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Good snow story: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=10745421

stan_qaz wrote:Good snow story: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=10745421

Good indeed! Thanks Stan.

Sidewinder wrote:

QuietOne wrote:Send away! I'll take it!!!!

Careful what you wish for. In NJ where my daughter's family lives got 9.64" or rain yesterday. 3-4' if water rushing across their driveway. Three bridges in the area gone and major road damage. This morning there were still multiple roads that were still closed. Big problems.

Here's a quote from and the link to a CNN.com article this AM about the drought here in Texas. So this should settle your concern about why I'll take the water any which way I can get it :

Texas is in the midst of an "unprecedented drought," according to the U.S. Drought Monitor at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

"Climate data show that the Lone Star State is in its driest ten-month period ever on record, in over a century of data. This is unprecedented territory," the agency said on its website.

Homes burn in Texas grassfire

QuietOne wrote:Here's a quote from and the link to a CNN.com article this AM about the drought here in Texas. So this should settle your concern about why I'll take the water any which way I can get it :

QO, I wasn't trying to diminish your dilemma there. We have family in Lubbock and have been keeping up with the problem. I can however assure you that taking out bridges, roads and dams on lakes and 10 feet of water in your house isn't something that you want either.

Sidewinder wrote:

QuietOne wrote:Here's a quote from and the link to a CNN.com article this AM about the drought here in Texas. So this should settle your concern about why I'll take the water any which way I can get it :

QO, I wasn't trying to diminish your dilemma there. We have family in Lubbock and have been keeping up with the problem. I can however assure you that taking out bridges, roads and dams on lakes and 10 feet of water in your house isn't something that you want either.

And I agree that it wouldn't be the best of outcomes either. That said though, I still maintain that we both sorely need and will accept the water in whatever form it manifests itself. That article is just the proof of the pudding and backs up my claim. That's all.

And JFTR, while I've never had a house 10 ft. deep in H2O myself, I have indeed shoveled more than my fair share of sandbags for more dikes and berms etc. than I can count in community (i.e. Fargo, ND, St. Louis, MO, & Cedar Rapids, IA all because they needed the help at the respective times) efforts/attempts to keep that H2O OUT of somebody else's house(s). So I have full knowledge of what you are talking about.

Snowstorm videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpGaIDm0 ... r_embedded#!

stan_qaz wrote:Snowstorm videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpGaIDm0 ... r_embedded#!

I'm envious as hell!

U.S. took it's shake, rattle and roll turn today, early morning in Southern Colorado, small one in Albany, NY and around 1:00 PM South West of Washington, D. C. in Virgina a 5.8 magnitude. The last one was felt clear up in New England. No deaths reported, minor injuries in/around Washington, D.C. Some physical damage to buildings. Nukes, Railroad and Airlines all went into shut down mode. Thing returning to normal. The only thing I felt was my desk chair was doing a side to side rocking motion.
Sideline issue disclosed is that the cell phone networks went unavailable due to overloaded usage. Not a good thing if this had been a disaster.

Sidewinder wrote:Sideline issue disclosed is that the cell phone networks went unavailable due to overloaded usage. Not a good thing if this had been a disaster.

What????? Are you by any chance hinting that the cell phone companies should, or perhaps had, build/built their networks to accommodate disaster level traffic??????? Hell! I'm surprised they actually hold up against peak rush hour traffic! I say that because nobody (company/corporate -wise) these days invests any more money into building anything than they absolutely have to which translates into "they only buy hardware and capacity to be able to meet the bare minimums of what they are required to in order to make whatever claims they want to make".

Wish it weren't so but ...

We felt it in Philadelphia but spent the whole time trying to figure out if it was really an earthquake. Earthquakes are pretty far down on the list of things that would make our house shake around here. I've never felt one like that, with shaking that goes on for a while. The bedrock is pretty solid here, but the quake was only 1 km deep. The local Quaker school's FB stream is already making puns.

Great to hear no fatalities so far. When I saw the magnitude and depth I was a bit worried....highlights how living on good bits of rock really helps


Unfortunately cell networks won't survive any kind of event like that.....people will be told not to call each other and SMS only when these things happen as it's a much smaller burden on the networks, but as we've seen here, people just won't do that when push comes to shove. If the aftershock patterns are the same then it can be expected to have another high 4 to low 5 quake sometime in the next 12 months, with a bunch of 2-3s as well.....not nice especially as it's an area not prone to quakes that are often felt.

Just heard an hour or so ago, while the original quake was a 5.8 ... they've already had one aftershock. From the reports, it was a 4.3 but the current forecast is that there should be one somewhere in the neighborhood of a 4.8 before it slacks off. Whether or not that 4.3 is the one they're forecasting or not has yet to be seen. Time will tell.

Also starting to hear, and see, some damage reports begin to come in. So far though there isn't anything major ... at least yet.

If I understand general earthquake stuff right, they could get many quakes in the high 4s in the coming months....it's more of a time thing with magnitudes slowly declining. But that's not say there might be half a dozen low 4s followed up by a high 4 a few months down the line. You can come to really hate the unpredictability of aftershocks


Still, all the earthquake data they model things on can be pretty raw....their major forecast for our Alpine fault going "soon" is only based on 3 large quakes previously known about. Even in the last few days we've had a bunch of low 4+ quakes in quick succession.....it was all nice and quiet then we had 4 in 3 days....as we're nearing our 7.1 September 4 anniversary date too, I think that put a few people on edge.


Some good news though, got a new massage chair for rusticbitches Nail Salon. Wouldn't even notice an aftershock in that...plus it does buttocks
http://www.facebook.com/ButtercupNails# ... =1&theater

Should really post the pic and not link to Facebook.

QuietOne wrote:

Sidewinder wrote: I say that because nobody (company/corporate -wise) these days invests any more money into building anything than they absolutely have to which translates into "they only buy hardware and capacity to be able to meet the bare minimums of what they are required to in order to make whatever claims they want to make".

Wish it weren't so but ...

Same here... back when powercompanies were still public property, we never used to have outages, as the infrastructure was layed out in circular cirquits with double capacity. This way, when the circle was broken somewhere, they'd just feed power from the other side. Now that the powercompanies have become commercial, they won't invest until they utilize full capacity of the underlying network. Subsequently, when a powerline is down somewhere, there isn't enough (cable-)capacity to feed from the other side and for the first time in many years we're beginning to see blackouts...

And when we had a blackout here two months ago, I found that telecom companies don't invest in auxilliary power for their transmitters: no cell network. Our block would have been completely locked off from the outsideworld if your's truly hadn't kept his oldfashioned "POTS" telephoneline next to his VOIPline and had'nt had an old wired phone ready to be hooked up, just in case...

rusticdog wrote:Some good news though, got a new massage chair for rusticbitches Nail Salon.

You're a very brave man, calling your ladyfriend that... especially when the ladyfriend in question has various sharp objects well within reach... My surname is "Hond" (Dutch for "Dog") but still, I'd be very interested to see what happens if anyone'd think he could rightfully call my sweet spouse "Rob's Bitch" to her face...