Here is a photo from space showing Pittsburgh, Baltimore, DC and Richmond with a slider to show before-and-after conditions:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/dc-storm-from-space/?hpid=z1 It isn't North Korea but it does show dramatic, widespread outages. My sister who lives near Charlottesville, VA just got power back this morning. To attend the meeting at W&M I drove from Gettysburg, PA through DC to Williamsburg. There were trees down and damage the whole way. Power was out from Frederick MD all the way to southern Virginia. Many of the people attending the conference from the surrounding areas lost power. I have never seen such widespread storm damage at this time of year in that part of the country. It was a hurricane that formed over land instead of the ocean; a so-called derecho -- a word I had not heard up until last week. The intensity was caused by the record high heat. I expect that, in turn, was caused by global warming. Washington DC has always had a lot of violent weather and extreme temperatures, but it is usually local. It seldom reaches Frederick or Gettysburg. I have never heard of such a thing stretching hundreds of miles. Gettysburg and the rest of southern Pennsylvania has every kind of weather every day of the year. It is hot, cold, raining and then clear in 30-minute increments throughout the day. I grew up thinking that is normal. That is also how the weather works in Ithaca, NY. People up there say "if you don't like the weather around here, wait 15 minutes." The problem it that it is dreary, gray and cold most of the time there, like of like in Scotland. I hold that such places are the source of discovery and intellectual ferment partly because people have nothing better to do than sit around indoors thinking. Not like the Riviera, Bermuda or Florida. These outages demonstrate the need for decentralized cold fusion power generation. So does the crisis in electric power in Japan with all the reactors turned off. - Jed
