Driving hints for Southerners caught in the snow and ice

Here's a helpful visual driving guide for those in the Southern states affected by this week's snow and ice.

Peter

A Valentine's Day thought from England

In the midst of some of the worst flooding in England in living memory, the Telegraph's cartoonist Matt thinks about Valentine's Day.

Peter

Windy!

This video clip was recorded at Crown Point, Oregon, last month.  The wind was gusting to well over 100 mph (more than 160 km/h).  If you look at this picture of Crown Point, you can see that the building portrayed below is exposed to the winds from all directions, so it's not surprising the gusts affected it so greatly.

Peter

Another reason not to walk during a snowstorm . . .

This security video was shot in front of an auto dealership in Brooklyn, New York City, during a recent snowstorm.

I'm still not sure why he didn't see it coming in time to duck aside.  Lost in thought, perhaps?  Or just cold?

Peter

So you think it's been cold recently?

Let this footage from the US station at McMurdo Sound in Antarctica disabuse you of that notion.

I get cold shivers just looking at that . . .





Peter

Perhaps a quick visit to Africa might be in order . . .

With a trembling in my bones, I've just realized that this weekend and early next week are going to be the coldest temperatures I've ever experienced in my life.  I'm an African boy.  I grew up used to summers with heat up to or exceeding 100° Fahrenheit (38° Celsius:  sometimes rising as high as 120°/49°).  Winters very seldom dropped to below freezing, and when they did, it was only by a few degrees, and not for long.  Snow was a once-in-a-decade thing, and then only in a few cities.  It would literally stop traffic, as everyone got out of their cars to catch the few falling flakes and marvel at it!

When I first came to North America, on a seven-month work-related visit in 1996, I landed in Toronto, Canada, in a snowstorm and sub-freezing temperatures.  My sinuses instantly quit in protest, and for the next three weeks I was barely able to whimper at the chill.  I spent several weeks in what was allegedly spring in Canada and the northern USA, with snow on the ground, ice not uncommon, and a frozen African body screaming with every fiber of its being, "Take me back to the Namib Desert!"

Since then I've experienced sub-freezing temperatures on quite a few occasions, along with snow and the occasional ice storm.  The coldest I've ever known (and that only late some nights, for short periods while outside) is about 15°F/-9°C.  However, Monday is forecast to get down to a maximum of 9°F/-13°C, and Monday night the mercury's supposed to fall as low as 3°F/-16°C.  Up in Minneapolis, friends of ours will be facing a low of -19°F/-28°C.  (One of them is scheduled to fly here on Monday.  All I can say is, I hope they manage to break his plane loose from the ice floe so it can try to take off!)

In one of my favorite pubs in Swakopmund, on Namibia's coast at the lower edge of the Skeleton Coast, it'll be in the balmy 70's to 80's Fahrenheit over the weekend and into next week.  It'll be twenty to thirty degrees hotter further north and inland.  I think this is the perfect weekend for a visit there, and a nice cold Windhoek lager . . .





Peter

Never mind toppling dominoes - how about falling ice?

I must admit, I found this fascinating - as well as funny.

I daresay those shivering in the North-East right now won't find it so amusing, though . . .

Peter

Weather watch

Right now the weather sirens are blowing their tops.  We're under a tornado warning, a tornado watch, a severe thunderstorm warning and a wind advisory.  The storm front's about twenty minutes from our house.

We've been warned power may go out, so I'm not sure about more blog posts tonight.  I'll try to put some up later, if possible, otherwise I'll wait until tomorrow morning.

Peter

Floating to the ground

Yesterday we saw a hard and heavy landing of a giant Airbus A380.  Smaller, lighter aircraft tend to have a different problem.  In the right conditions, once they get into ground effect they seem to 'float' - drift on down the runway, almost as if they want to stay in the air rather than land.  If they don't have a heavy load on board and have used up most of their fuel, it can be even worse.  (Miss D.'s light aircraft does the same thing - it's got excellent lift, and is very light, so when she's coming in after a flight with almost-empty tanks it's sometimes hard to persuade the plane to get down and stay down!)

As an example, here's a Bombardier Dash 8 commuter airliner of Flybe, a British regional airline, landing at an unidentified airport in high crosswind conditions.  Look how the pilot has to not only 'crab' into the wind, but work really hard to overcome ground effect and plant its wheels on terra firma.  I recommend watching it in full-screen mode.

I've flown in several Dash 8's and similar aircraft in the US, Europe and Africa.  All of them have exhibited that behavior when the winds are stronger than a gentle breeze.  Interesting how some aircraft designs do that, while others fall out of the sky with an ungainly 'thump!'.

Peter

It's enough to make me feel seasick!

Winter storm Xaver battered Europe and the North Sea earlier this month.  The oil rig standby safety vessel Grampian Protector (only about 127 feet long and weighing just 573 tons) was caught in the storm. Someone on board filmed this spectacular footage of the rough seas.

