Alpha Sets Record As 22nd Atlantic Storm

Whew. Something is happening that nobody has an explanation for. Ever since the Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami, natural disasters have been multiplying. Where are all the millenarians, crying "the sky is falling"?

Where's Chicken Little when you really need her?

Dang it...I knew it was coming though. When we hit Wilma with still six weeks left in the hurricane season, I knew we'd be headed into the Greek alphabet. I was just hoping it would be later than sooner.

I just can't imagine how much more the entire Gulf, the entire Caribbean and Florida can take.

And Merry Andrew, you are so right....it does appear that natural catastrophes are happening with more and more frequency. Have they been there all along and not been covered by the news as much or has technological improvement over the last 50 years brought every mosquito sneeze into the spotlight and it just appears as if there are more than ever before?

Or maybe Mother Nature is just p!ssed as H@ll at what we have been doing to her over time and is just not gonna take it anymore.

Man can fight man and win a battle or two. Man can fight Mother Nature and I don't think he has ever won a battle.

There was definitely a shift in storm formations. Many of the current storms formed west of the 55 degrees parallel unlike earlier storms. This gave less time for analysis and preparation. One of the more frivolous weathermen speculated it was caused by sandstorms from the Sahara causing it. I lived in Madeira approximately 300 miles west of Morocco for two years and this was an annual event. This was from 1990 to 1992. So much for that theory.

Chicken Little caught the bird flu!

Ah! It must have fallen from the sky. She was right.

And it isn't just that we are having more "weather events", as the pundits put it. They are increasing in severity, I believe. When was the last time that a category-4 storm made landfall in Louisiana? Never in recorded history that I'm aware of. I'm just waiting for the "big one" to rumble in the San Francisco Bay area. The last one which almost destroyed the city on the bay was almost 100 years ago, in 1906.

Another disturbing element is that the hurricane went from tropical storm to category 5 hurricane within one day.

Maybe Pat Robertson was right........................????

Kidding!

Look, we all know that Bill Clinton started all this, that it's all his fault, so let's leave Saint Pat...er...I mean, Pat Robertson out of this.

Ah, but the Quake of 1989 was nothing to sneeze at! It wasn't the earthquake itself in 1906 that nearly devastated all of San Francisco. It was the fires, actually. And it was eventually all of the firefighters efforts that saved the burning City. Hence came the erection of Coit Tower, donated by Mrs. Coit as a tribute to all of the firefighters that had saved the City. As anyone who has ever seen Coit Tower and actually paid attention to what it looks like, it is shaped in the form of a fire nozzle used during that time period. More structural damage was actually seen in cities further north than San Francisco during the '06 quake, but with less fire damage. 50 miles north, almost the entire City of Santa Rosa was destroyed and although it was much smaller than San Francisco, it sustained more structural devastation and leveling of buildings than San Francisco actually did.

The one saving grace to San Francisco and the entire Bay Area has been the constant work of earthquake retrofitting. While not all of the older buildings, that have not had any remodeling done over the last 50 years, any new construction and any remodeling work done on older buildings must follow a strict earthquake retrofitting building code. This gives the buildings more pliability and flexibility to withstand the earths movements during a quake. I think, but I could be failing in memory, that The Exploratorium at The Palace of Fine Arts has an excellent earthquake module, showing not only what an earthquake feels like but how the buildings are now made to withstand a great deal of rocking and rolling.

I was about 40 miles north of San Francisco when the '89 one hit. I remember sitting at my desk thinking of my brother and sister in law being at Candlestick Park for the Giants and A's World Series, wishing I could be there too. Looking out the large glass windows to my right, I saw what looked like an enormous WAVE of land heading toward us, just rolling as easily as water. The cars across the parking lot rose and fell as they were lifted and set back down so easily it appeared. I was standing and my co-worker next to me was wheelchair bound. As soon as the "wave" began to roll under us, I saw his chair moving backwards and a look of sheer horror on his face. I stepped the ten or so steps over to him, finding it very hard to keep my equilibrium and balance and grabbed ahold of his chair to stop it from moving, locked his brake into place and just knelt beside him. He was as white as a ghost and grabbed my hand tight. Everything appeared to be happening in slow motion and after what seemed like forever but was only a few moments, it had passed. The heavy glass doors stopped their incessant flapping back and forth, the cars no longer rose and fell and the ground beneath us was once again flat.

The first thing I remember doing was picking up the phone and calling the Boys and Girls Club in the town about 17 miles north where my kids were. The club director answered the phone and they were JUST feeling the quake then at that moment and we talked through it. I asked about my kids and he told me that my son had grabbed my daughter and dove under a pool table and that they were still there. Then all of the phone lines went into overload with all circuits busy and no calls could be made for hours.

It was a wild ride, but I gotta tell ya...I'd take an earthquake over a tornado or a hurricane any day of the week.

Wow! Great description of the quake, Lady J. I realize that the '89 quake was no minor tremor and that it's only the retrofitting which prevented the damage from being even more serious than it was. And you're right again in pointing out that the major damage in the 1906 quake was done by the fires which broke out, not by the temblor itself. But do you think that the 1989 "event" was the "big one" that everyone keeps talking about?

Yes. Really good... and scary. How weird that the earthquake waves were so slow to reach just a few miles away.

Re: Alpha