Posts from — February 2011

These are the arrival positions at Braeburn, and all but the last five are back on the trail. While Johannes Rygh is running near the front, I’m a bit concerned that the rookie musher had to leave two dogs behind. Hugh left first, but Sebastian is less than an hour behind with Wade Marrs, Brent Sass, Hans, and Kelly Griffin making up rest of the pre-4AM group.

1 Hugh Neff (8)
2 Kelley Griffin (1)
3 Johannes Rygh (6)^R
4 Dan Kaduce (10)
5 Hans Gatt (13)
6 Wade Marrs (15)^I
7 Sebastian Schnuelle (11)
8 Michelle Phillips (4)
9 Ken Anderson (18)
10 Brent Sass (22)
11 Dallas Seavey (3)^I
12 Mike Ellis (5)
13 Joshua Cadzow (16)
14 Allen Moore (24)^I
15 Jodi Bailey (17)^R
16 Denis Tremblay (2)^R
17 Tamara Rose (12)^I
18 Clint Warnke (25)^I
19 Jerry Joinson (21)^R
20 David Dalton (23)
21 Didier Moggia (7)
22 Hank DeBruin (19)^I
23 Allen Dennis (20)
24 Christine Roalofs (9)^R
25 Kyla Durham (14)^R

Updates below the fold
[Read more →]

Australia, of course. Mother Nature really has it in for the “Land Down Under” and doesn’t want to leave any state in peace. Apparently Tropical Cyclone Bianca’s fading to a low before landfall wasn’t enough for Western Australian, so the ABC reports that Strong winds hamper Perth fire fight

Strong winds are hampering efforts to fight a fierce fire burning in Perth’s north-eastern suburbs.

The blaze at Red Hill has burnt through 750 hectares since it started last night.

Gusts of up to 75 kilometres an hour are fuelling the flames, as 150 firefighters work to protect homes in Baskerville, Brigadoon, Millendon and Herne Hill.

About 20 properties are under immediate threat.

Les Hayter from the Fire and Emergency Services Authority says strong winds are fanning the blaze and making life difficult for firefighters.

“It’s probably the biggest factor in this fire and has been since the start,” he said.

The winds have also forced water bombing aircraft out of the sky, but helicopters are still dumping water on the blaze.

They are even having rain in the Outback of the Northern Territory near Alice Springs as a result of the remnant low from Yasi, but the flood threats in Victoria are easing up a bit.

They’re off, heading up the Yukon River to Braeburn.

The weather for the previous week around Whitehorse has not been good, with temperatures above freezing. This increases the risk of thin ice and causes a choppy surface as the ice breaks up and re-freezes. Fortunately the temperatures have dropped back down to the more normal single digit range, so there is less of a threat of dogs overheating. The dogs prefer to work below 20° F [-7° C].

They will have about 6 hours of sun left today. as the days are at 8¼ hours, increasing at about 5 minutes per day. The moon won’t be much help as it is a waxing crescent.

It’s about 100 miles [160 kilometers] to Braeburn where there is a two hour mandatory stop. [Update: there has been a rule change and the stop is now four hours and an adjustment for the start time. It means that the last team to leave Whitehorse only has to wait 4 hours, but the first team must wait 5 hours and 12 minutes, the extra hour and 12 minutes being the initial time advantage. After Braeburn, with this change, the first team in the next checkpoint is definitely the race leader. Previously the adjustment was added at Dawson.]

If you have a favorite team, the best resource is the YQ Live Tracking link on my sidebar, as the teams are carrying GPS markers.

I will be updating the daily post, rather than issuing individual posts.

Six hours after the Yukon Quest starts, a second race gets under way, the 300 mile race from Whitehorse to Pelly Crossing. When I saw Allen Moore’s name on the Quest starting grid I wondered if his wife, Aliy Zirkle, might be running in the 300. Aliy is the only woman to win the Quest, she did it in 2000, and has been trying to win the Iditarod ever since.

