The recent snow on the U.S. east coast ...
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World News brought to you by a /. poll (Score:4, Interesting)
I spent the weekend at a family reunion in the north west of The Netherlands at a vacation home with no interwebs. This is the first I've heard of the snowpocalypse. I find it rather amusing that the /. pole informed me before any other source. It wasn't even a news headline. I had to vote "Didn't make my local news." because it didn't make the Dutch radio news while I was driving...
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Try living in Australia at the moment, nothing makes the news past the grounding of QANTAS. The news coverage reminds me of 9/11 in some ways, it's on every channel all of the time and 8-10 pages at the front of every newspaper.
Kind of why I haven't bought a newspaper in over a decade.
Print media is dying.
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Meanwhile in the UK, even the World Series has been ignored by the media
Maybe if we Americans invited more countries to participate, those countries would take the "World Series" a bit more serious.
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whats the world series?
Some kind of sporting event where only a single country enters. 'World series' is a silly name.
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Some kind of sporting event where only a single country enters.
mmmm, except it isn't. You're thinking about the SuperBowl.
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Re:World News brought to you by a /. poll (Score:4, Funny)
Really? Surely it is? My understanding was that the name isn't as silly as it sounds however (it's named after the initial sponsor, not the planet).
So who sponsored the superbowl? A superglue company? Or a bowl manufacturer?
Only the US cares about these sports, the rest of the world doesn't know what they are. We assume they are all something like rugby but with ludicrous amounts of padding and a big metal helmet.
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We assume they are all something like rugby but with ludicrous amounts of padding and a big metal helmet.
Rugby is just like football.. except for players are smaller, weaker, slower and less athletic. And without the strategic elements of play calling.
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Boy, that's some real flamebait. Most rugby players can probably run rings around most American football players.
Rugby is NOTHING like football! (Score:5, Funny)
Rugby is played with a pointy ball and you're allowed to pick it up. Football is played with a round ball and you're not allowed to touch it in play, unless you're the goalie.
American "football" is a bastardised Rugby game, played by wimps in padded romper suits.
Oh yes, and while I'm at it, "Baseball" is merely Rounders played in pyjamas.
Re:World News brought to you by a /. poll (Score:5, Insightful)
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Nothing wrong with pyjamas!
Regulated Football has been traced back in Scotland over 400 years and has been played throughout Europe since the days of the Roman Empire who apparently invented it as a combination of sport and combat training. It was banned by James I, if I'm remembering my history books right, for being too violent. This would make sense if United fans were in the area at the time. (The team is great, the fans... well....)
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No, it's because the TV broadcasters need time to insert ads.
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Notice I said "most". In rugby like soccer the action is continuous with only the occasional break for scrums and line outs. Also, rugby is played without pads and hard helmets. In football you play hard for 4 or 5 seconds then you stand around for 30 or 40 seconds. Aerobically ruggers are generally way ahead of most football players.
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Kind of like Chester and Spike in the warner brothers cartoons?
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I'm sorry, but that's not factually correct. Major League Baseball has players from all over the world. Granted the teams are almost all American with the exception of the Blue Jays, but at the end of the day, it does represent a huge swathe of the world in terms of players.
Even beyond that, baseball is played in other countries as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organized_baseball_leagues [wikipedia.org]
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whats the world series?
Some kind of sporting event where only a single country enters.
When did Canada and the US become one country?
'World series' is a silly name.
Agreed.
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Canada is the one country that enters. The US is already there.
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I heard that it was named after a newspaper called "The World", is that a myth? I can't find anything online about it so I guess so.
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I spent the weekend at a family reunion in the north west of The Netherlands at a vacation home with no interwebs. This is the first I've heard of the snowpocalypse. I find it rather amusing that the /. pole informed me before any other source. It wasn't even a news headline. I had to vote "Didn't make my local news." because it didn't make the Dutch radio news while I was driving...
Yeah, I live in the Netherlands as well. First I've heard of it too.
