Updates on Nemo and Super Bowl blackout

Two updates, first on Nemo and then on the Super Bowl blackout.

Here's the latest on the storm from USA Today as reprinted in the Detroit Free Press.

'Nemo' blizzard turns deadly; massive power outages in Northeast
By Gary Strauss, Doyle Rice and Kevin McCoy
February 9, 2013

A deadly blizzard of epic proportions pounded the Northeast, already bringing more than 3 feet of snow to some areas and cutting power to 650,000 homes and businesses.

More than 3 feet had fallen on central Connecticut by Saturday afternoon, and areas of southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire notched 2 feet or more of snow — as the storm began to wane.

The storm is being blamed on at least six deaths, three in Canada and three in the USA. A 74-year-old man died after being struck by a car in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; the driver said she lost control in the snowy conditions, police said. A second New Yorker, 23, died when a tractor he was using to plow his driveway went off the edge of the road. And a pedestrian was struck by a vehicle and killed Friday night in Connecticut, police said.

The storm may be a disaster, but the naming was a success, as documented in Naming Nemo: How the Storm Got Its Name by Larry O'Hanlon at Discovery News.

Back in October 2012, everybody was poohooing The Weather Channel’s (TWC) plan to start giving names to significant winter storms. Now it looks like a large number of reports on the storm, dubbed Nemo by TWC, have adopted the name (not all, by any means, but lots, including Discovery News).

What happened? I’ll say it in three words: search engine optimization. Despite very reasonable arguments against the naming of winter storms by many meteorologists, we are seeing them adopted anyway.

Finally, another take on the Super Bowl blackout from Wired.

How Much Gasoline Would It Take to Power the Superdome?
By Rhett Allain
02.04.13

Surely you are aware that there was a power issue during Super Bowl XLVVII in the Superdome. So, some of the lights went out near the beginning of the second half of the game.

I’m not entirely sure there is a backup generator for the Superdome, but what if there is? What if the power went out and they wanted to continue the Super Bowl using a generator. How fast would that thing use gasoline?

The answer is one tanker truck per hour and a half.  That deserves last month's Nablopomo badge.