Allen and Aliy’s kennel is actually running two teams in the 300, probably as a warm up for the Iditarod, and to help her select her team for the race. And Aliy’s isn’t the only familiar name in the race. Longtime Iditarod mushers Jessie Royer and Gerry Willomitzer are also in the race, probably for the same reason as Aliy, warming up, without tiring out, their Iditarod teams.

But there were some lesser known names that were familiar to me, that I don’t expect to see at the Iditarod.

From a 2009 Yukon Quest post: “Yuka Honda (24), the Japanese school teacher, scratched at the Mile 101, another victim of Eagle Summit. She spent nearly 32 hours on the trail from Central to Mile 101 getting over the mountain. She made an attempt to climb Rosebud, but had to turn around.”

Ms Honda’s experience is why it takes almost a day longer to go from Whitehorse to Fairbanks than in the reverse direction, and no doubt is why she is in the 300 instead of the Quest. That Eagle Summit – Rosebud climb at the end of the race is brutal.

But the real surprise was another individual I talked about on that same Quest: “But the best is the reporter for the Yukon News who has been covering the Quest, Genesee Keevil, who plays the stand-up bass with Sasquatch Prom Date, a local band.”

Ms Keevil isn’t writing about the races, she is participating with a team of “waifs and strays”. I will miss her interesting take on sled dog racing. Actually, I’m a bit annoyed by the way the Canadian media seems to ignore the sport. There was a lot of coverage in 2009, but not much since.

The Quest starts tomorrow at 11:00AM PST [1PM CST] from Whitehorse with 25 mushers and 14 dogs per musher. The two fastest mushers for the two versions of the race are in the field. Hans Gatt, who has won the Quest four times, holds the record for the Fairbanks to Whitehorse trail of 9 days and 26 minutes. Sebastian Schnuelle, 2009 winner, holds the record for this year’s trail of 9 days, 23 hours, and 20 minutes.

1 Kelley Griffin (1)
2 Denis Tremblay (2)^R
3 Dallas Seavey (3)^I
4 Michelle Phillips (4)
5 Mike Ellis (5)
6 Johannes Rygh (6)^R
7 Didier Moggia (7)
8 Hugh Neff (8)
9 Christine Roalofs (9)^R
10 Dan Kaduce (10)
11 Sebastian Schnuelle (11)
12 Tamara Rose (12)^I
13 Hans Gatt (13)
14 Kyla Durham (14)^R
15 Wade Marrs (15)^I
16 Joshua Cadzow (16)
17 Jodi Bailey (17)^R
18 Ken Anderson (18)
19 Hank DeBruin (19)^I
20 Allen Dennis (20)
21 Jerry Joinson (21)^R
22 Brent Sass (22)
23 David Dalton (23)
24 Allen Moore (24)^I
25 Clint Warnke (25)^I

The Mushers in bold are former winners of the Yukon Quest, the numbers in parentheses are their Bib numbers, the small “I” indicates a Quest rookie who has competed in the Iditarod, and the small “R” indicates a total rookie.

Shashank Joshi, Royal United Services Institute, London, has a backgrounder of the role of the Egyptian military since the overthrow of the monarchy. Read it to understand the real power structure in the country.

The CBC has coverage of the brain-dead policy regarding the media in Egypt condemned for attacks on journalists.

Dr. Cole continues his informed coverage of the situation.

If anyone is interested, I think we are in Phase 3. In Phase 1, Mubarak failed to control the protests, so the military decided that the government must appear to change so the protests would end. That failed.

Phase 2 was Lt. General Omar Suleiman’s opportunity to grab the brass ring, so the military stepped back and the thugs went to work, while the media was being intimidated. The psyops department was pushing out rumors that the protesters were agents from Iran, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood, Israel, Amway, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, AOL, et al. The protesters were portrayed by the state media as the aggressors and trouble makers – the ever popular “outside agitators”. This was also a failure.

In Phase 3 it is Air Marshal Ahmad Shafiq, the new prime minister, who has been anointed by the military to lead the country out of its problems.

