Storms hit Britain

[NaokoSmith]

Worst storms in a decade to lash Southern Britain, according to news sources. I hope all British writers are safe!


I can hear the 50 mph winds in the trees outside my little flat. I said I would drive Piglet to school this morning - and her little piglet-y friends, as the wind is so bad. I don't want her to walk under the trees through the park.

It will all die down later, so should be OK for my journey over to Bristol tomorrow. I hope the railway lines aren't affected, as I dislike driving over there. One of my friends used to say that Bristol drivers are the worst; I think it's something to do with the weird road layout in the city.

 

[MSTarot]

Gives you a long hug. Stay safe, lovely.

 

[Hypoxia]

Yes, stay safe, dry, warm, hopeful. And now I have a story.

Season: late spring ca. 1995 IIRC
Place: coastal mountains north of San Francisco
Event: massive Pineapple Express (tropical) storm

We lived in a tiny community on a hilltop surrounded by giant redwood trees, up to 250ft / 75m tall. Hurricane-force winds blew. Our neighbor Cindi came home late, too drunk to crawl into her bed. She passed out on the parlour couch. And a huge fucking redwood crashed down on her house, crushing the... bedroom.

If she had been sober, she would have died. Have we a moral lesson here?

 

[Handley_Page]

Yes, stay safe, dry, warm, hopeful. And now I have a story.

Season: late spring ca. 1995 IIRC
Place: coastal mountains north of San Francisco
Event: massive Pineapple Express (tropical) storm

We lived in a tiny community on a hilltop surrounded by giant redwood trees, up to 250ft / 75m tall. Hurricane-force winds blew. Our neighbor Cindi came home late, too drunk to crawl into her bed. She passed out on the parlour couch. And a huge fucking redwood crashed down on her house, crushing the... bedroom.

If she had been sober, she would have died. Have we a moral lesson here?

Did she claim the salvage ?

 

[Hypoxia]

Did she claim the salvage ?

She moved into the city right afterwards and never returned.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Stay safe...watch for those pesky flying shingles.

I remember a storm...

It was July, 1964. Chicago. It started to snow. And snow. It snowed all day long. Accumulation? None. It was 75f out. Turned to water the minute it hit the ground. Claims of another ice age were made by climatologists.

 

[redzinger]

I've been out on my bike today, cycling home from a friend's house, and it was fine. Wouldn't have liked to have been going the other way though.

I do wish that drivers would realise how difficult cycling in wind can be though. The ignorance/arrogance of some is disgraceful.

 

[oggbashan]

Just returned from filling up car before trip today.

I passed a truck being unloaded after it had flipped in the wind. It had been put back on its wheels but the trailer is a write-off.

 

[TxRad]

Ya'll be safe out there. Blowjobs are good but Mother Nature has a tendency to go a little above and beyond.

 

[Handley_Page]

Ya'll be safe out there. Blowjobs are good but Mother Nature has a tendency to go a little above and beyond.

Sometimes I think Mother Nature has an evil streak.
She should, perhaps be indicated like the Egyptian goddess 'selkhmet', whose
symbol is a Scorpion. [a nasty sting in the tale].

 

[Saxon_Hart]

Stay warm and safe my friends.

 

[Handley_Page]

The wind has eased off round my way..
It's just bloody raining !

 

[NaokoSmith]

Thanks all for the good wishes! Glad to hear all are safe - be very careful, Toria. You know how stupid many motorists are around cyclists, wind or no wind

Sorry your friend moved away, Hypoxia.

TX - the image of being given a giant blowjob by Mother Nature is one which is making me regret again that they have scrapped the Earth Day contest.

There was a lorry jack-knifed on the Severn Bridge on Friday too, so it was closed, although open again on Saturday. I had a peaceful journey over to teach, although I realised I could get an earlier train and had to make a run for it so I had to get my salmon and cream cheese baguette (reclaimable on expenses as breakfast ) at Bristol station and eat it while setting up my tutorial instead of on the train.

The managers did send us out to teach once in high winds and when there was a football match on between the two biggest local rival teams Not only did very few students show up because several wanted to go to the football, the manager promised to come with cream buns and then she didn't bring any. As my colleague and I drove home we saw a lorry jack-knifed over the middle bit of the motorway (it's only two lanes wide down here so you can imagine how much chaos that caused).

