Tag: Nature

Head for the hills!

The Sac Bee has an interesting article today on projections by the City and County of Sacramento of potential floods that might occur given different scenarios of failing levees. This article comes complete with maps of how deep you can expect the flood waters to reach in your area, as well as evacuation routes.

Of particular interest was this bit in the article:

Generally, you will not need to drive for hours to be safe if a levee fails. You only need to get to high ground. Good areas to aim for: Carmichael, Citrus Heights, Folsom, Davis and cities along the I-80 corridor such as Rocklin and Auburn. In general, going north on I-5 or Highway 99 is not advised because of low spots. Heading south on Highway 99 is also iffy because it can flood.

So basically, if you live south of Highway 50, you’re screwed.

Fiat Fog

Glancing out the window on the way back to my desk I notice that the fog has settled on our fair city. See you in April!

UPDATE: My snark was premature, as it’s a wonderful day today.

Young, Old Hardest Hit

Just in time for rainy season, the News and Review is here to cheer us up with an examination of worst-case flood scenarios, and how they might affect the most vulnerable Sacramentans–the “very young and very old.” Be careful when you read this, because, in the spirit of Orson Welles, much of the emergency sections of it are told in present tense, with only that helpful phrase “as an example” stuck in there at the beginning to save them from being sued by me when I blow my life savings on a giant raft to save my family from the flood waters the paper has assured me are flowing toward my home.

I’m glad SNR had the courage to focus on how those in the community who need 24 hour care and monitoring might fare in such a catastrophe, because usually preschoolers and the elderly can kinda be left alone to figure stuff out.

Speaking of crap detectors

Ok, I can’t hold it in any longer. This “Weeping Mary” thing is just too much. Not sure where to begin. I think I’ll just make a few observations and be done with it.

  • Why is it so hard to find out if she is really weeping blood or not? Did I miss something? Crack that thing open, look for a red food dye pump and call it a day. And we all know there are folks camping out 24 hours a day so no one is climbing up it and placing the tears…oh, and call in the CSI and send those tears to the lab!
  • “Even if it turns out the tears are not real, people at the church said the effect is the same — more people are praying to God and rekindling their faith.” — Hmm, can’t you hear the “who really got hurt? people got back in touch with their religion because of this, it’s a victimless crime” speech in a few days when the truth is revealed?
  • Isn’t the timing of this “story” a little suspect, too? And how soon until this grows to the point of “Red November” status?

Ok, there, I feel better now.

Do you believe the statue is crying real blood?

Just in time for the holidays, a local statue of the Virgin Mary has begun crying tears of blood. Because parishoners at first suspected the work of local hooligans, the on top of it parish priest wiped the tears clean, only to see them reappear over the weekend. And since hoodlums and other assorted toughs usually take the weekends off, that settles that question.

Make sure to head right on over to CBS 13/UPN 31’s page and, without experiencing the statue for yourself, vote in their handy online poll, “Do you believe the statue is crying real blood?” Because whatever the situation is, the only important thing is whether Web site viewers believe it or not.

Hurricane, Shmurricane

Following CoolDMZ’s post from a few weeks back, I had to comment on this article from News10.net.

It’s a disaster experts know is coming, and it could dwarf the effects of Hurricane Katrina.

We live in earthquake country…sure, we knew that. Is it important to discuss earthquake preparedness? I think so. Is it necessary to bring down the victims of hurricane Katrina along the way? Even if you don’t watch the news regularly, or read the paper, or browse the internet, I think it is safe to say that most Americans, especially those of us out west pretty much get what happened in the gulf coast. There’s no need to “bring it home” by attempting to scare the bejeezus out of us with this doom and gloom, might as well not go to work in the morning, earthquake prediction crap.

Not to mention that it’s pretty insulting to those who have directly suffered from this disaster. You think you have it rough in New Orleans? You ain’t seen nothing yet, in the next 20 years we’re gonna have a tremor that will blow the socks off your little storm…maybe, we think, well, we predict. We’re two for three so far!

Spray now, we’ll discuss the details later

Wanted to follow up on the WNV epidemic from a few weeks ago. It turns out that it is going to be very difficult to determine whether or not the abrupt spraying of pesticide over our homes even worked! According to a sacbee.com article, “it may be impossible ever to draw firm scientific conclusions on how much the pesticide treatments helped to stem the West Nile virus.” Apparently, this has a lot to do with budget restraints on the vector control agency.

I don’t want to go off on a rant here, but aren’t budgets the sort of thing you work out in advance? Like, maybe a year or so? Perhaps when we were told last year that this virus was out there and potentially could hit us hard if we didn’t wear long sleeved shirts, spray on the DEET, and stay inside during peak skeeter hours, the powers that be could have also been preparing themselves fiscally. Realizing that this could get to a point where mass spraying of potentially cancer causing chemicals would be required.

I don’t know, just seems a little Bush league (pun intended) to drop this stuff on us with no real, shall we say, exit strategy? (hey, we’re kicking it up a notch here at the rag so work with me!)

Chili today, hot tamale

The folks over at Plum Win have asked us to do a story on the weather forecasting in the River City. Specifically, a story on why we don’t need weather forecasting. This reminded me of a rumor I once heard, I assume it is a rumor as I haven’t been able to prove it one way or the other, that Hawaii has no television weather forecasters. Presumably because it is partly cloudy with afternoon showers every flippin’ day. Perhaps our readers can verify this as fact or fiction. In the meantime, click your way over to thehawaiichannel.com.

Notice anything odd about this site? Apparently the old KCRA site found a new home in our 50th state, but I digress.
Continue reading “Chili today, hot tamale”