California Superstorm possible

Meteoroligist Evelyn Taft KCAL, LA

Stand back non believers, I believe we are gonna' get some rain!
According to Evelyn Taft of KCAL in L.A. quoting Dr. Lucy Jones of the U.S. Geological Survey. California may be in some deep trouble of the wet kind. A super storm is possible. One so big it makes the flood of 1964 seem like a drizzly day. I have lived through the 1955 flood and the 1964 flood, and I have seen conditions that made me think that a bigger flood was possible. They say that the '55 flood was a flood that only happenes every hundred years, and the '64 flood was a "thousand year flood". So, I just realaxed and figured that I've seen the worst of the worse, and it was over. But nope, a storm so big and bad is on it's way that makes all other storms fade in comparison.

A bigger storm than the '64 flood storm is hard to fathom. Nobody that didn't see the '64 flood with their very own eyes still can't imagine how hard it rained. So, try to wrap your brains around the following storm description.

Dr.Lucy Jones, USGS

"Imagine a rainstorm so large that it would be like hurricane Katrina hitting every day for a month.

Countless homes would be destroyed as if a million tornadoes roared through the city, and the cost of cleaning up would plunge the entire world into an economic depression for decades.
"It sounds like a scary script from a disaster movie right? But scientists say this is no fantasy. It will happen, and will destroy much of California.
They're predicting a superstorm that would turn a flood control channel into a river the size of the Mississippi, and would literally wash away many buildings.
Metrorologist Evelyn Taft from KCAL in Los Angeles says the storm will dump more than ten feet of water.
"We could possibly see a third of the state under water in a storm like this," says Taft.
They're calling it the "ark storm" like the biblical storm that forced Noah and his animals into the ark.
It would leave more people homeless than the Haiti earthquake."

"Dr. Lucy Jones from the U.S. Geological Survey created a computer model of the storm. She says the ark storm would be the most expensive natural disaster in history, saying, "We estimate it could cost as much as a trillion dollars." When will it happen? No one can predict with certainty, but one thing is for sure—when it comes, it will leave behind devastation and destruction like we've never seen before."

Some of you may not know, but the winter of 1861-62 had what is reputed to be a worse storm than the 1964 flood. The following is a description of the flood on the north coast. Garberville didn't give any description of the Eel River, so we can only wonder what happened here.

Great Flood of 1862
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Great Flood of 1862 or Noachian Deluge was the largest flood in the recorded history of Oregon, Nevada and California, occurring from December 1861 to January 1862. It was preceded by weeks of continuous rains (or snows in the high elevations) that began in Oregon in November 1861 and continued into January 1862. This was followed by record quantitative precipitation in January 9-12th, which contributed to a flood which extended from the Columbia River southward in western Oregon and through California to San Diego, and extended as far inland as Idaho in Washington Territory, Nevada and Utah in Utah Territory and Arizona in western New Mexico Territory.

"It was climaxed by a warmer, more intense storm with much more rain that was made more serious by the earlier large accumulation of snow, now melted by the rain in the lower elevations of the mountains. Throughout the affected area, all the streams and rivers rose to great heights, flooded the valleys, inundated or swept away towns, mills, dams, flumes, houses, fences, and domestic animals, and ruined fields. Early estimates of property damage was at $10,000,000. However, later it was estimated that approximately one-quarter of the taxable real estate in the state of California was destroyed in the flood. Dependent on property taxes, the State of California went bankrupt. The governor, state legislature, and state employees were not paid for a year and a half."

Having seen the '64 flood, I really thought that I had seen it all. Now I know that I haven't seen nothin' yet.

Earthquake, tidal wave, coming to a beach near you... Sooner than you think.

http://discovermagazine.com/2012/extreme-earth/01-big-one-earthquake-could-devastate-pacific-northwest/article_view?b_start:int=2&-C MONSTER CASCADIA QUAKE

Copalis Ghost Forest (Foreground)

Wednesday, March 28, 2012 they are going to have a Tsunami drill on the north coast. These drills have been going on, on the north coast since time began. In the coastal Indian legends there is a saying, "when the sky thunders, seek low places. When the Earth thunders seek high places". What that basically means is, "In a lightning storm stay low. In an earthquake... run for the hills." Darn good advice, even in the modern world. With all of our technology, we still have no idea how to control earthquakes. They are many times more powerful than the largest bombs that we have made. We are still running for the hills in an earthquake.

What we know today that the Indians may not have known, is that these earthquakes happen on a somewhat predictable cycle. Say... The Cascadia Subduction zone has an earthquake every 245-485 years, give or take a few years. Our biggest fear on the north coast is a pop in the subduction zone that could rip from Petrolia to Canada, loosening a 9 plus earthquake. Land could drop into the sea, or lift like it did most recently in 1981? in Petrolia. Kings Peak got 16 inches taller in that little quake, and seashore along Petrolia lifted over 4 feet. It was just a mouse of a quake compared to the lion quake that we are facing if the Cascadia releases it's pent-up pressure. The Cascadia did that the last time in 1700, exactly in the year 1700. Let's see... that was exactly 312 years ago. If I have my math right, that means the the Cascadia is overdue, and we are in the give or take area of earthquake predictability. Wow... exciting times, huh? The Copalis Ghost forest sunk into the sea during the 1700 quake, and the remains of the dead Red Cedar forest still stands in Washington.

