I answered hurricanes, but really, “people” here in the NY City area don’t worry about them much if at all, even tho many are still recovering from Sandy…
Tho the nuclear power plant about 25 miles north of NY City that is NOT earthquake hardened and built on a major fault line (albeit one that’s been inactive for over two centuries) is probably more of a real issue.
But we’re safe, since major earthquakes in this area only happen about once every 200 or so years…
TL;DR: NY’s Indian Point nuclear reactor leaks radioactive iodine and since it started operating has likely significantly increased the rate of thyroid and other cancers in hundred’s of thousands of locals.
@lotsofgoats, @FroodyFrog I live in an area of Queens where people in low-lying areas are supposed to come to in the event of flooding (“your failure to plan for high water is not my emergency… so go away!!”). Sandy was almost a non-event for me (~1/2" of rain). Irene was much worse, compounded by a borked float switch that wouldn’t shut off properly after the water level dropped (so I rigged an alarm bell with it and was awakened every 10-20 minutes for the next 16 hours, after already being awake for ~20 hours).
I will honestly say as a member of the Kansas community that I do not fear tornadoes but welcome them. With that being said volcanic eruptions for sure
@jbartus I already attained maximum grief when, as I browsed the Meh forum in an attempt to burn enough time to get tired enough to go to sleep and escape the horrible pain of remaining alive for the night, I saw yet another (unicorn) attack Trump for no fucking reason at all.
(TC edit - the name calling is done, on both sides.)
People 'round here are mostly concerned about tornadoes, even though flooding is far more common, particularly for the old half of town that’s all more or less a flood plain. But I suppose your house being wet is far less troubling than your house being rubble, and also probably wet.
We get hurricanes, but this far inland they rarely cause major damage (Fran wouldn’t’ve been nearly as bad if we hadn’t had a week of rain before the hurricane arrived; that saturated ground couldn’t have held the trees against a stiff breeze by then). Conversely, my friend’s house was ripped apart around him by a tornado that killed several people 5 years ago. I’m probably equally as concerned about the nuclear plant I’m within evacuation range for, but that’s not a natural disaster.
On the other hand, the Hurricanes have been a disaster for years now, failing to make the playoffs for the last 7 seasons, and only making the playoffs once since winning the Stanley Cup.
@FroodyFrog I don’t think this one is, thankfully, but I’ve heard the one by Wilmington is (Southport). It’s also right next to the ocean and has the same reactor model as Fukushima did. But I’m sure that’ll all be fine.
Almost 6 years ago we had strong, steady rain for about 2 days straight. It ended up flooding the river that runs through town and a sizable portion of the city ended up under water. It was a once in a hundred year event, though.
I’m way more worried about a tornado whipping through town. The local insurance company is, too, given the brick shithouse of a data center they just built. It’s designed to withstand an F5.
Blizzards. Real ones, not like that weak ass shit they get in Atlanta that shuts the city down for a week but real, honest to god, hand to bible blizzards with snowfall measured in feet or yards, not fractions of inches.
This is what the aftermath of a blizzard looks like:
@ceagee pahahaha. You kids are sweet. You added a year to your blizzard, giving it away that it is rare things are that bad. I bet you even got off work for it. We face that every year. The only way we get off school and work is if the predicted high temp for the day is below -70°F. Snow is never a problem.
@simplersimon Hey dere, neighbor! My wife grew up “spittin’ distance from Canada”, as I like to say.
I think it’s safe to say that we don’t really worry about the snow. It’s just how it goes. Hell, it didn’t even cross my mind when looking st the poll.
@jbartus Not that I want to be in the position of defending Atlanta, but (a) given the horror that is Atlanta rush hour, that section of highway probably looks just as deadlocked on a sunny day; (b) why invest in snow equipment when that happens maaaaaybe once a year, and not at all many years, when it will all melt away naturally in a day or two; and a lot of the people in Atlanta are from someplace else, many from up north. Somehow once they cross that Mason-Dixon line they forget how to drive in the snow. Part of the problem may be that they’re used to driving on treated and cleared roads, whereas down south the roads are rarely/barely treated or cleared (see point , and down here geography and climate conspire to mean we get a lot more sleet and freezing rain depositing sheets of solid ice on the ground instead of snow to provide better traction. All too often we see proof that just because you can drive in the snow, that doesn’t mean you can drive on ice.
@ceagee@jbartus Perhaps similar to the @simplersimon experience, the snow photos shown are more like biennial events in Steamboat Springs. It’s a matter of expectation. And geography.
@jbartus Unfortunately, not MY town. My sis-in-law lived there for many years, so frequent visits were possible. Many of those visits occurred during ski season. Coincidently. Really (not really).