It won’t work. The protesters have invested too much work, blood, pain, and lost too many people to accept anything but real change. I have no great hope that the Egyptian military will give up quickly, but they are courting trouble from their lower ranking officers who know that their soldiers are getting restless about the extension of the situation.

The BBC’s crisis media crew is now in Egypt, so you can expect higher quality pictures from random locations, not the easy targets of Al Jazeera’s fixed camera positions, supplemented by cell phone cameras. Even the US media gets angry when you beat up their reporters, and will start reporting facts. The Egyptians have even attacked Fox News, so “he said, she said” is probably not a viable option.

So, while Queenslanders are picking up the pieces after the two cyclones that followed hard on the floods, the Australians’ weather focus turns South to Victoria: Thousands call for help as storms lash Victoria

Severe thunderstorm warnings have been cancelled but wild weather continues to wreak havoc across large parts of Victoria as heavy rain pummels the state and forecasters say more chaos is yet to come.

The State Emergency Service (SES) has rescued 51 people and received about 3,000 calls for help after dozens of homes and businesses were flooded during super-cell storms last night.

Frequent commenter, Kryten, is in the middle of a move in Victoria, and has been out of contact waiting for the connection at his new place, so, it’s a matter of waiting and hoping for the best. 2011 is just over a month old, and Australians want to forget it already.

It’s time for the Yukon Quest and this year it goes from Whitehorse to Fairbanks, the hard course. Don’t expect the race times to be close to last year’s pace because the worse bit of the trail is at the end when you go West, and the teams and mushers are tired.

Whitehorse 2089 feet [637 meters] Start
Braeburn 2326 feet [709 meters] 100 miles [161 km] 4 Hours + Start Offset Stop
Carmacks 1722 feet [525 meters] 77 miles [124 km]
Pelly Crossing 1558 feet [475 meters] 73 miles [117 km]
King Solomon’s Dome 4002 feet [1220 meters]
Dawson 1050 feet [320 meters] 202 miles [325 km] 36 Hour Stop
American Summit 3920 feet [1195 meters]
Eagle 880 feet [268 meters] 147 miles [237 km] 4 Hour Stop
Circle 597 feet [182 meters] 159 miles [256 km]
Central 435 feet [133 meters] 74 miles [119 km]
Eagle Summit 3685 feet [1123 meters]
Mile 101 2250 feet [686 meters] 33 miles [53 km]
Rosebud Summit 3640 feet [1109 meters]
Chena Hot Springs 750 feet [229 meters] 42 miles [68 km] 8 Hour Stop
Fairbanks 440 feet [134 meters] 45 miles[72 km] Finish

It is around 1000 miles [1600 kilometers].

The trail between Central and Chena Hot Springs checkpoints is really a nasty piece of work, going up and down two mountains at the end of the race. In the even years it is out of the way early while mushers and teams are fresh.

The race starts on Saturday.

This Is Florida?

The rodent lied!

[Editor: The crew don’t believe the groundhog. We haven’t had snow, but the weather is damp and miserable. There is a stiff North wind that cuts through you when you go outside. I’d rather be in the middle of that pile.]

Friday Ark is back

The ABC reported this morning on the first known Yasi-related fatality: Generator fumes kill man during Yasi

A man died after suffocating on generator fumes during Cyclone Yasi, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has confirmed.

Ms Bligh said the 23-year old man died after being overwhelmed by fumes from the diesel generator he was using while sheltering in a small room in Bambaroo, near Ingham.

Authorities are still searching for three people missing in the wake of the massive category five storm, which destroyed homes and shredded crops as it roared ashore south of Innisfail on Wednesday night.

Ms Bligh says two people are missing in the badly damaged town of Cardwell, while police are searching for a man who was reported missing near Port Hinchinbrook after trying to move his yacht out of the way of a storm surge.

We lose people down here after almost every storm from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by generators. There are public service announcements about it before storms and a mass of warning material with every generator sold, but it just doesn’t seem to register.

