Talk Thursday: "Why on earth does anybody live there?"

The Oregon Coast is heaven on earth, no tornados, and no poisonous snakes: snakes yes, poisonous, no. Yes we have rain, the occasional flooding, and once every great while an earthquake.

Now, while you might be more than willing to chance a tornado that will lift your house from Kansas to beyond Oz, but I’m not going there… Oz or Kansas (tornados and nasty ass snakes.) Give me an earthquake any day – and before you ask, yes, I’ve been through several good size quakes: the roller coaster quakes that bob you up and down, hurky jerky quakes that rattle your teeth, and rock and roll quakes that in all truth remind me of interior California’s rolling hills (it’s one of those “you had to be there things.”) I don’t do tornados.

You don’t have to worry that the earthquake alarm is going to go off, then wait for endless growing hours for the quake that may or may not come. Here angry dark clouds just mean buckets of more rain, not anxious hours of nail biting and self -flagellation because I didn’t buy a place with a root cellar (which on the Oregon Coast would more likely resemble an indoor pool.) And if you think I bluff, we had twenty, count them, twenty inches of rain in March.

Oregon’s rainy days and seasons make you appreciate, that much more, the hot days of summer. I know, I know… I live and work on the Oregon Coast where the average temp during summer is 75 degrees, then factor in the average 45mph winds…. Which with my unscientific wind chill calculation averages to an approximate 60 degrees. I’ll take it any day over snakes, deep snow, tornados, snakes, cyclones, hurricanes (scratch that, we have hurricanes), snakes, and swarms of itchy bitey bugs. I love Oregon, earthquakes, rain, and all. Our little snow in mid March did make for a pretty picture or two, made me realize why people on the east coast actually (get this) use the garage for their vehicles, but again, I will take Oregon anyday.
* * * * I ADOREGON * * * *
Sith,
Cele

March 11th - Or A Day In The Wake Of A Disaster

My world goes round, my family is safe, my home is whole –dry – stable, and there is food on my table. My heart goes out to the Japanese people.

In total ignorance of the growing crisis in Japan (I was watching cable not network TV – so no information crawler) I took two sleeping tabs and went to bed at about 10:30. At 11:30, Beady Dee Dee called me. We are on Tsunami watch, after we checked out CNN together and her husband the Chief gave me some info through her I got dressed and was at work by Midnight. Yes, she chatted with me that long.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration or NOAA has an amazing array of informational sites for professionals and the public. KCST began disseminating information and Tsunami watch information. Phone calls began coming in. CENS (Community Emergency Notification System – or reverse 911) called me at the station (WTF) at 2:30AM or 3 o’clock to let me know I needed to be at the newly opened EOC (Emergency Operations Center – aka the Siuslaw Valley Rural Fire District’s main station.)

Thirty minutes later I was called by incident command that they were going to sound the Tsunami siren in 15 minutes.
This gave me enough time to write up and record a new dissemination and air it. It went something like this….

*********************************************************************************
The National Weather Service has issued a Tsunami Warning for the coastal areas of the Pacific Northwest.

At approximately 9:36pm PST an earthquake registering an estimated 8.9 struck the eastern coast of Japan. A Tsunami wave is expected to hit the Northern California and Oregon coast at approximately 7am (7:15 – 7:20 – 7:25 – sometime between 9 and 10am [seriously it changed that much.)

The Tsunami siren has sounded – please do not call 911.

Residents living near the beach and those in the Tsunami inundation zone are advised to evacuate to higher ground. The Florence Events Center has been opened as a relocation center (as was Three Rivers Casino, the Florence BiMart and Fred Meyer’s parking lots.)

Please do not call 911, do not go to the beach

Again, the National Weather Service has issued a Tsunami warning for the coastal areas of the Pacific Northwest. Stay tuned for further information and updates, you’re tuned to FM 106.9 KCST.

****************************************************************************************

And the phone calls began. I don’t call it the headless chicken republic for nothing. Excerpts from actual phone calls I answered (and for a while I was the only one at the station – so I answered them all) –

“What’s that siren? Can they turn it off I’m trying to sleep?”