I wish we could afford to retire there. Of course I have a retirement plan. I plan to ski
@jbartus In '74 and again in '79 we had measurable (inches) of snow in Las Vegas. The airport shut down because they didn’t have enough plowing equipment to keep the runways clear, but we still had to go to school. Some public schools did close for a day. I think a fair number of businesses didn’t open either (the casinos were open of course).
We did get out of one class to have snowball fights in the courtyard in '79. That was fun. The snow was gone by the next morning…
Overall I think we did better than the big southern cities with their snowfalls.
The year is there just bc it was the first picture up on google. True, we had mild( for us) winter this past year. El Nino, Climate change, both,take your pick.
I will give you that Minnesota usually gets colder than WNY. BUT we get more snow. It’s just a fact.
We are damn proud of it.
We get all that moisture off lake Erie. AND if the wind is just right, bc I am not actually in BUF, we get it off Lake Ontario too. Makes for a lot of white stuff.
@jbartus We get ice with the same frequency as snow. That said, after one largely unpredicted glazing shut down the area 10 years ago, the DOT got brining equipment and pretreat the roads for even minimal icing risks. It’s mainly the highways and major arteries that get treated, though. Some of the suburbs also pretreat and get more into neighborhoods now. The easiest path is still to just take the day off, though. Then get back to work the next day.
I only answer tornadoes because the first tornado to ever hit my hometown in recorded history was 4 years ago (on leap day) and it killed 8. We’re on the new madrid fault though. …so maybe earthquakes should be a bigger fear. … especially considering the amount of mining that has gone on under the town. …
Floods, hurricanes, tornados, hail storms, straight line winds… Had a water spout come ashore, land behind my house (it became a short lived tornado and took out 10 houses behind me), engulf my house in a lightening ball (my neighbor said the house disappeared completely) while I was in it - odd as the light was very white and opaque but not blinding. Scared the living daylights out of the cats such that they were scared of thunder and lightening storms the rest of their lives. They had been on a table looking out the window and jumped down and ran off the split second before it hit. House shook hard. Amazingly not one electronic was shorted out but the lightening rod was melted. Tree in front of the house had been hit by lightening before so I knew this rental was a high point.
Depending on how big of an area we want to look at, a lot of these are concerns. Personally, earthquakes would be the worst and has the possibility to really fuck things up. The volcanoes that surround me could be bad but I think I’m far enough away that it wouldn’t be very damaging.
If you expand the area out 10 miles around me, there are a few neighborhoods on flood plains and people throw a fit every year when their basements fill up with water.
Another 25 miles out from there and there’s places that get some pretty bad mudslides.
Expand one more time, and half the state tends to light on fire every summer. While I’m not in the burny area the fires have been making the air really shitty the last few years.
So, fire effects me the most, but earthquake is the most worrisome.
@hallmike She’s around, she’s been completely immersed in a fund-raising project for the past couple of months. I didn’t do anything (at least that I know of).
South Florida = hurricanes. Every time a disturbance occurs, the TV stations go ape, as if it is the apocalypse this time. (Like right now, with a disturbance in the ocean that will obviously miss us.) But we have been lucky for many years.
ok, I answered Floods, because it’s the most common in the area, with Tornaders a close second.
however, if I’m being truly honest, SUPERVOLCANOES.
Yellowstone is somewhere in the spectrum of Nearly-Over due, and when it does go, bye bye to a large chunk of the North American Population. many nearly instantly. the rest die of ash either falling out and burying them, or blocking out the sun, causing starvation from the lack of sunlight to grow crops, and just maybe triggering an Ice age…
so you know, nothing major…
and Yes, it’s a WHEN, not an IF. Thanks to Continental Drift. that Hot spot has carved out a wide Valley of “regular”(every 2-600k years) cataclysmic eruptions, exploding the mountains atop it, from the Pacific Coast, all the way across Oregon, and Idaho, to where the park is today… yes, it’s a thing, look at a topographical map of the northwest, and it jumps out at you
@earlyre Not that the Yellowstone Caldera has zero risk, but I actually think that Earth being struck by a large asteroid is a more likely event…
Either way, I’m not spending much energy worrying about it #fatalistic
@FroodyFrog *2032
Not sure how much credence I want to give USA Today for ‘hard’ news. Actually, maybe nobody is left that’s really equipped to deliver ‘hard’ news
Tornadoes. Tornadoes two days ago, tornadoes yesterday, tornadoes today, tomorrow, and for the Memorial Day weekend. Why, oh why, did I move back to Kansas?
With the last piece of what you wrote, you gave me a new appreciation for the first Wizard of Oz book. Even though she’d probably have been a bit happier in Oz (after all, she ended up moving to Oz with her aunt and uncle in a later book (can’t remember which one now, but Princess Ozma was responsible), she still wanted to go home to Kansas because that’s where her friends and family were.
@Barney To be near to me?
I sometimes wonder why I’m still living in Kansas, but that’s usually sometime in the middle of February when the freezing mark sounds like a summer vacation, not during severe weather season.