In 1700 the Cascadia earthquake was powerful enough to send a tidal wave toward Japan that was still 16 feet tall when it hit the Japanese shore. It was recorded there and the wave confirms the date of the last Cascadia super-quake. The bad news is that the 1700 quake was not the first...

"Oregon State University (OSU) used core samples from the ocean floor along the fault to establish that there have been at least 41 Cascadia events in the last ten thousand years. Nineteen of those events ripped the fault from end to end, a “full margin rupture.”

You have no idea how powerful a "full margine rupture is"! Now, I did the math for you: 10,000 years divided by 41 equals 243.9 years.  So we are long overdue for a major earthquake on the north coast of California. So, now you are wondering. "what are the odds of one happening?"

With a time line of 41 events the science team at OSU has now calculated that the California–Oregon end of Cascadia’s fault has a 37 percent chance of producing a major earthquake in the next 50 years. The odds are 10 percent that an even larger quake will strike the upper end, in a full-margin rupture, within 50 years. Given that the last big quake was 312 years ago, one might argue that a very bad day on the Cascadia Subduction Zone is ominously overdue. It appears that three centuries of silence along the fault has been entirely misleading. The monster is only sleeping."

When I was a wee lad I had a superstitious old great-grandmother that kept us kids scared to death with her endless “end or the world” predictions. I remember that she talked a lot about the “A-Tom bomb” that Russia was going to drop on us. I was too young at the time to not believe that the Ruskies thought that Laytonville would be some kind of a strategic target. The training at school was if you saw a long lasting bright light in the sky, more than lightning, that you should run inside hide under a desk and put your head between you legs. The joke at the time was that you put your head between your legs so you could “kiss your ass goodbye”. One of the things that my G-grandmother told us kids is that God was going to send a great Pacific tidal wave, that would come clear over Cahto Mountain. My uncle told me that she had been predicting that wave for years. He said that he used to run up the mountain behind the ranch house and hold onto a manzanita bush that grew on the very top and watch for the wave to come over Cahto. I still wonder about that wave.

Some excitment in Elsie's life!

I have been very busy the last two or three weeks. It's a tough life getting ready to go on a cruise, taking the cruise, then catching up after the cruise. Just about when I got caught back up, my mother Elsie had "a little spell" where her heart stopped beating and she passed out for a few minutes. She regained consciousness on her own, without C.P.R., much to her benefit, it hurts life hell to wake up after C.P.R. It has a tendency to break ribs and other maladies. We were very lucky. We took her to the hospital in Garberville. The doctor recommend that we have her transferred to a Hospital where her vital signs could be monitored and recorded. Well, of course we agreed. The Doctor worked for two hours on-and-off the phone to find a hospital that could care for her. It seems that Redwood Memorial in Fortuna couldn't take her, neither could Saint Joseph in Eureka, nor Mad River in Arcata. Something about a flu eppidemic and there was no room at the Inn.

It seems strange to me that no one in Humboldt could take her. I read just last week read that Saint Joeseph was laying off 50 people due to lack of hospital occupancy. Something stinks in Denmark. The Doctor asked if it was okay to transfer her south into Mendocino. Of course we also agreed to that, they have some very good hospitals to the south. Ukiah agreed to take her because there was no room at Willits. Before morning the situation had reversed and they had no room in Ukiah but Willits had a bed. Frank Howard Memorial put her on vital-signs-monitoring and they soon picked up an eradic heartbeat. They tranfered her to the Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital were Doctor Chang-Sing installed a pacemaker.

She is home and feeling great again, albeit a little sore around the incision that they installed the pacemaker through.

The good side of the week-long episode, is we discovered how many friends that my mother has. We got endless text messages and phone calls inquiring about her well-being and her progress. We even learned how to send texts to multiple recipiants... never done that before.

All's well that ends well. Today is my birthday, quite a gift to have a well Mother don't you think?


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I've been on a cruise

Xunantunich

Say {Shoo-nan-two-nich}





My wife Janis earned a Radio Shack incentive trip. It was a cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Belize and Cozumel Mexico. We are on our way back and I am now stuck in the San Francisco airport with a 1 1/2 hour layover. So... I need to kill some time. What better way than bloging?

I'm using a notebook that runs Windows 7. I'm using the touch screen keyboard which is a little weird for me.

It rained like crazy the last half of the cruise to Belize, and, the whole time that we were there. The locals were delighted because it cooled off. The rain didn't dampen our spirits, but our guide was disappointed that it ruined the view. We visited the Mayan ruins, Janis insisted that we climb to the top of the pyramid shaped temple. I tried to discourage her because she is not the most cat-footed person in the world, but what she lacks in grace she more than makes up in bravery. The steps on the temple are huge and they slope downward. Sneakers are slick as snot on the wet steps. I stayed under her the whole way to the top and back down, like I thought that I could catch her if she fell. I joked and told her that I thought that she was fairly safe, because the Gods only accepted virgin sacrifices.

Oops! time to go!
More later....