Maybe there’s something to this notion that weather extremes are getting greater. We had record breaking high temperatures in December and record breaking low temperatures in January.
January 31 beat the all-time low for that day by one degree. This year’s low was 16 degrees, lower by one degree than January 31, 1966. The high that day this year was 28 degrees, a whopping five degrees lower than the January 31, 1996 high of 33 degrees. And the wind was blowing at 25 knots. Brrr!
Believe it or not, spring is around the corner. The official start of spring is March 21, but spring unofficially begins in Jackson, Mississippi on February 15. Historical data shows that temperatures warm five degrees during the month. The buds on the trees will be visible by then.
Jackson dodged the ice storm but my house lost power, as usual. Loho, my neighborhood behind The District, has above-ground utility lines and big old trees. Adverse weather causes a limb to fall, taking out some power lines. Poof. The lights go out.
We also live at the bottom of a hill on a cul de sac. If the road gets iced over, we can’t get out. No power and no way to leave and 15 degree weather is not a good combination.
Fortunately, we have a gas burning fireplace in the den which is adjacent to our kitchen with its gas burning stove. With two battery-powered carbon dioxide monitors, I turned both the gas furnace and the gas stove top on full blast and shut the doors. It worked, temperatures started rising. The Emmerichs were not going to freeze to death.
I also have eight battery powered LED lanterns that last forever and provide an amazing degree of light. And I have battery backup chargers for smartphones. Heat, light, food and entertainment. What more does one need?
In reality, we could have easily walked to friends with power who would put us up. Plus our power came back on within 12 hours. Others throughout the state weren’t so lucky. Such is the fickleness of severe ice storms.
Has it really been 32 years since the last bad Mississippi ice storm of 1994? That seems incredible. I remember it like yesterday. That shows how rare these events are. It was quite impressive to see how well the weather forecasters predicted this event.
Oxford got hit the worst. Most folks were out of power for over a week. Streets were impassable. With freezing temperatures, this could be dangerous for many. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency confirms 25 deaths related to the ice storm.
One of my good friends has a tree farm in Carroll County. He had just thinned the pines. He estimates the ice took down at least half his trees. He partially blames the genetically engineered fast growing pines, which grow fast but go down even faster in ice storms. There’s no free lunch. He lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in trees, which aren’t insurable.
My neighbors have generators. The sound of them going on strikes dread in all the neighbors who don’t. They’re expensive. No doubt, as soon as I installed one, our power wouldn’t go out for years. Then when we finally lost power, it wouldn’t turn on for lack of use.
I’ve done the return on investment on a generator and I just can’t make the numbers work. It would be cheaper just to go get a hotel room. Backup batteries and LED lamps are a fraction of the cost.
I think it’s worse to lose power in the summer. I can bundle up and sleep in the cold, but sleeping in July in Mississippi without AC is miserable. In the winter, you can put your food outside in the cold. In the summer, you lose everything in the fridge.
I’m aware that these are first world problems. These brushes with nature should remind us all how blessed we are to have shelter and power and the innumerable amenities of first world life.
The start of the winter and the new year is also the start of the legislative session. I was excited to see that Secretary of State Michael Watson helped introduce a bill to improve campaign finance reporting in Mississippi. The bill cleared its Senate committee but seems to have little support in the House.
Mississippi has really obsolete and backward campaign finance laws. My personal pet peeve is that all the finance reports are scanned images of hand written reports. They are not searchable in any type of database. As a result, it’s a huge task to figure out who is getting what from where.
Watson’s bill would change that, requiring the reports to be entered into a searchable database. Who could be against that unless you are wanting to hide something?
The bill would also cap cash and corporate donations to $1,000.
We also need stronger enforcement of the existing campaign finance laws. Candidates routinely refuse to file reports, as our former mayor Chokwe Lumumba did. It’s up to the local DA to take enforcement action which basically never happens. Life goes on.
I remember a time, decades ago, when state lawmakers were eager to pass reforms and make the government more open and honest. It doesn’t seem to be that way anymore. I suspect the evisceration of local media and the fact that we have half as many Mississippi journalists as we once did may be part of the problem.
Fortunately, we have Mississippi Today, funded by Jim Barksdale as a non-profit, to do some of the work now abandoned by our diminished press.
