No hoodie today, no.

Neighbors and I believe this is a "Bravo Global Warming" summer. It has been like last year's. And last year's S

moi621 (imported) wrote: Thu Jun 09, 2011 8:47 pm ummer did not arrive until after

the Autumnal Equinox. Those Mission Figs that were suffering so much are deciding to produce large sweet fruit. The "nubs" of fruits it put out months ago that sometimes matured into a dry, white fleshed, yuk fruit - those nubs seem to select some amongst the gang to fruit it up. Today I picked an all time high of five. Some pretty big. Sweet, red fig fruitiness.

The Grape tomatoes are also plentiful and crowd out the beef steak tomato that was a hope for a good slice of tomato.

One of my garlic spikes is producing little plant like thingies instead of seeds. Home Depot is the source of dynamite garlic starters and they only carry it seasonally. Highly recommended. Look around November to Feb. Bulb time. The onions are, well I'd rather give the space to the triple X large clove garlic.

Pity the poor apartment dwellers who have no garden.

Moi

Getting bored with freakish floods in the Midwest? Last one in Pittsburgh near Dave.

Well this week we have a hurricane working up the Atlantic Coast toward Bob3. ETA, Friday - Saturday.

If this hurricane would just catch up with one of those Midwest thunderstorms we might have some voluminous aqueous weather reports.

Waiting for first hand accounts because here in paradise the weather is just so all the same, y'know.

Moi

Here in Seattle we have had a brutal, debilitating heat wave. For the first time in over a year, and for two days in a row it reached 85 degrees, and it went almost a week without rain. It was aweful. I had to lay down in front of the AC and pant. We just aren't used to this. Must be global warming.

Transward

transward (imported) wrote: Tue Aug 23, 2011 11:02 pm Here in Seattle we have had a brutal, debilitating heat wave. For the first time in over a year, and for two days in a row it reached 85 degrees, and it went almost a week without rain. It was aweful. I had to lay down in front of the AC and pant. We just aren't used to this. Must be global warming.

Transward

Tell me about it! I'm just a few hours north, and it's been completely and totally unreasonable! I thought I was going to die those two days when it crossed north of 80f. Someone just has to do something about this.

BossTamsin (imported) wrote: Tue Aug 23, 2011 11:09 pm Tell me about it! I'm just a few hours north, and it's been completely and totally unreasonable! I thought I was going to die those two days when it crossed north of 80f. Someone just has to do something about this.

I did something about it; I escaped the heatwave in the Northwest, that terrible 80° stuff, by going to Texas for a few days. It was only 105° to 110° there.

You guys are to much, 80 being to hot, but that is only half of the story, humidity is the other half. Its when its 106 and the humidity is 85% and the due point is 80 that you really want to stay in front of the AC.

River

moi621 (imported) wrote: Tue Aug 23, 2011 7:50 pm Getting bored with freakish floods in the Midwest? Last one in Pittsburgh near Dave.

...

Moi

It was just too much water for a system that is old and a series of roads that form a natural bowl. It's a shame people died. The authorities are hurrying to fix it. That is the right thing to do after the storm. It's that crumbling infrastructure thing that we keep hearing about.

From the Pittsburgh Post Gazette:

On flood-struck Washington Boulevard Monday, crews from the agencies responsible for the overtaxed sewers there began the job of cleaning and reinforcing the system, while the region's leadership started talking about potential solutions to Friday's calamity that caused four deaths.

Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority and Allegheny County Sanitary Authority officials met and identified potential short- and long-term fixes that ranged from emergency road closures during storms to raising Washington Boulevard above flood level.

Pittsburgh Councilman Patrick Dowd, a PWSA board member whose district includes part of the area that flooded Friday, said the only real solution was to rebuild the intersection of Washington and Allegheny River Boulevard, which currently forms "a dam" at one end of a vast topographic bowl.

"No matter how large the pipe is that you build, you're always going to have a storm at some point that is too big for it," he said.

In this case, the large storm sewers running down Washington Boulevard -- 108 inches and 102 inches in diameter, respectively -- received too much water for the pipes near the Allegheny River to convey.

He said a 48-inch pipe carries water toward Alcosan's treatment plant beside the Ohio River and a 132-inch pipe carries overflow to the Allegheny River -- but that's not enough.

"The dam has to be broken and let the water naturally get to the rivers."

The flash flood that hit Friday afternoon occurred as more than 2 inches of rain fell in one hour in the watershed around Washington Boulevard, leaving motorists stranded in trapped vehicles.

Emergency workers rescued more than a dozen people from trees and the roofs of their vehicles. But a mother and her two children from Plum drowned inside their vehicle, and an Oakmont woman died when officials believe she was washed into a sewer and ended up on the bank of the Allegheny River, where her body was found Saturday.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11235/11 ... z1VrMYAcHZ

Dave (imported) wrote: Wed Aug 24, 2011 5:51 am It was just too much water for a system that is old and a series of roads that form a natural bowl. It's a shame people died. The authorities are hurrying to fix it. That is the right thing to do after the storm. It's that crumbling infrastructure thing that we keep hearing about.

The same thing happens on the Mississippi, or should I say somewhere on the Mississippi, it to is an old system, had a natural bowl which was damned up and now floods.

But now you control where and who you flood

River

I drove that area lots of times. Took my drivers license test on that road.

It is behind the Highland Park area. The Highland PArk Zoo sits atop a hill and down in a valley.

On the other side is an equally high neighborhood and Washington Blvd comes from major suburbs and neighborhoods east and slightly south of Pittsburgh (East Liberty, Oakland, Shadyside, Squirrel Hill). Washington Blvd is a main, four lane road that ends at the approaches to the Highland Park Bridge that crosses the Allegheny river (Routes 8 and 28 if those mean something)...

Like most of Pittsburgh's river banks when you get away from Point State Park and the downtown city, there are broad flood planes that have entire communities built on them. The Highland Park Bridge spans more than just river. IT spans an entire community on either side of the river. The approach roads form natural funnels and paths for water drainage.

The rain overflowed two 8 foot diameter storm sewers and came up over roads to a depth of six to ten feet.

Now that's just an exceptional amount of water in less than an hour.