First off, Pensacola Pass was closed at 7PM CDT tonight to block any oil entering overnight. This has been expected all day because of the entry of oil through Perdido Pass with the tide, and the fact that there is a Huge plume of weathered oil 9 miles south of Pensacola Pass

A large plume of weathered oil has been found nine miles south of Pensacola Pass. The plume is two miles wide and goes south for 40 miles, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

An additional plume of non-weathered oil has been verified six miles south of Escambia County, the DEP said in a press release.

The communications screw-up over Perdido Pass is just the latest problem that is causing the officials from many of the counties on the Florida Panhandle to talk openly about a split from oil unified command, and is causing state officials to start talking about demanding that BP put a significant amount of money into an escrow account to cover the costs of defending the state from the slimy assault of BP’s Well from Hell.

This new wave of oil is the rusty-brown “mousse”, rather than the black weathered tar balls. As the Pensacola Beach Blogger noted, the new stuff looks a bit too much like chocolate. He is concerned with children who find it putting it in their mouths.

A lot of people [alas, not including me until now] have realized that the large litter box scoops are an effective way of picking up tar balls. I would think that “pooper scoopers” would also work without as much bending over, and either would be more effective than picking it up by hand.

The Pensacola News Journal reports that our orange governor, Charlie Crist has vetoed the latest attempt by the Republican majority in the legislature to interfere in doctor-patient relations in the state, and to order doctors to perform what may be unnecessary medical procedures, which will raise the cost of health care. [They don’t understand that’s what they are doing because they are pandering to their base, not thinking things through.]

The Republican leadership accuse Charlie of willfully and maliciously pandering to the voters by doing what a majority of them wants done, rather than doing what a minority of voters who will never vote for him want done.

It has never ceased to amaze me how many Republicans think that doing what the majority of people want is unprincipled.

That is a satellite composite of the Alabama-Florida Gulf Coast with the bays named and the passes to the Gulf indicated with the arrows. The Perdido River and Bay constitute the western border of Florida. To give you an idea of the scale, it is forty miles from the pass of Choctawhatchee Bay west to the pass into Pensacola Bay. The western two-thirds of the barrier island between the passes is called Santa Rosa Island, and Okaloosa Island on the eastern end.

The island to the west of Pensacola Pass is Perdido Key, and it is split between Florida and Alabama so the Flora-Bama Lounge can hold its Interstate Mullet Toss.

The last barrier island is Dauphin Island west of the pass into Mobile Bay.

From the picture you can see that securing Mobile Bay poses a problem, but the Unified Command couldn’t stop it from entering Perdido Pass which is narrow and has a bridge in place to anchor the boom. The lack of proactive measures to prevent damage is driving people up the wall.

Via Mustang Bobby who gets up and blogs before sunrise in the Eastern Time Zone, the BP Spills Coffee which would be better with British and Texas accents [if they were real].

Taking A Break

Ahhhhh…

[Editor: KT avoids the kittens by jumping up on the hood of my neighbor’s truck. Actually, she is only avoiding one, as the other knows how to take a nap until it cools off.]

Friday Ark

Thirty days of football [soccer to most Americans] begins to today in South Africa, but I’ll try to keep it down.

If you have never been involved with the Cup, there are 32 teams chosen after three years of games placed in 8 groups of 4. The initial round involves playing the other three teams in your group, with the top two teams in each group advancing to the final round that is a single knockout competition.

2010 World Cup draw

• Group A: South Africa, Mexico, Uruguay, France
• Group B: Argentina, South Korea, Nigeria, Greece
• Group C: England, USA, Algeria, Slovenia
• Group D: Germany, Australia, Ghana, Serbia
• Group E: Netherlands, Japan, Cameroon, Denmark
• Group F: Italy, New Zealand, Paraguay, Slovakia
• Group G: Brazil, North Korea, Ivory Coast, Portugal
• Group H: Spain, Honduras, Chile, Switzerland

[OK, so sled dog racing, the Tour de France, and the World Cup is a weird mixture, but you have to remember I was a military brat and veteran at the time when sports were even marginally important. These were the “big deals” when I was growing up.]