Newt

Storm Frank has done some strange and destructive things. This article gives good details including video footage of some of the UK flooding.

LOL - that seems pretty accurate. Scary but accurate. "Believe what I believe or you die."

We are having our own extremes here in rainy South Carolina. Christmas day is forecast to have a high temp of 24º C which is an an all time record high temp for the day. We've seen about a week of rainy warm days with 24/17º C on quite a few days. Most odd. 10/1º C is about average here for late December.

That's quite a temperature swing.

Most who celebrate Bank holidays aren't banks and don't worship banks but they still take the day off.

Its Christmas for us Christians but for other religions, not so much. That said, I bought a box labeled "Christmas Cards" - 25 cards and only 6 of them mentioned Christmas. The others were of the "happy holidays" variety.

We are having a strange Winter here as well. A few nights below freezing but it never lasted long and Christmas week looks to be positively balmy.

Hmmmm - interesting. The link from the Snopes email works fine but any attempt to post it here gives that 404 error. It basically said that the effect on the town from landowners putting up large solar arrays to get money from the electric company who bought the power was causing harm to the town in several ways but most of the responses spoke mainly of that nutcase who said they stole power from the sun. Try a google search for "nc town rejects solar power" and read some the links.

A somewhat more balanced look at the rejection and the reasons. Not really such nutcases after all, maybe. http://www.snopes.com/north-carolina-town-rejects-solar-panels/

Right back at ya Ken. Christmas for us. And a Merry Whatever from the Vail family to all of you.

It sounds like a situation where there are no really good options. Maybe the one they chose really is the least bad.

Short video. You will need your sound on. https://www.youtube.com/embed/Vt7FDTpzGvo?rel=0

Hold onto your seat, don't blink your eyes for a second! This is amazing. Seventeen year old Joe Bush got a high school assignment to make a video reproduction. He chose history as a theme and tucked it all into two minutes. Take pictures from the internet, add the track Mind Heist by Zack Hemsey (from the movie Inception) and then you get something like this. Hold on tight! SOUND ON - CLICK ON THE LINK! http://marcbrecy.perso.neuf.fr/history.html

When did Christmas become a major & widespread celebration in the UK? I just read a Wiki article that said before the 1950s it was mainly celebrated by the wealthy and didn't become generally popular until general postwar prosperity set in about then although the Dickens story in the mid 1800s had given rise to more notice of the "good cheer" of the day.

Maybe I'm just dense Ken but you are gonna need to explain that one to me.

There are quite a few players you can simply plug into your radio's USB port. You may have to buy a newish player though. Any good electronics store should be able to help you out and walk you through what should be a very simple process. Cory's idea is lots cheaper and the process really isn't that difficult even for us old fuds. It is a little time consuming but you only need to do the conversion onto a USB stick once and they have the advantage of being lots smaller than CDs.

And a very merry one to you too Andrew.

Interesting that "White Australian" men & women scored high (likely to be the case) on being helpful and on being violent.

Unfortunately this may really be true. If the quotes from the Manns are accurate I'd guess they had read and believed an article in the National Report which cited a Wyoming Institute of Technology discovery about the dangers of solar panels sucking energy away from the sun. Problem is that the National Report is a satire publication and they invented the Wyoming Institute of Technology for their article.

http://www.komonews.com/weather/blogs/scott/Massive-storm-blasts-Alaskas-Adak-Island-with-117-mph-winds-361705011.html

What a beauty!! (the snake that is, not the snake holder )

I wasn't too picky in those days when it came to female companionship. My main criteria were female & willing. She was an exception which for a horny young sailor is quite saying something.

Its a fast mover and not there yet. Probably going to hit the island chain that goes out south and east from the Alaska mainland. Set the height to 850 hPa (click on the word "earth" at screen left to get that menu) and look to the SW of the islands. Expected to reach there by this weekend. http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/powerful-bering-sea-storm-potential-record-breaking-fairbanks-anchorage-alaska/54125652 And oops - I mislocated Dutch Harbor on the map. Its further west on the island chain than the point I marked.

Oh, I can sum up my feelings toward Hanoi Jane pretty easily. At one time, you could get stickers with her face imprinted on them and we decorated the inside of urinals with them to provide a point of aim.

I predict it will make fishing very iffy for a couple of days. This thing would be a hurricane if it were tropical but I don't think there is any classification for these things other than "winter storm". Pressure that low will make it a really strong winter storm. Not sure what sort of wind they will see on the surface since this one is showing 160+ km/h at high altitudes (500 hPa or about 18,000 ft) but the lower you go, the less wind and down to about 75 km/h at 1000 hPa (500 ft). For us old fuds, hPa = mb or very close to it.