“What’s that siren?”
“The NWS has issued a Tsunami Warning ma'am.”
“What should I do?”
“Well ma’am where do you live?”
“On Siano loop.”
“You need to evacuate ma’am. They have opened the Florence Events Center as a relocation center. That or higher ground would be where you need to go.”
“But how do I get there?”
“You drive ma’am” (Siano loop is just over the dune from my house – which is not in the Tsunami inundation zone and take my word this woman could hear the siren it’s less than a block from her house.)
“But I don’t have a car.”
“Ma’am, I suggest you call a taxi then.”
“Oh.”

I had several phone calls in the same vein. One lady wanted to know if they would let her take her pets - see has dogs, cats, and birds. I really didn’t know the answer to that one. Several phone calls, and I mean several wanted to know if their house was safe. They lived at least a mile outside the Tsunami zone.

What frustrates me, and I imagine the EOC too, is that since the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami that killed tens of thousands, the City of Florence and other communities along the Oregon coast have been neck deep in educating residents in disaster prevention and preparation. You can not drive anywhere in Florence west of Highway 101 and not see signs that either tell you you’re in a Tsunami Inundation Zone or that road you are driving is
designated as a “Tsunami Evacuation Route”.

Monthly free workshops teach residents how to be ready in the event of a multitude of disasters – but they all focus on earthquakes and tsunamis. So how can you be in Florence for any amount of time and not know 1) If your house is in an inundation zone 2) what you should do 3) what emergency supplies and equipment you should have on hand in preparation 4) HAVE A FUCKING PLAN!

We kept our listeners up on where they could go, what schools were closed for the day or just on two hour delays. Sadly, at least one of the valley TV stations reported that Siuslaw schools were closed for the day, when in truth, until 8am they were just on two hour delay with morning kindergarten canceled. But of course at TV station 65 miles away would know better (according to phone calls) than KCST, even thought we get phone calls directly from the 97J Superintendent of Schools. Yes, they did finally cancel school for the day – the “I told you so” phone calls were delightful.

Then finally they called us at 10:30 to say in 15 minutes they would ring the all clear. It was a delight for me to make that announcement – Being a mile away from a Tsunami siren inside a building I didn’t get to hear the chimes. Several times before my airshift was over I made sure to invite people to openly say thank you to the officers, firefighters, city and county employees who made their Friday safer. Being a Friday, I still had a full day of work to do (I hate Fridays) and didn’t get to go home from work until 6:30 – over 18 hours after I arrived. But it was a fulfilling day.

I demanded pizza for dinner, ate three pieces, brushed my teeth and was in bed by 8:45. I didn’t get out of bed until 9:30 this morning. Yes, I did not go to yoga.

This afternoon I went and had to settle for kelp with 400mcg’s of iodine, because the two pharmacies I checked didn’t have potassium iodide (my friend got a bottle but it was expired) I need to go buy some potassium to go with it – no bananas won’t work, Ducky hates bananas. One pharmacist looked at me and the guy who asked for the potassium iodide like we were idiots. Do I have to worry about fall out from the Fukashima Meltdown? You betcha – check out the Unisys satellite image. Be safe, be educated, be smart.

Now I’m going to go have ice cream (Umpqua Dairy's Chocolate Brownie Thunder,) read the high wind warning one more time, say a prayer for the people of Japan, and go back to bed.
Sith,
Cele

Welcome Twenty Eleven, Nice To Meet You

Now get off my toe. Yesterday Harley made a comment on air about December 31st being the Feast of Sylvester (I kid you not) and if an east wind is blowing it bodes calamity for the New Year. Yesterday’s weather forecast for the central Oregon Coast: Partly Sunny (it was cloudy) East winds … through Tuesday – highs 40 to 45 degrees…. Clear skies, east winds, lows 30 35 degrees. We had clouds all day and 47. Rain last night 33 degrees. And Friggin’ east winds. What the Frell is that about?

I actually made midnight and a few before I went to bed this morning. This morning began at six after six with dead air on my FM dial. I called the Smurfette got a run down and went back to bed until she called me at 9:30. I spent the next forty five minutes at work rebooting computers. And then treated Ducky and myself to mochas and chocolate chocolate chip muffins. It’s not crispy hash browns, but it works.

So to close out Two ought ten I had one part timer out for a week because he was having trigeminal surgery. He’s now out for four week’s because in English, he had brain surgery, I’m not bitching, he talked his doctor down from six weeks out. My main hand man, the ying to my business yang, had a nasty ass ear infection to close out two thousand ten, he’s now kicked off twenty eleven with nasty ass ear infections in both ears. My third part timer, who has a full time job at the local Kroger, is helping with part of the basketball games, but we cover three teams… ouch.

