A Category 1 hurricane has sustained winds of 74 to 95 mph and a Category 4 hurricane has sustained winds of 130 to 156 mph. Category 3 and above are considered major storms but any hurricane will have winds strong enough to cause damage to buildings, trees, and powerlines.

Louisiana had a hurricane evacuation plan, unfortunately it turned out to be more of an intention to do something rather than an actual plan. Why didn’t they begin evacuation earlier? Whose responsibility was it to make the evacuation order?

At that time it would have been unconstitutional for the federal government to order an evacuation, it had to be done by the local and state governments. Max Mayfield, the Director of the National Hurricane Center explained to Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin the danger of waiting too long to evacuate but they decided to wait anyway.

President Bush personally called Nagin and encouraged him to evacuate the city but he still chose to continue to wait. The mayor eventually announced a mandatory evacuation less than 24 hours before the hurricane hit. By that time AMTRAK had already removed its trains and the airport had been cleared of planes.

The head of FEMA, Michael Brown went to the media to encourage people in the path of the storm to leave the area. As he was doing this, Mayor Nagin announced that the Superdome would be a “shelter of last resort”. At this point is was going to be difficult for anyone without their own car to leave the city and the mayor was offering an easier option – stay there and if things get too bad, come to the Superdome, despite having been told that it was very likely that the building would be damaged by the hurricane.

It was claimed that the state had prepositioned food, water, and medical supplies at the Superdome but it was actually FEMA that had supplied it. The supplies were insufficient to deal with the unexpectedly large number of people who showed up.

Ten years later both President Bush and Governor Kathleen Blanco have left politics; Mayor Ray Nagin is in federal prison for wire fraud, bribery, and money laundering; and Democrats and Republicans continue to point fingers and blame the other party for everything that went wrong. And it is true in the aftermath of the storm that, as politicians are wont to say, mistakes were made. It’s also true that even if the response had been perfectly organized, it could not have made up for the lack of planning by the city, state,, and the residents.

Plan ahead for emergencies. Even if you don’t live in an area that has hurricanes, there are still plenty of natural and man-made disasters and it could be days before the government can provide any help for you.

The government has planning checklists including a list of emergency supplies to keep on hand.

The Red Cross has iPhone and Android apps for first aid (including pet first aid) and disaster preparedness. Just make sure you have a phone charger, including a way to charge it if you lose power!

Frontline: The Storm,14 Days

Read Former FEMA Director Michael Brown’s recent article about Katrina in Politico.

In March 2006 VH1 had “Pay to Play for Hurricane Katrina Relief” where viewers could pay $25 to request a song or pick an hour’s worth of music programming for $35,000. One viewer who went for the $35k option chose an hour’s worth of Nena singing 99 Luftballons.

Why that song? I don’t know, maybe because this would have been in poor taste.

We didn’t get a full view photo of the Earth for almost 30 more years. On December 7, 1972 the crew of Apollo 17 sent back this photo of Earth. It became known as “The Blue Marble”. (Apollo 17 was also the last manned mission to the Moon.)

The photo shows the South Pole, or rather, clouds over the South Pole, Africa, and parts of Asia.

Finally, in 2015, we’ve gotten another sunlit Earth photo. This one is from a satellite that is one million miles away and shows the best part of Earth, North America. Just kidding! North America isn’t the best part, it just contains the best part – the USA! Totally not kidding about that.

The sherpa Tenzing Norgay had come as close as anyone to the peak the year before when he accompanied Raymond Lambert and his Swiss team. They climbed the Southeast Ridge and reached 28,210 feet (8,598 meters).

The successful 1953 expedition included 350 porters, 20 guides, and 10 climbers plus 10,000 pounds of baggage.

After setting up the final camp at 25,900 feet – anything high and they would be in the “death zone “where the oxygen is just to thin to breathe. He first pair of men,  Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans, attempted to reach the summit but had to turn back when they were only within 300 feet of it. Unfortunately for them, that 300 feet was pretty much straight up and they were running low on oxygen so they turned back. Weather prevented anything from happening for the next couple of days.