Hurricanes suck-- We suffered through Rita, Ike , and Humberto - we were displaced out of our home for five weeks with Rita and had to flee to Mississippi to live in a hotel because of Ike. Not fun cleaning up after hurricanes hit but we were luckier than others and know that. Still cleaning up freezers and refrigerators after no power was not fun ( I snuck back in county and cleaned my parents and our refrigerators and freezers out after three days with no power ) but others after weeks of no power had to throw their refrigerators and freezers away .
The smell around the area was overwhelming and it was eerily quiet as the birds had flown away before the storm hit so you didn’t hear birds,no humming of air conditioning units, and I saw poor animals ( dogs and cats left behind ) scrounging for food in the streets. I got dog and cat food from my house and fed some of the animals but many were too terrified and ran away when I approached them. I rescued two dogs and tried to find their owners for weeks after we moved back home and they were never claimed . Found two good homes for the dogs l rescuers and our local shelter had many dogs people left but never claimed – I was surprised how many people just left their pets and evacuated … No way if my pets could be taken with me to hotels etc., I wasn’t leaving either .
Many streets were impassable so I got out and walked down the streets with light poles strewn across them and trees down everywhere. It was really
strange seeing no people , no cars on the streets ( except police cars). And no lights as when darkness fell it was totally pitch black in the area. We had a tree fall in front of our home but our garage is angled to the side . The tree fell between our garage and house and the branches were on roof but didn’t go through the roof !
We were fortunate indeed as others weren’t so lucky! There were no fences up around the area so you literally saw everyone’s house with no fences up ! Nails and debris was everywhere so for months even after we could go back home, we were getting tire repairs at local discount tire shop ! Heck their store had all its windows blown out as dos all the glass stir fronts in the area.
@AttyVette We’ve lived in the Florida panhandle for well over 30 years. We’re only 15 miles from the Gulf. We’ve run from a couple storms in those years and have been very,very lucky. It’s been awhile since there was anything really threatening head this way. And the people here have gone complacent about it. They don’t recall Opal or Ivan.
When that next big one heads this way, we’ll be outta here fast. I fear a lot of idiots are going to learn the hard way.
@Teripie Yeah, my bugout plans include three large cat carriers, a box of documents/sentimental stuff, meds, every bit of chocolate in the house, and cash. The destination is someplace north of here, maybe mountains. I was way too involved in helping devastated people survive, after Katrina. Until you’ve seen real disaster, you simply cannot comprehend what it means.
@AttyVette I can’t imagine abandoning my dogs to near-certain death. I’d pack a tent and plan to camp out for months if I had to before I’d leave them behind.
@jbartus exactly I was so upset because Rita hit AFTER Katrina and the news showed what happened to the animals left behind after that disaster! That’s why I was stunned so many people here did the same thing – not me I wasn’t leaving without my pets - no way , no how, NEVER-- our cities sea wall came within being topped by the ocean by just a few inches not feet! If it had topped the sea wall our home, would have been under water as we are just a few feet above sea level .We were lucky – I saw Destruction and tragedy elsewhere in Mississippi after Katrina and even locally after Rita and Ike . The news stories and pictures on tv don’t do justice to what devastation looks like firsthand. I hope to never see these things again in real life!
I chose hurricanes, the season is upon us. Although I lived in Miami when Andrew hit, slept thru the whole damn thing. Moved to north Florida and got Alison, Charlie, David, Katrina.
They don’t bother me really.
BE SMART, BE PREPARED, BE SAFE!
then say FRUCK IT!
Tornadoes are the ever-present threat, but the looming threat that scares me the most is the earthquake along the New Madrid Fault Line. A nice shake there will put some of Memphis underwater and possibly have a nice ripple effect for miles. Of course, while living in Memphis, we had a near tornado (aka “straight line winds,” aka “that funnel didn’t hit the ground now did it?”) hit my school, and when I moved back to the South I lived right across from where a destructive tornado had hit a few years prior.
on a related note - the NWS now has a new saying to go along with “Turn around, don’t drown.” it’s “When thunder roars, go indoors.”
No love for blizzards and snowstorms? As a New Englander, hurricanes maybe once a year or two but snowstorms are consistently terrifying (and fun) every winter.
I’m in the Ozarks, so ice storms, ice storms, ice-frigging-storms. The kind that snap 60 foot power poles like match sticks and leave a surface so slick you can’t stand up outside, much less carry 60 foot replacement poles up hills into remote areas where there are no roads to get the trucks in. And just for an added kick, the temps then drop below zero and just hover there. It’s all the fun of a hurricane, but with ice. And not the good kind of ice that goes in tall drinks.
Florida has terrible sinkholes, they scare the shit out of me sometimes. Especially after one opened up under a guy’s bedroom, swallowed him up while he was sleeping, and it collapsed in on itself so deep they weren’t even able to find his body.
