Top o’ the mornin’

I took this picture Monday morning when I walked the dogs up to the top of the mountain. It was about 9:30, long after sunrise. Just right of center, where the steam plumes are, you can see the remains of the temperature inversion from the calm, clear atmosphere we had over Sunday night.

topothemornin

The foggy, linear stream on the left side of the plumes is the top of the inversion. If we had walked right after sunrise, the top of the inversion would probably have been more obvious, but it was already dissipating by this time. It would, however, have been at approximately the same level in the atmosphere.

An inversion serves as a cap on the atmosphere close to the surface. It traps moisture or pollutants that are beneath the top of the inversion. The temperature normally decreases as you go up higher in the troposphere. Air that is warmer than the air at the surface (like smoke from a brush fire) will tend to rise through the troposphere because it is lighter than its surroundings. In an inversion, the air actually gets warmer is you go up, so things like smoke will rise for a while, but will tend to stop at a low altitude. A very hot plume can push through the inversion and then continue to rise. The steam plumes are doing that.*

The steam plumes are coming from a paper mill. The two tall stacks to the right of the steam plumes are an old and a new stack at Plant Hammond, one of the two Georgia Power coal-fired power generating plants we can see from Lavender Mountain.

Plant Hammond’s active stack is 675 feet (205.8 m) tall. Although nowhere near the tallest stack in the world, it is tall enough to be on the Wikipedia list of the tallest stacks in the world.

It’s tall for a reason – the Clean Air Act, which goes back more than 50 years. That act has provisions that limit the concentration of pollutants at ground level. One might think that the logical way to do that would be to limit the emission of pollutants, but it happens that if you introduce the pollutants high enough in the air, they will have been diluted enough that by the time they can reach the ground, they will meet the standards. So the Georgia Power stacks are high enough to push emissions above the top of any reasonably probable inversion height. If the stacks were below the top of the inversion, their emissions might reach the ground because they might be trapped by a particularly strong inversion, or they might just reach the ground because of other atmospheric conditions. When the emissions are injected into the atmosphere high enough, they will be diluted enough to meet the letter of the law.

Rome happens to be in a nonattainment area for atmospheric particulate matter. That status somewhat limits the industrial development of this area. Our local newspaper, the Rome News-Tribune, does not like that. They have published editorials mocking the nonattainment status (like saying that our air seems clear enough to them).

To cast doubt on the legitimacy of the measurements that caused the nonattainment status, the editorial writer has pointed out that the air quality monitoring station is located near the base of the Plant Hammond stack. The implication seems to be that only an idiot would measure air quality that close to a pollution source, and thus the measurement must not be representative of Rome’s true air quality. I have written letters to them in the past pointing out that if you want to avoid measuring the emissions from a tall stack, the best place to put your instrumentation is at the very bottom of the stack. That is perhaps not intuitively obvious, but it is nevertheless true. However, the truth seems not to be a persuasive argument when it comes to commercial development and newspaper editorialists. (I might have mentioned this in an earlier post.)

You might be wondering why the top of the inversion is so much lower than the top of the mountain, where I have mentioned on several occasions that we are warmer than the surrounding lowlands because of a temperature inversion. The reason is that although the top of Lavender Mountain is above the actual inversion, the conditions that cause the inversion also work on the atmosphere up here. As the air on the mountaintop cools, it flows downhill into the lower areas, reinforcing the inversion down there. That air is replaced up here by the surrounding air, which is warmer than the air that flows down the mountain. I have mentioned before that we can be as much as 10 degrees F warmer than the air at the bottom of the mountain.

Oh, and Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

* The tropopause acts like the top of a temperature inversion. The air temperature gets lower as you go up in altitude until it reaches the tropopause. In the stratosphere, which is the layer above the troposphere, the air gets warmer as you go up. That’s why thunderstorms form anvil tops when they get to the tropopause. The clouds hit the warmer air and their buoyancy can’t get them any higher. At that point they tend to spread out sideways, forming the anvil top. Occasionally a very strong thunderstorm can push its clouds through the tropopause, but not very much higher.

Leah’s Mexican birthday lunch

We usually have huevos rancheros once a week at our favorite Mexican restaurant. Leah always has a birthday once a year. This year, they coincided, just like they did last year. And, just like last year, Leah got a margarita to go with her huevos rancheros. When we were finished, Gio, the waiter, brought a birthday sopapilla, just like last year.

Leah, contemplating the sopapilla

Leah, contemplating the sopapilla

I think I mentioned last year that the sopapillas here in the Southeast are not like the ones served in New Mexico, but this one was just fine. Leah didn’t want all of it, so she broke it up so I could help her.

And a little for me

And a little for me …

I ate a lot of it. Leah got the cherry on top.

What else can I eat?

Smokey likes to hang around the  dining room table while we eat, hoping we’ll give him something. Monday night Mark had a ground turkey patty and I had a pork chop, but all we had left over was mashed potatoes. I didn’t think he would actually eat them, but he did.

smokey eating mashed potatos

 

He looked up when Mark took the picture.

smokey over taters

It looked like he was thinking, “What’s the matter with you? There’s nothing to see here.”

The fox and the hound

Something has been eating the outside cats’ food. We suspected that it was a new stray dog that showed up several weeks ago. The dog is so skittish that it runs at the mere hint of a human’s presence. This picture looks like a spy shot, but it was the best I could do through the kitchen window screen.

stray_winter15

The dog looks like a cross between a basset hound and some kind of Australian shepherd dog. It has a fairly large body and head, but short legs.

We have been feeding it for about two weeks. We started partly to protect the cat food, but also because the dog was outside and exposed to some pretty harsh weather. I put an old dog house at the end of the driveway, hoping it would get in during the coldest nights, but it didn’t. Neighbor Deb says it seems to be sleeping near or in one of their out buildings.

It turns out that the dog isn’t the cat food eater anyway. The real culprit is a fox. Unlike the stray dog, this fox is not at all skittish. Here he is in the driveway after scouting for food. He, or she, is a real beauty, and healthy looking.

foxindrive

I know the fox has also been eating the dog food we leave for the stray, because he left his calling card one day — poop in the dog food bowl. I have noted that kind of behavior before.

On Saturday the dogs were on the deck making a racket. I went out and saw the fox. He walked casually around in the back yard and then sat down to look at me, Zeke and Lucy.

foxsittinginback

Zeke was barking, of course, but the fox ignored him. I shouted and waved my arms, but he only stared. Crazy human. I went down off the deck to get a couple of rocks. I threw one in his general direction. He was not impressed. I threw another, trying to land it closer to him. He jumped and ran back about six feet and then stopped to watch again.

I have written about our foxes and my ambiguous feelings about having them so close to the house. I have decided that it’s best for everyone if they stay away, but they seem not to take me seriously.

But the fox is a problem for another day. Our real problem is the stray dog. With us feeding him and Deb providing unintentional shelter, he’s probably OK for the short term. I want to get him to a rescue group so they can find a good home for him, but he is absolutely unapproachable. He sometimes watches from the woods as I pass with the dogs, but if I look at him or otherwise acknowledge him, he immediately retreats.

A trap seems to be the only option. We have live traps but nothing big enough for him. We have been told that we can borrow one from the local humane society or the county animal control. We will eventually set a trap and hope he calms down once he’s restrained. Dogs will sometimes do that.

A local rescue group saves a lot of animals at our pound, so if we can get him there, he stands a chance of finding a home.