11-mile reservoir.
The Petrified Forest last winter.