Santa Claus

yeah a lot of the bigger storms over the last 5 years, since i came to Piscataway, have featured extensive periods of sleet. there is always a strong mid-level warm tongue, usually poorly forecasted, that seems to muck things up. not that i am complaining, sleet is neat

there's not a whole lot that's off the table with some of these ridges

i have noticed my perception of warmth and humidity has definitely been changing over the last few years

endless summer

the Joro spider is beautiful. more or less just a cousin spider to other native golden orb weavers. probably not the worst invasive species we could be hit with.

i wonder if the lanternfly problem might eventually be self-limited by the amount of damage they're doing to their principal host tree, the tree of heaven. many of the trees of heaven that i have observed infested with lanternflies look very stressed.

look rclab, i gotta be there for you no matter what you request. unless it’s a below normal fall in which case i am obviously powerless.

is there some kind of inversion or something? people are running fireplaces and stuff and smoke is staying near the ground.

lol i hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it but you're right. i don't think i've ever seen the lawns this green in summer

what would be the driving force behind that, forky?

massive, very close.

are there any mosquito diseases that cause a sudden onset of frequent heart palpitations, asking for a friend its possible my rock and roll lifestyle is about to kill me but it would be a lot funnier if my habit of taking long nature walks is why i die in my sleep next week

on what

northeast is the new tornado alley confirmed

took a walk on the D&R canal for the first time since Ida. it's a wreck. soils and gravel are washed out in several places, plastic debris and trash wrapped around trees, foliage washed out. mosquitos are rapacious.

hot today, caught me by surprise. strong sun too. did NBR hit 90?

did anyone else notice that the fireflies quit early this year? i seem to remember a few years back they were swarming well into October due to warm moist weather. i might've thought they'd do the same this year if you told me the weather ahead of time, but i haven't seen them in several weeks, well back into mid-August.

oh man, you think? i should buy $100 SPY puts

the problem is in the very nature of generalist and specialist predators. generalist predators, like spiders, mantids, will kill and eat this bug, like they kill and eat many bugs, but they don't seek it out or have an evolutionary niche in killing it, and so are not particularly effective at control, especially against the kind of population density the lanternfly can accomplish. chickens are also generalist predators but can eat much more than a typical density of insect predators, and can better locally control lanternflies. specialist predators, that might hunt a specific species basically exclusively and control it, aren't here for the lanternfly because of course the lanternfly is not only unknown to the northeast but has poor analogues in the animal kingdom for other insects that are here. around the world there any many specific species or genera of insects which are controlled by one specific wasp species. wasps are like antibodies in the insect world. there is a wasp species Anastatus orientalis which is under investigation because it parasitizes the spotted lanternfly with, apparently, a high specificity.

now we'll never know where he got his ideas from

i have new-all-time-record fatigue

there's actually another round behind it if it can hold up

oh, you will. i'm not really sure what is supposed to stop their march north. tree-of-heaven can be found throughout SNE and it's not like our climate is that different. there's no natural predators yet. they are an amazingly prolific bug when they get a foothold.

and with the strong lapse rates and decent surface heating there's a chance for this to evolve into some kind of MCC-like feature?

rclab, i absolutely roasted you in off topic and i need you to hear it i am so sorry my friend also does Perkins still exist