Category: Weather

Categories
Connecting Weather

First storm of the season

The weather today is horrid, and I almost changed my mind about coming down to the coffee shop to connect, but I had work to deliver, and new work to pick up. This is definitely the downside of not having a connection; with comment spammers and tech problems at the Kitchen and snow predicted later, I have to wonder how long this little brain storm will last.

(Note, as I sit here shivering in the cafe, soaked to the skin after drying my laptop bag off, I think not long…)

Yet there’s the advantages: having to work something through on my own in Adobe CS without being able to ‘google for help’; spending last night relaxing with a book rather than being online; and the experience at the library yesterday.

I had to share one of the small computer rooms with another person, since I hadn’t booked ahead. As I was typing away, the gentleman turned to me and said he wished he could type that fast. We ended up chatting about various things, including the internet and what kids are exposed to nowadays. Both of our monitors were very visible to each other, and the type on mine was enlarged, because I was using the handicap-equipped station. I could see from the headers in his page that he was looking up religious material; and he could easily see the writing and photos of the sites that I visit on a fairly regular basis. What a great opportunity for a little cross-cultural exposure.

Still, with the tech problems I had at the Kitchen, and the spam, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea…

update

Well, this is one of my more brain dead ideas. After driving home through streets with a foot of water in places, I decided to grab a dial-up account. Not having a connection at home does not work if you’re having to make deliverables on specific days and can’t always drive to a internet connection; or when you’re having to monitor sites that are having problems.

But dial-up is also a pain to use, so it makes a happy medium between always on, and always off.

Besides, the problem isn’t with the connection, it’s with me. Instead of changing the connection, I need to change me.

Categories
Weather

Screwy weather

I was reading today in Prairie Point about the Missouri Earthquake of 1811. I had not heard of this before, so checked online and found that there was a series of earthquakes that hit the Mississippi Valley region in 1811 and 1812, and which geologists believe were the most damaging and widespread earthquakes to hit the country. They estimate from the descriptions and effects on the landscape, that the three significant ones were an 8.0 on the Richter scale or higher.

Other quakes caused more loss of life and damage to buildings, primarily because there were more people and more buildings. And other regions have more frequent quakes–earthquakes that are felt here are relatively rare. Still, interesting to know about our geological past

Another tidbit of information to store away about this state. If nothing else, this state does not have what I would call a very boring history.

What is more dangerous here are the tornadoes, and I can’t believe that we’ve been put under another tornado watch today. And the state is getting hit with storms having 2+ inch hail. This is the Spring weather all over again; frustrating, especially considering that tornadoes in October are extremely rare in the midwest. I’m watching all the lovely trees that are just now starting to get color, have their leaves ripped from them and I have a feeling by week end, our fall will have come and gone. I am disappointed, as I was really looking forward to some nice fall weather and photography. Maybe even take some of the planned, fun roadtrips, rather than ones I’ve had in the recent past.

Categories
Weather

Big wind does what big wind wants

My heart goes out to the people in Florida and the Carolinas, who have been hit time and again with hurricanes this season. It also goes out to the people of Haiti, who seem like they get the short end of the stick on a regular basis.

I was reading the weblogs this morning of folks who I know live in Florida, to get a better idea of what was happening. Tom Matrullo seems to have been missed this time, luckily, and posted some pics on his flickr account (flickr is the newest social software du jour), Dave Rogers also looks to have been missed, but made a very pertinent point about the property damage caused by these hurricanes:

This hurricane season will probably cost something greater than $20B in property damage. Loss of life will be disproportionately smaller, thankfully. Yet the property losses due to acts of nature in six weeks will likely be greater than all the property losses to Americans as a result of acts of terror in the last 60 years combined. Yet there will be no knee-jerk expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars in response on the part of the federal government.

If anything the Federal response to these events probably has been adversely impacted by all the fooflah in response the terrorism terror. Ever since I read about agricultural inspections from overseas degrading since the unit was placed under Homeland Security, I’ve had my doubts about the creation of such an overall powerful organization with an obsessive agenda greatly dependent on a continued atmosphere of paranoia. And when the FBI was assigned to the Hot Air Balloon Race, I knew that we had lost much of our sense of perspective.

