And only one pipe frozen in the house! Trying to thaw that now and will insulate better later today (we did a bunch of work on the plumbing over the summer and this was the first real test of it...which it failed haha)
Oh hooray, another Alberta Clipper for tomorrow. Alberta still blows.
Doesn't look like this one will qualify as a full-on blizzard...between this weather and so many students being sick, they really just should have cancelled school for the whole week. Sigh.
Oh hey look, a Starlink satellite "experienced an anomaly" and ejected a bunch of debris. Explosion? Debris hit? Either way, not good..
https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-satellite-malfunctions-ejects-debris-fragments
editing to add snark (because that's how I deal with bad news I guess): Don't worry everyone, SpaceX says it'll reenter in a few weeks and totally won't crash into anything! Please ignore the spray of debris that's at basically the exact same altitude as the ISS!
To clarify, I don't think this is at all catastrophic. Just bad. Making orbit less safe with every explosion. Making that CRASH Clock a little shorter, giving operators a little less time to respond, requiring more tracking, more maneuvers, and increasing operating risks in orbit.
I've seen some truly bad headlines related to this paper. Clearly LLM-written and not checked well. The funniest (saddest) ones seem to imply that 3 days from now, there will definitely be a crash in orbit.
I'm glad conversations are happening as a result of this paper. I hope the right conversations happen with the right people, and maybe some regulations will happen? Probably not fast enough. But I'm still holding out hope (and writing lots of letters to the FCC).
Oh hey look, a Starlink satellite "experienced an anomaly" and ejected a bunch of debris. Explosion? Debris hit? Either way, not good..
https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-satellite-malfunctions-ejects-debris-fragments
editing to add snark (because that's how I deal with bad news I guess): Don't worry everyone, SpaceX says it'll reenter in a few weeks and totally won't crash into anything! Please ignore the spray of debris that's at basically the exact same altitude as the ISS!
It's been interesting putting up a high-impact (hopefully no pun there) paper and getting lots of feedback! One (highly respected!) scientist graciously showed us a small error in our calculation, which we have fixed. It's like crowd-sourced peer-review. Interesting.
So, with that fix, the CRASH Clock is now at 5 days instead of 3 days. (If you think that extra time means there's no problem, you missed the point here!)
New from Scientific American: https://archive.ph/6BwqQ
I've seen some truly bad headlines related to this paper. Clearly LLM-written and not checked well. The funniest (saddest) ones seem to imply that 3 days from now, there will definitely be a crash in orbit.
I'm glad conversations are happening as a result of this paper. I hope the right conversations happen with the right people, and maybe some regulations will happen? Probably not fast enough. But I'm still holding out hope (and writing lots of letters to the FCC).
2 interviews lined up to talk about the CRASH Clock so far!
And I usually say yes to just about every interview request I get, but I got 1 interview request on a non-urgent, non-time-sensitive astronomy topic late on a Friday afternoon asking to talk today or tomorrow. I think I will have to blow that one off and focus on other things.
It's been interesting putting up a high-impact (hopefully no pun there) paper and getting lots of feedback! One (highly respected!) scientist graciously showed us a small error in our calculation, which we have fixed. It's like crowd-sourced peer-review. Interesting.
So, with that fix, the CRASH Clock is now at 5 days instead of 3 days. (If you think that extra time means there's no problem, you missed the point here!)
New from Scientific American: https://archive.ph/6BwqQ
We still have power! We actually didn't get that much new snow, but it's all in incredibly annoyingly-placed drifts.
I had to dig through a drift to get into the barn, navigate around weird drifts to get from the barn to the goat pen, dig through a drift to open the gate to the goat pen, dig through a HUGE drift to find their grain trough, dig through a drift to open the chicken area gate, and dig through yet another drift to get into the chicken coop. Overall, not too bad though!
And only one pipe frozen in the house! Trying to thaw that now and will insulate better later today (we did a bunch of work on the plumbing over the summer and this was the first real test of it...which it failed haha)
School buses are already cancelled for tomorrow, but school is not cancelled (they NEVER cancel school here, it's bizarre)...
Anyway... if the roads look like that tomorrow morning, I am definitely not driving my kids to school! There won't be enough teachers who can make it to school anyway... I really don't understand why they don't have snow days ever here. One of the weirdest parts of living on the prairies.
We still have power! We actually didn't get that much new snow, but it's all in incredibly annoyingly-placed drifts.
I had to dig through a drift to get into the barn, navigate around weird drifts to get from the barn to the goat pen, dig through a drift to open the gate to the goat pen, dig through a HUGE drift to find their grain trough, dig through a drift to open the chicken area gate, and dig through yet another drift to get into the chicken coop. Overall, not too bad though!
Oh yeah it's a blizzard. Almost every road in the entire southern half of Saskatchewan (larger than most European countries, as we learned from a post earlier!) is blue for "travel not recommended" or red for "closed".
And there are some true superheroes out there working right now: snowplow drivers, utility workers, tow truck drivers, emergency workers... lots of helpers!
School buses are already cancelled for tomorrow, but school is not cancelled (they NEVER cancel school here, it's bizarre)...
Anyway... if the roads look like that tomorrow morning, I am definitely not driving my kids to school! There won't be enough teachers who can make it to school anyway... I really don't understand why they don't have snow days ever here. One of the weirdest parts of living on the prairies.
Hooray for bus drivers!! Superheroes!
Not a blizzard yet, but I am so grateful I didn't have to drive anywhere.
Oh yeah it's a blizzard. Almost every road in the entire southern half of Saskatchewan (larger than most European countries, as we learned from a post earlier!) is blue for "travel not recommended" or red for "closed".
And there are some true superheroes out there working right now: snowplow drivers, utility workers, tow truck drivers, emergency workers... lots of helpers!
Tow truck drivers in Saskatchewan are superheroes!
(Everything is fine now! Everyone is ok, and tow truck drivers are awesome.)
Blue is "travel not recommended" which is pretty much everything around Regina now. I really really hope the schoolbuses are running this afternoon... School bus drivers in Saskatchewan (and everywhere), also superheroes!
Hooray for bus drivers!! Superheroes!
Not a blizzard yet, but I am so grateful I didn't have to drive anywhere.
Prof. Sam Lawler