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November 28, 2005
Nature’s Force

We had a bit of a surprising winter arrival in Germany. Some weird weather conditions led to never experienced ice growth especially on overland electric cables.

Those electricity towers are supposed to take hurricane winds, but some eight inch of ice around six or so two-inch cables along some 600 yards between poles results in a load of about a hundred (metric) tons between those poles.

Add some storm level wind that induces critical resonance swing on the cables and you get the above.

In the end some 100,000 folks are without electricity for the third day now, but emergency services have made sure that everybody had a warm meal and enough candles at home or some shelter so nobody will be really hurt.

Things like this make you value a prepared and well financed state emergency service.

Posted by b on November 28, 2005 at 21:25 UTC | Permalink
Comments

Gee, B-, it must be wonderful living in a Civilized Country. You should tell us about it more often, since we stuck here in xAm. know nothing about it.
There are still innumerable small towns along the Gulf Coast whose residents are still stranded from the hurricanes, and have received NO Relief Services of Any Kind. god knows how many have died there. But hey, ain’t that Real Freedom, the kind that the Libertarians & Wall Street like to rant on about.

Posted by: jj | Nov 28 2005 21:44 utc | 1

P.S. Funny how the Pat’s, Justin Raimondo’s, Grover Norquist’s etc. of this world who support policies that would leave these people to fend for themselves are never interviewed when this stuff happens. NYT should have featured interviews w/them on front page after Hurricane Toto, to discredit these jerks once and for all.

Posted by: jj | Nov 28 2005 21:48 utc | 2

Looks like Quebec after their ice storms

Posted by: Thor Heyerdahl | Nov 28 2005 21:58 utc | 3

this climate change stuff is right in front of our faces & still some can ignore it or try to explain it away. yesterday here it was in the low-60s (f) when the normal temp for this time of year is in the mid-lower 40s (f). and then last night we had freak severe t-storms w/ some tornado sightings. very unusual for this time of year. matter of fact, while i was reading moa, the emergency sirens went off all across the city. no power at the office today, so it ended up being a 5-day weekend, what w/ the holiday last week.

Posted by: b real | Nov 28 2005 22:08 utc | 4

I reckon ‘that climate change’ stuff is going to be the trigger for major alterations to the world’s political structure. The average human being is well aware of the cause of this planet’s weird weather of late.
Yet the same old crew still peddle the same old garbage about all of this being natural and having occurred many times in the past.
Ordinary people know that these once every 400 year events didn’t previously happen within the space of a couple of years. Importantly that the gaps between ice-ages were usually aeons, millions of years apart and not a couple hundred thousand years.
Yet this BS is still being preached by the same liars who have an obvious interest in maintaining the status quo. Another bad run of tropical storms and I reckon people are likely to hit the streets in a mixture of panic and anger.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 28 2005 22:48 utc | 5

Depends upon which part of the country is hit by natural disaster: if the affected residents are base voters for your ruling party/parties? Then pass around the emergency supplies, pronto. If they are just the base voters of the opposition party? Move ’em all out of the area, so can you “fix” the [ruling party’s demographic] “problem”.

Posted by: gylangirl | Nov 29 2005 0:54 utc | 6

Yeah, I agree with jj, “must be wonderful living in a civilized country.”
But I acknowledge the anomalous conditions of weather patterns who’s excursions are increasing in both frequency and amplitude.
From Vermont’s deficit of fall color and a long and mild fall,
to Germany’s “eight inch of ice around six or so two-inch cables,”
to the receding Greenland glaciers and ocean salinity changes,
to signs of alteration of the flow of Gulf Stream,
which we all know moderates the northern European oceanic climate;
And why the hell are we as a species so crisis oriented and incapable of pre-active response?
Well we’re here now so how the hell can we prosper through this crazy adversity?
I’m investing in the accumulated energy of my wife’s bees.
Aaa..h, Honey!
jj,
don’t throw out the baby with the bath water, e.g. Justin. I used to be, probably still am, at least partially a libertarian. And that part of me has had some excellent thoughts and ideas. At least in my own judgement. 🙂

Posted by: Juannie | Nov 29 2005 1:20 utc | 7

The Northeast US had a similar situation 7 years ago – ice covered everything to about a quarter inch, power out everywhere. We huddled around the few houses in the neighborhood with generators, got to know our neighbors, and drove carefully for two or three weeks.
It’s not the end of the world – I found it quite peaceful… school out for a week, little TV/internet, just time to relax. We had no real need for emergency services here in the suburbs – a wasteful car-based standard of living will do that.

