Now is *not* the time for Snarky Weasel!
Yeah, I know, everyone would probably appreciate a break from all the storm coverage, but I ain’t going to be the one to provide it. Hurricane Sandy looks like an epically evil fucker, and I’m going to close my eyes, hold my breath and wait for it to go by.
Metaphorically, of course. After major storms, we often get winds a week later, but Sandy will mostly blow itself out by Montreal. Though my dad told me yesterday, they’re expecting dangerously high winds in Nashville, a thousand miles inland.
Stay safe, peoples in the path! Charge your Kindles and your phones now, eat the icecream first and don’t drink too much!
October 29, 2012 — 2:41 pm
Comments: 40
Near miss…
We lost power in the night. We’ve had some weather (did I mention we got four inches of snow? That’s something for us) and there’s utility work going on in the neighborhood, we didn’t think much of it.
Eventually, Uncle B traced it to, um, this. That’s a normal British power socket on the left, and a melted smoking nightmare-fodder near-death experience on the right. Ke-rist, that was close.
It’s the greenhouse socket. A heater runs on a thermostat and keeps everything from dipping below freezing in the night, so it wasn’t in the house. But the whole thing is lined with bubble-wrap in Winter for insulation, so that could soooo easily have gone horribly wrong.
You’ll remember the Brits run this macho electrical system where every little lamp plug is the size of a dryer plug. Nearly all plugs have fuses built in, but somehow the fuse didn’t blow. The electrician (we have a tame electrician, thank god) said moisture got into the plug and started it all.
It’s a greenhouse. Duh.
Lucky for us, we have an RCD in the house. It’s an ultra-sensitive safety switch that knocks out power to the whole house if it senses a dip. Ours is ultra sensitive, anyhow — we lose power if a light bulb blows. Seriously.
Oh, the evenings we’ve found ourselves in a pitch-black house hissing, “sweetheart, do you have a fucking flashlight?”
Still, I suppose it saved our lives last night. Good thing I remembered to slather the lamb’s blood on the lintel.
February 7, 2012 — 9:51 pm
Comments: 45
Frozen in mid-weasel
We weren’t supposed to get the travel chaos down here. This little corner of the Sunny South was predicted to be cold and bright. We had plans to take a train along the coast for the heck of it.
Long about noon, we looked up to see blizzard conditions. Total white-out. Couldn’t see to the end of the drive.
The chickens — which, for reasons explicable only to chickens, are absolutely terrified of snow — were huddled under a table in the garden. They were so paralyzed with fear, they allowed me to pick them up and carry them to the hen house without the usual clucking fuss.
It was wild. Standing in the garden, I could see sun and blue sky in one direction, apocalyptic cloud and squally snow in another, and an improbable bright moon hanging over it all.
Damn, we do get some weird weather here.
When it passed, it had only dumped an inch or so, so we decided to drive into town for staples. Mistake. They hadn’t done much to treat the roads and the bit of slush had refrozen to a glaze of wet ice. Pretty much friction free. We watched people and cars slip-sliding all over town, turned right around and got our chilly asses home.
They say warmer and heavy rain tomorrow. Do we believe them, children?
December 17, 2010 — 10:33 pm
Comments: 71
Oof. Throw another runnybabbit on the fire
Can you make out the outline of Britain in the picture? No? That about sums it up.
It’s been snowing for three days. I reckon we got…getting on for two feet. It’s hard to tell with the drifts.
That would be a pretty good early storm for Rhode Island on the 1st of December. It is expletive extraordinary for the South coast of England.
And like most places that get hit with a lot more of the white stuff than they’re accustomed to, everything has skittered to a halt. The usual; people spending the night in immobile trains, massive jams on major roads.
It’s supposed to stop tomorrow and get sunny, but then the temps will drop to 19ºF tomorrow night (another extraordinary number for this place) so the refreeze should be eeeeeevil.