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You only heard about it on /.??
Man... my friends were all over the phone, web, and even rang my doorbell: "Dude, there's a blizzard in the USA, and some people are without electricity! Turn on your TV, go online! Can't miss this! It's the event of the century!" .... Ok, serious now: I didn't hear about it until this poll either.
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Well, blizzards in New England contain 85% of the RDA for lulz.
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As much as I like to sneer at British Rail (or whatever the marketroiders are calling it now) for not running if there are leaves on the line or there's the wrong type of snow, they're STILL better than Amtrak on every metric you can possibly imagine.
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As much as I like to sneer at British Rail (or whatever the marketroiders are calling it now) for not running if there are leaves on the line or there's the wrong type of snow, they're STILL better than Amtrak on every metric you can possibly imagine.
I took an Amtrak train last week (as a tourist). I bought a cheeseburger from the dining car, since there was no alternative hot food. It was the most disgusting thing I've ever paid to eat. Microwaved for 40 seconds, greasy and slimy, no garnish at all, yuk. I was longing for a British Rail sandwich.
Amtrak trains are bigger (wider), and per mile (or per hour...) much cheaper than in Britain. The cheap ticket was flexible too. But it doesn't really make sense to compare them -- I could travel by train
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The very notion that a person could actually long for a British Rail sandwich (cheese or otherwise) is the stuff of horror movies.
The reason you could travel from Aberdeen to Penzance in that time is that Amtrak trains are legally forbidden from going faster than 55mph, in many places the track is simply in too bad a condition to go even that "fast", there are almost no stations and the goods trains (such as they exist) appear incapable of going even 5mph which blocks junctions and track sections like nothi
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I measured the speed with my phone's GPS on what seemed the fastest bit -- about 120km/h (75mph).
But, have you seen the American freight trains? They're massive. Four or more locomotives, and fifty to a hundred loaded wagons (and those are wider, longer, and heavier than ours). Credit to the Americans where it's due -- which isn't to Amtrak, but the freight network.
(And criticism where that's due, which is to the politicians whose policies deter investment in the network, for freight and passengers.)
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Just because it's there doesn't mean people will see it. (I'm talking to you, Michael Fish!) [wikipedia.org]
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Not really, it's that they're sufficiently self absorbed to think that it should be national news, when really it's the natural consequence of winter. It's not like around here where we rarely get more than a couple days worth of snow in a given year.
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It happens often enough in December, maybe November, but those places rarely get any snow in October, let alone enough to knock out power for millions.
Yawn (Score:2)
I'm from Minnesnowta. You want snow? Talk to me in 3 months when I can't see my next-door neighbors house 30 feet away because of the walls of snow drifts.
Haven't had a power outage in years here, either - what're you all doing so wrong with your electrical grid that some frozen water flakes mess it up, hmm? ;)
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I'm from upstate NY. Believe me, Minnesota's got nothing on us. You see, we've got this nifty thing called "lake effect" snow, which basically means that the Great Lakes relocate on to our roofs and roads every winter. Several areas average 10+ feet of snow each year, and even the more hospitable areas average 6 feet. The record currently stands at over 35 feet, set back in the 70s. And remember, that's the average depth. Drifts are much taller.
This particular storm was nothing. Barely more than a fo
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I'm from the Sierra Nevada of Northern California. Upstate New York has nothing on us. You see, we've got this nifty thing called "The Pacific Ocean" to the west of us, and every winter the jet stream pulls tropical storms from Hawaii over us. So you get the volume of precipitation of a tropical storm, falling in the form of snow. A snowicane. (Snowphoon?)
Having also lived in Minnesota, however, I will grant that when you get 6 inches of snow in Minnesota, it's not going anywhere until Februrary or March. I
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I will grant that when you get 6 inches of snow in Minnesota, it's not going anywhere until Februrary or March
Or in the case of this year June. The snow pile at the end of the parking ramp here at my work took until June 3rd to finally melt.
