WICHITA FALLS, Texas (KAUZ) – After five months of looking into complaints made against Wichita Falls City Council members in January, the Texas Ethics Commission has resolved the issue.

Tim Short, Tom Taylor, Jeff Browning, and Mike Battaglino all have agreed to pay a $500 Civil Penalty.

Cathy Dodson, who ran for the City Council District 3 seat in last year’s general election filed the complaints to the T.E.C.

“A non-profit cannot be involved in politics, the Wichita Falls Firefighter Association couldn’t list it that would be illegal,” Cathy Dodson said.

She told crews back in January that she had sufficient evidence to prove the four men took money from the Wichita Falls Firefighter Association PAC.

After notifying the council of their finding, they released a statement:

“The PAC provided written notice of this in-kind contribution on April 21, 2024. All four of us have now corrected our reports to disclose the in-kind contributions. Our joint settlement also states that the parties neither admit or deny the findings of the fact and conclusions of law described. We have paid the small civil penalty and made the bookkeeping adjustments. As a group, we look to move forward for the betterment of the city of Wichita Falls,” City Council Members said.

The city also added, at least six other complaints to the Ethics Commission regarding the same issues were dismissed.

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A moment from Sky Elements’ record-setting 2023 July 4th drone show [Photo: Sky Elements]

Last month, the Fort Worth-based drone light show company Sky Elements put their dazzling nighttime sky skills on national TV with an appearance on “America’s Got Talent,” earning a “golden buzzer” from Simon Cowell himself.

The 400-foot-tall, 300-foot wide display in the skies outside the the show’s studio featured a rocket liftoff and an image of Cowell in the sky as a waving, space-walking astronaut, capped by the AGT logo.

“It was really patriotic,” Cowell told the Sky Elements team after the demonstration. “And I think the way you told the story, the use of music, whether you’re 3 years old, whether you’re 100 years old, I think you’re absolutely going to love that audition.”

You can watch that AGT clip here for a cool, behind-the-scenes look at how the team’s drone show takes off. 

See for yourself this coming week

Or you can watch Sky Elements in action yourself all over North Texas in the next week:

Tomorrow, Saturday June 29 at Toyota Stadium, Sky Elements will give a performance during FC Dallas’ 7:30 p.m. game against FC Cincinnati.

On Wednesday July 3, Sky Elements will perform Fourth of July shows in two local cities. The first will be the Denton Independence Day celebration at Quakertown Park, with “flight times” at 9:15 p.m. and 11 p.m.

The second will be held Wednesday during day 1 of a 2-day Sparks & Stripes celebration in Irving, with a drone and fireworks show at 9:20 p.m. at Levy Event Plaza over Lake Carolyn.

First drone light show to get FAA fireworks approval

“Pyro drone show” with fireworks on drones by Sky Elements [Video still: Sky Elements]

In May, Sky Elements announced that it had become “the first U.S.-based drone light show company to receive FAA approval to attach fireworks to drones.” 

The company had been working on obtaining the waiver for 26 months before the FAA finally granted its approval. The FAA green light allows Sky Elements to legally attach and launch fireworks from drones during their shows, creating what they call “pyro drone shows.”

It’s not the first time Sky Elements has made history. On Fourth of July 2023, the company snagged a Guinness World Records title for the largest aerial formation of words created by drones (by using 1,002 drones). Then last December, the company broke two more Guiness World Records with a 1,499-drone show in North Richland Hills.

And when Major League Cricket held its historic opening night last July in Grand Prairie, Sky Elements was there to mark the occasion with a drone light show.

Not just all over North Texas—all over the U.S., too

The DFW shows coming next week are just a glimmer of the stunning amount of events Sky Elements is booked for across the U.S. You can check out the company’s master list of performances by going here—including a patriotically astounding amount of shows it’s doing around this year’s July 4th.

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HOUSTON — A massive plume of dust from Africa’s Saharan Desert is blowing across the entire Atlantic Ocean this week, set to reach the shores of Florida and Texas in the coming days and casting a haze over typically blue skies.

The plume is currently forecast to skirt South Florida late Friday night into early Saturday morning, then push into the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend.

Eventually, the plume is forecast to move into Southeast Texas Sunday into Monday, with Corpus Christi and perhaps Houston likely to see some of the effects.

Coastal communities along the Florida Peninsula and the Gulf Coast are accustomed to seeing plumes of Saharan dust over the summer, which can impact air quality, produce colorful sunrises and sunsets, and reduce the chances of precipitation.

182 million tons of dust a year carried away from Africa

As daily triple-digit heat bakes the Saharan Desert, hot, dry air rises from the surface and carries fine particles of dust from the sands. That dust-laden air climbs to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, where winds called the Easterlies or Trade Winds (blowing from east to west) carry that dust about 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean into the Western Hemisphere in what’s known as the Saharan Air Layer (SAL).

5 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE SAHARAN DUST PLUME

According to NASA, about 182 million tons of dust leave Africa every year, though that amount can vary depending on the amount of rainfall south of the Sahara region.

Depending on the amount of dust being carried by the plume, air quality can be drastically affected. This means that people who have certain types of breathing problems can experience difficulty. People in the path of the plume can also experience eye, nose and throat irritation because of the fine dust particles in the air, according to WebMD.

The dry air from the hot, sandy desert also works to suppress tropical development and significant plumes of dust and dry air are common in the Atlantic during the first two and a half months of the hurricane season.

However, the current situation is a bit unusual in that there is quite a bit of tropical activity percolating in the Atlantic even with a significant dust layer.

Invest 95L and another tropical disturbance just to its east are holding positions just south of the dust layer, and are feeding off available moisture to their south to skirt the edges of the dust layer as they trek west. 

However, the dust layer may become an important variable in the storms’ future development depending on their track.