Preparedness for when

Cappella

milasavesmoney - I'd settle for just a few weeks of sunshine. I'm sitting with a wool jumper on under a crocheted blanket as I type this

I hope the firefighters manage to bring the blazes in your state under control soon. I can't imagine how terrifying it must be for those who've lost homes, or are in the path of the flames.

nuatha

milasavesmoney wrote: »

This leads me back to a topic we have already discussed a while back...having a thumb drive of essential papers/photo/accounts numbers etc. with you and I now think another one safe with a trusted 2nd party.

We so desperately need rain!

I hope the fires can be brought swiftly under control.
I keep a thumb drive on me as part of my everyday carry, a duplicate is in my vehicle and another with Herself. Another lives off site with my MiL. Apart from a pdf of my passport all the data is encrypted (a password protected zip file, with sensitive data having more heavy duty protection) these drives contain all the data to re-establish my identity and access my bank accounts - perfect for identity theft in the wrong hands.

GreyQueen wrote: »

I'm a fan of Tony Hillerman's books set in your part of the world.

I just discovered at the weekend that his daughter, Anne, is continuing the stories of Leaphorn and Chee, two novels so far with a third due this autumn.

milasavesmoney

nuatha wrote: »

I hope the fires can be brought swiftly under control.
I keep a thumb drive on me as part of my everyday carry, a duplicate is in my vehicle and another with Herself. Another lives off site with my MiL. Apart from a pdf of my passport all the data is encrypted (a password protected zip file, with sensitive data having more heavy duty protection) these drives contain all the data to re-establish my identity and access my bank accounts - perfect for identity theft in the wrong hands.

Thanks for saying how you store your info as that helps.
I started working on this again and then wondered off somewhere. I've got to get serious and complete this task!

Karmacat

I'm another one with a flash drive stored in a Hotel Bag and another one offsite too, as well as my ordinary backup.

Mila, glad to hear you're safe - these huge fires are serious business

It's not cold in my area the way GQ and Cappella are having, but I've definitely got an extra layer on. I've been up for a long time definitely got some energy at the moment, so I'm trying to do what I can while I can

mardatha

I've got a Navajo penpal, we've been emailing and swapping gifts since 2002. I started reading Tony Hillerman to know more about her folk. The conditions they live in are awful, a wee bit like the crofters up north but harder.

thriftwizard

Just an aside here: does anyone else think that the current weather forecasts contain a distinct element of "jam tomorrow"? I'm trying to plan which markets & sales to book for, and looking at the Met Office site next weekend looks lovely, but yesterday looked lovely on the forecast earlier last week, and whilst we did have a couple of hours of warm sunshine first thing, it soon turned back to louring dark grey clouds and cool wind and the potential buyers very sensibly stayed in bed!

The long-range forecast is just a masterpiece of hedging your bets. Our big local festival falls in the middle of July & it's my major earner of the year. Whilst we're not totally weather-dependent, it would be nice to be able to guess whether to pretty-up umbrellas or parasols! I do know that forecasting's never been/can never be an exact science, thanks to all those butterflies in the Amazon; I did a year of meteorology at uni long ago. And that climate change, however caused, is mucking about big-time with the little that we do actually know. And I'll concede that sun-spots clearly do have some influence, whether there's any scientific consensus about that or no, but I'm beginning to think that tossing a coin would be just about as accurate as any of the forecasts I've seen lately!

Perhaps this is the thin end of the wedge of climate change - not instant crop failure, but a bunch of puzzled & very broke market traders!

GreyQueen

Thriftwizard, I have pretty much given up paying attention to weather forecasts.

Many's the time I have had Radio 4 on and the weathercaster has said and it's sunny/ raining in Provincial City, and I've looked out the window and seen sunshine instead of rain, or vice versa. And if they can't accurately describe what is happening in real time, there's no hope for medium or long term weather forecasting, imo.

At the moment, we have hazy sunshine and I intend to go gardening for a few hours. Tomorrow I will be working, regardless of the weather, and may go gardening in the evening, if it isn't actually raining and I'm not too cream-crackered.

All you can do is, have a dry weather plan and a wet weather plan and don't try second-guessing which you'll have to deal with because even the meterologists don't seem to have a flipping clue.

mila; because the UK is only a few hundred miles across, and is set in a cold sea but also in way of the Gulf Stream, our weather is extremely changeable, which is why its always being talked about by Brits. It's a rare day when rain isn't a potential risk. If you ever visit, appropriate apparel even in summer would be a waterproof shell-type jacket and a warmish layer like a light sweater or microfleece.

[Deleted User]

GreyQueen wrote: »

mila; because the UK is only a few hundred miles across, and is set in a cold sea but also in way of the Gulf Stream, our weather is extremely changeable

Hence why most of the world has a climate, but we have weather.

nuatha

milasavesmoney wrote: »

Thanks for saying how you store your info as that helps.
I started working on this again and then wondered off somewhere. I've got to get serious and complete this task!

My "Go" bag also has the key documents vacuum packed in its base - the documents are arranged so the key ones are readable without opening the vacuum bag, but are vac-packed because laminating them means they are no longer acceptable to the authorities. Cut the vac-pack and the documents can be removed in perfect condition. Currently that's my birth and marriage certificates, proof of my NI and NHS numbers. Recent discussions have me considering whether to add some key photos and qualification documentation.
Unfortunately Go bags rarely have things removed, and there is a limit on just what I can carry (let alone what I wish to carry) and those limits are getting lower over time, hence my preference for bug in locations .

thriftwizard wrote: »

Just an aside here: does anyone else think that the current weather forecasts contain a distinct element of "jam tomorrow"? I'm trying to plan which markets & sales to book for, and looking at the Met Office site next weekend looks lovely, but yesterday looked lovely on the forecast earlier last week, and whilst we did have a couple of hours of warm sunshine first thing, it soon turned back to louring dark grey clouds and cool wind and the potential buyers very sensibly stayed in bed!
...
Perhaps this is the thin end of the wedge of climate change - not instant crop failure, but a bunch of puzzled & very broke market traders!

Generally I've found the farming forecasts to be more useful, however even these have been considerably less reliable over the last couple of years.
Even local forecasts for 24 hours ahead change rapidly and still fail to actually predict with any degree of accuracy.
This mornings thick cloud (as of 8pm yesterday) turns out to be blue skies, though it looks like its turning to sunny spells.

There uses to be a saying about always predict rain, if you were wrong people would be delighted and nobody would complain.
Though this is generally regarded as a wet period, with Glastonbury, Wimbledon and the Hoppings (a large gathering of Showmen and fun fairs in Newcastle upon Tyne) occurring at similar times.

Hopefully the sun will shine for you, though waterproof parasols and pretty umbrellas might make a useful hedge

VJsmum

nuatha wrote: »

There uses to be a saying about always predict rain, if you were wrong people would be delighted and nobody would complain.
Though this is generally regarded as a wet period, with Glastonbury, Wimbledon and the Hoppings (a large gathering of Showmen and fun fairs in Newcastle upon Tyne) occurring at similar times.

Hopefully the sun will shine for you, though waterproof parasols and pretty umbrellas might make a useful hedge

Shhhhhh, at the moment the forecast is extremely good..........:T