This is absolutely bizarre:

Authorities say the body of a woman who died in a Massachusetts public pool went undetected for days as swimmers continued to use the pool before the victim was found floating.

The body of Marie Joseph, 36, was discovered by teenagers Tuesday evening in the Vietnam Veterans Swimming Pool in Fall River, Massachusetts, according to Bristol County district attorney’s spokesman Gregg Miliote.

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The pool — which is 12 feet deep at its deepest — was described as “cloudy” by a health inspector who examined the pool Tuesday, according to the mayor of Fall River, William Flanagan.

Cloudy? Ya THINK? For a dead body to be lurking beneath the surface of a frequently-used swimming pool for several days and no one notice, it would have to be a little more than cloudy. To say the pool’s maintenance staff hasn’t been keeping a proper chemical balance in the water is probably an understatement. I would be more worried about health risks from the “cloudy” water that allowed the body to go unnoticed in the first place than from the body itself. All the stories about E-coli outbreaks this summer must be lost on the folks at this outfit.

Then there’s this:

Joseph had gone to the pool on Sunday with a 9-year-old neighbor and his family. She collided with the boy while the pair careened down a pool slide, Miliote said.

After the collision, the boy surfaced but the woman did not, he said.

So you’re on a pool outing with your neighbor. She fails to emerge from the water, but you don’t notice. She doesn’t accompany you home, but you don’t notice. Then when it’s realized she’s missing, it never occurs to anyone that she disappeared at the pool? Something smells fishy here…something besides the untreated water in the Falls City swimming pool.

If this report is correct, an emerging candidate to be Tennessee’s next athletics director could be none other than former UT quarterback/former Knoxville businessman/current Democratic Congressman Heath Shuler.

The report originated with Knoxville radio host Tony Basilio, however. Basilio has a less than stellar track record of late.

The story on why Bruce Pearl won’t be hired by ESPN anytime soon:

So why the double-standard?  One ESPN management source said Norby Williamson’s close relationship with Bob Knight, who despises Bruce Pearl, was to blame for the suddenly-enacted, revisionist policy.

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Another ESPN source lamented, “welcome to ESPN.”

Makes sense. ESPN’s history clearly says the network has no problem hiring commentators who have fallen from the NCAA’s good graces. And most people agree that Pearl would be a good commentator. Yet ESPN (supposedly) won’t hire him because he fell from the NCAA’s good graces? And it just so happens that Knight, who works and has clout at ESPN, dislikes Pearl? Hmm…

My weekly column:

As surely as fireworks will light the night sky Monday evening, an email will wind up in most of our inboxes between now and then to remind us of the fate of the 56 men who signed America’s Declaration of Independence in 1776.

The emails are poignant, somber reminders of the sacrifices of the men we consider our Founding Fathers.

The trouble is, most of those emails are also full of malarky: a little truth sprinkled

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amongst a lot of hyperbolization. Much like Mel Gibson’s movie, The Patriot, the truth doesn’t stand in the way of a good story. The Patriot is one of the greatest films ever in my book; it’s just that it’s obvious that its writers were students of Hollywood more than of American history.

The number one rule of law enforcement is ‘hurry up and wait.’”

Those are the words of Scott County Sheriff Mike Cross.

It’s shortly after midnight, and members of the Sheriff’s Department’s “5-0” team are gathered at a rendezvous point in Oneida, waiting for a phone call that may or may not come regarding the whereabouts of a suspect they’re seeking.

Armed with arrest warrants, the team of law enforcement officers is seeking three suspects wanted on sex-related charges. They are three hours into the operation, which is led by Det. Jennifer Culver, the department’s sex crimes investigator.

Continue…

I’m pretty sure East Tennessee doesn’t want any more severe weather. But it may not have a choice.

Storms have lined up along the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau and are pushing east. A severe thunderstorm watch is out for the northern half of Middle Tennessee, but doesn’t extend east of Fentress and Cumberland counties. However, the strongest weather of the afternoon may very well be east of the current thunderstorm watch area.

Radar:

In other weather news, it looks like the heat will return en force by later this week.

The latest model output statistics from the GFS model paint widespread 90s across the region by Friday, with mid 90s possible even here on the northern Plateau, and temps perhaps pushing 100 in Middle Tennessee.

UPDATE: The Storm Prediction Center discusses the possibility of issuing a severe thunderstorm watch for East Tennessee.

On July 1, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency will officially enter “wind-down” mode, as it prepares to be dissolved.

Twelve months later — July 1, 2012 — the agency will cease to exist, unless the Tennessee General Assembly takes steps between now and then to make sure that doesn’t happen. House Speaker Beth Harwell, R-Nashville, has guaranteed that such steps will be taken when the legislature reconvenes in January. Other members of the House aren’t so sure.

The Tennessean had the entire breakdown yesterday.

The state Senate passed a 5-year extension for the TWRA this session, keeping the agency in operation through 2016. The legislation’s companion bill in the House was bottled up in committee, however, and never reached the floor for a full vote. The reason? Governmental Operations Committee Chairman Jim Cobb, R-Johnson City, didn’t allow a vote on it in committee, because he says he wants to force the agency and its 13-member governing commission to sit down for talks with lawmakers.

