2M Americans Lost Power After 'Bomb Cyclone' (apnews.com) 129
An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press:
Tens of thousands of utility workers in the Northeast raced to restore power to more than 1.5 million homes and businesses just days after a powerful nor'easter caused flooding and wind damage from Virginia to Maine... Flood waters had receded in most areas, but Friday's storm had taken huge chunks out of the coastline in Massachusetts and other states... Residents in other areas, meanwhile, bailed out basements and surveyed the damage while waiting for power to be restored, a process that power companies warned could take days in some areas.
Power outages on the East Coast dipped by about 500,000 from a peak of 2 million earlier Saturday, but officials said lingering wind gusts were slowing repair efforts. The storm's aftermath also was still affecting travel, with airports from Washington, D.C. to Boston reporting dozens of delays and cancellations, while service was slowly returning to normal on rail systems throughout the region... The death toll from the storm increased by four, with authorities saying at least nine people had lost their lives.
Airlines canceled more than 2,800 flights, according to the Associated Press, while Amtrak suspended service along the northeast corridor (though it's saying they should all return to service on Sunday).
CNN reported roughly 1 in 4 Americans were in the storm's path, facing winds as high as 50 mph, while the Associated Press reports gusts up to 90 mph on Cape Cod.
Power outages on the East Coast dipped by about 500,000 from a peak of 2 million earlier Saturday, but officials said lingering wind gusts were slowing repair efforts. The storm's aftermath also was still affecting travel, with airports from Washington, D.C. to Boston reporting dozens of delays and cancellations, while service was slowly returning to normal on rail systems throughout the region... The death toll from the storm increased by four, with authorities saying at least nine people had lost their lives.
Airlines canceled more than 2,800 flights, according to the Associated Press, while Amtrak suspended service along the northeast corridor (though it's saying they should all return to service on Sunday).
CNN reported roughly 1 in 4 Americans were in the storm's path, facing winds as high as 50 mph, while the Associated Press reports gusts up to 90 mph on Cape Cod.
My thoughts exactly. (Score:1)
Crazy cops that shoot each and every one once the words 'Shots fired!' are heard. People 'living' in plastic tents in the outskirts; people running around without healthcare and then – the fucking cables hanging around everywhere. Once this goes wrong, they simply put up new cables in the same spot, so that people can enjoy the next outage...
This 'driving against the wall' mentality has degraded large portions of the states into t
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Like this storm I never heard about.
Do you live under a rock, Anoymous Coward? This storm was all over the news - CNN, ABC, CBS, CBC, BBC, NYT, WaPo - Everywhere. It was a huge deal.
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If not on Fox it never happened.
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Not AC,
I knew about the storm, its like every storm we have every year. It's no bigger a storm this decade than it was last decade.
New photos of the same old shit wind and waves just now they are in 4K, 60Hrtz or better, on a thousand channels that no longer shut down for the evening.
I was the same old deal this last week as it was when Indians lived here.
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Is it rated by how much damage it's done to aging and hastily repaired infrastructure or by how much press coverage it's received?
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Height of the storm surge can be affected by factors not attributable to the storm, like high tide.
What was the absolute lowest atmospheric measurement in Millibars and how does it compare to other storms?
I will give that the combination of tide and other factors coincidental to the storms arrival may have made it the most destructive event, but not likely the 3rd worst storm.
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Meanwhile, the fact that TWO largest winter storms happened within 1 year is amazing.
Oh, and there's a third storm on the way.
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Gotcha,
Perhaps it's time in the Earth's cycle that the great lakes region returns to giant glaciers.
Good luck over there.
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1) The United States spent 20 percent of the federal budget on defense in 2011. All told, the U.S. government spent about $718 billion on defense and international security assistance in 2011 — more than it spent on Medicare.
Jan 7, 2013
Never changes for the better, thus likely gotten worse.
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For 2015, it goes like this:
Food and Agriculture:4%
Given that defense of the country is the one of the few responsibilities of the federal government specified in the U.S. Constitution, it seems like 16% isn't enough. Also, it's interesting that people ignore the states and pretend that the American population isn't taxed or spending on other programs just because it is not in the federal budget.
Fake news alert (Score:2)
The United States spent 20 percent of the federal budget on defense.. more than it spent on Medicare.
Note how they are comparing the entire "federal budget on defense" to a fraction of the budget spend on healthcare (Medicare); conveniently ignoring Medicaid and the huge tax collected in the form of Obamacare premiums.
Faker news alert (Score:2)
Note that you need to take the advertised imperial spending amount and double it. [motherjones.com] Hundreds of billions of money spent on imperialism is counted separately, and dishonestly in other parts of the budget. Like the Department of Energy managing nuclear weapons, interest on past imperial debt, t
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But surely THIS is the last time a storm will blow down the powerlines and leave millions in the dark!