I’ve been clomping around in my Wellies all day, cracking the ice on the chickens’ water and feeding bits to our neighborhood’s one stray cat (we take turns looking after him).
Vodka supplies….running low. Please. Send liquor.
December 2, 2010 — 11:36 pm
Comments: 28
I love weather!
Eh. This scan didn’t come out too good. It’s from one of the local newspapers (that line across the middle is a crease in the paper — photo credit to Chris and Jon Hayes). But I was delighted to see the picture anyway, since I didn’t get one.
I was in the garden when this monster reached inland a few days ago. It was sunny, seventy degrees. The chickens were pecking around and I was reading a book.
Suddenly the wind got up. I stood up and looked in the direction it was coming and saw this thing. The clouds below were ragged and low — just higher than the treetops — churning and boiling. Way up above was a smooth, curved bank of clouds, like a shockwave.
Honestly, my first thought was an industrial accident somewhere blowing a cloud of something nasty.
It moved in faster than a man could walk. Suddenly it was dark, gusty — 60 or 70 mile an hour winds, they said — lightning, violent rain. Wild.
And then, half an hour later, it was sunny and mild again. Must be an English Channel phenomenon. It was a hell of a thing.
Anyhoo — thanks for the booze recommendation, folks. I have checked them all out. Have a good weekend!
July 16, 2010 — 11:25 pm
Comments: 14
Brace yourself. Maybe.
I’m sure you’ve heard that a volcanic eruption in Iceland has halted all air travel in the UK and much of Northern Europe. They’ve just extended it to tomorrow afternoon. The problem is that bits of volcanic junk can screw up engines and electronics, and the planes’ radar is blind to it.
It’s spooky with all the air traffic halted. Not as edgy as the days after September 11 — for obvious reasons — but still odd. Not many places in the South of England don’t have something of a constant drone from Gatwick and Heathrow.
There’s a scrap of worry it could be the start of something much worse, though. If this signals the beginning of an active volcano season, it could have serious weather implications.
Volcanoes were thought to play a major role in the famously terrible Summer of 1816 (which is where the expression Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death comes from). And an early active period may have nearly extinctered our whole species 70,000 years ago. There may have been as few as 5,000 of us left afterwards, meaning we are all inbred hillbillies.
Yep. Lethal global cooling.
But let’s think happy thoughts. Here’s our Mrs Compton at today’s Tea Party protests. I think she’s the one with the hat and the sunglasses.
If not…may I say what a lovely glossy coat you have, ma’am?
April 15, 2010 — 10:21 pm
Comments: 21
A question for the border-dwelling peeps
The whole of Olde England is about the size of New England, so weather broadcasts that take in the whole country are pretty practical. They have local forecasts, too, but they don’t tell you much more.
Weather forecasts here suck amazingly, on account of it’s a little island with a big cold ocean on one side and a continent on the other.
I get a kick out of the map, though. They report the weather for Northern Ireland, but nothing at all about the south. Slice it right off at the boundary. I pointed that out to Uncle B, and he said, “well, do your weather reports include Canada and Mexico?”
Ummm…hm. Do they?
The big national ones don’t, that I recall. Except to say things like, “there’s a mass of cold air coming down from Canada.” I don’t know about local forecasts, though.
How about it, people who live near the borders? Do your local forecasts include nearby cities outside the US?
And so lamely ends a week of blogging lameness. Hey, Spring finally made it to our little corner of paradise. I’ve been out playing in the sunnenshine!
Have a good weekend, everyone!
April 9, 2010 — 10:05 pm
Comments: 24
I am so not shitting you
And by “not shitting you” I mean “nobody in this house is allowed to take a shit for the foreseeable future.”
This is our weather forecast as is, was and ever shall be. Have I mentioned the moat?
Okay, it’s not really a moat. We just call it that. It used to be part of a network of drainage ditches that served to control runoff from the farm and pasture lands around us. Now many of them are cutoff and stand alone. Filling with water.
