Wednesday, January 17, 2007

an inconvenient truth. seriously.

as i surf the net for my dose of current affairs (p.s. i'm actually quite back-dated already. i didn't know american idol started today, and that the golden globes came and went on monday.), i was struck at how bad the weather is all around. the flooding in JB and singapore. the snow and ice storms that struck a whole lot of US states. suddenly i'm so thankful that seattle has cold cold temperatures and 2-inch snow. only. praying for those affected. praying for good weather. mother nature unleashes her global warming rage.

42 killed as winter storms, floods hit US
Posted: 17 January 2007 1113 hrs

CHICAGO: A massive winter storm has covered swathes of the United States in a mantle of snow, sleet and ice, killing 42 people, threatening millions of dollars in citrus crops and leaving hundreds of thousands without electricity, officials said on Tuesday.

"This is a big one, affecting all the way from New Mexico to Maine," said Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the National Weather Service.

The worst-hit areas were Oklahoma, where freezing rain left behind a sheet of ice, and Missouri, hard hit by sleet, he said.

"With the ice, the trees come down on the power lines, and in Oklahoma it's going to take the rest of the week to get all that restored," he said. "The lines are completely down. It's not like it's a transformer here and there - it's the whole grid."

The storm, which began churning across the country on Friday, was caused by an enormous cold front that dropped temperatures by as much as 17 degrees Celsius and brought wave after wave of freezing rain and sleet as it moved slowly eastward.

It weakened somewhat on Tuesday, sparing major East Coast cities such as New York, Boston and Philadelphia from the worst of the ice and sleet.

The National Weather Service has issued storm warnings for central Texas, freeze warnings in California, Arizona and Texas, wind chill advisories stretching from New York to Maine, and flood warnings across central US from Louisiana, Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio.

The storm has already caused ice storms in western parts of New York state, forecasters said.

In hard-hit Oklahoma, Federal Emergency Management Agency workers distributed electrical generators and bottled water to communities hammered by the ice storm, after President George W. Bush declared an emergency in Oklahoma on Sunday.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported more than 300 road accidents in which 14 people were killed, including seven in a minivan crash Sunday.

Some 103,000 people were also without power, according to Oklahoma's Department of Emergency Management.

Bush also declared a state of emergency for Missouri - including the city of St. Louis - on Monday, freeing up federal funding for recovery efforts.

State officials said eight people had been killed in the Missouri storms, including seven who died in traffic accidents and one killed by carbon monoxide poisoning - common when people without electricity use fuel-burning stoves for heat.

More than 300,000 people lost power in the state due to downed power lines, and a utility worker was injured, state officials said.

In Kansas, five people were reported killed in weather-related road accidents and one person died of carbon monoxide poisoning, officials told the Kansas City Star newspaper.

One person also died in a weather-related traffic accident in New York state, according to local radio.

In Texas, Governor Rick Perry called out the National Guard after heavy rain caused flash flooding. Local media reported two killed in separate weekend accidents on icy roads in western Texas.

And in California, where temperatures are generally mild, farmers braced for devastation to citrus crops worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has declared a state of emergency in the state, warned on Tuesday in a letter to the US Department of Agriculture in Washington that losses to the region's citrus fruit industry "will likely reach one billion dollars".

But Dave Kranz, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation trade group, said it was too soon to tell the extent of the damage.

"The freeze in 1998 was severe, but there were pockets of fruit that survived. That's the expectation this year," he said. "There are citrus groves that will have come through OK, but there is also widespread damage."

California accounts for nearly a quarter of the US market for citrus fruits, according to figures from state agricultural authorities, making it the biggest producer of fruit in the nation.

Some 51,000 homes and businesses lost power in upstate New York after a heavy layer of ice covered the area Monday, National Grid spokesman Alberto Bianchetti said.

The company, which provides power to around 1.5 million customers in the northern part of the state, expected to begin restoring services later in the day, he said.

More snow was forecast for later Tuesday and early Wednesday. - AFP/so

snow in its little dainty quantities is enough.


loving the phonecalls from sam. =)
and the skyping webcam sessions from home. =)
and a good dose of chinese food like winter melon soup and bah kut teh. =)

Labels: sam, seattle, snow

This girl posted at 4:22 PM

Saturday, January 13, 2007

oh the weather outside is frightful.

here i am, freezing my bottoms off in the health sciences library, reading the anatomy textbook and trying to remember where the femur is and looking at x-rays of all kinds of bones. seems like the heater is not working. even by ibook doesn't feel warm. according to yahoo! the temperature outside now is -1 degrees. temperatures have been dropping like crazy as we approach deep winter in jan. even with the sun out, the air is freezing. don't even get me started on the wind chills, which drops the temperature by 3-4 degrees when it blows in your face.

