Re: [projectvrm] Re: Colo floods

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Doc, Boulder took a direct hit; even areas far from drainages were affected.  
 Boulder Creek normally runs 200cfs.  It was over 5000cfs Thursday night.  To 
get an idea of the power that's more than 157 tons (assuming pure water) of 
water per second moving very rapidly. The power, to borrow from the NWS 
description of the intensity of the rain, is Biblical.  A large boulder was 
rolled  into one building I know of near the mouth of Boulder Canyon along 
with a few other buildings just crushed by the water.  I spent Thurs night 
keeping water out of my parents house which is just off Baseline about a mile 
east of CU  - well away from the action but every drainage along the Front 
Range was pouring water - the Big Thompson was a foot above what it hit in 
1976 (which was a nice day in Boulder if memory serves correct).  Baseline 
was a river of water for several long stretches and all reservoirs in town 
filled to the top.  Levees north of town gave way draining into the St Vrain 
and affecting points east including Longmont but all major dams appear strong 
and in good shape.   CU campus is OK but areas near drainages saw quite a bit 
of water including all along Canyon Blvd and Arapahoe.  Nearly all major 
roads were under water - there were no ways out of town Thursday night - and 
many roads under water Friday morning.  Most have reopened since but several 
bridges washed out and some of the mountain roads are just gone I think US 36 
west of Lyons and 34 in the Big Thompson Canyon are severely impacted and 
impassible.   I haven't been back in town since Friday am. Buckling of roads 
will be an issue as well.   We are just beginning to learn more of the 
mountain towns as helicopters were finally able to fly on Saturday and we are 
hoping the storms do not materialize today.   After today we appear to be in 
the clear.   

My immediate area of Superior was relatively untouched - significant areas of 
open space and holding ponds separate homes and huge drainages exploded with 
water but had somewhere and plenty of room to run.   Tiny streams - ankle 
deep were thundering 6-8 feet deep torrents and some of the creeks reached up 
to the roads - 15 feet up and nearly topped them and in many areas went right 
over - I-25 being a good example.  But relatives who live within a few 
hundred yards of the Poudre River - another that blew its banks with epic 
flows - high and dry because their neighborhood engineered to handle massive 
amounts of water.

Still the speed with which the entire environment goes from crappy rainy day 
to catastrophic and life threatening is unbelievable.  I along with the rest 
of Boulder was driving all around town to various appointments Wednesday - 
sure it was wet and creeks rolling and of course staying away from the water 
and out of the canyons but nothing prepares you for the speed with which the 
entire system is overwhelmed. We were running errands Thursday afternoon - 
rain was light and roads were fine as folks were getting their groceries etc  
- but once it started pouring Thursday evening all bets were off. 

Most of the worst came at night as well, which partly explains how some cars 
get caught - you drive on roads that never see water and suddenly they are 
rivers - very hard to gauge depth at night in driving rain and you are racing 
time to get to safety in areas you'd never anticipate to be problematic.   

Other towns like Eldorado, Estes Park, Longmont and Lyons and many others are 
also very hard hit.  That said Boulder worked hard for the past 30 years or 
so to engineer the town to take this kind of hit - bike paths and tunnels 
under roads throughout town double as drainage and many bridges widened to 
allow for the flow.  It could have been much much worse.  And had this been 
snow - 17 to 20 feet depending on how you run the numbers.   

The town and the entire area is beginning to assess and pull together to get 
through this.   But flood warnings are going up again as I write this so we 
are keeping our fingers crossed and all in our prayers.

Erik Cecil

http://about.me/erik.cecil

On Sep 15, 2013, at 8:03 AM, Peter Cranstone 
<
 >
 wrote:

> I'm south of Denver in Parker, but Liz is in Boulder and experiencing
> mother nature's flood. Although yesterday we got 4.5" of rain in less than
> an hour and the results we're pretty amazing.
> 
> 
> Peter
> 
> 
> 
> On 9/15/13 6:12 AM, "Katherine Warman Kern" 
> <
 >
> wrote:
> 
>> Peter, aren't you in Boulder?
>> 
>> Having been through Sandie just a year ago, my heart goes out to anyone
>> on this list in the Colo area effected by the flood.
>> 
>> K-
>> 
>> On Sep 13, 2013, at 11:24 AM, Peter Cranstone
>> <
 >
>>  wrote:
>> 
>>> Got to love those UI's :)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Peter
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 9/13/13 8:43 AM, "Dan Lyke" 
>>> <
 >
>>>  wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Stupid GMail interface meant the first pass of this went straight to
>>>> Peter. Sorry.
>>>> 
>>>> On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 4:08 PM, Peter Cranstone
>>>> <
 >
>>>>  wrote:
>>>>> Browserless Information should be glancable and require no
>>>>> navigation (I don't agree with this other than to display a
>>>>> picture. There has to be a menu somewhere).
>>>> 
>>>> A menu is a way to navigate a hierarchical tree. I think what many of
>>>> us desire in interfaces is flatter navigation, which is why the world
>>>> tends towards command-lines. And if you're one of those people who
>>>> says that we've settled on the GUI, I offer one observation: Search is
>>>> a command-line for the web.
>>>> 
>>>> But really, I suspect that what T.Rob means by "ambient interface" is
>>>> one that takes already available information and acts on it. This
>>>> isn't the environment around me presenting me with a menu, this is it
>>>> engaging me in a conversation.
>>>> 
>>>> It's a tricky space: When I flip a light switch, I want the light to
>>>> go on. I don't want the light thinking "what did he really mean?"
>>>> (Mostly [1]). But when I do switch on that light, I'm telling my
>>>> environment a lot more than "hey, I'd like some more light in here".
>>>> Likewise when I turn on my stove, or open a door, I'm engaging an
>>>> interface, but if those handles have notion of context, they can know
>>>> to do a lot more than light the burner or allow me access to the room.
>>>> 
>>>> Okay, here's one: My bathroom light switch plate has 3 switches
>>>> (light, fan, heater) and a timer knob (heater). One of those switches
>>>> has 3 positions, light off, on low, and on. If I'm up in the middle of
>>>> the night, I want the default to be "on low". If the hall light is on,
>>>> I want the default to be "on". If something knew the state of the
>>>> other lights in the house, it could figure this out from how I
>>>> interacted with the switch right fast.
>>>> 
>>>> No smart phone. No touch screen. In fact, probably the same physical
>>>> hardware. And, yes, I'd pay $50 to know that I was far less likely to
>>>> stumble into the bathroom in the middle of the night, want to find
>>>> something, and accidentally turn on the bright light and make myself
>>>> *wide* awake.
>>>> 
>>>> This is why designing interfaces now, or starting with interfaces, for
>>>> the "Internet of Things" seem to me to be doomed to failure: I shed
>>>> gigabytes of intent just walking around my two bedroom house. I
>>>> already have buttons in the house that confuse visitors[2]. What I
>>>> need is not more buttons and menus, but fewer. Which brings us to:
>>>> 
>>>>> Calm Should be seamless with the environment
>>>> 
>>>> One only has to look at the mocking of walking and texting to see that
>>>> phones aren't seamless with the environment.
>>>> 
>>>>> Persistent connection Information must be current, and
>>>>> regularly updatable (this will eat your data plan and
>>>>> battery on mobile if not coded carefully)
>>>> 
>>>> The interface must be responsive. This is different for different
>>>> applications. A tenth of a second is too much lag in some UI, in
>>>> others we're happy to have interfaces with latency of minutes
>>>> (although sometimes we'll but in a secondary effect to message the
>>>> user that something will happen: beeps when we press the crosswalk
>>>> button, feedback on thermostats).
>>>> 
>>>>> Decision driven data Should be personalized and summarized
>>>>> to help users make decisions quickly and easily. "Should I
>>>>> bring an umbrella with me today?" (Context is key)
>>>> 
>>>> Great example: If there's rain forecast, maybe my hat stand knows
>>>> about the weather and rotates to put my wool outback hat on the
>>>> accessible side, rather than the ballcap. Doesn't force the decision
>>>> on me, just makes a recommendation.
>>>> 
>>>> The interface for the Internet of Things will be on a screen, and
>>>> especially on a touch screen, only if the Internet of Things has
>>>> failed horribly and utterly.
>>>> 
>>>> Dan
>>>> 
>>>> [1] http://www.kosherswitch.com/
>>>> [2] Hot water recirculator. "Help, I was on the toilet, pushed that
>>>> button because I wanted to see what it did, and now there's a humming
>>>> that I can't turn off". When we stopped laughing... Of course now we
>>>> have a bidet seat, hopefully the Toto icons don't really give visitors
>>>> like that a shock...
>