Filling and filling and filling.
Our sewage empties into it. Only, we don’t have a boring old septic system. We have a complex, computer-controlled shit processing factory. And the water level is now within five inches of the outlet.
God knows what happens if the water overtops the outlet. I’m guessing the central computer sings “Bicycle Built for Two” while attempting to shut down our life support systems. Stay tuned!
TOMORROW COMES THE DEAD POOL. I’m going to set it up to auto-post at 6pm Zulu Time. That’s 1pm on the East Coast and 10am on the Left Coast. Remember, no matter who you had before, it all starts again fresh — you have to show up and pick again. Let’s see if we can’t bring BlueHost to its knees!
February 25, 2010 — 10:03 pm
Comments: 18
Honey, I didn’t know you invited Al Gore to tea
We’re expecting sixteen inches of global warmening tonight. Okay, that’s the Mail. They are <ahem> somewhat prone to exaggeration — but we’ve just watched the evening news, and it looks pretty dire out there. It’s been snowing on Scotland for two weeks, and now it’s moving across the sunny South.
It’s a lot for here, I’m telling you. And worse than the snow is the deep cold that looks to hang on afterwards, turning us into a slippery Britcicle.
The Met Office has so much egg on their faces, they could make face omelets. They — for the third year in a row — promised us a record warm Winter, as temperatures have gone down and down to levels not seen in decades.
How can £200 million a year buy weather forecasts so consistently wrong? Because the Met Office is the throbbing heart of British warmist propaganda.
The current chairman of the Met Office, Robert Napier, was previously chief executive of WWF-UK, the UK arm of the World Wide Fund for Nature. In other words, a long-standing, committed environmental activist bugfuck looney-tune.
And, in the chattering teeth of this latest embarrassment, management has given itself nice, fat raises.
The question is, how long will Britons pay stupid money for short-range forecasts substantially less helpful than just sticking your head out the damn window, and long-range forecasts that amount to hysterical international suicide pacts?
January 5, 2010 — 7:47 pm
Comments: 43
Seven reasons a layman can be sure global warming is complete bullshit
It can be tough for a non-scientist to tease apart the arguments of scientists. To make truly informed decisions, you’d have to throw it all over and become one yourself. No thanks — there’s math involved! Instead, let me share a few reasons you can be pret-ty daggoned sure anthropogenic global warming AKA climate change is complete shite without a glance at the science.
7 Surprise! The “cure” is ALLLLLLL the things hippies have been trying to get us to do for decades: biff our cars and ride bikes, save the rainforest, go vegetarian — organic vegetarian (home-grown, or at least local), recycle, reject consumerism and, like, get back to the land and shit, man. What a lucky coincidence for hippies!
6 Globally, the “cure” involves sucking billions out of the economy and handing it over to government. Yay! What a lucky coincidence for governments!
5 Burning wood for heat — thereby releasing a bunch of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — is now considered a net REDUCER of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Ha! For this to be even remotely true, all firewood would have to come from lands newly turned over for purpose-grown forests. Boolsheet. Hippies just like woodstoves.
4Al Gore. Seriously — Al Gore. That’s some big fat clue right there, folks.
3 Nobody can think of a single good thing that would follow from higher average temps or CO2 levels. There was this article I read — see, plants love CO2, so it was all about how carbon dioxide is making poison ivy loads more poisonous. That’s really the only thing that comes to this writer’s mind when he thinks “plants love CO2”? Change makes some things better; an honest discussion includes those, too.
2 As Glenn Reynolds famously put it: I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who say it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis. Downsizing their mansions. Selling beachfront properties now, before they sink beneath the waves. Riding bikes to work — or at least not so much flying their personal jets to the 7-11 for a pack of Kools.
Numero uno But the main reason you can be sure global warmening isn’t happening? IT’S GETTING COLDER!!!!!!!
July 7, 2009 — 7:34 pm
Comments: 33