Roscoe Wind Farm Featured in Weather Channel Series on Wind Energy

At the Lumberyard, a cameraman gets footage of Cliff Etheredge talking to TSTC students about wind energy.

 A film crew from Los Angeles has been in town for the past couple of weeks conducting interviews and making video footage for an upcoming four-part series scheduled to air on the Weather Channel sometime next March.  The series, entitled “Turbine Cowboys,” a word-play on "urban cowboys," features the men and women of the wind industry and will have as one of its focal points the Roscoe wind farms. 

During their stay here, the film crew, headed by David De Angelis, did research, conducted interviews with workers and others whose lives are affected by the wind industry, and filmed area wind farms, at one point even going to the top of the Plowboy grain elevator to get some shots from there. 

On Wednesday evening, they were outside at the Lumberyard, filming the conversations of a small gathering of wind energy workers and a group from TSTC, along with Cliff Etheredge and yours truly. 

That concluded their work in Nolan County, and the next day they left for Idaho, where they’ll be for a couple of weeks doing more of the same before going to Tehachapi, California, to cover the wind industry there.  They also plan to visit and include an offshore wind farm in the UK.   

They will remain in touch with Cliff Etheredge and let him know when the series will air as soon as they find out themselves.  Each of the four episodes will be a half-hour long. 

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PLOWBOTS TO COMPETE IN TEXAS-NEW MEXICO REGIONAL ROBOTICS MEET

Plowbots proudly display trophies won at the Big Country Hub Robotics Meet.

After winning the Big Country Hub meet, the Plowbots, Roscoe Collegiate’s robotics team, will compete Friday and Saturday in Garland at the Regional BEST Robotics Meet.  BEST is an acronym for Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology, and this region includes all the hubs in Texas and New Mexico, of which the Big Country Hub is only one.

This year’s contest theme is “Bugs,” and each team must build a robot that collects different types of “bugs” and puts them in a collection area.  The Plowbots’ robot is named Mantis, after the bug-eating insect. 

The Plowbots are led by Coach Dan Boren. Club President is Hannah Weems.

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ROSCOE COLLEGIATE HIGH SCHOOL FEATURED IN NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE 

Two Nolan County schools, Roscoe Collegiate and Blackwell, were featured in a New York Times article published on November 10 about the effect of wind money on small schools in west Texas.  The article, written by Morgan Smith, originally appeared in the Texas Tribune, a non-profit publication which the New York Times occasionally reproduces articles from for its online edition. 

The article focuses on the benefits that Roscoe School is implementing with its collegiate program.  Through the program, 13 of the 25 high school graduates this past spring  graduated with Associate Degrees from Western Texas College in Snyder because they were able to take community college courses while going to Roscoe High.  The article also discusses some of the goals that Roscoe is setting for its students in both grade school and high school.  

The original version of the Texas Tribune article includes this three-minute video:

To go to the New York Times article, click here.   To go to the original Texas Tribune article, click here.

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JACINDA MORALES FINISHES 18TH IN STATE CROSS-COUNTRY MEET

Jacinda Morales finished 18th in a field of 103 runners with a time of 13:09 in the Class A Cross-Country State Finals in Round Rock on Saturday.  The winner, Macey Siegert of Seymour, had a time of 12:19.

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PLOWGIRLS DEFEAT BLACKWELL IN BASKETBALL

The Plowgirls  defeated the Lady Hornets in Blackwell last night.  I don't yet have other details but will post them as soon as I get them.  The Plowgirls lost their first game of the season last Tuesday to the Winters Blizzards 52-37.

The Plowboys don’t officially begin their basketball season until next Tuesday, when they and the Plowgirls play games against the Wolves in Colorado City.  

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WEATHER REPORT

Despite the lack of precipitation, Roscoe experienced another week of beautiful fall weather with highs generally in the seventies and lows in the fifties—although it was a bit cooler than that last Wednesday and Thursday, and a couple of days were pretty breezy.  Still, the weekend was beautiful, and on Sunday and Monday the skies were cloudy with temperatures climbing up to 80°F.

There has still not been a freeze, and my garden is going strong with tomatoes, peppers, and okra all still producing (See photos.).  Bruce McGlothlin’s confident prediction of a freeze on precisely November 12 was therefore obviously in error. 

To be fair to Bruce, though, this year has been an unusual one when it comes to the usually reliable methods of predicting the weather.  You may recall that back in March the buzzards returned and the old mesquite trees budded out—and, despite that, we still had a late freeze.  That’s not supposed to happen, and in normal years it wouldn’t.  But this year’s weather has obviously been anything but normal. 

The forecast for the coming week is almost a carbon copy of the weather we had this past week, cooler tonight and tomorrow, then warming up to a nice weekend, followed by a couple of days of cloudy weather on Sunday and Monday.