Steve Prosinski proved the view of the Billings fog Tuesday morning was MUCH prettier from above than my view in its misty midst! Snow and cold have arrived... be safe!
I've learned that people who are doing work for you here just kind of show up and start working. The guys who worked on our deck did this. The landscapers did it as well. We just looked outside to discover people in our yard working away. 🤷♂️
Recent example - the guy who blows out our sprinklers.
Me: "Ryan, I notice there's a hole in my lawn that wasn't there yesterday."
Ryan: "Yeah, I don't wanna talk about it but it'll be fixed next week."
Montana had 45-75 mph wind gusts on Tuesday! The pretty leaves on Helene's Purple Ash tree in Laurel were here yesterday, but "gone with the wind" today! 😲 🌬 🍂 🍁 🍂 🍁 🍂 🍁 🍂 🍁 🍂 🍁
We woke early at the hotel in Hulett, Wyoming this morning so that we could get to the Devil's Tower national monument. We got there so early we were the first ones there and there was a significant ground fog obscuring everything but the tower itself. I became as fascinated with fog burning off as the monument. I guess I'm easily distracted.
There's an asphalt foot path that completely encircles the Devil's Tower monument. We walked it this morning. 1.6 miles. When we got around the back side of the mountain, we never saw a landing pad, a Moog synthesizer, a color light panel or Richard Dreyfuss in a jumpsuit. I'm beginning to believe that Hollywood is complete bullshit.
The Dirty Deadly Front End of Nuclear Power — 15,000 Abandoned Uranium Mines (Pt. 1)
by Josh Cunnings, March 11, 2016
"The perplexing problem of these open, deadly, toxic messes was discussed between Emerson Urry and Arnie Gundersen.
"Urry: I want to go back for a minute to the uranium. We were talking about Fukushima and obviously the myriad isotopes that are put off as a byproduct of the nuclear fission that is happening in the reactor. It all starts there with the uranium, and there was quite a rush for that, and now we have all of these situations. To our understanding there are about 15,000 abandoned uranium mines that have been left in complete ruin with very little cleanup or remediation at all, just in the western United States. This has happened, by-and-large, because of an antiquated mining bill – the 1872 Mining Bill – still affecting these situations today – that kind of allowed miners to just walk away from these situations — but yet, they remain in the open leaching off tailings – blowing around #radioactive dust. I think there’s about 4,500 of these exposed mining sites just in #Navajo country – another 2,500 or so in #Wyoming. How do we deal with that situation? What does the future hold in those regards, and quite frankly, are we all being poisoned by these mines?
"Gundersen: I’ll give you another example of the same thing, and I would say 'yes' to everything you said is the quick answer. There is a mill-tailings site in Moab, #Utah. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission [#NRC] told the owner of the site that they needed to set aside six million dollars to clean it up. Well, the actual #cleanup is a billion dollars. What did the owner do? They declared #bankruptcy and walked away.
"Urry: And it wasn’t bonded? No bond?
"Gundersen: Right. It wasn’t bonded. You know, if you bonded uranium mining, you wouldn’t have uranium mining."
#Wyoming's wolf hunting season has been open for 12 days -- and 3 #wolves have already been shot and killed on #Yellowstone 's doorstep.
How many wolves will get caught in a hunter's crosshairs this year? Trophy hunters will be allowed to kill dozens in the hunt areas outside Yellowstone National Park.
#EnvironmentalAction supporters have sent tens of thousands of messages to the state government calling for protection for #Wyoming 's wolves.
But we can't count on Wyoming deciding to do the right thing alone. Right now, the wolves of the #NorthernRockies region -- including Wyoming's population -- are the only #GrayWolves in the U.S. that do not have #EndangeredSpeciesAct protections. That's why we're also working to convince the #Biden administration to restore federal protections.
That Mother Nature... she's a temptress, alright: 80s and sun in fall in Montana. Some weather whiplash is coming! I'll have your 7-day weather forecast at noon on your MTN station!
Look to the sky, Montana & Wyoming! Tonight at ~8:30, look SW and you'll see the International Space Station move NE for about 5 minutes! I'll have your 7-day weather forecast at 4:30, 5:30 & 10pm!
Devil's Tower National Monument in #Wyoming. The first national monument in the US. Both the monument and its surroundings are spectacular! See if you can spot the two sets of climbers in the close-up.
Today in Labor History September 2, 1885: 150 white miners, who were struggling to unionize for better wages and work conditions, attacked their Chinese fellow workers in the Rock Springs massacre in Wyoming. As a result, they killed 28 Chinese miners, wounded 15 others and forced all the other Chinese to flee town. By the time the federal troops arrived, there were no surviving Chinese people left in town.