OT. Light Bulb Supper

[Dean Hoffman]

A lot of people call it dinner but I grew up on a farm long ago.

[Bob F]

Cute satire, but dated wrong. They have avoided rolling blackouts since

2020 from what I could find. Most recently, by using texts.

Clearly , global warming is serious, and we need to do whatever can be done to reduce the causes.

[Scott Lurndal]

California has had _two_, count them again, _two_ cases of rolling blackouts due to a shortage of generation in the last quarter century, the first was caused by crooked power companies gaming deregulation in 2001. The other, during a heatwave last year.

The PSPS (Public Safety Power Shutdowns) that occur in certain wildfire prone areas (and have happened only a few times, in very limited rural parts of the state) are also due to incompetence by the utility companies where they stopped investing in infrastructure repairs and upgrades and instead pumped that money into stock dividends and buybacks.

There is generally more than sufficient capacity, even last week during the unprecedented heatwave when there was

54GW of capacity available (and about 51GW used). It came close, really close, but the public responded by reducing consumption.

And, in fact, the state is planning on adding additional CH4 plants in the future and has extended the life of Diablo Canyon.

[Dean Hoffman]

The California governor and other officials warning must've been heeded. Did you see Newsom's speech warning people about the possible power outages ahead of time? He was in some sort of a jacket while doing it. Bad optics. I bet you're old enough to remember the days before air conditioning. We had a couple fans. It doesn't get as hot here in central Nebraska as it does in California. 105º is really rare here for a high temperature.

[invalid unparseable]

I visited CA after labor day and it was 105º in Orange county. Drove north to Yosemite but could not drive through the park to Tahoe as the Donner pass was snowed in. Big state with varied climate. Went up a mountain on a tram near Palm Springs and there was snow on the ground in November then back to hotel to lounge around the pool in the afternoon. Sacramento is further north and maybe not hot that day.

[rbowman]

Old enough but I still don't have AC at home and we had a run of high

90's that broke into the 100s a couple of times before Labor Day. Saturday of that weekend had been forecast as 101 but heavy smoke kept it down to the low 80s. I guess the good part is all the smoke is from the fires to the west and not local.

[rbowman]

A friend was at Pendleton when they were told they would be bused to Pickle Meadows for mountain training. "It's California, how bad could it be?"

It's around 7000', the same as Donner so the answer was 'Pretty bad'.

My friend spent most of his time on Okinawa. I think the Crotch was a little gun shy after its experience in the Korean tropical paradise.

[Marilyn Manson]

Memorial Day at Mt Hood, OR a few years ago. 59° on Rt 26 at the base, 28° at Timberline Lodge.

Memorial Day is typically the last day of the season at Mt Hood. Timberline Lodge is out of this word beautiful. Worth the drive up just for a cup of coffee. (I use the loft area as my Zoom background)

When we got out of the car an Eagle swooped so low that we could hear the whoosh of it's wings.