Posted by: Anonymo | Nov 29 2005 4:05 utc | 8

3 days in freezing temps w/ no elec. yikes. hope everyone snuggled. maybe there will be a surge of births in 9 mo;)
this happened to me in nevada city in a snow storm. i luckily had a woodburner. the house was jammed packed for days.
hope your comfy b. my sentiments to all in germany.

Posted by: annie | Nov 29 2005 6:02 utc | 9

Yes, and we can be thankful that the authorities here did not just announce that they were “shutting off electricity to perform routine maintenance work”
Germans, raised in a very social state, are still terrified at the thought of economic self-reliance, but are very good at pulling together in times of catastrophe.
We were spared here in the balmy Middle Rhine Valley, but I am already preparing our emergency supplies, as we are one of the few remaining communities in the country with overhead power lines to our houses. Most places have buried cables, but we are sitting exposed up on a slate bluff overlooking the river.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Nov 29 2005 7:15 utc | 10

Wild storm lashes south-east Qld
***
I thought it’s the end of the world…it was so scary…they say there is more to come. I can’t remember so much rain and storms as it was this spring here in QLD…definitely change is obvious…at least for me….

Posted by: vbo | Nov 29 2005 13:47 utc | 11

We had a mayor storm last january that hit the forests in southern Sweden hard and threw down large portions of the forests. It caused huge losses for forestowners but not many casualties, though it took some time before power, roads and communications were restored.
And I agree, stuff like that makes you appreciate a well functioning emergency service. And stuff like that makes you realise that the weather definitely isn´t the way it used to on a emotional level. After that and after the strangely warm autumn (we have got the first snow now and it is beautiful, but it should been here much earlier) most people I meet accept climate change as a reality which is here now. And few debate wheter it is man-made or not. It does not really matter, because the problems still needs to be solved.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Nov 29 2005 16:27 utc | 12

It’s in my area, but in the more rural part (about 25 miles to the west). People don’t whine but try to repair things as quickly as possible. We were told there is nothing you can do, because everything necessary is being done. So I couldn’t agree more with Bernhard about the emergency services.
But then, some journalists actually compared this to New Orleans. What nonsense – you don’t compare a minor glitch like this with a real human tragedy.

Posted by: teuton | Nov 29 2005 18:45 utc | 13

Just in the last year or so in mid-atlantic region I’ve seen basic change in weather pattern. Warmer yes, and rain comes in spurts, although we recently had a two-day-long record gully-washer that overflowed all the rain guages.
Hey its fun to chat about the weather here – thanks B.
NOLA and Gulf coast are in for a long long recovery period. Optimists project 10 years but they are guessing. In 1969 Camille hit the same strip of beach in Mississippi very hard, but more concentrated than Katrina. Damage from that 36 yr-ago storm was still quite visible earlier this fall. The same area has been hit again now and much harder/wider. Big areas were stripped clean down to the cement foundations. Communities are still in shock and have hardly begun to plan for recovery.
Oh yeah and the govt is turning a blind eye to the best of its ability.

Posted by: rapt | Nov 29 2005 20:08 utc | 14

Here (Switzerland) it has also been exceptionally cold – the coldest in 40 years for November. I’m in a valley, so low down: only 450 meters. It is the dead of winter, leaden skies, ice everywhere, the ski stations with their cannons (artificial snow) open. Few customers, though: skiing has become too expensive for the clapped out middle class.
With the rise in price of heating fuel – about 60% of the use of fossil fuels in this country goes to heat or otherwise maintain buildings, human activities inside them such as cooking or manufacturing excluded – a general drop in interior temp. of about 5 degrees Celsius reigns. Everyone in the same boat. New fashions are developing – the night bonnet made of felt is soon to be a high fashion item.
The movement to better exploit forests is happy about this. As are the peasants, the ecologists, the army, the left conservatives (no privatisation of energy), the anti globalists, the unions, etc. They are talking about the ‘doubling up’ scheme (reduce the use of buildings by half by packing people in), about actually cutting down trees to heat (Swiss forest is a jungle growing year by year..), etc.
Interesting.
Rum is selling well.

Posted by: Noisette | Nov 30 2005 17:27 utc | 15


a general drop in interior temp. of about 5 degrees Celsius reigns

Noisette, to what interior temperature would a Swiss home normally be heated?
Americans seem to regard 15C (68F) as being a painful sacrifice. Which helps to explain this country’s massively disproportionate energy use per capita.
We are *not* typical Americans — our home heat does not come on until well below 10C (50F), and only part of the house is heated.

Posted by: marquer | Dec 2 2005 3:00 utc | 16

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