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I will grant that when you get 6 inches of snow in Minnesota, it's not going anywhere until Februrary or March
Or in the case of this year June. The snow pile at the end of the parking ramp here at my work took until June 3rd to finally melt.
Late northern region snow melts was actually part of the problem with the Missouri River flooding, or am I wrong?
Luxury (Score:4, Funny)
Kids these days, complaining about the snow. Send some of it down here ya blasted ingrates.
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Kids these days, complaining about the snow. Send some of it down here ya blasted ingrates.
I would suggest that to say that is like me complaining that I've never even seen a dingo, when one has just taken your baby.
But then, what would a kid like me know?
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Have you been to the north east? NY? CT? MA? NJ? We have trees. Lots of trees. The tree huggers in some towns won't even let you cut a tree in your own yard without their permission first. Now add in overhead power/telco/cable located along the roadways and within feet of... trees.. lots of them. And south of VT/NH, with most of their leaves still on. Now add 6-20" of just barely snow. Heck some of those power lines probably came down on their own. Then factor in that the north east is probably t
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how shoddy is your infrastructure where there are massive power outages from some snow.
This point has been elsewhere, but as a point of illustration, I was driving around 6:30 - 7 PM Saturday, after it started snowing a bit before 5 in my area. Branches of trees along the road were scratching the roof of my car (regular height sedan).
I've driven down the same roads during and after storms where the snowfall was measured in feet, and never before have branches come even close to my car (unless they had fallen and I was driving over them). Here the trees were bent over after little more than a
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I'm from Central NY - traditionally, we get a small portion of the lake effect fun, which is still a fairly decent amount of snow.
However, for the past few years, the snow seems to be shooting south to areas not as accustomed to it.
Go figure - a few years ago I bought a pair of snowshoes. We've barely had a single decent snowstorm since then, while my parents in New Jersey keep getting great snowshoeing weather - but they don't snowshoe. (They do, however, enjoy these storms for cross-country skiing.)
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I've considered moving to Minnesota before, even after I had achieved a complete understanding of what the weather like. That's a sign I'm insane, right?
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Perhaps just a sign that you like to ski/snowshoe/ice skate.
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I suppose mostly winter; I've visited in late summer and am aware it gets much hotter, but I would struggle to tell you _how_ much hotter.
I was specifically looking at Minneapolis, and suspect living in a fair sized city also is quite different to being further out! Still, it's a really nice state, from what I've seen, and the frozen wasteland impressions help keep house prices low :)
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Re:Yawn (Score:5, Informative)
I'm from Minnesnowta. You want snow? Talk to me in 3 months when I can't see my next-door neighbors house 30 feet away because of the walls of snow drifts.
Haven't had a power outage in years here, either - what're you all doing so wrong with your electrical grid that some frozen water flakes mess it up, hmm? ;)
This issue is not the amount of snow. The issue is timing.
This same storm 3 months from now wouldn't be note-worthy. This storm now, before the leaves have fallen, is news because those leaves gather more snow than bare branches, causing more downed trees, power outages, etc.
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I'm from Colorado. We've had two 1-foot snowstorms already. (They melted pretty quick too.) Snow on Halloween is kind of a tradition; sadly, we didn't get any this year.
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so biased (Score:2)
if it didnt happen in the north east, cali, or tx...it didnt happen
Four yorkshiremen poll (Score:2)
This poll just screams for four yorkshiremen sketch replys.
"That's nothing - we get 250 ft. of snow every day. We have to start digging our way to work two hours before we get home" and so on and so on.
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You have jobs?
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Yes, he didn't die, he retired to Hebden Bridge.
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This poll just screams for four yorkshiremen sketch replys.
"That's nothing - we get 250 ft. of snow every day. We have to start digging our way to work two hours before we get home" and so on and so on.
Already started [slashdot.org].
