Junction had a late freeze seventeen times between Ma rch 15th and April 1st.
“So I tell you to go ahead and plant the corn if you want to, but you have a 34 percent chance of losing it. Then I tell you that if you wait until after April 1st, you’ll only have a 4 percent chance of losing it. I suspect you’ll wait those extra two weeks.
“And by logging all the data into my computer once we’re in the mine and I have time to do so, I can write a program that will give us a fairly accurate weather forecast every day. Not based on what the sky looks like or what the weather radar says, but rather by historical data only. And while it won’t always be right, in most cases it’ll be pretty darn close.
“Say for example, it’s December 1st. My program will look back at the last hundred years of data and figure that the average low temperature was 26 degrees, and the average high was 60. It will also note that on 5 of those hundred years, it rained on December 1st. On 16 of the hundred years, it snowed.
“So your weather forecast for that day will be a low of 26, a high of 60, with a 5 percent chance of rain and a 16 percent chance of snow. It won’t always be accurate, but it’ll be darn close most of the time.”
And of course Mark felt stupid, because it never would have occurred to him to gather such data. And even if he’d wanted to, he wouldn’t have a clue how to do it.
He’d walked out of the room that night amazed at how analytical his girl could be. And he was reminded once again how lucky he was to have her.
-23 -
NOV 9, 2014 14 MONTHS UNTIL IMPACT
The girls had finished furnishing and decorating the game room, television room, the two one-room school houses and the clinic. They were been bugging Mark for something more productive to do, but Mark, being a man, was balking a bit.
He maintained that moving heavy kitchen equipment, installing livestock fences and building things was man’s work. Ha nnah and Sarah both told him he was a chauvinist pig.
Coincidentally, at that very moment, Bryan called from the feed store. He had loaded up a delivery of cattle feed that came in the day before. He was getting ready to bring it over to the mine, when another delivery truck, from a plumbing supply wholesaler, came by to deliver twenty eight camping toilets.
“It had your name on it, so I went ahead and accepted them.” Bryan said. “But what in hell is a camping toilet, and why do we need twenty eight of them?”
“Can you fit them on the truck along with the feed?”
“Yes.”
“The n bring them along, and I’ll show you when you get here.”
Mark looked at the girls and said “Well, if you girls want to get your hands dirty and play with the big boys, then I’ve got just the job for you.”
Hannah and Sarah looked at each other. He was up to something again.
Mark had spent two whole days the week before working on the sewage disposal systems for the RVs. He crawled underneath each o ne, disconnected the water line for each toilet, and marked the spot on the mine floor directly underneath it.
Then, one at a time, he moved the RV s out of the way, brought in a twelve-foot long auger drill attached to a multi-purpose Bobcat, and drilled a drain hole into the mine floor.
Each hole was ten feet deep and twelve inches wide . It would be a makeshift septic tank for the RV parked above it.
Once the hole was drilled, he carefully repositioned the RV back in its original location. Then he crawled under the RV a second time to attach a piece of flexible duct from the bottom of the RV into the septic hole. To reduce odors, he attached a soft plastic seal to the duct where it entered the hole.
Hannah and Sarah had been watching his project off and on during those two days, fascinated. But
“So I tell you to go ahead and plant the corn if you want to, but you have a 34 percent chance of losing it. Then I tell you that if you wait until after April 1st, you’ll only have a 4 percent chance of losing it. I suspect you’ll wait those extra two weeks.
“And by logging all the data into my computer once we’re in the mine and I have time to do so, I can write a program that will give us a fairly accurate weather forecast every day. Not based on what the sky looks like or what the weather radar says, but rather by historical data only. And while it won’t always be right, in most cases it’ll be pretty darn close.
“Say for example, it’s December 1st. My program will look back at the last hundred years of data and figure that the average low temperature was 26 degrees, and the average high was 60. It will also note that on 5 of those hundred years, it rained on December 1st. On 16 of the hundred years, it snowed.
“So your weather forecast for that day will be a low of 26, a high of 60, with a 5 percent chance of rain and a 16 percent chance of snow. It won’t always be accurate, but it’ll be darn close most of the time.”
And of course Mark felt stupid, because it never would have occurred to him to gather such data. And even if he’d wanted to, he wouldn’t have a clue how to do it.
He’d walked out of the room that night amazed at how analytical his girl could be. And he was reminded once again how lucky he was to have her.
-23 -
NOV 9, 2014 14 MONTHS UNTIL IMPACT
The girls had finished furnishing and decorating the game room, television room, the two one-room school houses and the clinic. They were been bugging Mark for something more productive to do, but Mark, being a man, was balking a bit.
He maintained that moving heavy kitchen equipment, installing livestock fences and building things was man’s work. Ha nnah and Sarah both told him he was a chauvinist pig.
Coincidentally, at that very moment, Bryan called from the feed store. He had loaded up a delivery of cattle feed that came in the day before. He was getting ready to bring it over to the mine, when another delivery truck, from a plumbing supply wholesaler, came by to deliver twenty eight camping toilets.
“It had your name on it, so I went ahead and accepted them.” Bryan said. “But what in hell is a camping toilet, and why do we need twenty eight of them?”
“Can you fit them on the truck along with the feed?”
“Yes.”
“The n bring them along, and I’ll show you when you get here.”
Mark looked at the girls and said “Well, if you girls want to get your hands dirty and play with the big boys, then I’ve got just the job for you.”
Hannah and Sarah looked at each other. He was up to something again.
Mark had spent two whole days the week before working on the sewage disposal systems for the RVs. He crawled underneath each o ne, disconnected the water line for each toilet, and marked the spot on the mine floor directly underneath it.
Then, one at a time, he moved the RV s out of the way, brought in a twelve-foot long auger drill attached to a multi-purpose Bobcat, and drilled a drain hole into the mine floor.
Each hole was ten feet deep and twelve inches wide . It would be a makeshift septic tank for the RV parked above it.
Once the hole was drilled, he carefully repositioned the RV back in its original location. Then he crawled under the RV a second time to attach a piece of flexible duct from the bottom of the RV into the septic hole. To reduce odors, he attached a soft plastic seal to the duct where it entered the hole.
Hannah and Sarah had been watching his project off and on during those two days, fascinated. But
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