Cobb is apparently upset that he hasn’t been included in talks between TWRA and some lawmakers over the past couple of years. The Tennessean quotes Rep. Frank Nicely, R-Knoxville, as saying that a relative of Cobb’s was fined by TWRA for hunting over bait…a charge he apparently feels was erroneous. For his part, Niceley is no stranger to controversy involving TWRA. He’s had a number of complaints in recent years, including minor game violations against friends and, more recently, TWRA’s opposition to a failed deer farming bill, which Nicely authored.

Mike Butler, CEO of the Tennessee Wildlife Federation, a non-profit conservation lobbying organization often allied with TWRA, says those complaints shouldn’t be significant enough to jeopardize an agency that drives $2.4 billion annually into Tennessee’s economy.

Hunting and fishing, and the accompanying economic benefits, will continue even if TWRA ceases to exist. So Butler’s stance involves a bit of hyperbole. But the premise of what he’s saying is true enough: TWRA manages Tennessee’s fish and wildlife, hunting and fishing seasons, and enforces the laws governing those sports. The agency does that somewhat uniquely in that it is the only state agency that is self-sustaining. Tax dollars do not fund TWRA, and TWRA does not need the approval of the state’s lawmakers to set season dates and bag limits.

That has long rankled a number of lawmakers, some because they abhor the notion that the agency doesn’t need the legislature’s stamp of approval to tell hunters how many deer they can shoot and others because they would like to dip their hands into the agency’s coffers. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Commission can be quite political — it is composed of appointees by the governor and selects its own chairman — but not nearly as political as the alternative…which would be to require hunting seasons, bag limits and other wildlife decisions to be approved by the legislature.

Those decisi ons are best left in the hands of folks who deal with them

on a daily basis, not legislators who have political interests at heart.

But all that is neither here nor there, really. The fact is that the legislature can restructure TWRA anytime it chooses, with enough support in the House and Senate. The issue here is one of lawmakers attempting to politically strong-arm the agency because of petty beefs they have with the way the agency does things.

It’s been just one year since the last time TWRA found itself on the verge of sunsetting because a lawmaker used tactics similar to what Cobb has attempted this year. Last year, it was then-Speaker of the House Kent Williams, R-Carter County, who was playing games with TWRA. Williams asked Rep. Susan Lynn to take the bill concerning the TWRA extension off notice in 2010, again in an effort to force communication between the agency and lawmakers.

Williams said at the time that it was only coincidence that Rep. Chad Faulkner, R-Campbell County, had a beef with TWRA over bass regulations on Norris Lake; his issue with TWRA had nothing to do with fishing regs, he said.

Taking action to dissolve TWRA would be a huge mistake on the part of lawmakers. But if they’re determined to do that, put it before a vote of the full House and the full Senate. These strong-armed political games of stalling legislation in committees are nonsensical and a waste of the people’s time by the folks who are elected to be responsible for the public’s welfare.

Using the threat of allowing the TWRA to sunset every time a lawmaker has a petty concern with TWRA is equally ridiculous.

It was announced Friday that Adventure Sports is going to build a store in West Knoxville.

Given the ridiculously overpriced selection at Dick’s Sporting Goods and Gander Mountain, this is a good thing.

Summer officially begins tomorrow, and while rain chances will be greatly diminished today and tomorrow compared to what they were over the weekend, wet weather will return en force on Wednesday, as East Tennessee experiences a wet start to summer.

Topsy-turvy weather continued this weekend, with cooler-than-average temperatures and wave after wave of storms — some severe — over the weekend. That followed what had been an abnormally dry period from mid May through much of June…which itself followed an abnormally wet start to spring.

As we noted last week, a flip to cooler and wetter weather was indicated well in advance. Now the question is one of how long this pattern will last.

Ridging is finally building into the mid-levels of the atmosphere across the South, which should provide a break from the heavy rains of Saturday and Sunday.

But that ridge will break down by the middle of the week, and the rainiest weather may be yet to come. The second half of the work week is looking like a very wet one, especially as a frontal boundary arrives Wednesday and Wednesday night.

That frontal boundary will stall across the region, providing for another round of heavy rain on Friday. Things should begin to dry up as the weekend begins, but we’ll continue to see a northwest flow aloft, which could mean more storms…and yet another frontal boundary will approach the region soon thereafter.

As long as the North Atlantic Oscillation remains in a negative state, we’re going to see a general large-scale pattern that allows a northwest flow in the Southeast. And with that cooler air clashing with warmer, moist air pulling north from the Gulf of Mexico, the perfect catalyst for severe storms is created. That’s just what we saw over the weekend, as several impulses riding that northwest flow allowed mesoscale convective systems to form. And where the storms formed, they found a very unstable environment to work with, with CAPE (a measure of instability) reaching very high levels of 3,000-4,000 j/KG in some areas. That allowed for some severe storms to form, mainly featuring damaging straight-line winds and hail.

The end result is that we’ve quickly gone from very dry — with lawns and gardens begging for rain — to very wet. We’ve already seen some flood advisories and flash flood warnings, and we’ll likely see a lot more of them across the entire state later this week. A few inches of rain isn’t at all out of the question.

How long the pattern lasts is anyone’s guess. There are some indications that the NAO will move back towards neutral territory as the 4th of July holiday approaches, which could allow for summer weather to make its return. But that’s hardly a given.