Flooding

[Tobian]

Ok on Sunday, I'm coming back from my gaming group when WALLOP the heavens open, and the streets are turned to rivers.. literally! Some areas of Tyneside (my borough) wre under several feet of water, and I myself got so incredibly wet that the water got into my bag, through the waterproof and umbrella I had, and ruined all of my newly purchased Warhammer books! How infuriating! Some parts of yorkshire lost power and accessibility.

Humour aside however this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4617891.stm puts things into perspective a little.

[Ergi]

How infuriating! Some parts of yorkshire lost power and accessibility.

You know, I'd be extremely pissed if any of my RPG books were ruined. However, since you didn't mention any additional damage (e.g. to your home) I suppose you considered yourself lucky after all.
I envy you slightly, though. I always imagined that a complete power failure and neither a sensible way of getting to work nor a reason to do so for my friends would be the best time for playing.
Somehow like a child hoping for the schools being closed due to snow.

[Tobian]

I'm not entirelly sure why but on my birthday, last month, when I got home from my night out there was a 2 mile radius power cut, and I had to find the matches, to light my candles, by the light of my mobile phone! It was pretty spooky having no lighting at all, but I live in quite an urban area, and I didn't think it was that dark at all! I could still see a huge volume of light from the surrounding housing estates, poluting the sky. I wish they'd invent more downward casting streetlights, it'd be nice to see the night sky, rather than a mugge ugly orange glow

I managed to salvage the books, and got some of them dried enough, but at least 3 of them are pretty crinkly. if it wasn't full colour glossy paperm it might have made them look like old tomes, adding to the gothic nature of the product, but instead it just makes the books hard to close and the pages annoying to turn !

I actualy didn't think I would be able to get to work in the morning as on our return from a night out (which I sensibly took a Taxi, avoiding the second coming of the storms!) we drove past the street I walk down to work, and it was under 2 foot of water! Annoyingly they'd pumped it out, or the drains cleared by the morning

[Squick]

We do not get too much flooding here in Johannesburg, South Africa, (at least I've never personally experienced it) but we get some horrendous electric storms. I once left my study window a liitle too wide open, went out, and it rained something shocking -- right onto a stack of Forgotten Realms books that I'd left on my desk right next to the window in question, ruining the entire lot

And being in Africa, we get power failures all the time, even in the so-called "good" areas of Johannesburg, like Sandton. What happens is some "bright sparks" try to steal the live thick metal cables (usually electrocuting themselves to death in the process) with the intention of selling the stolen goods to scrap yards. Terrible what destitution does

[Tobian]

If that wasn't so tragic it'd be funny

We are not normally prone to flooding in the North East of England, though Yorkshire often floods these days due to terrible land management policies a while back where they cut furrows in the peatland, allowing it to be used for grazing land, but causing massive peat erosion, and a lack of water retention in the land, hence flooding! This was a pretty bad flash flood, we got something like 2 months of normal rain water in the space of a couple of hours: I don't think anywhere is built to cope with that kind of freak weather (unless freak weather is normal, and they built storm drains! ) !!

[Squick]

If that wasn't so tragic it'd be funny

I know what you mean. Apparently in one case, all that remained were the individual's smoking shoes! Insane.

Tobian, do you live in one of *those* picturesque areas of England (as seen in River Cottage)? If so, you're a lucky fellow

[Tobian]

I *SO* do not live in one of those areas ! The North east has some picturesque areas, just not anywhere near where I live. On the flip side, living in an urban area means I don't suffer many blackouts or service failures often, and my house is on a rise, so we havent yet got flooded, the houses on the bottom of the rise however....

Our street at least has trees, fairly old one's (the estate was laid in the 1920's - 30's), so it's quite pleasant if you squint your eyes

and Squick, many of the inner city slums suffer from similar problems. In some of the council estates the council would regenerate areas which had got run down, then the locals proceeded to empty out the houses of all their copper wiring, new central heating systems and all the piping, and in some cases removing all the roof tiles! This led to the council putting up boards on the windows of empty properties, which kind of defeated the purpose of regenerating the area as it made it look terrible! So don't think it's just a problem in poorer countries!

Fortunatelly I don't live near one of those areas either

[Poolshark]

Speaking of electrical storms, I am sitting here watching a cracking good one. Continuous thunder, and lightning lighting up the sky in all kinds of colours. Not too much rain, but damn, the pyrotechnics flashing across the sky are amazing!

