There were a couple of cold snaps in January when overnight temperatures dropped close to (but so far never below) freezing. But we also had several fabulous days, blue skies, temperatures hovering around 20 degrees C and magnolias in full bloom. The tomato plants we have keep on bearing fruit as do the green peas I planted around them. Papayas are doing well in their plastic house and they keep blooming, one even has a small papaya on it. We are not out of the woods yet, another month or so to go, let us hope we will make it without freezing.

Took advantage of the weather to make another trip to Galveston.
(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) This time we chose a different part of the beach and the effect of the hurricane were much more pronounced. It seems to have been luck of the draw – the worst damage occurred where currents undercut the beach and left houses without much support. The houses are constructed by sinking posts into the ground and then pouring a concrete slab in the sand around the posts. In many cases much of the beach is gone and the slab is hanging up in the air, often more than 1.5 m of sand has been removed. When the slab starts to break up it undercuts the house and it starts to fall down. Houses that are too close to the new coastline will be torn down because under Texas law beach belongs to the state. Talked to one woman, whose house was in the third row from the sea front. She was quite happy – now her house is directly overlooking the sea. Until next time.

It is also a good time to look around Houston’s museums – most of which are free. One Sunday we headed to the Menil Collection. It houses the private collection of M. Menil and his wife. She was the heiress of the Schlumberger oil service company fortune, he became the president of the company. They moved Paris to Houston just before the start of WW II. Undoubtedly a smart move, but it must have been quite a shock as well. Houston, which even today is not considered to be a very “cultured” city (perhaps somewhat unjustly) was just a small provincial time in the 30’s and Paris was Paris.

In May of last year a large sinkhole opened up in Daisetta – a small town about 100 km east of Houston. Few weeks ago the local Geological Society organized a field tip to have a look at it. Daisetta is a town built on top of a salt dome. If you pay attention you can see a slight topographic high which rises from the otherwise featureless plain. Associated with the salt dome are small oil fields, most of them still producing. I imagine the oil fields were responsible for the town being where it is or at least expanding to its present size (still pretty tiny, but they have a high school and a football team). The sinkhole is roughly circular, 200 m in diameter and possibly as much as 300 m deep. However, from the moment of its formation it was partially filled with water which initially was at about 20 m below surface but today has risen almost to the rim. Associated with the sinkhole formation several abandoned oil wells started to flow large quantities of salt water with a whiff of H2S. I imagine the people in the little town must have thought the end of the world was at hand. As always in these situations people want something done. Several university teams and US Geological Survey people (along with TV reporters) descended on the town, set up monitoring stations, measured the sinkhole in excruciating detail and conducted a gravity survey to see if they can identify other potential sinkholes. However, this is not the first time a sinkhole formed in the area – it is part and parcel of living on a salt dome, especially when associated with an oil field with oil production and water injection.

During one of the breaks I noticed the spout coming from the roof of the high school where we had the meeting. It looked like during hot summer days the tar comes flowing down from the roof. That brought to mind another picture I took a few years earlier, this one in a city where cold is more of a problem than heat.