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Yeah, but those don't follow in the Four Yorkshiremen spirit - those replies being (presumably) factual and all :) I found the one-upmanship in that thread amusing, but it's not Four Yorkshiremen.
how about... (Score:2)
Made me glad to live in the North East (Score:2)
Not everyone despises snow. In fact, some of us who live in the North East do so by choice, and love snow.
I took my kids out for a snowball fight early Saturday morning. This wet snow is perfect packing snow, and we had a blast!
The reason for the question... (Score:5, Informative)
is because this is some of the earliest snow, EVER, for the northeast, the amount of snow (3" - 22") and it was the heavy, wet kind which is worse than regular, powdery snow because it brings down branches which are several inches thick or entire trees.
How heavy is the snow? Imagine someone putting 3 - 4 gallon jugs of water on the end of your snow shovel and trying to toss the stuff. You get tired very quickly. Even shoveling small amounts is tiring because of the weight.
As to bringing down branches and trees, I helped my dad clear the collected snow off tree branches from around his house to prevent them from snapping. In fact, some of the branches, which you can normally walk under with ease, were all but lying on the ground from the weight of the snow on them. Once the snow was removed they bounced right back to where they should have been.
While doing this, we both heard and watched as branches from pine trees in other peoples yards snap and crack off.
York, PA was on CNN showing the effects. One guy had a large branch (4" diameter) fall on to his windshield while driving. I saw in Yonkers, NY, a tree came down and destroyed both the guys truck and took out half his house. I heard of similar situations around me.
That's the reason this made news. It is out of the ordinary, the amount was very significant and the damage it caused. My local power company said the amount of damage from this storm was worse than when Irene came through early this year.
Sure, Buffalo and Erie get more, Minnesota likes to brag about the amount they get because they have nothing else to talk about during the winter, but this is newsworthy because it's one of those odd occurrences.
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So, yes, New England gets snow, it doesn't surprise us, even when it's a month earlier than usual. What doesn't usually happen is that the trees didn't bother dropping their leaves in time to save themselves.
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Early? It's near the end of October, I remember a few years back getting snow in July, granted not much, but we are well into the Northern hemisphere so it was somewhat confusing.
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this is some of the earliest snow, EVER, for the northeast,
Note the use of the word some. I knew there had been storms which have come through earlier in the past, that is why I used the word some. Meaning inclusive.
GLOBAL COOLING! ZOMG! (Score:3)
I already have idiots here at work pointing at it as proof that Global warming does not exist.
But then I point at them as proof that higher education does not mean you are smart.
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are all proof of human caused global warming. Whereas ...
mean nothing.
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... then I point at them as proof that higher education does not mean you are smart.
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On the other hand, Global Warming pundits attribute every weather pattern that occurs, to global warming.
Snowing? Global warming.
Heat wave? Global warming.
Mild summer day? Global warming.
"Heat Index" saying the temperature feels hotter than it's ever *actually* been? Global warming.
Rough seas? Global warming.
Calm seas? Global warming.
Icy seas? Global warming.
Forest fire? Global warming.
Floods? Global warming.
I've read one pundit attributing the Japanese earthquake to global warming due to reduced salinity f
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Seriously, where is global warming when you need it?
Hi, I live in Australia,
Bring some bloody sun block.
Fair and balanced? (Score:2)
I chose "made me sorry to live somewhere else", which is saying a lot since I use to live in the Northeast and never looked back when I moved south. Now I have three horses and dealing with my second season of drought. I watch as low after low passes us by and dumps moisture on the poor soggy folks up north. I'm no scientist (just an under appreciated software developer), but in the five years I've lived in the south it has gotten hotter and drier while my old stomping grounds begin to resemble bogs. Wh
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Overhead wires are vulnerable to ice and snow. Underground wires are vulnerable to a hick with a backhoe. Putting wires in the ground isn't an obvious win.
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A valid point, but given there are a number of areas with underground wires, gas and water pipes, we do not see themn drop out 4M customers in one dig. Yes, some lady in and eastern bloc county took out their whole internet connection, but its rare.
