Happy Thanksgiving!

if kosovars celebrated thanksgiving, i imagine it would look a little bit like this...



i'm working today although i'd rather be back in reno sharing thanksgiving dinner with the family... oh, well... i fly out tomorrow and will be glad to be out of this cold rain/snow mix and back in the warm springtime of argentina... unfortunately, that will only be a week and a half stint before i will indeed be back in the high desert winter...

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More crazy weather - two feet of snow in Reno...!

i've seen some heavy snows in reno but nothing like what hit them yesterday... it was evidently one for the books, shattering snowfall records that have stood since 1918...

the photo below was taken by my son off the back deck of his house where, due to the intensity of the snow coming down, it's almost impossible to see houses on the next street... i pitched in with a fair amount of shoveling when i was there before the holidays and i'm sorry i wasn't there this time to help out... i did do quite a bit of shoveling at my friend's place in suburban d.c. week before last so i guess i haven't escaped entirely unscathed...



about 8 yesterday morning here in pristina, it started snowing so hard i thought it would be up to my waist in no time but it only lasted for less than 20 minutes...

i've got to figure something is happening with global climate change given the frequency and intensity of weather events seemingly happening everywhere...

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The Reno earthquake jitters

from esteemed #1 son in northern nevada...

You might be a Northwest Reno resident If …

# While shopping for a new dining room table, you bring the entire family to RC Willey [well-known local furniture store] to make sure you all fit underneath it.

# “Family Game Night” includes copious rounds of Uno, Scrabble and “Guess the Magnitude.”

# The USGS Web site is your home page, and you check the UNR Seismology site as frequently as you check your e-mail.

# You believe the “Triangle of Life” is so last week.

# You can now hear the earthquakes before they arrive.

# You are spackling and painting your walls — why not, there aren’t any pictures on them anyhow.

# You get mad at the kids when they’re snacking out of the earthquake bin in the garage.

# “I’ve felt 25 earthquakes today?” you reflect. “What a great day!”

# Your children know what “Rabbit in the hole” means.

# The “Living with Earthquakes in Nevada” publication that you found last week in the RGJ has become your coffee-table book.

# You know the exact latitude and longitude of your home.

# You can adeptly convert UTC to Pacific Daylight Time.

# Earthquake insurance brochures and estimates are in your “To File” stack.

# You debate the philosophical underpinnings of “aftershock or foreshock” with your family and neighbors.

# Wall hangings = floor leanings.

# You have narrowed down the lag time between an earthquake and the moment the magnitude posts to the UNR Seismo site to 11 minutes and 42 seconds – give or take.

# Your car is parked in your driveway — and not because there’s no room in the garage.

# You take a shower in your swim suit; after all, who wants to be naked when the “Big One” hits?

# On your nightstand next to the latest Eckhart Tolle book and your Carmex is a Maglite flashlight and a crescent wrench you’ll use to turn off the gas.

# The pharmacist doesn’t even ask if you need the briefing about Xanax anymore.

only 27 more days and i'll be back there...

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What do insurance companies do when trouble comes...? Stop insuring, of course...

money-grubbing bastards...

MetLife placed a 30-day moratorium on new coverage after a 4.2 quake jolted Reno on Thursday. Until then, the strongest quake in the sequence had been 3.6 on April 16.

what, don't they trust their claims investigators to weed out false and frivolous claims...?

sons-of-bitches...

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Earthquakes in northern Nevada

from my son's email on friday morning about what's been happening in reno...

[We] had two (4 total, only felt 2) fairly big quakes yesterday 4.2 & 3.8, rocked the hospital at about 3:45 and 3:55. There was another about 6 pm and 1 am this morning but I didn’t feel those. If you go on to the USGS web site, you will have to do some poking around but you can see that we actually have been having up to as many as 50 small quakes a day in the area for the past couple of weeks. Those were the first quakes [my wife] and I had been in so they were both fun and scary at the same time.

this greeted me this morning on yahoo news...

Scientists urged residents of northern Nevada's largest city to prepare for a bigger event as the area continued rumbling Saturday after the largest earthquake in a two-month-long series of temblors.

More than 100 aftershocks were recorded on the western edge of the city after a magnitude 4.7 quake hit Friday night, the strongest quake around Reno since one measuring 5.2 in 1953, said researchers at the seismological laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The latest quake swept store shelves clean, cracked walls in homes and dislodged rocks on hillsides, but there were no reports of injuries or widespread major damage.

Seismologists said the recent activity is unusual because the quakes started out small and continue to build in strength. The normal pattern is for a main quake followed by smaller aftershocks.

"A magnitude 6 quake wouldn't be a scientific surprise," John Anderson, director of the seismological lab, said Saturday. "We certainly hope residents are taking the threat seriously after last night."

here's the usgs earthquake chart for the past 2 1/2 hours, all of them in the reno area...

MAP 3.1 2008/04/26 20:56:00 38.538N 117.217W 0.0 52 km (32 mi) N of Tonopah, NV
map 0.7 2008/04/26 20:46:43 39.550N 119.939W 4.0 4 km ( 3 mi) NNE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
map 1.7 2008/04/26 20:43:07 37.781N 122.199W 9.5 3 km ( 2 mi) ESE of Oakland, CA
map 1.5 2008/04/26 20:37:26 37.568N 118.867W 8.4 12 km ( 8 mi) SE of Mammoth Lakes, CA
map 1.0 2008/04/26 20:36:56 38.848N 122.773W 1.4 5 km ( 3 mi) WNW of Cobb, CA
map 1.4 2008/04/26 20:36:46 39.530N 119.886W 8.0 6 km ( 3 mi) W of Reno, NV
map 0.7 2008/04/26 20:33:51 39.509N 119.938W 0.0 2 km ( 1 mi) ESE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
map 0.8 2008/04/26 20:18:57 39.491N 119.859W 0.0 5 km ( 3 mi) SW of Reno, NV
map 0.7 2008/04/26 19:55:35 39.530N 119.886W 0.0 6 km ( 3 mi) W of Reno, NV
map 1.4 2008/04/26 19:36:25 32.637N 116.040W 10.5 12 km ( 7 mi) SSW of Ocotillo, CA
map 1.7 2008/04/26 19:35:04 39.551N 119.835W 8.0 3 km ( 2 mi) NNW of Reno, NV
map 1.1 2008/04/26 19:27:51 39.510N 119.886W 0.0 6 km ( 4 mi) WSW of Reno, NV
map 1.0 2008/04/26 19:09:04 39.510N 119.912W 4.0 4 km ( 2 mi) E of Verdi-Mogul, NV
map 0.6 2008/04/26 19:06:24 39.550N 119.939W 0.0 4 km ( 3 mi) NNE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
map 0.5 2008/04/26 18:47:10 39.510N 119.886W 0.0 6 km ( 4 mi) WSW of Reno, NV
MAP 3.0 2008/04/26 18:37:55 39.901N 115.707W 16.0 48 km (30 mi) NNE of Eureka, NV

it was only a little less than two months ago that the 6.0 quake hit wells in northeastern nevada...

The quakes around Reno began a week after a magnitude 6 temblor in the northern Nevada town of Wells, near the Utah border.

"around reno" is a relative term, given that wells is nearly 400 miles away...

ah, well... something to look forward to when i get back there in early june...

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