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Pretty much all the power has been restored. No big deal.
Except for anyone who had solar panels blown off their roof, they have a far more expensive problem.
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Don't those people also have power lines to their houses?
As for the solar panels ... that's what homeowner's insurance is for. We're thinking of getting panels put up. The saleperson reminded us that we need to let State Farm know so that they can adjust (increase) our homeowner's policy.
And, yes, we will still have power lines to the house, even though I hope to be independent of the power company for 7 months of the year. (I hope to get on-site battery backup for nights and cloudy days.)
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As for the solar panels ... that's what homeowner's insurance is for.
Don't confuse "insured" or "subsidized" with lower cost. The cost is the same, the only difference is who pays the bill.
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Good thing that these are good white people living in these areas. If they were brown people like Puerto Rico, they would be without power for months.
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I've seen the power company restore the same lines at least five times over the years. When does it become more economical to accept the upfront investment of burying cables, like all the more advanced countries have been doing for a couple of generations?
And go to three-phase for all homes, for that matter...
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Maybe those tunnel boring machines can be useful after all
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You have to avoid existing buried telephone, internet, cable, water, sewer, and gas lines.
That's an opportunity to use those. Smart companies make chutes that can fit extras, and then burying becomes even easier than stretching overhead cables. And even where there are old buried cables, they can often be replaced with newer cables that can carry both the old and new infrastructure. This is how many homes got their fiber hookup[*] - the old copper was pulled out, trailing new cables that had both copper and fiber.
[*]: At least in parts of the world where true fiber connections are offered, a
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Ones you go underground the problem is less.
For a power - fiber combination there is no problem and who in his right mind would in this day and age still dig in copper data cables?
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You could insulate the power lines with fiber and everything would be fine. It's the copper plant that would be a very bad idea. Now it's not a good idea to put the fiber that close as it makes maintenance an issue.
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You never run communication cables and power cables together.
You most certainly do. Ground cables are shielded. They cost 2-4 times as much per length as a result, but you get less interference on a data cable buried next to a power cable than from an overhead cable that receives all kinds of EM interference.
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You have to deal with crossing under roads, driveways, and sidewalks.
In my neck of the woods, I see these [ditchwitch.com] all the time.
You have to avoid existing buried telephone, internet, cable, water, sewer, and gas lines.
All neatly displayed on maps.
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You have to avoid existing buried telephone, internet, cable, water, sewer, and gas lines.
All neatly displayed on maps.
In theory, but not really true in the US. They send out utility locating companies all the time because the exact location is generally never specified. It's all within a few dozen feet or worse. Even then you have to hand dig much of it. Heck, Comcast drilled through our sewer line at work running a cable. They won't pay, naturally.
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Of course there might still be outlying homes and farms with a single cable, a good ground is the return.
Single or dual phase is a bit like the old community phone lines, a great idea 80 years ago.
Economical (Score:1)
I've seen the power company restore the same lines at least five times over the years. When does it become more economical
How are you going to keep so many union line workers employed unless you deploy a lot of infrastructure you know will need regular work?
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Ever got a quote for burring cable? We have on several occasions, and prices are around $25 to $50 per FOOT. That's completely impractical for anything except new construction where they can do whatever and plan ahead. Same reason why most houses don't have natural gas in Southeastern PA, even though there's plenty of it. That costs $100/foot to run pipe. It would be cheaper to burn dollar bills.
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A "huge expensive job" that you hardly ever need to do beats constantly repairing overhead power lines and trimming trees by a, well, hugely expensive amount.
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Not when underground is a cost the power company incurs vs trying to get FEMA and the like to pay for massive overtime etc. They do not bury as they make big piles of cash from the feds to fix most of the big outages.
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Cancelled flights? (Score:2)
This just shows the differences in levels of preparedness for certain weather conditions of different airports. It takes some serious weather to bring down air infrastructure in North America.
In Europe on the other hand, temperature is below 0deg, there's this very subtle white powder falling from the sky, CLOSE EVERYTHING!
Facetiousness aside as climate change is expected to bring about more extreme weather conditions it's time the European airports looked across the ocean for tips on how to cope with a lit
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That depends a lot on where you are in Europe.
It doesn't really because the airports most affected by this include the 4 biggest European hubs: Heathrow, Schiphol, Charles de Gaulle and Frankfurt. Only Istanbul is alone in the top 5 that hasn't imposed runway restrictions due to weather multiple times in the past few years, each time with quite a bit of ensuing chaos throughout all of Europe.