Expedition leader, John Hunt, three days later, decided to send Hillary and Norgay to try to reach the summit. They spent about 15 minutes up there. They took some photos and left a little offering/memorial of chocolates and a cross at the top of the mountain. Later that year, Hillary became Sir Edmund Hillary and continued to win national and athletic awards.

Just because they made it to the top didn’t mean that it would be easier for those who followed them. An average of one out of every ten climbers dies in the attempt. Often the corpses are difficult to get to and any rescue attempt for a dead body would put many others at risk of dying too.

There’s an area known as “Rainbow Valley” on the Northeast Ridge route because of the colorful down jackets of people who didn’t survive the climb.

It looks more like something you would take a string trimmer to than it does an important food crop, doesn’t it?

Early Mesoamericans (people who lived in what is now Mexico and Central America, before Europeans came) bred the plants over thousands of years to get plants that were closer to what we think of as corn.

Modern corn needs people as much as people need it. If an apple falls off an apple tree, the fruit will rot and the seeds will have a chance of sprouting. If a corn cob full of corn falls off the plant the seeds are too tightly wrapped to be able to sprout. Even if it was shucked first, there are too many tightly spaced seeds. It would not have the room it needs to grow.

Corn growers realized they could breed together several varieties of corn and create hybrids that combined the most desirable qualities of the ancestor varieties. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “About 95 percent of our corn acreage now is planted to hybrid corn. We produce at least 20 percent more corn on 25 percent fewer acres than in 1930, when seed of hybrid corn became available in quantity to American farmers.”

Hybridization let us develop corn that was more vigorous, disease resistant, had shorter growing periods, and was sweeter. New seeds had to be bought each year since you cannot grow the same plant from the seeds of a hybrid. The plants from its seeds will revert back to the parent varieties.

Corn that had been genetically modified in a lab was first made commercially available in 1996 by Monsanto. There have been several genetically engineered modifications to corn:

• Herbicide tolerant – This lets farmers use an herbicide that kills weeds without harming the crop. This helps prevent soil erosion because the lands needs less tilling to destroy weeds.
• Bt toxin production – A toxin that is produced by a soil bacterium is inserted into the plant. It is harmful to insects that try to eat the plant but is not harmful to humans or animals. It reacts with the alkaline insides of the insect (our stomachs have acid). An extract of this toxin is used in organic farming. Using plants with this modification means the farmers can use less pesticides.
• Starch breakdown – This GM corn contains a transgene for an enzyme that breaks the starch in the corn down into maltose. This speeds the corn’s production into ethanol.

Corn and other plant hybridization helped feed the world for a while, but to keep growing we need to continue to develop genetically engineered plants that provide more food, use less resources, and are more environmentally friendly.

Learn more about teosinte from the University of Wisconsin and the history of maize (corn) from History.com
NYT article about the history of corn

Find out the myths and truth about GMO corn from NPR

Read a post at the Skeptical Raptor’s Blog with lots of links to learn about GMO science vs. anti-GMO fear mongers.

The next full line-up, like the 561 B.C. one,  will be May 6, 2492.

When an astronomer speaks of the planets being in alignment, it means that, when looking at them from the Earth, you can see them in the same general area in the sky.

Solar System Live – set the date and time to find the location of planets.

Pictures and news from NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory

And just as an extra bonus, here’s David Bowie singing “Life on Mars?”.

Maybe some microbial life, definitely one little explorer bot.  I know the Mars Rover isn’t alive, but on its birthday, it sings (hums? chimes?) to itself. Teaching a robot to do something that would be done out of loneliness if a human did it is a pretty clear sign that it will eventually develop sentience. I know this because I’ve seen a lot of scifi movies and TV shows. It Always Happens!

August 5 will be the anniversary of the Mars lander arriving on the planet.

Here’s a time-lapse video of the ice building up on the lake via Greatlakesvista.com

Lake Erie has a surface area of 9,990 square miles and while it is fourth largest in surface area, it’s the shallowest of the lakes and has the least water volume. This makes it the one that is most likely to freeze over.

The winter of 2009 – 2010 was cold. By February 13, 2010, all 48 contiguous states had at least some snow on the ground. By February 16, Lake Erie was 98% frozen. So close.

We have to go back to the winter of 1996 for the last time it was completely frozen.

Just in case you came here looking for another frozen…we don’t want you to be disappointed.