Friends in Need When Nature Hiccups, Natural Disasters forum Options

[Tesheiner]

<snip>
My main worry is that I'm supposed to be heading off to sunny Madrid later today for a few days teaching the folks in Dell about some of their cool new toys and I was really looking forward to it but it seems there is a risk that Dublin airport is likely to be shut down and I may not escape.

Sunny Madrid eh?!? Here're a few pictures.

The first one is from sunday morning and the remaining ones are from the 9th of January. It's not uncommon to see some snow falling in the Madrid area at least once in the winter. But THAT amount is really out of the scale, specially the storm on the 9th. Madrid's airport was closed for hours, schools closed too, and the traffic jams on the main highways were really huge. I was in Germany part of the week and that day we were supposed to fly back to Madrid but the chances were slim due to the delays and finally no way once Barajas (Madrid's airport) was closed. We would have to spend the night in Frankfurt but finally decided to take a flight to Zaragoza (300km east of Madrid) and make the final leg by train because the railway network was fine. In a normal situation a would be at home at 7pm but that time I was back at 4am.

[imipak]

Getting snowed in can be inconvenient, and I guess that a bump does show up in the mortality rates when they come to collate the stats at the end of the year (due mainly to falls), but it doesn't really compare to proper weather, like what you have over yonder - hurricanes, earthquakes, rains of fish, etc. It makes a nice traditional news event for a few days, particularly if there's nothing much else going on.

I live on top of a hill right on the Welsh border at the southern end. The Atlantic western approaches / Bristol Channel (with prevailing westerly winds) is just down the road, so one of the main weather patterns that produces snow (wet Westerly wind meets cold easterly) tends to dump snow on us more heavily than the relatively flat / low-lying, and apparently more news-worthy, parts of the country. I was driving an unfamiliar loan car home from work on Monday (a heavy diesel Skoda estate car) vs my normal somewhat nippier car*. By the time I got a few miles from home and left the heavily gritted main roads, there was a fair bit of snow lying on the carriageway. As I drove (cautiously! carefully! slowly! Honestly, officer!) down a snowy hill 3 miles from home, without any warning or provocation the thing span 60* or so anti-clockwise, then all the way back to 60* the other way, somehow missing both a row of parked cars and the lorry coming up the hill the other way, before slithering to a halt at a comical angle across the middle of the road. $ABS++ . ...which was nice, although I could almost see the "thinks" bubble above the lorry driver's head :> ) Got home with no further excitement, but around 8pm the power went out. So for the rest of the evening, it was reading stuff called "paper", by oil and candlelight. Power returned overnight, but the DSL didn't! It's finally started working tonight (Trillian: "Did you manage to make some sense of the controls?" Ford: "No, we just stopped fiddling with them.") Electricity I can live without, but the net?! Not so much.

(* '97 Celica, a less boy-racer looking one of these, which I {} BTW!)

Apparently we're due another pasting tonight. Never mind, our Anderson shelter's quite cheerful and homely, and we will drown out the noise with a jolly singsong. Stiff upper lip, chaps!

[dmuller]

Though I am not directly affected, we have major bush fires in SE Australia. News just out (http://www.abc.net.au/news/) report that 14 people perished (maybe up to 40) in bush fires near Melbourne, Victoria. It's a beautiful country side were it happened, been there a couple of times. Scorching heat (Melbourne 47, Western Sydney 42, my place 40) and strong winds didnt help the situation. Lets hope it doesnt get any worse, NSW's having a hottie tomorrow.

Edit: not to forget, two states up in Northern Queensland they have a massive flooding event there

[ustrax]

Lets hope it doesnt get any worse...

It did, in a terrible way...just terrible...
Hope all you UMSFers downunder are OK and let's pray for this to have an end.

[dmuller]

It did, in a terrible way...just terrible...

It has indeed turned into the worst natural disaster in Australia, and sickest of it all is that some fires were deliberately lit. 108 have perished (there are fears that this number could go to 170) and some towns are still threatened by fires. It's a real tragedy.

[nprev]

The enormous magnitude of this disaster is becoming more and more apparent. I sincerely hope that our Australian friends are safe, and remain so.

[nprev]

Unfortunate to resurrect this thread yet again, but best wishes to and hopes for our fellow UMSFers in Italy after yesterday's terrible earthquake.

[MahFL]

My condolencies too.

I'd rather cope with hurricanes any day....at least you can see those coming.
From the pics it looked like a lot of new buildings were ok but the old ones crumbled badly.

[nprev]

Breaking news...We just had a 5.0 (prelim) quake in LA centered about 5 km NW of where I live...quite a sharp jolt! My wife is freaked!

[Astro0]

USGS is reporting it as a 5.0 with 3.1 aftershocks.
Hang tight nprev!

EDIT: A friend at JPL just replied saying "What earthquake?!".
He didn't even feel it

[nprev]

No sweat! That was a good one, though; all my neighbors were outside as well (we went to the front doorway immediately).

(Sigh)...My wife's not sleepin' tonight, I'll wager. She hates these things.

[brellis]

It was a mild rolling quake in Santa Monica. It did roll for quite a while, causing me to entertain the possibility that it would get stronger!

edit: I was in LA during the 1971 quake, watched my younger brother's crib bounce across the bedroom. He was all jacked up about it -- "do that again!"

[RoverDriver]

I am in La Crescenta and definitely felt it. Both the 5.0 and the 3.1.

Paolo

[nprev]

Should've mentioned I'm in Torrance. Real strong shake, whole building was creaking.

[dvandorn]

Hey, guys -- spent a good hour in the basement of my call center here in St. Paul, waiting out tornado warnings. (Actually, spent a half-hour downstairs, got back to my desk and another warning was issued, so trundled right back downstairs for another half hour.)

Nothing hit right near my workplace, but apparently there were tornado touchdowns within about a mile of my house in Minneapolis. I won't be home for another 90 minutes or so, but talking to a friend in the same area, it appears that there was not much damage in my neighborhood.

I'll let y'all know if my home is still where I left it... later. (I wish there was a smiley for the emotion "whew!")

-the other Doug