despite that, i still like walking out in the open! all you need to do is to get your mind off the cold. wear tons of layers. long johns. bask in the sun. walk faster to get your heart pumping. enjoy the sights. with so many things around me to see where got time to worry about the cold? it's a good strategy because i used to be really miserable in cold weathers. now i'm not! and not to mention the feelings of awe and amazement and thankfulness when i'm surrounded by beautiful sights. this world that my God has created for us. He created such beautiful things just for us, because He loves us. how wonderful is that.

so it snowed 2 days ago. the weather forecasts were all really accurate. and it happened in the funniest manner. my friend suhui and i were grocery-shopping at U-village in the afternoon after classes, when we were almost gonna check out and we peered out and saw white stuff falling from the sky. white stuff that's not rain. the outside became a blur of white things. and we realised it was snow! we grabbed our bags, left our shopping cart in the supermarket and went out to stand in the snow. hahaha. sua ku singaporeans.

it was the most beautiful sight. the snow was light and fluffy. it was all over. the snow melted the moment to touched the ground. so in that sense it was beautiful just for a moment, fleeting. in the air, the snow danced in the wind. as the wind came, it seems as though the wind was drawing a piece of art on the snow canvas. i stood and was really excited and mesmerized at the same time. we took many pictures with the snow. haha. and finally went back to pay for our groceries. and i bought a jacob's creek bottle of red wine for USD5.99. how cheap is that. =) but our total bill was USD74.99. haha. that's more than 100 sing. and we didn't even buy a LOT.

as we reached home 1 hour later, we dumped our groceries in our rooms and went out to take MORE pictures. yes we were that excited. by this time the snow had stopped falling but my blockmates were gathering snow off the roof of cars, making snowballs and having a snowball fight, right in front of our apartments. i got a super duper painful hit from my friend 'cos the ball didn't break as it hit my arm. hehhh but quite fun. the snow continued to fall intermittently throughout the night, but we were lucky (and unlucky too) that it probably only snowed 1-2 inches here. my sister's friend who lives in the south had 6 inches of snow and they couldn't get to work the next morning.

speaking of the morning after. it was just as beautiful! i stepped out to white snow on top of almost everything. trees, cars, houses, shrubs, soil. everything was just wrapped in a blanket of white snow and the sight was amazingly beautiful. the sun was out but the snow didn't melt due to the crazy subzero temperature. so it was just a sight i wished i could stand still for a minute to take it in. but as usual, i was running late for class. snapped pictures along the way so check back on my pictureblog soon.

anyway i need more cooking ideas! carlene! can you send me some of your foolproof recipes? including the one you cooked for our christmas get-together.

edward! you know the microbe soft toys you got us for christmas? they are sold at my school's bookstore! which is school of medicine lah. but they are SO many of them!! i shall upload the pictures soon.

ohyes. another exciting thing. one of my classes is human anatomy and physiology. and for the first lab, we got to look at cadavers. as in dead bodies that were dissected for the purpose of learning. at first i was so afraid that i was gonna freak out and puke out whatever things that i do not have in my stomach. but thankfully i didn't! mainly because it looked so model-like. it was dissected and prepared and processed till they resemble plastics. touch-wise, it felt soft but i didn't touch much. we looked at the muscles primarily. but i got to peer into the body cavity and see all the organs. heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, stomach. the genitals, head, feet and hands were covered for minimal privacy and taking into account the interest of other students. one of the cadavers which i worked with was a woman. she was quite small sized and elderly. the other cadaver i worked with was a man. very big chest cavity. very developed muscles. today we went to look at bones! this time it was the bones of an elderly woman. all the tibia and femur etc etc.

i realised my medical knowledge is really a lot for a non-medical student. haha. all thanks to CSI and House and grey's anatomy. although i watched ER before, but that was a long time ago.

well well, i'm going to post more pictures up soon. of the NBA game and the snow. =) assignments are looming. and more subject registration nonsense. sssiigghh.

starting to miss home. ok actually i missed a lot of home and singapore already. i've crossed the mark and set a new record of the longest time away from home. the longest being 11 days when i went to tokyo with my sis. as i predicted, this trip is really God's very own creative test for me to grow and mature and to be independent. drawing closer to God and reading His word and listening to pastor's messages online really really helps with everything. from the settling down to the culture shock (not much. thanks to all the american tv and magazines) to the people relationships to the everyday living bits like chores and meals. also a test of not taking anything that i had at home for granted. because many of us tend to do that and do not realise it before it's too late. so i'm glad i had this chance to not become like that.

ok i'm not making sense. my proteins assignment is calling me. but the long weekend is here. martin luther king day. it's supposedly a day of service. heh. makes me think of wsc. =) i think all my professors are all really good teachers. even the fred hutchinson guy who is quite a prominent scientist and researcher with many award-winning papers published. he's really good but i'm scared that he'll ask me some difficult question then i cannot answer.

ok. upload photos. eat fruits. do assignment. read Bible. sleep.

good plan.

Labels: life in seattle, snow, UW

This girl posted at 5:04 AM