So I tried to hook up Ducky’s Wii. I’m the techie of the house. I apparently don’t speak Wii. I hate when I have to call my bro inlaw for techie support, it’s what everyone else to who he is related does. I feel like I’ve failed – really it can’t be that difficult. I hooked all the appropriate cord to the appropriate Wii orifice. Took the appropriate audio/video RCA plugs and put them into the appropriate DVR audio/video Inputs – Nada. Yes, I sync’d the remotes. Despite being preloaded with Wii Sports I have no menu. I put in a game disc ( Link’s Crossbow Training) hit the home button. Nada. I punched every button on my remote. Nada. I stood on my head and spun three time to the east. Nada. I walked away and cooked dinner. Still nada, but I’m feted.

Ducky got me these kewl Christmas socks in my stocking.
Pandas. They totally rock. I’d gotten Burp monkey socks for his stocking, and Ducky got Psam frog socks. I really wanted a picture of all three pairs of Christmas feet. Drats that didn’t happen.
I pulled my Christmas Panda socks out of the dryer, to find out they’d begun coming unsewn. I whipped out my needle and repaired my socks. But oops, I got one of the feet wrong. But the socks fit even better than they did before being washed.

My Christmas tree is still up, my Christmas decorations are still up, and my roots are two weeks past due. But I’m good. I burnt my has browns, but TCU won and I’m good. Go Uconn.
The wind of twenty eleven is calm right now.

Sith,
Cele

Talk Thursday: What I Learned This Summer

For the last day or so I was totally flummoxed, despite the ramblings in my last post I couldn’t figure out what I have learned over the summer. And, the other option? I’ve been nowhere, except for a Ringo Starr concert in Eugene.

Well okay, balderdash! I learned how to make a superior thermodynamic survival shelter if I’m ever stranded in the frozen tundra with a solar blanket, plastic tarp, and a flint. I learned how to gig a piranha if I am ever hungry in the Amazon rain forest. And well I just couldn’t watch the episodes with rattlers, cottonmouths, and vipers. Ugh. Really some shows should come with viewer warnings. Hey, I know how to pasteurize water to a drinkable consistency without fire – now that one I might be able to use.

So here you have it… What I Learned Over My Summer Vacation Replete With Satellite Pictures Proudly Stolen Borrowed From NOAA

Years ago I took a weather seminar by one of Oregon’s better meteorologist that was absolutely fascinating. We learned how to read thunderclouds (hey on the Oregon Coast we don’t get a lot of lightning and thunder), rain clouds, and things I’ve long forgotten. I loved the seminar… and never took another one; yes I’m that friggin’ lazy.

And then it hit me, all summer long I’ve been badgering Tyree up at the National Weather Service about satellite pictures. No really. I give the weather forecast at least seven days a week (hey, that was a totally plausible statement) and while NWS and NOAA are fairly dependable… if you live inland… I have long learned that I need to…hmmm tweak the prognostication into something with more… potential plausibility. So I read the forecast, read the marine forecast, read the warnings, and constantly watch the satellite pictures and I write my weather forecast beginning with

Morning clouds giving way to partly sunny skies with increasing northwest winds 15 to 25mph… northwest marine winds 15 to 20 knots… today’s coastal high temperatures in the low to mid 60s.

Coastal Weather Rules of Thumb:
#1 If you have more than three days of heat in the valley you get fog on the coast… just sucks that puppy right in.
#2 If the wind is not up by 10 it will be up by 2.
#3 We have three weeks of amazing weather somewhere in January/February
#4 If it’s going to snow it will on February 12th
#5 The power will go out when the emergency generator’s battery is dead
#6 The best weather on the Oregon Coast is in September… when all the above is nil and void

If you’ve every been to the Oregon Coast you know that is a totally doable forecast. If it’s winter, we have...

rain with coastal winds southwest 25 to and 35mph, gusting to 90 on the beaches and headlands… marine gales south 40 to 45 knots… Coastal high temperatures 40 to 45 degrees…

Really a baby could do it. Just don’t write your forecast for more than a day and a half in advance.

I am finding satellite pictures amazing, mesmerizing. And it helps to have a real weather guy answer my questions. It all began with this picture.