As for the guy trying to move his boat – you have to wonder where he thought he was going to move it to? Yasi was hundreds of miles across, so if that boat didn’t have a couple of jet engines on board, there was no way of getting it away from the storm.

So, Queensland, which has been averaging one cyclone every 5 years, has two in a week, including what is one of the worst, if not the worst, storm to ever come ashore, Yasi.

Then there is the US Thunderblizzard that dumped more that 5 inches of snow on 22 states, more than ½ inch of ice on 7 states, and affected 100 million Americans. Now, Lady Min is semi-used to getting 20 inches of snow, but this isn’t over.

This is the evening forecast for Houston, Texas:

Snow…sleet and light freezing rain likely in the evening…then snow and sleet after midnight. Snow and sleet accumulation around 2 inches. Ice accumulation of less than one tenth of an inch. Lows in the mid 20s. North winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of precipitation 70 percent in the evening increasing to 80 percent after midnight.

You think the Midwest looks bad, wait until you watch them winching SUVs out of the Ship Channel and bayous. The roads in Houston are not snow friendly. They get adventurous in the rain. Steve Bates really doesn’t need the aggravation, especially with Texas experiencing rolling electrical cuts.

If you are feeling active, OWL wouldn’t say no to some help digging out her car.

Year of the Golden Rabbit Jin Tu

Chinese New Year
[Spring Festival]

Position: 17.5S 146.8E [ 6 PM CST 0000 UTC 10AM AEST].
Movement: West-Southwest [240°] near 23 mph [37 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 70 mph [110 kph].
Wind Gusts: 85 mph [140 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 255 miles [405 km].
Minimum central pressure: 980 mb ↑.

Currently inland about 230 miles [ 370 km] Southwest of Cairns, Australia.

A Cyclone Warning is current for coastal and island communities from Cardwell to Ayr, extending west across the tropical interior to the Northern Territory border, including Mt Isa and Longreach.

The storm has weakened to a Saffir-Simpson Tropical Storm / Australian Category 2 Cyclone and will probably be a low pressure area by the time it reaches the border with the Northern Territory.

Tully, Mission Beach, Silkwood, Innisfail, and Cardwell got the worst of it when Yasi came ashore.  The ABC’s Yasi Live Blog has pictures from some of the areas, and they got stomped. There are no reports of fatalities currently, but there hasn’t been much time to do the search and rescue, especially in the rural areas. This was a huge storm and it cut a wide path across northern Queensland.

In addition to all of the trees that were pushed over by the wind, more trees will die in the next couple of years due to the defoliation by the wind, and the salt spray that was carried inland.

It will be a long time before things will get back to normal, especially with power out to a couple of hundred thousand people, and trees and utility poles across the roads.

Update: Oh, yes, as if the news wasn’t “sour” enough: Bananas, sugar to skyrocket after Yasi

Almost all Australia’s bananas are grown in the path of the storm, and about one third of the country’s sugar cane.

Cane sugar is used for ethanol as well as cookies in Australia, so fuel prices will go up too.

Dr. Cole has a nice explainer, Mubarak’s Basij, on what happened in Egypt today – the Ministry of Interior sent in its people thinly disguised as pro-Mubarak demonstrators to inspire fear.

Everyone knows this, even CNN, so that was a failure.

At this point Mubarak is probably not making the decisions. This was probably directed by the leaders of the Egyptian military. It would appear that they had no problem with sacrificing Mubarak, but they want an officer in charge. They have probably decided to make Suleiman the new President, and they don’t want civilians to interfere with their plans.

I think the military has seriously misinterpreted the situation. I can’t see the protesters settling for another military dictator [Mubarak was the head of the Egyptian Air Force before becoming Vice President under Sadat]. The military made a lot of friends among the people by not using force against the protesters, but they will lose if they decide to pull a “bait-and-switch” now, to hold on to power.

Today was an amazingly stupid move. They attacked American journalists, and the US media is actually reporting facts about the situation. Even the Village might figure out what is going on.