anyone going to be watching the celestial light show tonight?

[ayoub_ibrahim]

weather permitting, a celestial light show is on the cards tonight as the earth orbit sees it plough through a thick cloud of comet dust.
this phenemenon, the Perseid meteor shower, occurs every year & is supposed to reach its maximum intensity tonight.
for those in the UK, best time to watch will be from 10pm onwards!

[Chris Blake]

All we shall see is cloud I guess.

[breezer]

A metior shower will beat a rain shower for a change

Breezer

[Greebe]

also tommorrow... actually it's been going on for the better part of a week now. I was out the othernight (morning I should say) @5am watching the Perseid's

Also don't forget Venus and the Cresent Moonin the west just after sunset. (typo I know but it looked too funny to edit out

[The PIT]

Something is wrong it ain't cloudy or raining.

[Dr Mordrid]

Here in Michigan it can't make up its mind.

Right now its only about 30% overcast, but the sun is shining and there is thunder & lightning all over the place

Crazy Michigan weather.......

Here we literally get sunshine on one side of the street while a major thunderstorm floods the other. Then there was the notorious "Green Storm" of 1980

Dr. Mordrid

[az]

Green storm?

AZ

[Technoid]

Spontane thought after looking out at the sky "can't see a s****"

[The PIT]

Oh yes the clouds are rolling in so it's going to be a no go what a surprise. Does it without fail.

[Dr Mordrid]

Originally posted by az
Green storm?

AZ

Yup....Green Storm. A particularly nasty storm that is well known to most long-term residents of the Great Plains and Great Lakes areas of the US.

Most residents here old enough to remember one argue over them being miniature (but intense) "inland hurricanes" or 20-30 mile wide tornadoes, but their essence is;

1. They are rare; as in about one every 20 years or so, and sudden. Most times you have little or no warning before all hell breaks loose.

2. When they hit the sky turns green....as in a very scary, and almost luminous, lime green.

3. Rain comes down in sheets, literally....and usually almost horizontal once the winds really pick up.

4. The strongest winds noted during the 1980 storm were at at Metro Airport, about 15 miles southwest of downtown Detroit. This one blew out the windows in Metro Airports control tower and the last wind speed reading seen as the crew was bailing out was 140+ mph. The area damaged was over 20 miles wide and over 30 miles long.

5. A Green Storm that hit in the Lake Superior area in 1999 registered winds estimated at 110-130 mph. This particular Green Storm was documented in the book "Wake of the Green Storm: A Survivor’s Tale", written by Marlin Bree.

Mr. Bree, a writer for a newspaper in MInnesota, got caught in a sailboat on Lake Superior during this storm....not a very cool place to be at the time

Similar storms hit Oklahoma in 2001 and Kansas in 1988.

6. they only last about 20 minutes, but in 1980 the suburbs south of Detroit were without power for >2 weeks, had thousands of trees uprooted and hundreds of millions of $ in property damage. They had to call in insurance and electrical workers from the whole midwest to take care of those needs alone.

Personal anecdotes of the 1980 Green Storm;

1. in 1980 we had a circular 24 foot wide x 5 foot deep swimming pool that was full at the time of the storm. The winds moved it at least 8 inches off its platform.

2. in Michigan we have trees called "cottonwoods". These are often 100+ feet high and have rather soft wood. One broke off about 200 yards/meters from out house and flew like an arrow straight for the kitchen window; root end first.

A sudden bit of turbulance caused it to "jump" over our house, but it ended up impaling another house (fortunately empty) about 2 blocks over, fully penetrating it from the picture window through to the back of the house and into the back yard.

3. We had a 60 foot elm that snapped off just above the root. It ended up making like a tumbleweed up and down our street for 10 full minutes, totalling 3 cars in the process.

4. I was at work at a local trauma hospital when the storm arrived. When it hit there was a Lincoln Continental (huge sedan) pulling up to our emergency entrance. When the driver opened the door the wind caught it, ripped it off its hinges and blew it almost 200 yards. It finally stopped when it impacted our long term care facility on an outside wall, shattering all the bricks for a 4 foot radius.

Green Storms....tons of fun

Dr. Mordrid

[Dogbert]

1 word: wow.
2 words: Holy shit (pun intended)

[Novdid]

Interesting storms...

[Dr Mordrid]

Interesting isn't the word. Every time it gets mentioned my wife goes nutsy. She was standing in front of the kitchen window when that tree was heading for the house....straight for her

Being a bit older than her I've seen 3 of these things, none of which were fun at all. The best course of action is to head for the basement.

Those who live in the midwest/plains states or "tornado alley" that are smart have hardened areas in the basement just for severe storms and many cities are now even including them in their building codes. These shelters have in some locales become known as "panic rooms".

This term was somewhat mis-used as the title for a Jodie Foster movie though as the typical panic room consists of nothing more than a large reinforced concrete closet and not the high-tech fortress depicted in this movie.

Ours is only about 6x8 feet with a reinforced steel door, 12v battery power with a 300w inverter, a few days worh of canned food & MRE's (military meals), bottled water, 12 volt flourescent lights, a weather alert radio, a pre-paid cell phone (no recurring bill), an external klaxon (to alert search teams of survivors), porta-potty and a citizens band radio.

We use it several times a year; basically whenever our immediate area gets a severe thunderstorm or tornado warning.

This has happend twice in just the last month alone, the last of which was the 4th of this month. A severe thunderstorm caused our power to go out for almost 3 days. This one, however, only had 60 mph winds and dropped 3 inches of rain in <4 hours. We lost 3 major tree branches and the power transformer behind our house exploded from a direct lighting strike

Dr. Mordrid

[RichL]

Originally posted by Dr Mordrid

4. I was at work at a local trauma hospital when the storm arrived. When it hit there was a Lincoln Continental (huge sedan) pulling up to our emergency entrance. When the driver opened the door the wind caught it, ripped it off its hinges and blew it almost 200 yards. It finally stopped when it impacted our long term care facility on an outside wall, shattering all the bricks for a 4 foot radius.

He's lucky he didnt pull up the other way around and have the door slam shut on his leg as he got out!

[Dr Mordrid]

He'd have never been able to open the door that way.

Dr. Mordrid