5 ms·
MASSIVE Storms in VA area where us-east-1 is. 326,000 customers without power already, worst lightning I have seen in my 20 years of life. Sky is intense blue/g
by robbiet480 14y ago
MASSIVE Storms in VA area where us-east-1 is. 326,000 customers without power already, worst lightning I have seen in my 20 years of life. Sky is intense blue/green/purple. This is most likely what the issue is
- prezjordan 14y agoNo matter how powerful we become as a species with our technology, we are still at the mercy of the clouds. Pretty cool if you think about it.
- tyrmored 14y agoThe cloud is no match for the cloud!
- jonniekang 14y agohaha
- MrMatters 14y agoWell, until we figure out plausible ways to control weather reliably on a large enough scale, at least. Without killing the atmosphere or our species or anything like that.
- Ygg2 14y agoOr each other...
- oldstrangers 14y agoOr if we just built our power grid underground like rational people.
- __mark__ 14y agoUntil earthquakes.
- mediocregopher 14y agoDepending on where you are in the world, earthquakes are much rarer then insane storms. I'm speaking as a Floridian. I'm fairly ignorant on this issue, but would it be that difficult to use one or the other depending on which natural occurrence is more likely? Or is this also a cost issue?
- gregschlom 14y agoMassive cost issue, plus some technical issues. According to this document [1]: "The North Carolina Utilities Commission studied the cost of placing Duke Power’s distribution facilities underground and found it would cost more than $41 billion, resulting in a 125 percent increase in customer rates." [1] http://www.sceg.com/NR/rdonlyres/465E6534-2FFB-4069-BF84-81465AEEF887/0/%20Undergroundvs.pdf http://www.sceg.com/NR/rdonlyres/465E6534-2FFB-4069-BF84-814...,
- Ygg2 14y agoUnderground cables have many problems like rats (and other vermin) or people harvesting copper/metals.
- Nitramp 14y agoDo they? Here in Germany the entire cabling within cities is underground, only the high voltage long distance lines are above ground. I've never heard a story about people stealing underground cables (they do steal e.g. train track above ground cabling). That also wouldn't make sense, digging up those cables is much more effort than taking them down from a post. I've also never heard stories about issues with rats. Power outages still happen, but they are quite rare - in 30 years I can only remember twoish.
- adamt 14y agoRats are a common menace with all sorts of cabling. Large parts of scotland recently lots broadband due to rats eating cables (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/12/dirty_rat_downs_virgin/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/12/dirty_rat_downs_virg...). Apparently it's the insulation on the wires that they like.
- batista 14y agoReally? Rats and copper harvesters? Like it's gonna be some unprotected plastic cables 1 foot under the ground?
- Ygg2 14y agoI don't know but I've heard stories. Stealing cables underground is not common but it happened. And rats and underground water is quite a problem for underground (copper) cables.
- blaines 14y agoSometimes they don't even steal the cables... This guy just liked the sparks. http://www.westvalleyview.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=31723&SectionID=2&SubSectionID=&S=1 http://www.westvalleyview.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleI...
- vasco 14y agoUnderground cables have more expensive set up costs, lower lifetime, and higher maintenance costs. The price you pay for electricity doesn't even come close to justifying burying power lines. There's also the ecological stuff if you find that a reasonable argument. Bottom line, burying power cables just so you don't have to light a candle for a night isn't worth it.
- meskyanichi 14y agoOr as the religious people call it, "The Act of God". No seriously, people actually write that shit in their terms. Hilarious.
- cmelbye 14y agoIt's a legal term with a specific meaning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_God http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_God
- meskyanichi 14y agoWhich is why I brought it up, it's hilarious. I thought people were just trolling at first but man, the first time I saw it, it made my day. Relating something like "God" with natural disasters. I love how people come up with that kind of stuff.
- excuse-me 14y agoPresumably in this case - Thor ?
- meskyanichi 14y agoThat, or Ramuh? Or Quezacotl?
- excuse-me 14y agoWell it's hitting N America and his movie didn't do that well - so he might be a bit annoyed
- meskyanichi 14y agoZing!
- meskyanichi 14y agoReligious people be mad!
- wavephorm 14y agoHopefully one day it will be feasible to host our computing architecture in space and avoid all these terrestrial obstructions.
- zacharyvoase 14y agoUntil a solar storm hits, and our servers are no longer under the protection of the Earth's magnetic field.
- wavephorm 14y agoHow do satellites deal with solar storms currently? Surely they could put a ton of iron around the servers to protect them.
- jordanthoms 14y agoWhat about when a booster goes off by mistake and sends your data flying into the sun?
- Ygg2 14y agoSun is far away, you'd still get data back before it hits, but if buster made satelite hit another satelite or descend to earth it would be a worse situation.
- AYBABTME 14y agoI have a feeling the electromagnetic conditions are much more stable on earth than in space. The magnetosphere and the atmosphere deflect a great deal of energy.
- jaequery 14y agothis is pretty bad, really bad ...
- vibrunazo 14y agoI'm completely ignorant here. But aren't these outages usually solved by having backup servers in different locations? As many datacenters do, and as I imagine something as huge as heroku would?
- wensing 14y agoStormpulse.
- tomjen3 14y agoNot cool at all. All it means is that humans are not yet powerful enough to make the environment work as it should (ie serve humans).
- bsg75 14y agoI see what you did there.
- shadowz 14y agoSeems pretty severe actually. Washington Post has a live blog going on about it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/severe-thunderstorm-watch-through-1-am-for-washington-dc-area/2012/06/29/gJQAY04LCW_blog.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/pos...
- douglasisshiny 14y agoI live in DC. It was an amazing storm. A transformer in my area went down fairly quickly. Fortunately, I live near a large hospital.
- jberryman 14y agoWas watching a movie in a big 20-screen theater in Richmond, and they told everybody to just leave (incidentally, not through the emergency exits, instead they funneled 100s of people into the lobby all at once :/)
- Klinky 14y agoSaw this post here on HN, pulled up www.chart.state.md.us to watch the live traffic cams in the area. Clicked through a couple, some of which showed heavy rain, wind & lightning. Then the stream froze and now the site is completely unresponsive.
- hristov 14y agoIn other words, Amazon's power backups failed again. On the bright side at least they are not running a nuclear reactor.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]