A camera on a mast located on top of Jefferson Elementary School in Faribault, Minnesota pointing north captures the high wind event that caused damage throughout Southern Minnesota on September 20, 2018.
These were likely straight-line winds but the National Weather Service is still surveying the aftermath a week later.
Category Archives: Blog
A Tornado Just Hit Faribault.
The National Weather Service did its job tonight extraordinarily well. The Rice County Emergency Management and Dispatch sounded the alert sirens quickly. Our Skywarn social media posts went out immediately. These sources gave everybody in Rice County at least 15 if not 20 minutes of warning before the tornadoes came through.
Things are a mess around here. Bethany and I are OK, and our part of town had more tree damage than anything. This is the only damage I had.. a single piece of front fascia hanging down. It is absolutely nothing compared to several families dealing with losing their homes or businesses tonight.
West of Faribault is like a scene out of “Twister”. Corrugated metal hung up high in trees. Roofs of sheds laying in unharvested fields. Halves of silos gone completely. Trees through people’s living rooms. Horse trailers laying on their roof in the ditch. Recreational Vehicles tipped over like Hot Wheels at LeMieux’s Resort.
North of Faribault, not many hangars are left without major damage at our Airport. MetCon has structural damage to their building. The freeway, closed down because of vehicles tipped over and debris littering the roadway.
I’ve never seen this kind of devastation around the Faribault area. This is going to be talked about for a long time.
A YFZ450 trying to give chase to two Can Ams at Hurricane Hills MX, Mazeppa, MN
I attempt to keep up to a couple of fast Can Am guys at Hurricane Hills on my YFZ450. Eventually, I’m just along for a joy ride of my own. 🙂
A nice group of quads at Hurricane Hills MX, Mazeppa, MN
A decent quad turn out, and all of us are giving chase. All Can Am except for one YFZ450. That would be me.
High-Resolution LED Display Graphics
Since the time these high-resolution LED displays were installed in the Nomeland Gymnasium at the High School, I’ve been spending much of my spare time designing graphics, sponsor advertising, and program workflow for the system. It has already been used successfully for several volleyball matches, 9th grade orientation, and now an all-staff District workshop. The variety of technology I get to work with is one reason I love my job and this field!
YFZ450 chasing behind a YFZ450R at Hurricane Hills MX, Mazeppa, MN
A “C” class view of riding the track at Hurricane Hills motocross park in Mazeppa, MN, right behind a guy with a YFZ450R.
A Tour of the National Weather Service Office in Chanhassen
As Rice County Skywarn is a Weather-Ready Nation Ambassador, we got the opportunity to tour the National Weather Service in Chanhassen today! We talked to the meteorologists that forecast our weather and do such a good job updating the public over social media, without sensationalism. At 6 p.m., we watched a weather balloon launch with a radiosonde which measures temperature, humidity, and pressure all the way up to 100,000 feet. The data is used to create the models we use each day to predict the weather. The staff was so accommodating, informative, and polite! Afterwards, we stopped by Lion’s Tap for supper. It was a great afternoon away from the office!
Poor Sears
Poor Sears. They are shutting down another 100 stores as their businesses continue to fail. Sears was perfectly positioned to monopolize computer-based sales since they had a 100-year head start with their mail order business.
Before almost anyone had Internet, CBS, IBM and Sears joined forces to create an online service called “Prodigy” in 1984. This actually allowed people to purchase things from Sears on their home computer some 10 years before Amazon was founded. Unfortunately, their vision was just too early as most people had to pay long distance phone charges to connect in addition to the monthly subscription.
In the mid to late 90s when Internet became more popular, Sears was gun-shy about investing more money into the same idea. Unfortunately, this would be the beginning of the end since Sears never really did innovate again.
Enjoy this commercial for the Prodigy online service from 1990.
Bitcoin
Since the increase in Bitcoin’s worth to almost $20,000 (before Christmas), I’ve been asked by several people about Bitcoin. Here are a few reasons why getting involved with them, in my opinion, is a horrible idea.
1. Your Bitcoin wallet is kept on your computer. If you lose the key to your wallet, or your computer crashes, you lose all of your money.
2. If you put your Bitcoin on an exchange, when that exchange gets hacked, you lose all of your money. This has already happened several times since there are only a handful of exchanges that deal with US currency.
3. In order to buy something with Bitcoin, you have to pay to have that transaction processed by all the Bitcoin “miners” in the world. This on average costs over $20 a transaction, and takes 2 hours to complete. The more you pay, the higher your priority in line.
4. This one transaction, according to https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption, takes as much electricity to process as what is consumed by 10 average U.S. households in a single day. This is mainly due to inefficiencies in the Bitcoin protocol.
5. Refunds or chargebacks are impossible with Bitcoin. There is no turning back a transaction.
6. Since there is little value to using Bitcoin for everyday transactions, most of its current value (in my opinion) is only from its possible future prospective value (when will the bubble completely burst?)
Now that Bitcoin value is back down to under $15,000, some are wondering if it might be time to invest. Take a look at these graphs and ask yourself, is this the bull trap before the bottom drops out?