@RuralNinja Florida has several geological maps showing sinkhole clusters, and places where the underlying conditions are favorable, aka where NOT to live. Google it.
@OldCatLady I know what maps you’re talking about. There’s only so much you can do though, when half the state has a high chance of dangerous, sudden sinkholes forming. Except move, which I plan to.
Having lived in CA, I’ve been through flooding, mudslides, fires, earthquakes, El Nino, La Nina, and once sat in a traffic jam for over 10 hours on Christmas Eve because a fire was dancing over the freeway and it was the only path available.
We get snow. It doesn’t worry me. Every once in a while we get ice and that’s disconcerting. But unless the snow all happens at once, melts quickly, causing massive flooding, which leads to mudslides, which leads to fires… I’m not all that stressed.
Cats. Just cats.
Oh sure, they’re all cuddly and affectionate now, but if I die at home, I know the furry little bastards will eat my face before my rotting corpse is found. I don’t want to spend eternity with my face chewed off.
I answered hurricanes, but really, “people” here in the NY City area don’t worry about them much if at all, even tho many are still recovering from Sandy…
Tho the nuclear power plant about 25 miles north of NY City that is NOT earthquake hardened and built on a major fault line (albeit one that’s been inactive for over two centuries) is probably more of a real issue.
But we’re safe, since major earthquakes in this area only happen about once every 200 or so years…
@baqui63
I took Indian Point into account.
Although apparently we have bigger issues with it than if we have an Earthquake.
@FroodyFrog apparently… (I just read the article you linked)
@baqui63
Could you summarize it? There are too many words there.
@baqui63 yea i went with “floods” for this reason – we don’t care about the hurricaney parts of the hurricane, really
@Lotsofgoats @baqui63
I live on a (not steep hill). My biggest concern in the extremely unlikely hurricane + nuclear power point affected combo.
lol…
TL;DR: NY’s Indian Point nuclear reactor leaks radioactive iodine and since it started operating has likely significantly increased the rate of thyroid and other cancers in hundred’s of thousands of locals.
@lotsofgoats, @FroodyFrog I live in an area of Queens where people in low-lying areas are supposed to come to in the event of flooding (“your failure to plan for high water is not my emergency… so go away!!”). Sandy was almost a non-event for me (~1/2" of rain). Irene was much worse, compounded by a borked float switch that wouldn’t shut off properly after the water level dropped (so I rigged an alarm bell with it and was awakened every 10-20 minutes for the next 16 hours, after already being awake for ~20 hours).
I will honestly say as a member of the Kansas community that I do not fear tornadoes but welcome them. With that being said volcanic eruptions for sure
@boredashell
@cj0e i need to contact this man
Thankfully, the nuclear power plant 26 miles from me isn’t used the same way as years ago.
However, it’s still dangerous (and not just because it’s right by a fault line in the earth)
Interesting read.
@FroodyFrog lol (or perhaps not). We are relative neighbors.
Trump
@somf69
Isn’t voting considered artificial though?
@somf69 I think that qualifies as an unnatural disaster.
@Dizavid @somf69
@somf69 I think we have a winner (and a loser).
@Dizavid you really don’t see how not saying anything would save you grief here?
@somf69 ha…just posted the same thing until @jbartus told me in time to delete…nice. I can appreciate someone who wants to start some shit.
@jbartus I already attained maximum grief when, as I browsed the Meh forum in an attempt to burn enough time to get tired enough to go to sleep and escape the horrible pain of remaining alive for the night, I saw yet another (unicorn) attack Trump for no fucking reason at all.
(TC edit - the name calling is done, on both sides.)
@Dizavid sounds like you need a hobby.
@Dizavid This is America. It’s our God-given right to bitch about our politicians. We don’t need a reason.
You are free to bitch about whichever politician you want, or all of them if you are so inclined.
There are some images in here that might be appropriate
https://www.buzzfeed.com/robinedds/the-most-wonderfully-scottish-things-that-have-ever-happe?utm_term=.hrAkYvBmM3#.gq51NJQ0lo
@Thumperchick Thanks for light-handedly maintaining the peace.
@2many2no @Thumperchick
UNICORN ATTACK!!!
@FroodyFrog Some days, I could really use some rainbow farts!
http://shirt.woot.com/offers/dark-side-of-the-unicorn
Morning.
@cercopithecoid The struggle is real
@cercopithecoid Monday morning…
People 'round here are mostly concerned about tornadoes, even though flooding is far more common, particularly for the old half of town that’s all more or less a flood plain. But I suppose your house being wet is far less troubling than your house being rubble, and also probably wet.
In West Texas, Mother Nature periodically sucks thing up into the air and spits out the pieces as 2x4 projectiles.