I'd take my chances Redneck vs Storm. The yahoo with the backhoe can be discovered and fined, the storm? Can't sue Mother Nature. I've been through two moments where winter ice and spring storms took out my power from 1 to 9 days. I did not get a deduction f
Made Me Glad to Live Somewhere Else (Score:2)
When I bought my new house I thought it would be nice to have a standby generator now that I'm a homeowner and all that. I'd put it on the "Something to consider in 3-5 years." Now it's on my "Next major purchase once the car's paid off" list.
...barely missed me! (Score:2)
Friday night, it was forecasting an inch Saturday afternoon, and another 1-3 Saturday night.
Saturday morning, this had been upped to 2-4, and we could see the storm beginning to creep slowly and inexorably toward us.
By 5PM Saturday, though, we could see the bulk of the storm passing by to the south—looking at the map, the snow looked like it ended no more than about 20 miles southeast of us.
Dan Aris
Lots of news coverage...BUT (Score:2)
...nothing happened.
However, 30 miles away they got zapped.
No affect (Score:2)
We got 5 inches of snow here in Virginia, but I wasn't affected in any way. I guess I don't get to vote in this poll.
Re:No effect (Score:2)
uneffected by your enonymous effectations on the affect of your corractions.
I can insure you will be spastically affected by these alocutions.
But now I'm just firing for affect!
Just gives the talking heads... (Score:2)
Glad to not pay east-coast taxes (Score:2)
The weather didn't make me glad to leave NYC. Looking at my most recent paystub did.
Hershey PA (Score:2)
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There were some major accidents with deaths due to trees on the road...
I am mystified by this, I've been in Canada for over 40 years and believe me we have lots of both trees and snow.
What are the trees doing? Jumping on cars as they pass by?
Or are people so stupid that they drive with all season tires as if it were simply raining?
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Web comics (Score:2)
This affected me personally; the current Questionable Content storyline is being delayed!
Preparedness is insurance (Score:2)
Dire predictions on Friday for the areas west of the I-95 corridor of up to 7 inches of White Death from Above prompted me to get my snow tractor (an ancient Cub Cadet with a blade) ready to go, so I spent Friday evening wrestling and bolting on the plow, then strapping a set of rusty tire chains onto my spare set of wheels, then discovering that the battery was dead. I got it all together, and with a battery borrowed from my sprayer, I made a victory lap Saturday afternoon, pushing almost an inch of quickl
Seattle (Score:2)
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To us Midwesterners, the "snowstorm" looks more like a light dusting.
Call me when you have trees collapsing under the weight of ice [noaa.gov].
OK, what number should I call you at? Virtually all of the tree in this area still had their leaves on them. This gave the wet heavy snow an awful lot of surface area to stick to. Almost every street has huge branches broken off or trees that collapsed. Personally, all of my trees held up, so I was unaffected. My neighbor has three very large branches down in his yard and another neighbor across the street has a tree that split in half. We only had 5 inches of snow here, I don't think the amount of snowfall
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they don't get all that much snow, they just like to make other people think they do. The north east (PA north and east) gets just as much and in quite a few cases, a lot more. They like to complain about cold too but guess they have never been to VT,NH or ME.
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Snow typically doesn't total your car does it?
It took down a tree right on top of my buddy's driveway. Thankfully he was insured. This was just a little snow even by NJ standards, but it was not a little problem.
Local governments prepare for local phenomena. This was an unusual event atypical for our climate, snow doesn't usually land on leaves in NJ and snapping trees off at the trunk on houses and power lines, it typically just slips through bare branches later in the year. Most of the snow is already gon
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You can keep your seasons along with your snow.
And you can keep your air pollution, all the Californians, a state that seems to be suffering from mud slides or burning down, the massive amounts of traffic, and the Governator.
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and you may keep your earthquakes, mudslides, fires and air pollution.
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We Southern Europeans do exist. Snow here would be quite remarkable.