Surprisingly I just about had it figured out. But still I sent a description of what I was seeing on the satellite at 140 longitude and what I thought it looked like. Airplane contrails. Shocker. Tyree wrote back and said I was very close – they are ship contrails that are only visible by satellite when weather conditions are just right. Which must be summer because I’ve been able to see them a lot through out the season. Dig the weather system’s swirl in the gulf of Alaska. BTW - Someone should let those captains know you shouldn’t drink and drive.


NOAA’s satellite pictures also offer a water vapor picture. Way kewl and very colourful. But what’s that orange? Heat? I figured the white mean thin clouds or fog, the darker the green the more the water concentration of the clouds. And the cool puffy things? Thunder heads. I forgot to as about that. But I did ask about the orange. I was kinda wrong. Orange is dry air… which in my mind looks like hot dry air and there you go.


These are pictures I especially love…


They are like the world at peace…


Well at least it looks good.

And totally off the subject, who are they fooling with these phones that feature touchable, expandable screens? WTF who can see that crap? Watch a movie? Excuse me, I want a 52 high definition flat screen with unending buttered popcorn (in someone else’s house, mine’s too small.) Read a map? Honey, I get my pictures printed larger than that, frick I’m middle aged, it takes a pair of readers and a magnifying glass to read which color of mascara I’m buying.

Sith,
Cele

PS Congrats to Tandy, Simon, and Baby Zander - I wish you a wonderful life.

PSS - Thank you to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for the unauthorized use of their beautiful satellite pictures.

Happy Resolutions

Happy New Year!

Every year I fall into the make a resolution revolving door that kicks my butt by, let’s say February. Sad, so sad. Last year I thought to make it a more realistic. I resolved to blog twice a week, and write a poem a week (or three a month.) Well I fell only five short on the blogs, which baffles my mind. How did I get that many written? As for the poems…let’s not go there.

Because I was such a slackard last year, I’m going to try again for 2009. This is post 221 by year’s end, a mere 364 days away in a perfect world, I should have written and posted blog number 345. That is without skipping a single post between 222 to 344 just to be clear. Check back with me December 31st, will you? As for the poetry, well I hope to get one new poem written a month. That should be putting the hurdle low enough.

See, I do make resolutions, but I’ve scaled back from the grandiose “shrink my zip code size butt to one block” dieting for life resolutions to the livable type resolutions. Ergo, I resolve to be more positive, upbeat, and less sensible. Plus I’m doing the two I boffed last year… Some you win, some you lose. I will try harder.

The other thing I plan to improve upon is twofold 1) the time I spend with Ducky and 2) the time I spend in the hot tub.

I, er, I mean we began today. I came home from work (yes, I know it’s New Year’s Day, I’m in radio…and as I am wont to say, “Radio stops for no one.”) Ducky and I watched the first quarter of the Rose Bowl game… go Trojans! (Hey, I support the Pac Ten - Ducks first, the Beavers when they're not playing the Ducks, and damn even them dawgs.) And then hopped into the hot tub. You might note that Oregon’s coast line is being bombarded by high winds, rain, and did I mention high winds? I purposely left the cover partially perched over the west half of the hot tub and climbed in. Amazing. The wind blew, the rain poured, the hot water bubbled merrily…ahhh, total contentment and the perfect way to spend a New Year’s Day.

Hot water.
High winds.
Torrential rains.
And the man I love...Pure Bliss!

Sith,
Cele

Talk Thursday – Thunder Rolls

The Floydian Slips concert was just winding down Saturday night, when I caught the first flashes from the corner of my eye. Ducky had just commented on the drive into town that it looked like a thunder night. Apparently, his personal Doppler system was working fine. As we drove out of the parking lot the flashes to the north were more visible and picking up frequency, soon bolts of lightening raced across the darkness.

We are all up for a good electrical storm. Hey, I live in Florence lightning storms are far and few between, so this was a treat. Brilliant forks split the sky, diving downward, to seemingly impale itself into the distant ground and then the thunder would peel. It would start with a crack, nano seconds after the flash faded into the dark, and roll from one cloud to the next, as if filling each sound before moving on to the next. A symphony of bowling Angels battling Thor’s tympani booming bass a clash of in rolling waves of sound that burbled against my skin and through the night.

I love thunder, heaven’s music, this would have been the type of night that I would sit out and listen with my eyes close and feel the thunder rumble though the night. Our joy thought was short lived for as we drove west towards home the thunder was too far away, the flashes dimmer and distant, then all was dark and quiet again.