We’re lucky though, because the effect is localized and short-lived. So far, they have passed me by, although sometimes uncomfortably closely.
sinkholes?
also, guessing anyone who would have reason to put landslides put earthquakes
@chr Every year my home mortgage company sends me a letter telling me I need to add sink hole protection. And every year I just ignore it.
Earthquakes. We’re in the middle of the New Madrid fault zone.
Earthquakes. I live in LA now, but my very first quake was the Loma Prieta when I lived in SF. Terrifying.
@AnnaB I was less than 5 miles from the epicenter. Truly life changing.
@KDemo Eek. Knowing what it was like where I was, I can’t even imagine.
We get hurricanes, but this far inland they rarely cause major damage (Fran wouldn’t’ve been nearly as bad if we hadn’t had a week of rain before the hurricane arrived; that saturated ground couldn’t have held the trees against a stiff breeze by then). Conversely, my friend’s house was ripped apart around him by a tornado that killed several people 5 years ago. I’m probably equally as concerned about the nuclear plant I’m within evacuation range for, but that’s not a natural disaster.
@jqubed
If it’s on a fault line then you could consider it a natural disaster.
On the other hand, the Hurricanes have been a disaster for years now, failing to make the playoffs for the last 7 seasons, and only making the playoffs once since winning the Stanley Cup.
@FroodyFrog I don’t think this one is, thankfully, but I’ve heard the one by Wilmington is (Southport). It’s also right next to the ocean and has the same reactor model as Fukushima did. But I’m sure that’ll all be fine.
Almost 6 years ago we had strong, steady rain for about 2 days straight. It ended up flooding the river that runs through town and a sizable portion of the city ended up under water. It was a once in a hundred year event, though.
I’m way more worried about a tornado whipping through town. The local insurance company is, too, given the brick shithouse of a data center they just built. It’s designed to withstand an F5.
@SpenceMan01
Let me guess, Iowa?
@DVDBZN Close. I’m about 45 minutes north of the Iowa border.
Blizzards. Real ones, not like that weak ass shit they get in Atlanta that shuts the city down for a week but real, honest to god, hand to bible blizzards with snowfall measured in feet or yards, not fractions of inches.
This is what the aftermath of a blizzard looks like:
Not this. I’m looking at you Atlanta!
@jbartus Your snow looks a little wimpy to me.
I could go on and on. Of course, I’m not sure we really worry. We are prepared and kinda like it.
@ceagee @jbartus
@ceagee pahahaha. You kids are sweet. You added a year to your blizzard, giving it away that it is rare things are that bad. I bet you even got off work for it. We face that every year. The only way we get off school and work is if the predicted high temp for the day is below -70°F. Snow is never a problem.
@ceagee you should be joining in solidarity, not instigating a measuring contest!
Those southerners don’t know the meaning of snow!
Besides, we’re not prone to any of the other disasters I can think of
@simplersimon where are you from, if I may ask?
@jbartus Northern Minnesota. Or, as my Missourian mother liked to say, The Ninth Circle.
@simplersimon your mother sounds like a good sort, I think I’d like her.
We almost moved to Minnesota, mom’s company got bought by a company from out there when I was a kid.
@simplersimon Hey dere, neighbor! My wife grew up “spittin’ distance from Canada”, as I like to say.
I think it’s safe to say that we don’t really worry about the snow. It’s just how it goes. Hell, it didn’t even cross my mind when looking st the poll.
@SpenceMan01 like I said, it’s not so much a worry as the only natural disaster I can think of that actually threatens us.
@jbartus Not that I want to be in the position of defending Atlanta, but (a) given the horror that is Atlanta rush hour, that section of highway probably looks just as deadlocked on a sunny day; (b) why invest in snow equipment when that happens maaaaaybe once a year, and not at all many years, when it will all melt away naturally in a day or two; and
a lot of the people in Atlanta are from someplace else, many from up north. Somehow once they cross that Mason-Dixon line they forget how to drive in the snow. Part of the problem may be that they’re used to driving on treated and cleared roads, whereas down south the roads are rarely/barely treated or cleared (see point 
, and down here geography and climate conspire to mean we get a lot more sleet and freezing rain depositing sheets of solid ice on the ground instead of snow to provide better traction. All too often we see proof that just because you can drive in the snow, that doesn’t mean you can drive on ice.
@jqubed Oh, I can drive on ice. It’s the stopping that becomes a problem.
@jqubed if you get that much ice you should invest in equipment to treat your roads
For what it’s worth I am aware of all that, mostly I was just joking, though I do think it’s kind’ve silly that it was as big a crisis as it was.
@ceagee @jbartus Perhaps similar to the @simplersimon experience, the snow photos shown are more like biennial events in Steamboat Springs. It’s a matter of expectation. And geography.
@compunaut living on a mountain is cheating.