That looked to have been a very rough ride!  I'm surprised so small a ship handled it so well;  but I note that she has a very high bow, designed for precisely those conditions.

Peter

Windy!

Last week, winter storm Ivar battered Scandinavia.  Winds were particularly high in the Norwegian town of Ålesund - with interesting consequences for pedestrians.

Aah . . . fresh air!




Peter

Driving on ice this weekend?

With the current ice storms in mind, here's a video clip of how the professionals drive on ice.  This is from the 2012 Rally Sweden event.

'Lords Of The Ice' indeed!  I loved the tractors with studded tires . . .

Peter

Two interesting landings

Here are two video clips of airliners landing under difficult or unusual conditions, to add to the several we've already watched in these pages.

First, here's a tricky crosswind landing by a Boeing 757 of German airline Condor at Düsseldorf airport in Germany.

Next, here's an Emirates Boeing 777 landing at Birmingham airport in England.  The atmospheric conditions were just right to produce some very interesting visible wake vortex trails.

(Compare the above video to an earlier one of wake vortex turbulence that I put up earlier this year.)

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #738

Today's award goes to two photographers for the British Sky News network. During the recent St. Jude storm in that country, they were taking pictures at Brighton of swimmers skylarking in the waves.  Unfortunately, they forgot that heavy surf is, well . . . heavy surf.

I wonder what was the value of the flooded photographic equipment?  One hopes Sky News insures their cameras and lenses against doofus photographers . . .





Peter

It's (not) nice to have confirmation . . .

From about midday today my back has been aching something fierce, and my left leg (with its damaged sciatic nerve) has been very reluctant to let me move at all. I know why, of course . . .

All that crud closing in from the west had its usual effect.  It's nice to know that scientists now acknowledge there's something to it.

Do weather conditions really aggravate physical pain?

It is one of the longest running controversies in medicine.

Hippocrates in 400 B.C. noticed that some illnesses were seasonal. The traditional Chinese medicine term for rheumatism (fengshi bing) translates to "wind-damp disease."

But modern scholars have gotten inconsistent results in studies that tried to match weather patterns to reported pain symptoms—leading some to dismiss the connection as highly subjective or all in sufferers' minds.

. . .

Scientists don't understand all the mechanisms involved in weather-related pain, but one leading theory holds that the falling barometric pressure that frequently precedes a storm alters the pressure inside joints. Those connections between bones, held together with tendons and ligaments, are surrounded and cushioned by sacs of fluid and trapped gasses.

. . .

Many patients swear that certain weather conditions exacerbate their pain. Consequently, orthopedists, rheumatologists, neurologists, family physicians, chiropractors, physical therapists—even personal trainers—report an increase in grousing among their clients when the temperature drops or a storm approaches.

"I can tell you emphatically there are certain days where practically every patient complains of increased pain," says Aviva Wolff, an occupational therapist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, and Mrs. Polatsek's daughter. "The more dramatic the weather change, the more obvious it is."

Both the Weather Channel and AccuWeather have indexes on their websites that calculate the likelihood of aches and pains across the country, based on barometric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind. Changes in those conditions tend to affect joints even more than current conditions do, says AccuWeather meteorologist Michael Steinberg, which is why the Arthritis Index shows more risk the day before a storm or a sharp drop in temperature is forecast.

. . .

Cold weather seems to raise the risk of stroke, heart attacks and sudden cardiac death, some research shows. Heart-attack risk rose 7% for every 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) drop in temperature, according to a study of nearly 16,000 patients in Belgium, presented at the European Society of Cardiology last month. British researchers studying years of data on implanted defibrillators found that the risk of ventricular arrhythmia—an abnormal heart rhythm that can lead to sudden death—rose 1.2% for every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit drop, according to a study in the International Journal of Biometerology last month.

There's more at the link.

Ever since my back surgeries in 2004/05, I've had an almost infallible barometer in my lower back and left leg - particularly the titanium and steel implants holding my back together. I swear the damn things are made of mercury sometimes, they respond so quickly to changing weather conditions . . .

Peter

The raw power of the sea

I came across this Russian video while searching for something else.  It conveys, as few other videos have in my experience, the raw power of the sea when Mother Nature gets her dander up.  I recommend watching it in full-screen mode.

It brought back lots of memories of my time in ships and small craft off the Cape of Good Hope and around the southern coast of Africa, where the Agulhas Current makes the area the so-called 'Home of the Rogue Wave'.  (The first explorer to round the Cape, Bartolomeu Dias, named it the 'Cape Of Storms', with good reason.  The King of Portugal decided that was bad public relations, so he renamed it the 'Cape Of Good Hope'.  On a calm day it's absolutely beautiful - in 1580 Sir Francis Drake called it 'the fairest Cape in all the world', and in good weather I won't disagree with him.  On a rough day, though . . . )





Peter