Well
it’s been ten days since I repopulated the DaveCave, and California’s Heat Wave
followed me across the Big Valley and right up the hill. In fact Truckee ran
hotter than The Inland Valley and the Ancestral Digs for nine straight days!
I ran into Reno for some BBQ parts,
reprovisioning and a tank of gas after a week of baking, being careful to pick
a day where the weather promised some relief from their string of 90°F+ days,
and a chance of Thunderstorms to boot!
Well the humidity made up for the
slight slacking of the temps…fortunately my errands didn’t include any heavy
lifting…I picked up a new BBQ and headed west up the Truckee River Canyon in
time to make it home for the 4:05PM SF Giant’s Double Header.
Thursday I headed into town to dry
my laundry and hit the library for some internet connectivity. The sky to the
north and east was as dark as midnight. On the car’s AM radio I could hear a
steady crackling of lightning strikes.
The parking lot at the library was
packed. This meant that all three AC Outlets upstairs in the ‘Internet Peanut
Gallery’ were doubtlessly occupied…I opted to run on battery power from the
shared parking with the Truckee PD. It was hot but breezy, 85°F according to
the car’s external thermometer…I let the car run with the A/C blasting until I
had both computers started and the clouds parted bathing the front seat area in
blindingly bright sunlight that made it all but impossible to view the laptops’
LCD screens.
I had the Dell up, running and
connected to the library’s Internet Access Point, read my mail and started
streaming KSFO from San Francisco before my nine year old COMPAC finished
starting up. I paused Carbonite and tried in vain to get logged onto the
library’s wireless network. There’s a very specific dance to get onto the
network, and it’s a little complicated to do the two-step with the old single
core Centrino™ processor doing one. thing. at. a. time…
I run the old machine for iTunes,
and I needed to update some Podcasts…I bailed…I’ll dig a little further back in
my iTunes library tonight and hit the library before lunchtime tomorrow.
I headed back to the DaveCave and
the radio was still crackling like a campfire. I was listening to Reno’s
leading News/Talk station KKOH 780AM. At 3PM, it’s Local Talk. Dan Mason the
regular afternoon host was on, but he was having a heck of a time getting any
conversation going because the Emergency Alert System (EAS) kept interrupting
with the latest NWS Weather Warnings…Flash Flood Warnings, Severe Thunderstorm
Warnings…local doomsday if you will…
Twitter on my phone kept me up to
the second…because of the seven second delay the radio stations use, I’d see
the tweet from @NWSReno a few seconds before the EAS klaxon would grate away at
my radio’s little speaker and parrot the latest trouble spot.
At 4:08PM PDT @i80chains tweeted:
“HELD: WEST held AT THE NEVADA STATE LINE Due to A MUD SLIDE – MOTORISTS ARE
ADVISED TO USE AN ALTERNATE ROUTE (16:08)”
Finally, KKOH went off the air for
twenty or so minutes…likely a lightning strike took out the power at the
transmitter site. KKOH, missed out on
the Alert and the scoop…I turned on the tube and tuned in Sacramento’s CBS
affiliate KOVR 13. Their weatherdude, Dave Bender was on the story…here’s his
radar pix:
Around 5:30PM PDT @D3PIO ( CalTrans
District 3 Public Information Officer) tweeted: “ETO for I-80 reopening near
state line is now 8:30 p.m.” That’s when I heard the first thunderclap. We got
a few kernels of hail in the ¼ inch range, but not enough rain to fully wet the
front deck…
Well lookie here…CalTrans got the
Interstate open at 10PM PDT Mountain life, never a dull moment!
