RGV Life

Today seemed a particularly crazy day in the news here in the Rio Grande Valley. Let's start off with the first day of school. Today, parents, children, and the community at large scrambled around like ants after their hill is kicked over. Police everywhere watching trouble spots where people get gnarled up dropping off their kids, and watching for dummies talking on their phone (or texting) through school zones. So, the craziness started with people trying to readjust to the school routine. Then, apparently, Weslaco's water was contaminated overnight because of too much demand. Their water processing could not keep up. I don't know exactly what that means, perhaps something with backflows where water is sucked back into the water lines, thus making the quality questionable. Who knows? In any case, the whole city had to lay off tap water. The schools had to order bottled water. Restaurants shut down. Dogs and cats...never mind. The City of Weslaco issued a notice overni...

Just yesterday, while thinking about the heat and the possibility of rain, it occurred to me that there have been no tropical storms nor hurricanes this year. 2013 was a very slow year with only two hurricanes and fourteen tropical storms. Nothing major. So, how is this year looking? First, I discovered that Hurricane Season officially starts on June 1 and ends September 30. This means that it has been only about three weeks since the season started. Thus, not enough time for these random events to cook something up. However, given that we had an unusually long winter, and that such storms love heat energy, it may be possible that we will have another slow year. The predictions by people who keep stats say that we should have 5 hurricanes this year, with 2 major ones hitting land. And we should have about 10 tropical storms. If you do the numbers, that gets us up to the letter J in storm names. Given the history of storms, we can likely expect both the Yucatan and Caribbean isl...

I don't think cleaning mold and mildew from your window air conditioner is a problem specific to the Rio Grande Valley. After all, there are plenty of other places with high temperatures and high humidity. However, given that there are so many of us who rely on window units to cool our homes, allow me to share some experience in cleaning these things out. Why I'm Cleaning My Own A/C Obviously, our window units grew some black stuff on the blower and its enclosure. This generated allergies in my little one, who is sensitive to such things. Not having my own laboratory, I couldn't tell you if it is mold or mildew. It matters not. What I've Tried Other than replacing the window unit every couple months, I've tried washing the unit with Clorox products. I figure bleach kills everything; but, I guess it doesn't. We still had to use cotton swabs to wipe and scrub surfaces on the blower and enclosure, which is almost impossible on some models. You can't d...

The RGV Life Twitter feed was previously fed news updates through Topix. Unfortunately, it required clicking on the link, landing on a summary page, and then having to click on another link for the full story. The feed has been updated to use Google News as the source in the hopes that only a single click will be needed to reach the news source rather than require a second click to reach the original post.

The Hidalgo County Metropolitan Planning Organization will meet Monday, April 14, at 6 pm in the UTPA Community Engagement (ITTB 1.210) building. The MPO relies on public involvement to advise local governments and leaders on what they can do to make our communities better and safer for pedestrians and bike riders. Facebook Event:  https://www.facebook.com/events/225577074290877/

South Texas Wedding & Quinceanera Showcase starts tomorrow from noon to 6 pm at the McAllen Convention Center. The event features more than 70 exhibitors. Tickets to the event are only $8 per person. Attendees can expect to see fashion shows to highlight products. In addition, there will be live entertainment, special offers, food, and prizes. An event like this is a great preparation for summer brides who are looking for that something special for their upcoming wedding. Be sure not to miss it.

If you follow RGV Life on Twitter , you will see an increase in posts with Rio Grande Valley headlines, weather, and event announcments. This is a recent effort to make the RGV Life online presence more useful to the community. Unfortunately, it requires a greater time commitment to write blog posts, otherwise that would be the preferred method of announcing things. Still, keep checking back as more updates and modifications are made.