I'm just hearing about this now... terrible, terrible news. The first thing it reminded me of was the awful Dunblane tragedy. I remember listening to the events of that day unfolding over the radio, very vividly indeed.

Tragic to hear this, Stu. Glad you're okay, and best wishes for your friends & family in the region.

Cumbria's been hit again: this time by a tremor:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12056634

Let us know if you're okay, Stu.

Well - he's tweeting about it

We're getting drowned over here in LA - something like 210mm ( 8.25 inches ) of rain in the last 4-5 days. Most of it in the last 45 hrs.

Earthquakes in England. Endless rain in LA... What's wrong with this picture?

All's well here Almost dead on 11pm the building shook with a real jolt, then another smaller one. I initially wondered if it was just another truck or lorry thundering up the road, because we get a dozen or so 'tremors' from those every day, but the vibrations continued for another ten, twenty seconds maybe, and it just felt... different, like a kind of interior rumble, very odd. Anyway, within moments people from all over Cumbria were Tweeting about it, and it turns out the tremor was mag 3.6, centred on Coniston. No damage reports, and I'm happy to confirm that although our christmas tree swayed a lottle the dalek and Tenth Doctor perched near the top stayed safely in place...

Quite an exciting day - lunar eclipse this morning, tremor this evening!

Glad you're okay, Stu. It's been a busy week or more over there, seemingly!

Meteo-nurd factoid. Per year per sq Km.... the UK has more tornadoes than the USA.

Always have to remind people that despite the fact that I am originally from Kansas, I have only seen one tornado in my entire life.

Somewhere there is a late-night talk radio host with a gravelly sounding voice implying a connection

Stay dry Californian-UMSF'ers.

"I'm dreamin' of a dry Christmas, just like the ones I used to know."

Thanks, Astro0. It's pretty much over now, just a few sprinkles here & there. (What we call a "torrential rain" here would usually be characterized as a typical storm almost anywhere else in the world...)

Still, as a direct result of the fact that it doesn't rain here much, events like this can have some dire effects on the hilly areas of the greater LA area particularly in the burn areas like last year's Station Fire. In addition to some prominent UMSFers, a number of JPLers live in or near that area; best wishes to them all for a safe, quiet holiday season.

I've seen three tornadoes (well 2 water spouts and 1 proper tornado on land) and just missed one that I didn't see that destroyed a bunch of houses about two miles away from where I live now. As a kid though I grew up right on the coast where we got the full anger of North Atlantic storms on a regular basis - we'd get Hurricane force (75mph or greater) sustained winds at least once a year and when those hit land you get all sorts of interesting gust effects that produce the really violent small scale vortex effects like water spouts. I'm not sure if they are technically tornadoes now that I think about it but with a tight vortex and wind speeds well above 100mph I'm not sure that the mechanical origins matter all that much. When the storms can throw around 100 ton boulders from sea defences as if they were pebbles you know that when the forecast said "Severe Storm" that they weren't joking.

I'd happily swap a couple of those for the cold we're having now. We're now heading into the fourth consecutive week of heavy snow and sub zero temperatures. It hit -15C last night according to my car and yet again I have to dig the blasted thing out from under a foot deep blanket of snow.

I've seen videos of basically, small rivers carrying quite large rocks straight over someones driveway about a mile outside of JPL. I had no problems ( I'm a few miles from the foothills ) - but it had a lot of us on edge. About 11 inches of rain in 5 days all told. That's about 1,400 tons of water over a football pitch.

Yeah, Doug, you guys in or near the hills really bore the brunt of this (though I think that the OC got whacked pretty hard this morning as well.)

Downtown...no real problems. This afternoon on El Segundo Blvd, though, I drove through by far the heaviest rain I've seen since we moved here...the street was flooding literally as I watched, the rate must have been several cm per hr for at least five minutes. Such things are both awe-inspiring & humbling to witness.