Monday, October 25, 2010
Salute to propane 2
Propane saves the day again.
Power failed yesterday around 3 PM. Unlike the previous 6 failures this year, yesterday's failure happened in the middle of a fairly strong wind and rain storm, with some lightning.
Was it a tree falling on a line? No.
Was it rain shorting a transformer? No.
Was it lightning zapping a line? No.
It was a goddamn car hitting a power pole, just like the other outages.
= = = = =
Vaguely related: 2010 has been a notably windy year. Seems to be a 3-year cycle here; I remember that 2004 and 2007 were also steadily windy, while intervening years had only a few windy days. Tried to locate some semi-official data, but it's not there in any form I can find or use. Probably not there at all.
This fits into the 33 and 66 year solar patterns.
Three and eleven: all you need to be a pretty fair climatologist. Temp goes up for 33 years, down for 33, up 33, down 33. The top and bottom years, when there's not much 'pull' in either direction, are the worst for floods and droughts. At those stable points, the jet stream tends to hold still for long periods. In between, on the sloping parts of the curve, some parts of the earth are being 'pulled' up or down more than others by the effects of sunspot changes. More temperature gradient means the jet stream moves around more. It always makes storms, but during the 'years of change', the storms don't stick in one place as long.
= = = = =
And another vaguely related thought: Since the resultant force from wind varies with the square of the velocity, why don't we have a decibel-style scale for wind? After some fiddling, I think 10 times the pounds per square foot on a flat surface would do the job nicely. Such a scale would help ordinary folks to understand that the 10MPH increment from 30 to 40 matters a lot more than the 10 MPH increment from 5 to 15. ¶ 5:58 AM
Propane saves the day again.
Power failed yesterday around 3 PM. Unlike the previous 6 failures this year, yesterday's failure happened in the middle of a fairly strong wind and rain storm, with some lightning.
Was it a tree falling on a line? No.
Was it rain shorting a transformer? No.
Was it lightning zapping a line? No.
It was a goddamn car hitting a power pole, just like the other outages.
= = = = =
Vaguely related: 2010 has been a notably windy year. Seems to be a 3-year cycle here; I remember that 2004 and 2007 were also steadily windy, while intervening years had only a few windy days. Tried to locate some semi-official data, but it's not there in any form I can find or use. Probably not there at all.
This fits into the 33 and 66 year solar patterns.
Three and eleven: all you need to be a pretty fair climatologist. Temp goes up for 33 years, down for 33, up 33, down 33. The top and bottom years, when there's not much 'pull' in either direction, are the worst for floods and droughts. At those stable points, the jet stream tends to hold still for long periods. In between, on the sloping parts of the curve, some parts of the earth are being 'pulled' up or down more than others by the effects of sunspot changes. More temperature gradient means the jet stream moves around more. It always makes storms, but during the 'years of change', the storms don't stick in one place as long.
= = = = =
And another vaguely related thought: Since the resultant force from wind varies with the square of the velocity, why don't we have a decibel-style scale for wind? After some fiddling, I think 10 times the pounds per square foot on a flat surface would do the job nicely. Such a scale would help ordinary folks to understand that the 10MPH increment from 30 to 40 matters a lot more than the 10 MPH increment from 5 to 15. ¶ 5:58 AM
