Le Journal

If you want to stop and smell the roses, you might not think to go to the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo, but did you know that, in addition to the livestock and riding competitions, there’s a Floriculture Contest? “I love flowers,” Cameryn Mead of Godley FFA said. “For a very long time I tried to find my hobby, and when floriculture was handed to me, I realized how much I liked it.” Mead was among the 4-H and FFA competitors in the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo’s Floriculture Contest. “The Fort Worth Stock Show is all-encompassing,” FWSSR Department Superintendent for Floriculture Dr. CyLynn Braswell said. “It goes well beyond cattle and swine, what we’re traditionally seeing when we think of rodeo and animals.” Students go from room to room at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden BRIT center for different classes in the competition. They have to identify 60 plants by their official and common names. They also judge and rank plants, floral arrangements, and stems, deciding what to keep and what to cull. “I looked at Number 4, the smallest one, I just put it at the bottom immediately,” Belon Outwama of North Central Texas Academy FFA said. “I looked at Number 3, it’s hydrangea. It’s really big, but it’s like really damaged, so I was ok, that’s gotta be second to last.” It might be the quietest FWSSR competition, and one of the few where you won’t see boots or cowboy hats. The floriculture programs for 4-H and FFA are career development programs, meant to be a gateway for a career in agriculture. “We want them to experience what it is to have that knowledge and skills, that content vocabulary, and really understand how they can apply that to real life,” Braswell said. “And maybe it opens a career opportunity that they’ve never heard of.”

Ice accumulation poses the biggest threat to electric service this weekend. Even small amounts of buildup can drag down branches and power lines. As a massive winter storm approaches, electric companies such as Oncor and Rayburn Electric Cooperative say they are deploying equipment ahead of potential power outages caused by ice accumulation. “It’s added weight and then to the extent that there’s wind blowing that adds some additional strain. More so than the ice accumulation on the transmission lines and facilities, we also have to worry about the trees,” said Stephen Geiger, chief operating officer of Rayburn Electric Cooperative. Oncor says ice can increase the weight of tree branches by 30 times, and a half inch of ice can add 500 pounds of extra weight to power lines. But unlike the 2021 winter storm, the Texas grid is not the biggest concern. At a campaign event on Wednesday, Governor Greg Abbott said he is confident there will not be a challenge to the power grid but that there is concern about local power outages from smaller downed lines that connect homes and neighborhoods. “Bottom line, we are in a situation completely different than we were five years ago, ensuring that the power is going to remain on,” Abbott said. Customers should prepare for a power outage by charging phones and having backup batteries, flashlights and food. Since the 2021 storm, Geiger says Rayburn Electric, which serves more than 6 million Texans, has hardened transmission lines and facilities. “So we have doubled down our efforts. We’ve increased over the last few years, increased our head count in linemen. We’ve grown that group, that department, to make sure that we can handle the necessary work in-house instead of having to rely on third parties,” Geiger said. He says crews are prepared to work nonstop in the event of outages as winter tightens its grip on North Texas. Updates are expected from Oncor and Abbott on Thursday. ERCOT 9 hours ago ERCOT issues weather watch ahead of impactful North Texas winter storm Extreme Weather 8 hours ago North Texas business stockpiles salt ahead of winter weather

Dallas City leaders laid out their action plan for the incoming wintry mix and said they are ready for whatever comes. City officials held a news conference on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the roles of different departments as they gear up to respond to various needs. They said it’s all hands-on deck. The city manager, police chief, fire chief, and other department heads said they have a plan to keep people warm, meet safety needs, and maintain roadways. “Our teams have been closely monitoring all of the different forecasts at the national level, local level, to make sure that we activate our winter weather operations plan,” said City Manager Kim Tolbert. Kevin Oden, Director of Emergency Management and Crisis Response, said the emergency operations center will be activated Saturday morning at 7 a.m. He said the city department leaders have had a very productive 48 hours and are now in a “pre-incident” posture. Oden told reporters that Dallas Police and Dallas Fire Rescue are fully staffed and operating under severe weather protocol. “The Transportation and Public Works [Department] has crews that are being pre-positioned with resources in order to scout bridges, overpasses, and prepare their ice force teams,” said Oden. Once precipitation begins, Gus Khankarli, Director of Transportation and Public Works, said they’re prepared to deploy about 50 sand trucks. “Then we’re going to be watching it until the temperatures starts dropping,” said Khankarli. “And then when it starts going into an icing condition, that’s when we’re going to have to start looking at the ability to get to those places and start sanding operations.” Khankarli said crews will work 12-hour shifts around the clock while severe weather is in effect. Oden said utility and infrastructure partners that include Encore, Atlas Energy, and Dallas Water Utilities all have crews staged and ready to respond to any infrastructure outages during the event. The sanitation department and city facilities department have all adjusted their operations to maintain essential services throughout the weekend. The citywide plan also includes the unhoused. The city, along with Austin Street Center and partners, will open a warming shelter at Fair Park. It is expected to unlock at 4 p.m. Friday and remain open throughout the freezing weather event. David Stucker, Director of Government Grant and Administration, explained how they’ll prepare beginning Thursday morning. “That’s going to involve getting the building open, cleaned and then at about 11 o’clock they’ll start delivering supplies, cots, etcetera to stock the building,” he said. Stucker told NBC 5 they’re prepared to house roughly 900 people at the Fair Park facility before moving on to backup facilities. “I would say the most important thing is everybody knows what their role is, Stucker said. Tolbert said ongoing communication between departments will be a key component of success over the next several days. “Planning for events like this do not start today. We have had significant amount of time over the way we work on our emergency operations plans to look at ways that we do this throughout the year. So, when we face an event like what is being forecasted now, then we just are really pretty much implementing that plan.” For more information on Dallas City Alerts and Warnings, click here.

New York Giants head coach John Harbaugh isn’t opposed to the idea of luring Rex Ryan away from ESPN to reunite with his former defensive coordinator. Earlier this week, longtime New York sports columnist and NFL insider Gary Myers suggested the idea of Harbaugh bringing Ryan with him to the Giants. And when asked about Read more... The post John Harbaugh floats Rex Ryan as Giants’ defensive coordinator: ‘We’ll have to give him a call’ appeared first on Awful Announcing.