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Hell Kitty

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When I got up at 5:30 this morning to a blood red sky I thought I was either dreaming or hallucinating. It was pretty disappointing to find out it was just a dust storm and not the first sign of the zombie apocalypse.

 

More funky pics here.

 

Sitting on the train looking at an empty Hornsby platform at about 9:30 this morning gave me quite the Fallout 3 vibe with everything being a yellow/brown tinge.

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Now the storm has moved to Queensland, where the winds are fuelling the bushfires while the dust opacity is grounding firefighter helicopters. And yes, the top of Australia is on fire while the bottom experiences earthquakes, flooding, golf-ball hail, and tornadoes. Earlier this year it was the reverse.

 

The cycle looks likely to continue. This was the 2nd warmest winter on record and El Nino is about to start.

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I blame those damn alarmists and their global warming mantra! If they hadn't mentioned it, none of this would have happened!

 

/end taks rant

Swedes, go to: Spel2, for the latest game reviews in swedish!

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That looks pretty cool, although a bit dangerous.

"Alright, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade - make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager. Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons. Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons. I'm going to to get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!"

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don't get that dust pneumony, pneumony in your lung

 

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

The area between the balls and the butt is a hotbed of terrorist activity.

Devastatorsig.jpg

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Eat our dust Kiwis!... ;)

“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein
 

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This was the 2nd warmest winter on record and El Nino is about to start.

el nino "started" several months ago and is now holding steady according to the latest reports coming from JPL.

 

el nino screws our weather up, too, though oddly, we had our fist snow of autumn today. our first snow of the "season" was the last day of summer, this past monday.

 

taks

comrade taks... just because.

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Winter Is Coming....

 

 

Oh, wait... this isn't the book thread.

 

 

;)

"While it is true you learn with age, the down side is what you often learn is what a damn fool you were before"

Thomas Sowell

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This was the 2nd warmest winter on record and El Nino is about to start.

el nino "started" several months ago and is now holding steady according to the latest reports coming from JPL.

 

That's not really correct.

 

Basically, at first glance, some indicators of El Nino aren't showing, so some people are predicting a weak or non-existent El Nino. But those predictions arise from not looking at the entire data set.

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Neat-O.

 

If there's enough dust to have that kind of color effect, can one breathe without feeling like the lungs are filling up with dust&dirt? :)

“Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.” – Alan Watts
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Neat-O.

 

If there's enough dust to have that kind of color effect, can one breathe without feeling like the lungs are filling up with dust&dirt? :)

 

No. It stung my eyes and it smelt and tasted horrible. The government had to issue health warnings telling people to stay indoors if they could help it, and simply not to leave the house if they were young, old, or asthmatic.

 

The amount of particulate matter in the air was above minimum safe levels (2000 parts per million IIRC). Prolonged exposure to levels of particulate matter above that level significantly increase risk of cancers and diseases (mainly of the lungs). But a day of it is unlikely to cause that (you've got a problem if you're a labourer in the mineral industry who works in such circumstances every day, though).

 

The amount moved was pretty amazing, though. About 52 million tonnes of dust was dumped over the state of NSW.

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Guess I was wondering because of the people in the pics...like they're just hanging out on a fine dusty day. :)

 

52 million tonnes? Holy bejeebus.

My dad was in a white-out snowstorm where he had to stop the car and sit on the freeway several hours...but that dust storm sounds 100x worse. Even if you could see, wouldn't the dust choke up a car before long? The clean-up on everything must be awful. :/

“Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.” – Alan Watts
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I dunno about cars, but it's playing havoc with our data centres.

 

The data centre I work at has been running fine, though. The vast majority of damages and outages were caused by the storm that led to the dust storm. Mainly flooded server and switch rooms and stuff.

 

They had to ground flights because the dust ****s with the engines. Not to mention visibility.

 

Edit: But yeah, you could walk around in it easily with only mild discomfort. As long as you weren't asthmatic. Anyway, it's a once in a lifetime phenomenon (we've been getting a lot of those lately) - gotta enjoy it.

Edited by Krezack
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