Your town is beautiful though, I learned to ski there.
@jbartus Unfortunately, not MY town. My sis-in-law lived there for many years, so frequent visits were possible. Many of those visits occurred during ski season. Coincidently. Really (not really).
I wish we could afford to retire there.
Of course I have a retirement plan. I plan to ski
@compunaut on the plus side you no longer have to worry about me nagging you to trade houses for a month in February.
@jbartus In '74 and again in '79 we had measurable (inches) of snow in Las Vegas. The airport shut down because they didn’t have enough plowing equipment to keep the runways clear, but we still had to go to school. Some public schools did close for a day. I think a fair number of businesses didn’t open either (the casinos were open of course).
We did get out of one class to have snowball fights in the courtyard in '79. That was fun. The snow was gone by the next morning…
Overall I think we did better than the big southern cities with their snowfalls.
@duodec
See, Atlanta, if Vegas can do it so can you!
@simplersimon
The year is there just bc it was the first picture up on google. True, we had mild( for us) winter this past year. El Nino, Climate change, both,take your pick.
I will give you that Minnesota usually gets colder than WNY. BUT we get more snow. It’s just a fact.
We are damn proud of it.
We get all that moisture off lake Erie. AND if the wind is just right, bc I am not actually in BUF, we get it off Lake Ontario too. Makes for a lot of white stuff.
@jbartus Are you one of those obnox…uhh, interesting Boston/New York/Eastie-types?
@compunaut I’m from the best damned place on Earth, Massachusetts.
@jbartus We get ice with the same frequency as snow. That said, after one largely unpredicted glazing shut down the area 10 years ago, the DOT got brining equipment and pretreat the roads for even minimal icing risks. It’s mainly the highways and major arteries that get treated, though. Some of the suburbs also pretreat and get more into neighborhoods now. The easiest path is still to just take the day off, though. Then get back to work the next day.
@jqubed
¯\_(ツ)/¯I still find it crazy how badly they were affected by the tiny amount of snow that fell is all. Sorry I’m not sorry.
Tie between earthquakes, tsunami, and volcanoes (Seattle area)
I only answer tornadoes because the first tornado to ever hit my hometown in recorded history was 4 years ago (on leap day) and it killed 8. We’re on the new madrid fault though. …so maybe earthquakes should be a bigger fear. … especially considering the amount of mining that has gone on under the town. …
Tornado Alley FTW! …I guess…
@thismyusername
@mfladd is that actual footage from Sharknado 3?
*No spoilers please.
@mfladd Who knew she had such nice legs?
Blizzards. Really vicious blizzards.
@simplersimon yeah left that off my list
Floods, hurricanes, tornados, hail storms, straight line winds… Had a water spout come ashore, land behind my house (it became a short lived tornado and took out 10 houses behind me), engulf my house in a lightening ball (my neighbor said the house disappeared completely) while I was in it - odd as the light was very white and opaque but not blinding. Scared the living daylights out of the cats such that they were scared of thunder and lightening storms the rest of their lives. They had been on a table looking out the window and jumped down and ran off the split second before it hit. House shook hard. Amazingly not one electronic was shorted out but the lightening rod was melted. Tree in front of the house had been hit by lightening before so I knew this rental was a high point.
Depending on how big of an area we want to look at, a lot of these are concerns. Personally, earthquakes would be the worst and has the possibility to really fuck things up. The volcanoes that surround me could be bad but I think I’m far enough away that it wouldn’t be very damaging.
If you expand the area out 10 miles around me, there are a few neighborhoods on flood plains and people throw a fit every year when their basements fill up with water.
Another 25 miles out from there and there’s places that get some pretty bad mudslides.
Expand one more time, and half the state tends to light on fire every summer. While I’m not in the burny area the fires have been making the air really shitty the last few years.
So, fire effects me the most, but earthquake is the most worrisome.
@metaphore
I’m going to guess Washington or Oregon. How close am I?
Potholes - Northeast Pennsylvania resident
My hair. Although I’m probably more worried about it as a natural disaster than the people in my area. Well, except maybe co-workers.
When @MrsPavlov is angry and she gets quiet.
Really quiet.
@Pavlov She’s been pretty quiet around here lately. What did you do this time?
@hallmike She’s around, she’s been completely immersed in a fund-raising project for the past couple of months. I didn’t do anything (at least that I know of).
Hillary coming to town. Words just can’t describe the terror.
@cranky1950 Agreed… or worse yet… her becoming president…
@sohmageek I can’t think of an alternative right now that doesn’t fill me with fear/anger/mistrust/sadness
snow
South Florida = hurricanes. Every time a disturbance occurs, the TV stations go ape, as if it is the apocalypse this time. (Like right now, with a disturbance in the ocean that will obviously miss us.) But we have been lucky for many years.
@olperfesser I remember Andrew. No wind-up, just the punch. Way too close to the apocalypse for most residents.
