Graham Knopp's Blog

Topics in land use, culture, and nature.

  • Texas Hill Country, but first a bit of Astronomy

    The huge amount of misinformation around 3I/ATLAS is annoying. Let’s stick to the facts. The 3I/ATLAS radio “signal” was from a radio observatory and detected OH in absorption in the bounced signal, which is what one expects for a cometary object. The object is still very strange, of course, given the trajectory alone, which is…

  • Spirit of the Guads – A Hiking Story from Guadalupe Mountains National Park

    copyright 2025 Graham Paul Knopp Parry’s Agave with crickets in the high Chihuahuan Desert at Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Many of these plants had crickets so arranged. Is this normal? Is this because rain is on the way? When you want to climb mountains in Texas, your choices are very limited to Big Bend National…

  • Climate Change and Terrestrial Water Storage. Also, Hail!

    September 16, 2025 Copyright Graham Paul Knopp 2025 More immediately in weather news, not climate, I experienced my first Texas hail storm, and my car now has some dimples to show for it. I did not take action quite quickly enough to move the car into the garage. Standing at the front door, watching the…

  • Hurricane Erin

    Hurricane Erin is spinning in the northeast Atlantic Ocean, soon to be renamed the American Ocean, before it is realized that the Pacific Ocean is bigger, then its name will be changed to American Ocean II, with the Pacific Ocean being renamed the American Ocean I. There’s a nice satellite loop of Hurricane Erin at…