It's snowing!

Started by Harvey Birdman, October 21, 2007, 09:38:59 AM

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Sethren


Harvey Birdman

How much of that is smoke? From what I'm reading in the press it sounds like half of LaLa land is on fire!

:o

dhavalmistry

what the hell is LaLa Land???
"His blood-terragen level is 99.99%...he is definitely drunk on Terragen!"

Sethren

Quote from: Harvey Birdman on October 22, 2007, 07:18:03 PM
How much of that is smoke? From what I'm reading in the press it sounds like half of LaLa land is on fire!

:o


Everything you see blowing out into the ocean is smoke.

Harvey Birdman

#19
D - LaLa Land is a (somewhat derogatory) term used by Northern Californians to describe the southern part of the state; the south typically responds by calling the north the 'People's Republic of California'.

Sethren - I hope it stays away from you, kiddo! I saw some moron on one of the news shows standing in front of his  (15,000 square foot, probably) house insisting he was going to stay and fight the fire ('I've got 500 gallons of water...'). 500 gallons. When the Weimar fire threatened (and got close enough so we had a CDF truck parked at the foot of our property, with choppers filling their buckets from a pond right behind the house) I had 5000 gallons in a holding tank. The flames were advancing as crown fires through 150, 200 foot tall Douglas firs. All that bold talk of staying and fighting paled pretty damned quick, let me tell ya. Before the bombers stopped the flames, we were talking about jumping into the holding tank to try to survive. Trying to use it to stop the flames would have stood about as much a chance of succeeding as pissing on them.

Will

#20
yea well I hope everyone I know there is safe (I really got to look before I press post). My cousin apparently had to evacuate.
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

Harvey Birdman

#21
Will - Really. Bummer. It's scary stuff. I grew up not too far from you ( in Vermont). I'm telling you, unless you've actually seen a Californian wildfire (can't speak for the rest of the West, having only seen big fires in Ca) you can't imagine. Watching the CDF fight them is incredible - the choreography of aircraft and ground crews, and just the scale of the fires.

I saw the Weimar fire up close and personal (close enough so the ground crews were within earshot of our house, shouting to one another through the woods), and I saw the Berkeley Hills fire (the one that burned ... what was it, 1500 houses? It was some ridiculous number.) from the other side of the Bay. It was amazing - it looked like half the Oakland side of the Bay was on fire. Just amazing...

<Edit>

Berkeley Hills Fire Statistics

Deaths.......................................................................................25
Injuries....................................................................................150
Single Family Dwellings Destroyed..........................................2,843
Single Family Dwellings Damaged.................................................193
Apartment Units Destroyed..............................................................433
Total Living Units Damaged or Destroyed..............................3,469
Total Acreage Burned by the Fire..............................................1,520
Fire Perimeter................................................................5.25 Miles
Estimated Dollar Fire Loss......................................$1,537,000,000

</edit>

Sethren

"Bring on the snow"     :P

Luckly where i am at the fires are far away enough but being in this area for 31 years i have never seen anything quite like this, still there is a haze of ash in the air i can see everywhere. Just a few weeks ago some jerk arsonist lit our palm trees in the front yard on fire and it almost caught the house. I don't care what the california mentality is, we need some rain here.

Harvey Birdman

re the arsonist - of course I suppose if you were to blow his head off, you'd be the one to go to jail... there's something to be said for the mindset here in Wyoming. Here, the sherriff would stop by and make sure the fire was out, then go about his business.

:D

Good luck. Keep us posted.

;)

Will

The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

Dark Fire

Quote from: Sethren on October 23, 2007, 02:38:17 PM
"Bring on the snow"     :P

Luckly where i am at the fires are far away enough but being in this area for 31 years i have never seen anything quite like this, still there is a haze of ash in the air i can see everywhere. Just a few weeks ago some jerk arsonist lit our palm trees in the front yard on fire and it almost caught the house. I don't care what the california mentality is, we need some rain here.
Wow. I've always wanted palm trees. Shame about the arsonist. I've only ever seen one living tree dry enough to burn (...which I did burn) - strangely, that was in the land of eternal rain...

Sethren

You can come here and take all the palms you need.  ;D   Actually it is illegal to remove/cut down a Palm Tree. It was someones crazy idea a long time ago to plant these things all over so-cal (An Image Thing  ::)) . I'd replace them with Oaks sense they are indigenous to the area.

Dark Fire

Quote from: Sethren on October 23, 2007, 04:45:08 PM
You can come here and take all the palms you need.  ;D   Actually it is illegal to remove/cut down a Palm Tree. It was someones crazy idea a long time ago to plant these things all over so-cal (An Image Thing  ::)) . I'd replace them with Oaks sense they are indigenous to the area.
Really? Why are there so many backwards laws like that!? Another odd one I've encountered is that it is illegal to take rocks from Teide. It's not like they need them - it's a volcano! It will make more!

How have we managed to get to volcanoes and palm trees, when the title/subject of this topic/thread (I really hate the large range of terminology for these things) is 'It's snowing!'?

Will

I've been wondering that but I'm far to polite to ask  ;)
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

Harvey Birdman

The well-documented phenomenon of thread drift.

:)