Extra captcha when ordering fukus.
Transgender individuals using public restrooms :sigh: There are so many more important things to worry about #WastedEnergy
@compunaut I scrolled through to post this. For my part, I’m afraid of these guys.
@compunaut Danny on the end is all over the shithouse. The citizens of Texas needn’t worry.
ok, I answered Floods, because it’s the most common in the area, with Tornaders a close second.
however, if I’m being truly honest, SUPERVOLCANOES.
Yellowstone is somewhere in the spectrum of Nearly-Over due, and when it does go, bye bye to a large chunk of the North American Population. many nearly instantly. the rest die of ash either falling out and burying them, or blocking out the sun, causing starvation from the lack of sunlight to grow crops, and just maybe triggering an Ice age…
so you know, nothing major…
and Yes, it’s a WHEN, not an IF. Thanks to Continental Drift. that Hot spot has carved out a wide Valley of “regular”(every 2-600k years) cataclysmic eruptions, exploding the mountains atop it, from the Pacific Coast, all the way across Oregon, and Idaho, to where the park is today… yes, it’s a thing, look at a topographical map of the northwest, and it jumps out at you
@earlyre Not that the Yellowstone Caldera has zero risk, but I actually think that Earth being struck by a large asteroid is a more likely event…
Either way, I’m not spending much energy worrying about it #fatalistic
@compunaut @earlyre
Interesting you mention that.
2023
@FroodyFrog *2032
Not sure how much credence I want to give USA Today for ‘hard’ news. Actually, maybe nobody is left that’s really equipped to deliver ‘hard’ news
@compunaut
@earlyre It’s one time when you wish you really, really didn’t know that. The glee with which geologists announce new findings is unbounded, though.
Tornadoes. Tornadoes two days ago, tornadoes yesterday, tornadoes today, tomorrow, and for the Memorial Day weekend. Why, oh why, did I move back to Kansas?
@Barney Just click your heels thrice.
@Barney
Because you want to end up in Oz?
But seriously, possibly because it’s (somewhat) cheaper to live in Kansas than other states.
@FroodyFrog It is a lot cheaper to live in Kansas (after all who’d want to live here?), but maybe it’s because there’s no place like home.
@Barney
With the last piece of what you wrote, you gave me a new appreciation for the first Wizard of Oz book. Even though she’d probably have been a bit happier in Oz (after all, she ended up moving to Oz with her aunt and uncle in a later book (can’t remember which one now, but Princess Ozma was responsible), she still wanted to go home to Kansas because that’s where her friends and family were.
@FroodyFrog Oh, shoot, are you trying to make me cry? Yep, I’m having one of those days…
@Barney To be near to me?
I sometimes wonder why I’m still living in Kansas, but that’s usually sometime in the middle of February when the freezing mark sounds like a summer vacation, not during severe weather season.
@smyle Do you have a basement?
@Barney Absolutely!
@smyle I don’t. I’ll be right over.
@FroodyFrog I’ve always loved this line from Robert Frost: “Home is the place where, if you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
@Barney Door’s open - come on down.
@smyle The price is right!
@Barney
@medz That face… It looks awfully familiar.
@Barney Between all the tornados and Brownback, Kansas is hosed…that goes for our little dogs too.
@medz Kansas is in deep trouble thanks to Brownback. I fear we may never recover.
Hurricanes suck-- We suffered through Rita, Ike , and Humberto - we were displaced out of our home for five weeks with Rita and had to flee to Mississippi to live in a hotel because of Ike. Not fun cleaning up after hurricanes hit but we were luckier than others and know that. Still cleaning up freezers and refrigerators after no power was not fun ( I snuck back in county and cleaned my parents and our refrigerators and freezers out after three days with no power ) but others after weeks of no power had to throw their refrigerators and freezers away .
The smell around the area was overwhelming and it was eerily quiet as the birds had flown away before the storm hit so you didn’t hear birds,no humming of air conditioning units, and I saw poor animals ( dogs and cats left behind ) scrounging for food in the streets. I got dog and cat food from my house and fed some of the animals but many were too terrified and ran away when I approached them. I rescued two dogs and tried to find their owners for weeks after we moved back home and they were never claimed . Found two good homes for the dogs l rescuers and our local shelter had many dogs people left but never claimed – I was surprised how many people just left their pets and evacuated … No way if my pets could be taken with me to hotels etc., I wasn’t leaving either .
Many streets were impassable so I got out and walked down the streets with light poles strewn across them and trees down everywhere. It was really
strange seeing no people , no cars on the streets ( except police cars). And no lights as when darkness fell it was totally pitch black in the area. We had a tree fall in front of our home but our garage is angled to the side . The tree fell between our garage and house and the branches were on roof but didn’t go through the roof !