(What did they think was going to happen? That a mad Islamic terrorist would hijack a hot air balloon and attack the Energizer Bunny?)

Still, seriousness of the storms aside, Dave wrote something else that absolutely cracked me up, though I don’t know if this was his intent, and I hope he’s not offended that I laughed:

By Saturday morning, it was pretty clear there would be no call for a general evacuation of the beaches communities. But it still looked as though we were looking forward to sustained winds greater than 60 kts, and that would mean widespread power outages of greater duration than we experienced for Frances. I have no canned food on hand in my apartment, and no way to heat food either. So I went up to CompUSA to look at the new iMac.

There’s more, but when I read that last sentence, I lost it completely.

Categories
Weather

Crazy Ivan

I haven’t been writing anything on Ivan because it’s a crazy storm, all over the board. Jeneane’s been covering it more thoroughly, especially the storm’s impact in Jamaica, a favorite spot for her family.

This was a nasty storm in the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, and Grenada, but luckily slipped right between Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula. As horrid as a hurricane is for us in the states, it’s many times more dangerous for other countries that could get hit.

(As a side note, I noticed that Castro said he wouldn’t accept a penny from us in aid if it did hit. We have had opportunities in the past to extend a hand of friendship to Cuba and have disdained to do so. It is past time that our countries healed the wounds between us. We are too close, in many ways, to continue this old cold war anger.)

The computer models for Ivan differ, but it keeps drifting to the west. Whether it stays this course or not, is anyone’s guess. Florida looks spared this time, but if it hits full strength in New Orleans, this is going to be a nightmare. There’s no sugar coating of this – New Orleans cannot protect itself against anything higher than a category 1 or 2, as this older storm surge simulation demonstrates.

And due to the rather interesting way that politics works in Florida, it’s because of Ivan that Ralph Nader will be on the ballot this fall. I guess the prediction that Nader will become president when hell freezes over is closer to reality than originally assumed if he can muster a hurricane to get him on the ballot.

Politics aside, my positive thoughts go out to Missouri’s brothers and sisters in Louisiana, fellow children of the Mississippi river.

Categories
Weather

Guess who’s coming to dinner

Dave Rogers is also less than impressed with the new iMach G5 from Apple. However, he has other things to think about now – such as a possible category 5 hurricane by the name of Frances that is shaping up, from all computer models, to hit near his home. If I were a betting woman, I would bet on this storm hitting between Jacksonville and Daytona Beach, with the first winds starting Thursday night/Friday morning.

(I don’t think this will impact service for this site, but note that my host’s (Hosting Matters) servers are in that area. However, if there is a problem with the servers, I do NOT want Annette, Stacey, and the gang worrying about making their way into the shop to fix the problem. Let the sites stay down – Michelle Malkin will understand. She’s a compassionate conservative.)

I’ve been watching this beast for several days, as it got stronger and more determined. The shear is low and the water is hot, and the previous activity was long ago enough so that no churn is bringing up the cooler water. And though there is a possibility of the storm being blown further north or south, even the more cautious weather forecasters are saying that it looks like it will hit the Florida this Friday. And it doesn’t look to weaken.

Hopefully those in mobile homes and along the ocean will use shelters, but they’re already maxed out with Charley. I guess one good thing about all this, if you can say anything is good about Florida being hit with two such major hurricanes in such a short time, is that support people are already there, entrenched, to help out with this one.

It’s frustrating to sit here knowing that this storm is heading towards people I know and there’s not a damn thing I can do to help them. I did sign up at the Red Cross for disaster help, but haven’t had my training yet. When I called to volunteer to help in Florida, I was gently and kindly told that our state is only sending in those with years of experience, and a newbie like me would be more trouble then help.

It’s been said that we webloggers can pool ourselves into a viable force for good. But what good can we do against Mother Nature, who always manages to demonstrate that no matter how clever we are, the Lady always wins?

However, folks in that area have good warning, and they know what to do. Including not standing out in winds in excess of 120MPH, yelling ‘hee YAH!’ at the top of their lungs, while they take pics to post.

Not that I would do something like this if I lived there. Not me.

I’ll be watching the storm, and keeping the folks there in my most positive thoughts.