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All 4 of those are in a zone that has average temperatures above 0 year-round. They experience 0-5 snow days a year. The cost of the occasional closure due to a snowstorm will be less than buying and maintaining an army of snowplows, deicers etc. of the calibre used by airports that see 3 solid months of snow each year.
That's why this area has trouble with snow: it's too rare to bother preparing for.
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That's exactly my point. As the weather starts becoming more extreme they need to start learning to cope with the weather.
I never said that the problems weren't insurmountable or based on faulty assumptions during original airport design, just that the world is changing and in winter it seems like the two busiest hubs in Europe both managed to have a 90% reduction in capacity for several days, several months in a row.
What may have been occasional closure is unlikely to be going forward, and I would challeng
Another Casualty of This Weather - 1 SpaceX Rocket (Score:2)
SpaceX are scheduled to launch a rocket on Tuesday, 05:33 UTC. Weather should be fine for the launch by then, but the sea states off shore are another matter.
They were going to recover the first stage on a floating platform, but the ships that would have taken it out should have left are still in port, with only 43 hours left to go - they'd take 42 hours flat out to even get there.
The reason for this seems smple - 14 foot seas. Even a 100 meter long platform isn't going to stay still enough in that. So it
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The reason for this seems smple - 14 foot seas. Even a 100 meter long platform isn't going to stay still enough in that.
That's because they're doing it wrong. If they want stability, they have to go semi-submersible.
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Yes. I half expect them to do that at some stage. But a fitted out barge is a much simpler thing to start out with.
You know, they are currently working on a new droneship, quixotically named "A Shortfall of Gravitas". It will probably be just another Marmac 300 series barge with thrusters, but we'll have to see. This is SpaceX, who put spider arms on a ship a few months ago; they could do anything.
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And yet...
Number of people affected by the storm: ~80 million,
Number of people who lost power as a result of the storm: ~2 million.
Number of deaths attributed to the storm: 9.
Compared to Katrina, not all that big a deal. IOW, what's the fuss about? Slow news week?
Trump's fault (Score:1)
Trump didn't get to the latest school shooting and confront the shooter because it was over before he could get on AF One, but surely he could have faced this storm off.
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That sounds like typical liberal criticizing, in fact Trump is imposing a 25% tariff on imported snow and rain: "A weather war is easy to win!"
Crappy reporting (Score:2)
Is America's infrastructure that delicate? (Score:2)
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You talk about a third world country ... ... and that is going on since half a century or longer like that :)
They will fix it so that it barely works and next storm with similar size will nock it out again.
Then they will cry how much stronger their Hurricanes are versus a Taifun or an Orkan
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Try looking at a Google Maps satellite view of the Northeastern US vs. southern Britain, and you'll see the reason why. The power outages are caused by downed branches. The US is heavily wooded in comparison to southern Britain; go a few miles out of a major city and there is extensive tree cover. Britain, in comparison, looks largely denuded, a patchwork of fields. This is the legacy of centuries of wood burning followed by efforts to become food secure in WW2.
Another difference is in how the UK and
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Actually power losses during storms are quite common in the US northeast. That's because our infrastructure is old. More recently electrified places use underground electric distribution, here the last mile is overwhelmingly carried on poles.
What's more installing and servicing overhead electric distribution is cheap; not just the labor but the materials. So the economic calculation, while not requiring god-like abilities, does involve a net present value calculation.
2 milllion or one in four Americans? (Score:2)
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Sissy Storms (Score:2)
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Just going by random street views on google maps, the trees look pretty short down there. I see many without tops. Those frequent winds you get sort of keeps the problem at bay. Up here winds like these are rare, so the trees keep growing up and up with nothing to stop them. When the winds do come they are tall and break or fall over. It is rare enough that disruptions like this are tolerated.
As for building codes, things like hurricane ties are now a requirement here. But the problem with this storm is not
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Think about it a bit, different regions have different standards.
A little snow on the ground in Florida and people think the day of reckoning is upon us.
I Suspect a Large Part of This... (Score:1)
They gotta start burying that stuff too; that would help a ton.
Ferret
The most amusing thing (Score:2)
that comes out of this story are the silly ass names they come up with for these storms.
You can't just call it a Winter Storm. . . . oh no, that's too boring. Not American enough. :|
We have to go and name it a " BOMB CYCLONE ".
I swear, our entire culture absolutely glorifies War, Death, Demise and Doom.
And folks wonder why some people are goin all crazy anymore.
What about Puerto Rico? (Score:1)
So, umm, how many Puerto Rican's lost power, how long ago, and how many are still waiting for power to be restored?
They are also citizens of the USA, you know.
And yet a quick scan shows no comments obviously comparing continental USA with island USA?
Interesting.
So, how is Puerto Rico going, US friends?
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