I'm having a hard time believing, not that a #transportation agency would come up with a plan that was to sweep the broken glass and gravel off of the sidewalks and leave it in the bike lanes for a few days before sweeping it up, just that it wasn't done with intentional malice or disdain toward people on bikes. (months after it snowed and they graveled everything while plowing the snow onto the sidewalks) #BarburBlvd#pdxBikes#Portland#BikeTooter#ClimateDenial#CarSupremacy#ODOTGTFOpdx
and yes, that does look like an Oregon PW plate on the back of that pickup, so yes they should have one on the front, $115 fine. But sure, we'll just "share the road" with people in 6000lb missles and expect that they're paying attention and following the rules. #DriverAccountability
A very large sunspot issued five Earth-directed coronal mass ejections on Thursday, leading the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center to issue a watch for G4 geomagnetic storm conditions Friday afternoon to Sunday. This is the highest alert category issued by NOAA since 2005.
A G4 storm on NOAA’s scale corresponds to a Kp index value of 8. Under these conditions, the northern lights or aurora borealis could be seen on the northern horizon as far south as Northern California and Alabama. Aurorae may be seen near to directly overhead the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes with much of Canada (especially Western Canada) likely to experience significant displays.
Having five coronal mass ejections back to back is a remarkably rare event. Readers may remember a double-ejection event in March 2024. Coronal mass ejections are eruptions of material from the Sun, typically originating from sunspots. The sunspot area that generated these ejections is also remarkable – it is estimated to span an area 16 times the diameter of the Earth.
This size puts it on par with estimates of the sunspot area that generated the Carrington Event. While aurorae are typically confined to polar regions, this one in 1859 was strong enough to generate them well into the tropics. Reports of northern lights came in from places like Cuba, Hawaii, and Colombia.
The impeding solar storm is not the same strength as the Carrington Event despite having been spawned by a sunspot area of similar size. The Sun will rotate the current sunspot area to face away from Earth in the coming days.
Coronal mass ejections also create radio blackouts and problems with electrical grids. A G5 storm in 2003 caused power outages in Sweden and damage to electrical infrastructure in South Africa. A large storm in 1989 knocked out power to nearly all of Quebec.
https://ingallswx.files.wordpress.com/2024/05/img_2612-1.png?w=984HRDPS modeled cloud cover for 00:00 PDT Saturday. (WeatherBell)The weather in the Northwestern United States and Western Canada looks ideal for aurora viewing on Friday night. A few scattered high clouds are possible, along with spots of low-level stratus in some coastal areas, but mostly clear skies are forecast. This is thanks to a ridge of high pressure in place over the region.
If you’re in Canada or the northern half of the United States, you can improve your chances of seeing the northern lights Friday night by finding a dark location outside of a city or town with a clear view to the north. Aurora displays are also possible Saturday night.
Note that there is a level of uncertainty with these kinds of forecasts, just like those predicting “normal” weather conditions. Observed Kp numbers aren’t likely to exactly match the NOAA forecast but they should be close. Some uncertainty is also inherent in the timing of the solar storm.
Sunspot frequency varies based on the 11-year long sunspot cycle. Sunspots are the origin of events like this, thus having more sunspots present increases the chances of a geomagnetic storm producing aurora above Earth’s mid-latitudes.
The Sun is currently near the peak of its current cycle. The Space Weather Prediction Center notes that over the course of April 2024 there was an average of 137 sunspots present on the Sun compared to less than 1 for several months during the last minimum in 2019-2020 and 146 in February 2014.
February 2014 represents the peak of the last sunspot cycle. The ongoing maximum is forecast to continue to early 2026 before declining toward the next minimum. While sunspots, geomagnetic storms, and mid-latitude aurora are more common during the peak of the sunspot cycle, occasional storms do strike the Earth around the minimum.
The featured image is of an aurora display in Estonia in 2022. (MaximBilovitskiy/Wikimedia)
After the protests and the library occupation at #Portland State, the university wanted police to monitor the 51st annual Naimuma Powwow, which was scheduled on campus for May 04. Organizers didn’t love that idea of having police there, so they rescheduled the powwow for May 25th.
Then something special happened: students and #Indigenous community members showed up on May 04 anyway, in the park blocks by the university, and held a spontaneous Powwow for #Palestine.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is reportedly secretly intervening to stymie Susheela Jayapal's (sister of Rep. Pramila) congressional race in Portland.
