The Weather Outside Is…
Update: The Australian fires have claimed lives: More than 40 feared dead, 100 homes lost in Victorian fires. The winds picked up and shifted, flanking the fire lines.
Not so bad here, since the wind shifted and the temperature jumped up to normal.
OTOH, it has been snowing and freezing for five days in the UK, and the South of England and London really are not acclimated to that sort of thing. They are running low on road salt and places to put the snow they plow.
Being British they are discussing The etiquette of snowball fights.
Australia is experiencing a very nasty summer with tropical cyclones and flooding in Queensland, in the North.
In the South, it’s Bush Fires and temperatures in the 40’s C [40° C = 104° F]. Victoria [Melbourne], South Australia [Adelaide], and New South Wales [Sydney] are all affected by the extremely hot temperatures and the wildfire threats.
As uncomfortable as the cats and I have been for a few days, it is better than those choices.
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It’s raining cats and dogs here…and cold (by CA standards)
Etiquette of snowball fighting? Wussies. I think the only rule we had as kids in NH was not to put HUGE stones in the snowballs.
cookie jill´s last blog post..skippy’s friday nite music club
Stones were out, but you could always have a ready supply of ice chunks, and in a city there were slush supplies at the curb for a really heavy snowball.
We’re drowning in Los Angeles.
As I remember SoCal all that is required is a sprinkle and the concrete LA river basin becomes a raging torrent that shuts down the races and movie car chases that normally take place in the “river bed”.
You guys have had under 2-inches of rain, that was what we received in two hours during Georges. The problem is all the concrete which doesn’t allow it to drain.
You are getting snow in the mountains, which will help with the water situation.
When some sports personality named “A-Rod” tested positive for steroids five years ago, you can’t expect anyone to notice that LA is being washed into the Pacific Ocean.
I think they’ve changed his nickname to A-Needle
cookie jill´s last blog post..hope busting
My cousin and her family just relocated to Australia. I’m not sure what part. I’ll have to check her blog.
oldwhitelady´s last blog post..What a catastrophe!
Coatesville has been all over the national news lately. 23 or so burned down houses will do that for ya.
This is a sad day for me, and many Australians. There have been about 200 Bushfires reported yesterday in Victoria. Many were small and burned out. Others were contained by firefighters. Over 20 are still burning out of control. It’s cooler and we’ve had a little rain, but nowhere near enough to do much good. And the lightning has started many of the fires anyway.
A town I love called Marysville has been totally destroyed. It was a beautiful place with beautiful people. I have many fond memories. I was lucky enough to have visited it one more time in 2006 with Lady Min when she decided to come to Aus for a holiday and I suggested Marysville, and we stayed at Kingbilli Country Estate. I think she liked it as much as I did. I have even been considering retiring there. I have so far been unable to contact anyone I knew there.
This is what Marysvill looks like this morning: Almost nothing left: Marysville lies in ruins (ABC TV)
ABC News item here: The town of Marysville in central Victoria has been almost completely destroyed by bushfires.
Of course, other fires have been devastating also. But this one is particularly sad for me. My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone.
A sad day.
The ABC have a video up now of Marysville after the fire.
Bushfire devastates Marysville
I’ve been looking at hybrid Satellite/Map images all around the State. The devastation is almost incomprehensible. The State of Victoria is about 238,000 sq Km (92,000 sq miles). About a third of it has been burnt. A lot of forest and bush are gone, and several town have ceased to exist. The death toll continues to rise. I remember Ash Wednesday in 1983. I was serving overseas at the time and was unable to contact family for sometime. That was the worst fire season in Victoria’s history, until now.
Sorry, I meant to add this link to the story.
Wiped out: Town destroyed by killer fires
The news services are now calling it “Black Saturday”. *shrug*
I’ve been through them in Southern California. You think you’re safe, and then the wind shifts. If the fire is big enough it creates its own weather. Embers get carried aloft and start new fires miles from the source. You are pouring water an what’s approaching only to discover there’s another fire behind you.
After they get to a certain size they make the rules, which are chaotic. If eucalyptus trees are involved, and I assume they are as they are native to Australia and were imported into SoCal, they just seem to reach a certain temperature in a fire and then explode.
Of course, the drought has strained water resources, and no one has the equipment and personnel needed to deal effectively with something like this.
It is small comfort but there are people on this side of the Pacific thinking about your problems.
Stay safe, and don’t volunteer for anything stupid, like working the line.
Moi, I think they will probably discover that it is related to the economy in the final analysis. I assume the arson investigators are reviewing insurance policies as we write.
Right now Bryan, all I want to do is go hunting. Find this bastard and chain him to a tree in the path of this fire and watch him burn.
Where the fires are burning this afternoon
I remember back in Cambodia after my team entered a torched village with bodies everywhere how angry I felt and how deadly my men and I were as we hunted the bastards that did it. We always found them. I feel the same way today.
As if there weren’t enough problems with lightning strikes, you have the miserable bastards who do this kind of thing. In most of the US they would be charged with first degree murder and subject to the death penalty or life without parole. The arson is a felony, so it doesn’t make any difference whether they intended for people to die. This would kick in even if someone suffered a heart attack as a result of the stress. It applies in some states even if the person who died was an accomplice to the crime because the death was a result of the crime.
We Californians are Australians today…we know the ashfilled horror they are going through. Hell isn’t some place to go after one passes…it’s right here on earth during a brushfire with extreme drought and heat conditions.
In terms of punishment, this is the one time where I might give serious thought to “eye for an eye”….”fire for fire.”
cookie jill´s last blog post..The Wine Cask and Intermezzo for sale?
hanks cookie jill, and I understand. 🙂 We feel the same when we read about fires in CA. 🙂 Kindred spirits perhaps. yeah, you have to have lived through it to understand.