 

[Carnevil9]

Stay safe...watch for those pesky flying shingles.

I remember a storm...

It was July, 1964. Chicago. It started to snow. And snow. It snowed all day long. Accumulation? None. It was 75f out. Turned to water the minute it hit the ground. Claims of another ice age were made by climatologists.

I remember the 60s and 70s. Everyone knew that another Ice Age was coming. They didn't just think so; they KNEW.

Now, they all know that we have global warming coming. Okaaaaayyyyy..... But I remain skeptical of man's ability to make such predictions.

 

[NaokoSmith]

I remember the 60s and 70s. Everyone knew that another Ice Age was coming. They didn't just think so; they KNEW.

Now, they all know that we have global warming coming. Okaaaaayyyyy..... But I remain skeptical of man's ability to make such predictions.

It's scientifically proven that we have global warming. This is much more of a problem for polar bears and the inhabitants of islands which are disappearing under the rising sea level.

What people are not very good at is understanding what global warming will mean. A few years ago, everyone in Britain knew that we were going to have a desert style climate and the gardening columns were full of advice about how to grow cacti. But we live surrounded by water! Heat is going to make the water vaporise and then fall as rain. And more rain.

*Looks out of window and calculates it will be next Tuesday before I can hang any laundry out - mind you, it is only January.*

 

[Bramblethorn]

I remember the 60s and 70s. Everyone knew that another Ice Age was coming. They didn't just think so; they KNEW.

There's a saying: "if you remember the 60s, you weren't there".

In the 1960s-70s, climate science was still quite a new field. Climatologists were studying a bunch of different effects, some related to cooling (Milankovitch cycles, aerosols) and others related to heating (yep, people were very much aware of CO2's warming potential back then). They hadn't gotten very far in ironing out just how these different effects interacted; it doesn't help that accurate climate modelling requires high-power computing that just wasn't available in those days.

So, some climatologists - those focussed on Milankovitch and aerosols - believed we were headed for an ice age, and said so. But many others thought that greenhouse effects were going to dominate, that that we were in for warming. Here's a Time article from 1976 which notes the controversy:

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,914494,00.html

That said, even in the 60s and 70s, the weight of scientific opinion was heavily in favour of warming*; during that period studies supporting warming outnumbered those supporting cooling about six to one. https://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm (more links at the bottom of that one).

So the claim that everybody was predicting global cooling in the 60s and 70s is wildly inaccurate; there certainly were climatologists who believed that, but it was a minority viewpoint. Since then, with improved knowledge and much more modelling power, the majority in support of warming has become a consensus. Unfortunately some of the deniers are not too particular about the truth, and not above reinventing the past to create a global cooling "consensus" that never existed.

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2...th-and-time-magazine-covers-by-david-kirtley/

*net global warming, that is; at least in the short run, some areas are predicted to experience cooling as weather patterns change, but the overall picture is warming.

 

[Handley_Page]

There's a saying: "if you remember the 60s, you weren't there".

; it doesn't help that accurate climate modelling requires high-power computing that just wasn't available in those days.

.

I do and I was; true,. but only as an observer. . . .

Well, the computing power WAS there, but climatology was well down the totem pole of desires (bombs and engineering were higher.
We just didn't have enough of it!

Warning to British Litizens:
The weather forecast this morning has told of anything & everything from freezing to +12C, winds zero to 50mph, and the one really consistent item; RAIN.
Stay safe, people.

 

[NaokoSmith]

I think the worst of the storm is over here, because the seagulls have left the park by my house and gone back to sea. I could tell it was really bad the other day because the park was full of them floating in the minor flood between the goalposts

(Very unusual park for Wales - football goalposts instead of rugby sticks!)

 

[GoldenCojones]

I think the worst of the storm is over here, because the seagulls have left the park by my house and gone back to sea. I could tell it was really bad the other day because the park was full of them floating in the minor flood between the goalposts

(Very unusual park for Wales - football goalposts instead of rugby sticks!)

Very glad to hear you got through the storms. Stay safe, my friend.

