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Everything posted by efaardvark
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The thing about deserts is that there is no water. There is no water in the air to make clouds or fog so the sun hits the ground full-force and heats everything up. If there were water on the ground, either in the ground or in standing bodies or even in plants, then it could evaporate and cool things off a little, but there isn't.
One other thing that water vapor in the air does is trap heat at the ground. Since deserts have no water, at night all that heat collected during the day gets lost back to space. It is not at all unusual for the temperature in a desert to go from below freezing before dawn to over 100F by noon.
Snow in the desert is pretty unusual though. In my area the deserts are deserts because mountains along the coast block all the moisture from the ocean from getting inland to the deserts. Lately however we've had strong winds pushing very cold, wet air over the mountains into the deserts. We've been getting lots of rain on our side of the mountains as well, but conditions on the desert side this time turned it into snow instead. Definitely unusual.
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Probably not likely. Anything that blows in would have to deal with the desert conditions & coming from wetter areas they'd likely die. Unless this is more of a permanent weather change of course.
There are plants that are already there and adapted to the desert however. Usually they lay low most of the time, waiting for the infrequent rains. When the water does come, there's an explosion of activity as they do their thing while they have access to the water. Some desert plants have seeds that can last for hundreds of years, then sprout, grow, flower, go to seed, and die in the course of a couple days or a week, and desert blooms are often quite impressive, though hard to catch.
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So back in October a tree fell on my old car, a 2007-vintage Prius hybrid, necessitating the purchase of a new car. I liked the old one a lot, but I always wished it'd had the option of charging the battery to function more like an electric vehicle. I'm not sold on EV's due to the so-called range anxiety, and EVs are still pretty expensive anyway, so I didn't want a full EV just yet. (I'm not actually worried about the range so much as the recharging times. I'm always thinking of those people on the east cost when hurricane Sandy hit and everyone was told to evacuate at least 500 miles inland to avoid flooding and high winds. People with gas cars could manage it, but even the best EVs can only go a few hundred miles before needing several hours to fully recharge. Doh!)
So anyway my new car is a also a hybrid, but this one is pluggable, with an electric range range that is plenty to cover the commute before the gas engine kicks in and it starts behaving more like my old car. If I plug it in overnight at least every other day I pretty much never need gas, and I've been pretty good about plugging it in. I'm approaching the 1,000-mile mark on the odometer and just recently dropped below the halfway point on the tank of gas I got from the dealership when I bought the car.
Yep.. driving daily since October and I haven't had to visit a gas station even once!
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Valentine's day viewing choices...
[mal type=anime id=14289]
or maybe
[mal type=anime id=2476]
Decisions, decisions.....
JK... I went with 好きっていいなよ