AIPAC is funneling money through 314 Action, which says it helps elect Democrats with a science background, in this case Maxine Dexter, a doctor.
Jewish Insider news had floated Dexter as a potentially pro-Israel candidate before she entered the race.
Rally at 1pm Thurs outside #Portland City Hall to save #PortlandStreetResponse from the proposed budget cuts, and sign up to testify after. Street Response has been far more cost-effective than police on calls for welfare checks or dealing with mental health issues on our streets without guns.
@voiceofunreason yes and PBOT used that as an excuse to build the worthless median islands instead of protected bike lanes 😞. I believe Hardesty later admitted that they got the wrong design on this, while she was relatively new as commissioner when she made that choice. The merchants and traffic Engineers need to understand that not all drivers are going to make any effort to do better.
@enobacon our utility, #XcelEnergy, lobbied the Minnesota legislature/PUC to end the state's very successful community solar garden program. It was replaced with:
ratepayers can pay Xcel to make extra renewable power ("Renewable*Connect "). It is unclear to me if this actually increases Xcel's solar production, or if they would have just produced the minimum required by the state, with or without my bribe.
joining a solar garden via a new State of MN program... only available to low income residents... who are coincidentally unlikely to invest in solar
And that's not all! I tried bribing Xcel to make more solar and... I've been wait listed for a year. They won't even let me join.
@NewNordicNormal have you heard the good news about municipally-owned power generation? At least our community solar program is effectively a discount, even if PGE is still privately owned (for now)
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is reportedly secretly intervening to stymie Susheela Jayapal's (sister of Rep. Pramila) congressional race in Portland.
AIPAC is funneling money through 314 Action, which says it helps elect Democrats with a science background, in this case Maxine Dexter, a doctor.
Jewish Insider news had floated Dexter as a potentially pro-Israel candidate before she entered the race.
@DrALJONES Yep. This is how they operate. I fail to understand why this organisation (#AIPAC ) is not required to register under FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act). All of their work is focused on benefiting #Israel, not the #US.
@DrALJONES Americans have the vapours at the thought of external countries like Russia interfering in elections (something the USA actually does), yet AIPAC are destroying you. US politicians received over $58 million from Israel Lobby in the last election cycle and it’s being exceeded during this one. Bought and paid for politicians is corruption
Today in "how dangerous are drivers of one specific race and gender in #Portland these days", I had some asshole in a green Trooper lean on the horn for the sin of...stopping for a school bus with the stop sign out and flashing.
On a road where you had to stop. He then continued to flip me off and motioned for me to approach his car.
I turned. Not worth getting shot at. But...this is becoming a real problem and the gutlessness of Polite Whoit Society to address the monsters within it? It's killing people.
There were KIDS CROSSING THE STREET my dude. Unlike you, my man, I don't give a fuck what race, gender, or whatever they are, they're FUCKING CHILDREN. It is your responsibility as an adult in this society not to fucking harm them worse than 40% of their parents of a specific race being Fascist fuckups are harming them already.
I know it's "rude" to point this out. But the monsters in your midst will get you given a long enough timeline.
#Portland's new Deputy City Administrator of Public Works will start July 1, in transition to the new form of government adopted by the charter reform measure. Public Works will include Water, Environmental Services, and #Transportation bureaus (which will be run by a City Administrator rather than elected commissioners of our current system.) #pdxBikes
Tactical network-level changes like cut-thru traffic diversion and bus-turn-only road diets are badly needed if we want to actually connect a usable low-stress #bikewayNetwork and not waste the next decade on more non-progress like rebuilding Hawthorne or flashing beacons on 82nd. Drop in hardware, take feedback, and iterate, not this narrow, overpriced, too-little-too-late stuff like around Tilikum, Naito, and soon SW 4th. #tacticalUrbanism like Jersey City, Paris, Seville, Amsterdam 50yrs ago
For far too long, Portland's electeds have been allergic to the word "bike", operating under the delusion (or was it just a lie?) that transit would be the means for people to get out of their cars. But Portland doesn't run its own transit except the streetcar, and the last-mile problem of our sprawling low-density neighborhoods keeps transit from being functional without bikes, for the majority of the population. Until most kids can bike to school, this city is going to stay stuck in traffic.