A little hazy today but sunny with highs around 80 degrees around Trinidad. For tonight we’ll drop down to the upper 40s.
On Thursday we’ll be sunny again with highs in the lower 80s.
Now, here’s the news.
Last Friday, September 11, Las Animas County Administrator Phil Dorenkamp announced that the County would now begin accepting applications for their COVID Small Business Emergency Grant program. Businesses within Las Animas County will have access to up to $5,000 to pay for rent, utilities, insurance, and other costs associated with COVID-19 strains.
Dorenkamp said the funds used by the county for the grants, totaling $320,000, would be reimbursable by the state because they were being used for COVID-19 relief efforts.
Funding for applicants is determined by how many apply, the availability of funds, and the need demonstrated by each business.
Applications must be received by Las Animas County no later than 3:00 p.m. on October 22, 2020 and only complete applications will be accepted. For more information, give them a call at 719-846-2562.
Additionally, coming up on November’s ballot is whether or not to allow the county to use some of the 1A excess funds, audited at approximately $2.9 million Dorenkamp said.
If the issue passes, the County would share that excess through grant applications and other means of fairly and properly dispersing the funds. Dorenkamp explained that commissioners and staff have discussed using at least $500,000 of those funds, should it pass, for additional COVID-19 relief.
In the state, last week, as temperatures plummeted overnight, farmers across the Front Range were preparing for the worst.
Starting out a peak month in Colorado produce — from tomatoes to cucumbers, peppers, green beans and squash — growers had to act fast. The weather forecast predicted 30-degree highs and lows in the 20s just after Labor Day, meaning much of their late summer produce would be lost.
Now, with temperatures back up, farmers like Corrigan and Cure are back to work planting for fall and moving their harvested summer produce. And they want consumers to know that buying local is still on the table, whether at farmers markets or directly from farm stands.
Just a few days after the freeze, temperatures were back in the 80s, and markets such as Union Station’s on Saturday were full of summer fruits and vegetables, among other things.
Locally, Trinidad’s own organic farm, The Good Food Project, is selling vegies at their farmstand on Highway 12 in Jansen, just up the road from Bob and Earls, every Friday so long as supplies last!
Happening in galactic news, astronomers have recently found a potential sign of life high in the atmosphere of neighboring Venus: hints there may be bizarre microbes living in the sulfuric acid-laden clouds of the hothouse planet.
Two telescopes in Hawaii and Chile spotted in the thick Venusian clouds the chemical signature of phosphine, a noxious gas that on Earth is only associated with life, according to a study in Monday’s issue of Nature Astronomy.
Several outside experts — and the study authors themselves — agreed this is tantalizing but said it is far from the first proof of life on another planet. They said it doesn't satisfy the “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" standard established by the late Carl Sagan, who speculated about the possibility of life in the clouds of Venus in 1967.
As astronomers plan for searches for life on planets outside our solar system, a major method is to look for chemical signatures that can only be made by biological processes, called biosignatures. Astronomers decided to look that way at the closest planet to Earth: Venus. They searched for phosphine, which is three hydrogen atoms and a phosphorous atom.
NASA hasn’t sent anything to Venus since 1989, though Russia, Europe and Japan have dispatched probes. The U.S. space agency is considering two possible Venus missions. One of them, called DAVINCI+, would go into the Venutian atmosphere as early as 2026.
All in all, life on Venus is definitely a possibility…
Not too much happening this week but Mount Carmel is still offering their online virtual classes. To see their schedule and register for the link to join, visit their website MountCarmelCenter.org.
Additionally, if you know of any upcoming events we should be aware of, please feel free to reach out to us here at the Chronicle News so we can make sure to spread the word!
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This is Cameron Wayne, have a great day!