But I will never understand anyone who deliberately does this. I refuse to. And now it seems that not only are they being deliberately lit, but being relit after!!
Another town I loved is gone. 🙁
35 killed, towns feared wiped off the map
And the place I stayed with Lady Min it seems is gone also now. I thought it was safe this morning, but the wind changed. I have a photo frame with several pic’s of Kingbilli here on my desk that Lady Min gave me one Christmas. Just memories now.
Oh, Kryten – I am so, so sorry. I hope they find – and convict – the SOB quickly. Unfortunately, nothing can bring back the losses of all the victims.
O/T, Bryan, but my mother died earlier this evening. She’s been declining mentally & physically for the last year. Ninety-four years old, lovingly cared for in a good nursing home, and painlessly just ‘going to sleep” – we should all be so lucky.
andante´s last blog post..
Oh… I’m sorry andante. 🙁 94 is a good run, but even if expected (as with two of my Grandparents and my Mother) I know how it feels. Peace and best wishes, sincerely!
I suppose that today is definitely *one of those days*! 🙁
I was so upset to see Marysville and the surrounding area burning. 🙁 That was such a beautiful place.
It’s bad enough when the weather causes destruction but when people help it along it makes me sick. I just can’t grasp how someone could deliberately start a fire knowing the devastation it will cause. Very sad.
LadyMin´s last blog post..Random Identity Generator
i’m sorry, andante.
OT: My thoughts are with you and your family, Andante.
She must have been ready, to slip away in her sleep, and she isn’t really gone as long as anyone remembers her. She saw amazing things during her life, from just before World War I until this year she has seen the rise and fall of empires, and inventions that would have seemed like magic in her youth. It was a wondrous time to have lived.
When you think of the devastation that caused around Santa Barbara because a group of idiots didn’t ensure that their fire was truly out before they left the area, it makes one wonder if there were still some traditionalists left on PNG who would like to hold an old-time barbecue, Kryten. Dip them in olive oil and drop them by parachute.
Some of the reporting would seen to suggest that it is the ember started fires that are really defeating the fire lines. That’s what happens in SoCal – they establish a fire line and it gets leaped by airborne debris that lands on houses.
I’d get a nail gun and nail him to a tree facing the oncoming firestorm.
It’s getting bad. The fires are merging and the wind is picking up again. They say there is only one solitary building left standing in the entire township of Marysville. 🙁 And the fire may turn and finish that off. The fires have merged into a 120,000 hectares monster after windshifts merged the East Kilmore fire and Murrindindi Mill blaze into a massive inferno known as the Kinglake Complex.
And Summer still has 2 months to go here.
It’s time to clear brush and start digging a blow-over/slit trench as a last resort.
It may be time to seriously consider piping excess water from Queensland to the South, only don’t use an open canal like those fools in California did decades ago. The whole thing could probably be solar powered with in-line turbines to recover some of the power used to lift the water in any mountains.
There has to be a better system, but we haven’t found the answer in the US.
The PM has called in the Army, lot’s of bulldozers and brush/forest clearing equipment that the Army has. Also, Mining companies are sending huge graders, trucks and trenchers.
Don’t get me started on the screwed up water system!! Been saying for years they need to make the system Federal and stop being assh*les about it!! Pisses me off.
Now you can see why I hate Politicians. I don’t care what country they are from. A politician is a politician. Only good one is a dead one. Just a bunch of clueless, ignorant wheeler-dealers. There is a reason most of them are Lawyers or Accountants.
LadyMin pointed me to a regularly updated Wiki about the fires:
2009 Victorian bushfires
The brushfires are the number one topic on twitter tonight.
On a more positive weather note…. Chicago thawed out today. A month early for a thaw; but hey, it’s been a weird year.
I was talking about digging a trench in your yard as a last resort bolt hole, because getting in a metal box with 40 liters of flammable liquids, i.e. petrol, would seem to have been a bad decision for a lot of people, and having bottled gas for cooking, also seems to have had tragic consequences in many cases.
States rights have been a major problem in this country, and gets especially annoying during hurricane evacuations, because Alabama and Florida can’t agree on procedures and hurricanes don’t wait on the personal problems of politicians.
I was trying to start anything, just noticing that the South had a drought while Queensland had floods. It just seemed logical and helpful to all concerned to move the water to where it was wanted from where it wasn’t. I know I shouldn’t mix logic and politics, but I can’t help myself.
There can’t be a thaw, Lady Min, that would be too much like Global Climate Change, and we all know Al Gore needs to go on a diet.
You are right Bryan about the ridiculous situation with water supplies. Victoria and Queensland have actually built a pipeline to their borders, NSW won’t allow it to pass through their state until we agree to pay them for the privileged and they want control over their section (which means they can stick a valve to start/stop the water flow and effectively hold Vic to ransom). A sane person would think that allowing NSW to use some of the water (QLD has a hell of a lot of it) would be payment enough. Also, NSW doesn’t want to pay for their segment of the pipeline. They say it should be Federally funded (and I agree it should be), but State controlled (which it SHOULDN’T be!)
All Politicians should be shot.
It would appear that NSW is unaware that the man who pays the piper calls the tune. If the federal government pays for it, they own it. In the US this would be a federal project unless the state governments specifically brokered a deal and asked for no federal assistance because it is interstate commerce.
These sorts of problems came up a lot under the original US government created by the Articles of Confederation. They were so annoying that the US Constitution was created in part to facilitate interstate commerce.
Politicians are all hellbent on creating little empires for themselves.