Cheers

Tas

[Cybrludite]

Ah, being able to cut out of work due to bad weather... I remember those days! Now that I'm working for a hospital, a "little" water isn't supposed to stop me. That's why I drive a sport-ute that can handle half a meter of water on the road. At least I'm not on the list for having to stay if there's a hurricane, but I am on the recovery team. I gotta come back as soon as the storm has passed, even if the evacuation order hasn't been lifted yet. My work badge is supposed to be able to get me past the roadblocks & such.

The worst I've seen here was when we got 13" of rain (33cm) over the space of a few hours a couple of years back. A tropical storm had hit to the west of us, so we got all the rain.

[Squick]

You know, thankfully I've never had to face a "natural disaster" or really bad weather of any kind -- it must be terrible to face Mother Nature's fury. Yes, Johannesburg has had its share of floods and sudden down pours (recently, a woman was killed when she ignored police warning and attempted to cross a flooded bridge in her BMW X5; must have thought she was invulnerable in the thing?). But I've faced no hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. (granted, I've faced other South African-type dangers)

Even snow and cold weather, is relatively foreign to me. I've only seen snow twice in my life, and younger generations in Johannesburg have never seen snow. When I see documentries on Discovery, Nat Geo, etc. about bad weather, it's quite shocking for me. How do those people cope? It's insane, having to scrape ice from one's windscreen each morning in the freezing cold.

[BouncyCaitian]

Squick,

We call it Winter here in the midwest. We get on the average -15F for weeks at a time here during the deep winter, -35F or lower if mother nature is being ornery. On contrast, we've been running 90F+ for the last two weeks with about 80%-90% humidity depending on the day. Tornados and thunderstorms are the norm for spring. I've heard people think it's a horror to live here. Typical midwestern repsonse is to deal with the weather and move on. I don't get the shock of the weather in other people.

[Tobian]

Actually one of the 'highlights' of our little flood was a couple who nearly drowned inside their car: They had driven into a dip in the road, which I must add must have already had several feet of water, and thinking that they would wait it out they eventually had to be rescued by passers by as the car got completelly submerged!

http://icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk/e...name_page.html

Britain never gets it that bad (though it has to be said we are getting 'the most', 'the worst', 'the hottest' etc with alarming frequency these days) Which is why I think it always stands out when we do get something like this: Exactly because it's so rare . If you live somewhere where the temperature constantly fluctuates, you have tornadoes and regularly get burried under 3 foot of lava or snow, then yes i can see your point that our little event was rather passé, but for us it's like hens teeth.. That and I happened to be standing in it getting wet and having my books ruined!

[Squick]

We call it Winter here in the midwest. We get on the average -15F for weeks at a time here during the deep winter, -35F or lower if mother nature is being ornery. On contrast, we've been running 90F+ for the last two weeks with about 80%-90% humidity depending on the day. Tornados and thunderstorms are the norm for spring. I've heard people think it's a horror to live here. Typical midwestern repsonse is to deal with the weather and move on. I don't get the shock of the weather in other people.

Those low temperatures are insane.

I must admit though, parts of South Africa can easily pass the 40ºC mark. In Johannesburg in summer, we regularly get 30ºC+ temperatures, which can be torturous, as many office buildings and almost all homes aren't equpped with A/C. In Kwazulu-Natal, the southeastern coastal province of SA, which is sub-tropical, the combination of high humidity and high temperatures can really nail you -- nevermind the mosquitoes and the threat of maleria (or the odd impi asagai ).

[Sho-sa Kurita]

Those low temperatures are insane.

I must admit though, parts of South Africa can easily pass the 40ºC mark. In Johannesburg in summer, we regularly get 30ºC+ temperatures, which can be torturous, as many office buildings and almost all homes aren't equpped with A/C. In Kwazulu-Natal, the southeastern coastal province of SA, which is sub-tropical, the combination of high humidity and high temperatures can really nail you -- nevermind the mosquitoes and the threat of maleria (or the odd impi asagai ).

Except for the malaria, its just like home here in Texas. As a matter of fact today was 38ºC (I thinkg 101ºF sound worse ) and we're not to the hot part of summer yet. Luckily the humidity was really low (38%), but then we haven't had rain for many weeks now...

But I'll take diamondback rattlesnakes and brown recluse spiders over malaria-bearing mosquitos anyday

[Tobian]

Err give me some malaria pills thanks, and I'll take my chances with the flies!

This is getting barmy round here, it's extra hot again, and there's been another flood, fortunatelly I didn't even notice the bad weather It's not nearly hot enough for malaria, but hot enough for me to pass out shifting 48 boxes before my morning coffee