 

[beachbum1958]

Well, the worst of Henry seems to be over, what a bloody mess! Last year we planted 140 Silver Birch saplings to fell next year and use as fuel in 2018; every single one of them is uprooted and smashed to splinters, the plantation looks like a bomb went off. We had an ornamental Staghorn Sumac grove, planted by my Great-Great Aunt in the 1920's, that's mostly not there anymore, it's just wreckage now, and three superb White Ash, 4 mature Horse Chestnut, a lovely old Beech, and a beautiful ancient Hornbeam are also uprooted and blown down; all the shitwood, Sycamore and Alder and Hazel are fine, all the stuff we could have done without are all still standing and none the worse, but the best of the ornamental trees and our fuel for 2018 are all gone. My wife is in tears, the woods are complete chaos, I was in there this morning trying to see what we could salvage and it's heartbreaking, all those lovely old trees just tossed around like lumber, and all the crap we cut down as a matter of course is safe and happy. This is the second year in a row this has happened, we keep losing our fine trees and all the scrap wood remains. One small consolation is that all the oaks seem to have weathered it, but I guess we won't know until I can get an Arboriculturist to check whether or not they need any attention. It's mornings like this make me wish I'd never heard of managed woodland and just stayed in London.

EDIT:
Just found a pair of huge Larches down as well and a whole bank of Bluebells uprooted and churned; the law says I have to leave them as they are, it just seems a crying shame that one of the features of our woodland has to remain looking like a bombsite because the flowers are protected, no matter what condition or surroundings they're in. That bank of bluebells was Lori's pride and joy, every Spring she'd take any visitors we had to see and photograph the carpet of flowers, now it's a wreck.

 

[Handley_Page]

Well, the worst of Henry seems to be over, what a bloody mess! Last year we planted 140 Silver Birch saplings to fell next year and use as fuel in 2018; every single one of them is uprooted and smashed to splinters, the plantation look like a bomb went off. We had an ornamental Staghorn Sumac grove, planted by my Great-Great Aunt in the 1920's, that's mostly not there anymore, it's just wreckage now, and three superb White Ash, 4 mature Horse Chestnut, a lovely old Beech, and a beautiful ancient Hornbeam are also uprooted and blown down; all the shitwood, Sycamore and Alder and Hazel are fine, all the stuff we could have done without are all still standing and none the worse, but the ornamental trees and our fuel for 2018 are all gone.
My wife is in tears, the woods are complete chaos, I was in there this morning trying to see what we could salvage and it's heartbreaking, all those lovely old trees just tossed around like lumber, and all the crap we cut down as a matter of course is safe and happy.
This is the second year in a row this has happened, we keep losing our fine trees and all the scrap wood remains. One small consolation is that all the oaks seem to have weathered it, but I guess we won't know until I can get an Arboriculturist to check whether or not they need an attention. It's mornings like this make me wish I'd never heard of managed woodland and just stayed in London.

Remember that hurricane in 1987 ?
The one that Michael Fish said "no chance" only to eat his words before the week was out?
I saw that damage to whole mountain and hill -sides; trees snapped off at 10ft.
It was heart-breaking.
You have my sympathy.

 

[DriftWood75]

Out of bed at 5 this morning, kids all up as usual.

So once I got them settled down I decided to go check out the damage. All our fences still standing, tree still erect and no roof tiles missing.

I peak over the fence to the garages and the neighbours car is stuck under a large heavy fence ouch!!! he was less than impressed when he went outside this morning.

Seems the midlands got the tail end of this one.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Beachbum and Lori, so sorry to hear about the woodland destruction


(Sorry about your neighbour's car too, DriftWood.)

 

[JackLuis]

It could be worse, if you lived in China.

China sends 6,000 police to quell new year train station chaos

Next week marks the beginning of the Year of the Monkey.

However, up to 100,000 passengers were reportedly left trapped at one of the main railway stations in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, this week as a result of bad weather in central China, which caused severe delays.

The government-run People’s Daily newspaper claimed at least 100,000 passengers had been trapped, while Xinhua, China’s official news agency, placed the figure at closer to 50,000.

 

[PennLady]

Hope everyone came through the storms okay. Dealing with the weather can be difficult.