Today (Monday) I read on CNN a short blurb about people many miles away, who woke up in the entire country to this.
220 million |
That's about how many people in Pakistan were left without power this morning after a countrywide outage. Pakistan's national grid went down at around 7:30 a.m. local time, the country's Ministry of Energy said, adding "system maintenance work is progressing rapidly." Power in some cities has since been restored, but many others remain impacted. |
Watch the infrastructures of the world, a friendly voice told me many years ago. They are having a hard time keeping up with population growth and spread.
So I keep an eye on things like this. Check how many bridges have been repaired, as well as the usual pot-holes. See about the number of water-line breaks around you. How often is internet interrupted? And black-outs where electricity goes out, how long do repairs take? Generally speaking my area has been spared winter's woes up to now, so highways are unsullied from plows and salt.
Today's weather was forecast to have rain and snow before dawn, a few hours of it. I needed to drive 15 miles to a medical test, leaving just at dawn from my home on a hill. I was very cautious considering the slopes from the steep hill as passable...though just sliding downhill might happen, I would like to end where the stop sign is, not in a ditch.
So I canceled the test. I explained that I would have been driving on unsafe roads, when I rescheduled it.
In reality, no rain nor snow came in the night. I knew when I looked out the window at the same time my appointment had been...and the sun was shining, with a few fluffy clouds against the blue sky.
So that's another bit of wonderment, why do I make my plans based on weather forecasts anyway? I usually will be able to discern what's actually happening...but not at night. The snow is still forecast within the hour, but after being over freezing for a few hours, with sunshine, I dare say it will just get things wet. Will I drive after that? It depends on how I feel. A woman's intuition is as good as any weather forecast, I figure!
And I could post later whether there was snow or not, but I won't.
