Looking for Help Researching Possible Oil Residue in Rain near Tampa, FL

Fellow ATS'ers,

A colleague of ours, who shares my locale (Tampa, FL), asked me earlier if I had noticed anything 'unusual' about our rainfall here. I replied that I had not noticed, but I also had not really paid attention to it.

I'm seeking fellow ATS'ers in Hillsborough, Pasco, Hernando, and Pinellas counties to collect whatever rainwater may fall during this weekend.

For control group purposes I will be using a clean, clear glass sitting on an overturned bucket in my backyard, far from any overhangs or possible roof contamination. I'll attempt to see if any oil sheen or other anomalies appear.

I'll post results here in the coming week.

For any that are interested in participating, please post here and lets see what, if anything, that we find.

Thanks for your time.

GBD

I have had collection containers and sections of glass out during the last three days of thunderstorms (off the coast of Fort Myers). Have not seen any signs of yet, although we have daily USCG patrols by C-130's about 2-3 NM offshore.

The true test will be when we get thunderstorms that form offshore and come onshore (usually from July on).

[edit on 18-6-2010 by habu71]

Excellent job looking out!

I'm sure your method is going to be a bit more precise than me, but the more of us that can corroborate the better.

Thanks again!

GBD

reply to post by GuiltyByDesign


Good luck in your experiment. I hope you are able to get others to also help you as a control. I look forward to hearing any results. Please take pictures and monitor for a few weeks and log your results after each rainfall. You might also go to a pool company or water testing companyand see if you can find any testing supplies to check different PH and acidity levels from sample to sample and see if there are chemicals you can add to isolate any oil molecules in the rain.

reply to post by vtcajun


Great suggestion, I hadn't even thought about my pool and such. And like you I hope we can get a few of us involved in this.

I pray we find nothing and just have some fun doing a bit of research, but if it's more I'd rather know about it as soon as possible.

GBD

Might also want to test for dispersants!
That's the plan here in MS.
I have been checking the rain guage after every rain for Oily residue.
None thus far.

But the chemical to be looking for will be Bezene it can disolve in water and fall back down in the rain.

I suggest that you keep all the samples you take and use the first ones as the control.

Good luck and God help us.

reply to post by GuiltyByDesign


It just rained here I don't see anything weird. Did you?

Just my two cents...

When I first saw your post I thought, NO WAY. Rain is water. Couldn't have oil in it, BUT.

My thinking didn't stop there.

If an evaporated liquid is in the atmosphere then it would be subject to condensation just like water. The condensate wouldn't necessarily be pure oil, it would be made up of it's constituents. Each component would condense at it's own temp/pressure to form a minute droplet. That droplet would be carried by air currents and could potentially travel for many miles until it either became heavy enough to fall naturally or, more likely, is caught up in a natural rainstorm. The raindrop would collect whatever particulate it came into contact with as it fell. Pollen, dust, and whatever else was in the air would be added to the droplet.

Rain is natures way of cleansing the air.

According to my train of thought, YES IT COULD BE part of the BP spill.

There are millions upon millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf right now. Part of it is going to evaporate. Makes perfect sense that some parts could fall to Earth within rain.

You've also got to include the chemical dispersant that BP has been using. It's probably got components that can evaporate into the air as well. I would think that with the vast amount of dispersant that they've used that some part of it will end up in the rain.

This thing just keeps going on and on and getting worse and worse.

Also found this...
North America faces years of toxic oil rain from BP oil spill chemical dispersants

When you pour more than a million gallons of toxic chemical dispersants on top of an oil spill, it doesn’t just disappear. In this case, it moves to the atmosphere, where it will travel hundreds, if not thousands of miles from the site of the BP oil spill, in the form of toxic rain.

[edit on 18-6-2010 by LazyGuy]

Good day ladies and gents,

Please forgive my updating lapse, my house got hit by lightning on Saturday during a storm and knocked me back into the stone age
Thankfully I can access ATS at work.

I did two seperate tests this weekend, one on Saturday and the other on Sunday.

Like I posted earlier, I used a clean, clear 8 oz drinking glass and placed it in my backyard, away from anything that might disturb the results (roofs, trees, etc.)

Both tests yielded the same results... negative indication of ANY oil or sheen residue in the batches.

For my next phase of testing, I'm going to research COREXIT and see if any of that is present. Thanks for your time.

GBD

I didnt notice any oily sheen by my house. Question tho, if the storms start out in the gulf and work there way inland then shouldnt some of the water close to us (the bay, st. joseph sound, etc.) have that oily sheen on it when its done raining?

Clearwater/Saint petersburg here.

Ill try to keep an eye out as well.

You may get some chemical dispersant compounds, but oil will not evaporate and rain back down. Now, you could get oil mixed with your rain in strong hurricane winds, but only because of the lifting action of the wind.

I'm sorry. Can someone explain to me how oil can mix with water? I was under the impression this is impossible, as per the old adage.

Originally posted by justadood
I'm sorry. Can someone explain to me how oil can mix with water? I was under the impression this is impossible, as per the old adage.

The dispersants make the oil mix better with water.. thats why there is less on the surface, its mixed in and staying lower. Normaly oil being lighter and not mixing would come to surface, but the dispersants make it sort of spread out more and sink.

I live near a large lake that is in the great lakes chain (But not a "Great Lake") and at all the gas stations they use dispersant if someone spills gas, I do not think the same stuff dumped into the gulf I bet they use soap based or something but not really sure. I know gas and oil are not the same, but still oil based. You can watch the rainbow break up and mix in with the lake water, always sorta bothered me to see being I used to eat fish from that lake.