We were fortunate indeed as others weren’t so lucky! There were no fences up around the area so you literally saw everyone’s house with no fences up ! Nails and debris was everywhere so for months even after we could go back home, we were getting tire repairs at local discount tire shop ! Heck their store had all its windows blown out as dos all the glass stir fronts in the area.
@AttyVette We’ve lived in the Florida panhandle for well over 30 years. We’re only 15 miles from the Gulf. We’ve run from a couple storms in those years and have been very,very lucky. It’s been awhile since there was anything really threatening head this way. And the people here have gone complacent about it. They don’t recall Opal or Ivan.
When that next big one heads this way, we’ll be outta here fast. I fear a lot of idiots are going to learn the hard way.
@Teripie Yeah, my bugout plans include three large cat carriers, a box of documents/sentimental stuff, meds, every bit of chocolate in the house, and cash. The destination is someplace north of here, maybe mountains. I was way too involved in helping devastated people survive, after Katrina. Until you’ve seen real disaster, you simply cannot comprehend what it means.
@AttyVette I can’t imagine abandoning my dogs to near-certain death. I’d pack a tent and plan to camp out for months if I had to before I’d leave them behind.
@jbartus exactly I was so upset because Rita hit AFTER Katrina and the news showed what happened to the animals left behind after that disaster! That’s why I was stunned so many people here did the same thing – not me I wasn’t leaving without my pets - no way , no how, NEVER-- our cities sea wall came within being topped by the ocean by just a few inches not feet! If it had topped the sea wall our home, would have been under water as we are just a few feet above sea level .We were lucky – I saw Destruction and tragedy elsewhere in Mississippi after Katrina and even locally after Rita and Ike . The news stories and pictures on tv don’t do justice to what devastation looks like firsthand. I hope to never see these things again in real life!
I chose hurricanes, the season is upon us. Although I lived in Miami when Andrew hit, slept thru the whole damn thing. Moved to north Florida and got Alison, Charlie, David, Katrina.
They don’t bother me really.
BE SMART, BE PREPARED, BE SAFE!
then say FRUCK IT!
@mmcs Yup. I moved back to Florida in 2003, after 30 years elsewhere, and 2004 gave us Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne. What a welcome.
Definitely floods. Grew up in this area. Crazy stuff
Tornadoes are the ever-present threat, but the looming threat that scares me the most is the earthquake along the New Madrid Fault Line. A nice shake there will put some of Memphis underwater and possibly have a nice ripple effect for miles. Of course, while living in Memphis, we had a near tornado (aka “straight line winds,” aka “that funnel didn’t hit the ground now did it?”) hit my school, and when I moved back to the South I lived right across from where a destructive tornado had hit a few years prior.
on a related note - the NWS now has a new saying to go along with “Turn around, don’t drown.” it’s “When thunder roars, go indoors.”
We had a derecho. It snapped all of the trees by the skatepark in half. Cool.
No love for blizzards and snowstorms? As a New Englander, hurricanes maybe once a year or two but snowstorms are consistently terrifying (and fun) every winter.
I’m in the Ozarks, so ice storms, ice storms, ice-frigging-storms. The kind that snap 60 foot power poles like match sticks and leave a surface so slick you can’t stand up outside, much less carry 60 foot replacement poles up hills into remote areas where there are no roads to get the trucks in. And just for an added kick, the temps then drop below zero and just hover there. It’s all the fun of a hurricane, but with ice. And not the good kind of ice that goes in tall drinks.
@rockblossom I think you’re supposed to use helicopters or airships for this kind of lifting job. Just sayin’
Cali = earthquakes all day
@jakeyphro Earthquakes are only 1 of the 4 seasons in california
Florida has terrible sinkholes, they scare the shit out of me sometimes. Especially after one opened up under a guy’s bedroom, swallowed him up while he was sleeping, and it collapsed in on itself so deep they weren’t even able to find his body.
@RuralNinja Florida has several geological maps showing sinkhole clusters, and places where the underlying conditions are favorable, aka where NOT to live. Google it.
@OldCatLady I know what maps you’re talking about. There’s only so much you can do though, when half the state has a high chance of dangerous, sudden sinkholes forming. Except move, which I plan to.
Having lived in CA, I’ve been through flooding, mudslides, fires, earthquakes, El Nino, La Nina, and once sat in a traffic jam for over 10 hours on Christmas Eve because a fire was dancing over the freeway and it was the only path available.
We get snow. It doesn’t worry me. Every once in a while we get ice and that’s disconcerting. But unless the snow all happens at once, melts quickly, causing massive flooding, which leads to mudslides, which leads to fires… I’m not all that stressed.
Cats. Just cats.
Oh sure, they’re all cuddly and affectionate now, but if I die at home, I know the furry little bastards will eat my face before my rotting corpse is found. I don’t want to spend eternity with my face chewed off.