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Joined: Oct 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
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NYC will sometimes be hit with a big snow storm when cold canadian winds hit warm tropical storms come up the east coast-- and in 1968 Mayor Lindsey lost his bid for re-election after he decided it was OK to postpone digging out queens-- forgetting that Manhattan might have the most money, but queens has the most voters.. (high percentage of registered voter, and generally highest percentage of turnout.)
Should we have a sub thread on mayor who lost elections because of snow storms?
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Joined: Jan 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
New England has only one wind worth mentioning, and it does not have an impressive name. But some terrible blizzards start that way, and in old days caused tragic ship-wrecks. Some of the old-timers swore it made their arthritis flare up. One such would not get out of bed if his weather vane visible from his bed indicated wind from north east. Some kids hitched a string to it, and he stayed in bed for two weeks, until bright sunshine convinced him of a deception.
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Joined: Sep 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
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Joined: Nov 2000
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 866 |
Went to a quiz night the other night and learnt that "sirocco" was also a wind. This came about in the "Guess The Jumbled Place Names" round - clue being Sirocco cured pork meat. (Wyndham - in the far north of Western Australia)
Oh - and the quiz itself....we led for a few rounds but fell at the post due to our lack of knowledge of classical music. (well, I WAS sure that Beethoven wrote the William Tell overture. - Who's this Rossini guy anyway - what'd he ever do?) Our team had to console themselves with prizes that consisted of bottles of red wine, packets of popcorn and a video shop voucher. Sounds like a good night in the making!
Quiz nights are a very popular form of fundraising in W.A. but hardly heard of in the eastern parts of Oz. What about where you are?
stales
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 618
addict
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addict
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 618 |
Quiz nights are quite popular in Adelaide too.
Returning to winds: the Fremantle Doctor is a common occurrence during a cricket match at the WACA (Western Australian Cricket Association ground). Then there's kamikaze. And ... nah, that'll do.
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
Went to a quiz night the other night and learnt that "sirocco" was also a wind.Nonsense! It's a coffee bar that stays open late at night. It's situated at the bottom of Dowling Street in Dunedin and is currently owned by a very nice Dutch couple ...  Quiz nights are very popular in Zild. Damned near every pub runs one at some time or another. The New Zealand Computer Society used to have a fair number of them as fund-raisers. I usually got roped into coming up with the questions and answers. As I am reminded every time I watch "The Weakest Link", people are so damned igorant about such basic things .... !
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
snowfall led directly to the Denver mayor's losing the election the next fall because he couldn't get the streets cleaned of snow.
MAny years ago the mayor of Cambridge was taken to task for doing nothing to get rid of the very deep icy ruts in the city's street. His response :"God put it here and God will take it away." And sure enough He did ... in April!
And the Mayor was re-lected ... go figure!
And Dr. Bill : those snows that can dump two to four feet of snow on Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts in 24 hours is a Nor'easter (a/k/a "The Montreal Express.")
(And this Northern New Englander ain't lookin' forward to any this winter lemme tell ya'.)
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
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wildwinds,
fwiw, there are approx. 900 -ologys in OED2, discounting mob psychology and the like. none of these seem to have anything to do with dust (based on the reliability of the search engine).
[it would be fairly easy to list them all; not so easy to define them...]
p.s. - in addition to khamsin itself, there are several entries which mention it; e.g.,
Strong southerly winds are specially hot and unpleasant, and they are distinguished everywhere by local names such as sirocco, chili, khamsin. {from chili, An oppressive hot southerly wind which blows in Tunisia.}
Her steadfastly sunny outlook even in the middle of a ghibli (khamsin or sirocco, by any other name as blinding and painful). {from gibli, A local name in Libya for the sirocco.}
The Mediterranean area also is the home of a hot, searing, dust-laden wind off the Sahara, known in various localities as sirocco, khamsin, leveche, or samiel. {from leveche, A hot, dry, more or less southerly wind of south-eastern Spain, the local counterpart of the sirocco.}
...also sharav and simoom.
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Joined: Sep 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
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Thanks, tsuwm, for your seemingly unending will to research. I had heard of some of the winds you listed, but a couple were new to me: the chile and leveche. What made the chile interesting was the fact that it is a wind of Tunisia--and I know of no strong Spanish presence in Tunisia, which is northern Africa. Do the Spanish heavily populate Tunisia, I wonder? (I'm not asking you tsuwm to research any further!! You've done a great deal already--I'm just curious about the Spanish presence in Tunisia.)
There should be a book of *ologies.
Best regards,
WW
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Joined: Dec 2000
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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Tunisia being Francophone, it's pronounced shili. I guessed it'd be Arabic, but in fact it's Berber.
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