Until two o’clock in the morning. When the sky cracked open with lightning and the force of the thunder shook the house. Nirvana. Ducky and I got up and watched the light show for its short duration and then went back to bed.

A feeling of impending thunder lasted through out Sunday. The much needed rain had been absorbed by the thirsty ground and for the first time this summer my lawn looked sated. I began seeing flashes around eight in the evening, at first I thought it was just my eyes, then from the deck Ducky ask if I could hear the thunder? The flashes were small, the thunder distant, but it lasted the entire evening.

Until two o’clock in the morning when with one brilliant flash and a deafening ka-boom the lights went out. And then back on and I went to work. Power outages play havoc with small radio stations, so when the power comes back on I have to go reset the equipment – my computer screens freeze up, on air boards are all out of whack. At two in the morning, dressed in my jammies and slippers, I waddle out to my truck, drive the mile to work, reset my equipment, drive home, and go back to bed.

Until three thirty when it starts all over gain. Ducky leaves for work around four fifteen, so I’m thinking the next time I had to go to work was four thirty. Do people really get REM sleep? And did I mention I love thunder and lightning? And why do they say thunder and lightning when clearly the lightning comes first?

The national weather service had been issuing Severe Thunder Warnings for much of the early morning hours the EAS automatically sends the audio out over the air when we’re in walk away mode. Later Monday afternoon, NWS sent out one last Severe Thunder Warning over the EAS. I’m still laughing, following the usual warnings of impending doom the broadcaster ended with, “If you can hear the thunder you’re close enough to be struck by lightning.
Which begs me to ask, “If you hear the thunder isn’t it too late to worry about the lightning? And would you hear the thunder if you were stuck by lightning for all the ringing in your ears?

Just askin’.
Sith,
Cele

Snow Days

When it snows in Western Oregon industry and travel comes to a screeching halt. Good snow days don’t happen often in my part of the world. And for Ducky it means a whole change of routine. Ducky works in a truck stop some 80 miles away from heaven, in the Goshin Vortex. We don’t get to see a lot of each other, when it snows we see each other even less. Translation: We won’t get to see each other for days.

As a concession to age and a need for sustainable, refreshing, REM sleep he stays “in town” at his sister’s house twice a week. On occasion weather and road conditions will require him to leave early or stay in extra. It saves on his nerve and cuts down on the potential for road injury and accident. A major winter storm, or in truth a series of storms, struck Western Oregon starting last Thursday. This had been preceeded by a series of cold weather fronts the weekend before. Ergo, he left home on two consecutive Sundays to keep from having to travel 126 in the ice, snow, and dark. I’m sure my friends Peggy and Natalie are laughing their collective asses off about right now, living in Colorado and Utah respectively they deal with snow on a seasonal basis each year. Dry snow. Quite different than the slushy, wet, soon to be frozen over hell on ice we get.

But I digress. Sunday to avoid the approaching weather related insane commute Ducky left for the Goshin Vortex early. Stopped in Veneta to play with the snow with his sister and bro-in-law, before going to his other sister’s for the night.

His commute Monday morning from west Eugene to work was a bit hazardous (but shorter) with icy roads complicated by inept drivers, specifically one trucker who had it out for both my Zuzu and my Ducky. But my husband the every paranoid, err, I mean very cautious driver and avoided any contact with said truck, guardrail, or ditch and made it to work with only a case of shredded nerves.

Three hours into work with the route trailer unloaded, tires inventoried, sweeping done, boredom was beginning to set in and there wasn’t a semi in sight. Seemingly all traffic on I-5 had been taken care of by a lone jack knifed trucker near Salem. Translation: No truck traffic for quite a while. What is a man to do?

My husband has a very playful side to him. I’m sure, very sure, his sneaky little fingers were heavy on the instigating side in the turn of events at the truck stop of the Goshin Vortex. While I wasn’t there when it all went down, I spent the rest of my day with the mental image of several snow frisky, middle age Baby Boomer men taking on a slightly younger Gen X crowd in a snowball fight. I understand sides held true for several minutes before it became an icy snowball free for all with no winners in sight. This just goes to show he can bitch about the biting cold when he has to work in it, but just like your child who can stand in the chilly ocean water for hours on end without complaint, put men in the midst of snow, & war and joy will surely ensue.

Who says Snow Days are for kids?

Sith
Cele