Came across some really cool images of the recent blizzard. First two are from NASA’s GOES project showing the what it looked like during and after the storm. The third one was posted by The Weather Channel’s Twitter feed @TWCi. You can view a much higher res version of that image here.

20th Annual Lowcountry Blues Bash
Seasoned blues artists from around the country will converge on Charleston this month for the 20th Annual Lowcountry Blues Bash. This annual 12 day event kicks off Friday, February 5 and runs through February 16. There will be over 50 acts, performing 90 shows at 25 venues throughout the Lowcountry. Cover charges range from $3 to $15 and many shows are free. You can check out the list of artists and venues in this handy two page pdf.

John Mayer Concert
John Mayer released his fourth studio album entitled, Battle Studies, back in November. You’ve probably heard the first single “Who Says” on the radio a few times. A tour to promote the album kicks off today in Sunrise, Florida.  The fourth show of the tour will bring Mayer to the North Charleston Coliseum on Monday, February, 8. Crappy tickets are still available through Ticketmaster. Your best bet for decent seats will be CraigsList. There’s a mix of folks looking to make a profit and others who are genuinely just trying to get rid of tickets at close to face value. I was able to find a pair of tickets for $75 each that are selling for twice that amount at a more traditional site like Stubhub. Good luck and caveat emptor.

Last week an enormous and powerful low pressure system rocked the Southwest United States breaking all kinds of records for the area for rain totals, snowfall totals, tornadoes, and caused major flooding, mudslides, and even brought hurricane force winds (over 74mph) to several areas. The main record broken was the lowest pressure ever recorded over large swaths of states including Oregon, California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah making it the strongest storm ever recorded in 140 years of record keeping.

Some other impressive events of this storm were the 5 tornadoes in spawned in unlikely areas like Southern California. Snowfall totals in the mountains of California and Arizona topped out at 7 feet.  As always, Dr. Jeff Masters breaks down the record breaking weather event in way more detail, but he doesn’t have this pretty radar image of the storm at the height of its fury.

Hopefully you haven’t forgotten about your Charleston Stingrays as they finish up the 2nd half of the season and look to defend their ECHL Championship and the Kelly Cup they won last year. It can be difficult for a championship team to maintain that high level of play following a championship season as all the other teams are usually gunning for the champs. It’s even harder in a minor league system like the ECHL where players and personnel are constantly moving and shifting from teams and leagues. Despite all that, the Stingrays find themselves atop the South Division and playing well. For game and ticket info, visit their website.

Although the ECHL is 2 tiers below the NHL, that doesn’t mean the quality of the product on the ice isn’t entertaining. Some of the Stingrays games I’ve been to are as intense and energetic as some NHL games I’ve seen. And while yes, these players aren’t as talented as NHL or even AHL players, you’ll still see some quality hockey action. If you don’t believe me, I give you exhibit A in the video below. It is a goal from a recent ECHL game featuring the Victoria Salmon Kings. I’ve seen A LOT of amazing goals in the 30+ years I’ve been watching hockey and this is one of the best.

This is what a snowman looked like in Charleston this morning. Photo courtesy of @AndrewBarton

All the hype about snow this week from the local weather and news outlets was a bit confusing to me. After hearing report after report all week about a chance of snow in the Lowcountry on Friday morning, I went to see what the Weather Channel had to say. Their forecast, since Monday, called for temperatures on Thursday night into Friday morning in the upper 30’s with a chance of rain and only rain. This forecast never changed all week. I’m not sure what the local weather forecasters knew that the Weather Channel didn’t when calling for even a chance of snow or a wintry mix in Charleston, but it was never going to be cold enough along the coast for anything other than rain.

More checkpoints this weekend in the Mt. Pleasant area. New Year’s eve checkpoints are pretty obvious but they’ll have a few more throughout the weekend. Be safe.

Thursday night December 31

Mathis Ferry Road at Old Wando High School
9:30 p.m. to 11:00  p.m.

SC41 at Bessemer
12:30 a.m. to 2:30 a.m.

Friday night January 1

Park West Blvd near Cario Blvd
9:30 pm – 11:00 p.m.

Rifle Range Rd near Waterworks/New Whitesides
1:00 a.m. to 3:00  a.m.

Saturday night January 2

Whipple Rd near recreation complex
9:30 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.

Chuck Dawley near Spine Institute
1:00  a.m. to 3:00 a.m.

And if you ever wondered about these checkpoints and how they affect your 4th Amendment rights, you can read up on the legality of checkpoints here.

If you are going to be out and about on the roads this weekend, be aware of several police checkpoints that are going to be set up in the Mt. Pleasant area.

Friday, December 18

Mathis Ferry Road near the old Wando High School
10:30 p.m to 12:00 a.m.

Rifle Range at Water works
1:00 a.m.  to 3:00 a.m.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

K-Mart at Bowman
10:30 p.m. – 12:00 a.m.

Chuck Dawley Blvd near the Spine Institute 
1:00 a.m. – 3:00 a.m.

And if you ever wondered about these checkpoints and how they affect your 4th Amendment rights, you can read up on the legality of checkpoints here.

Is it a new decade or not?

As we approach the new year, the calendar will switch to 2010 and many will recognize this as the start of a new decade just like most everyone recognized January 1, 2000 as the start of a new century and millennium. The problem is, this is technically incorrect.

Sort of.

If you go all the way back to the start of the calendar we use, the first day was January 1, 0001. There was no year 0. This means that the first decade, or ten year period, went from January 1, 0001 through December 31, 0010 with the second decade starting on January, 1, 0011. This ten year cycle would never change during the course of the next 2000+ years so for those of us alive today,  the next decade technically doesn’t start until January 1, 2011. Yes, this means all the hullaballoo around the celebrations on December 31, 1999 were only because the numbers on the calendar were changing to 2000. We were not technically celebrating the start of a new decade, century, or millennium if you were counting from the beginning of our current calendar. Those all officially happened on January 1, 2001.

It’s a weird debate and both sides can technically claim they are correct. By definition, a decade is any period of 10 consecutive years no matter when you start counting. From a societal standpoint, we’ve always refered to decades by the numbers on them so the 80’s ran from the ten year period from 1980 through 1989. So for many, 2010 is the start of a new decade because they started counting in 2000, which is fine.  After all, if we didn’t do it this way then 1980 was actually part of the 70’s which is really lame and would totally mess up all those Best of the decade shows on VH1.

Yes, there are some things South Carolina can do well, at least a county in South Carolina anyway.  The full 100 city listing can be found here or you can search by zip code.

Cities with the best water:

1. Arlington, TX
2. Providence, RI
3. Fort Worth, TX
4. Charleston, SC
5. Boston, MA
6. Honolulu, HI
7. Austin, TX
8. Fairfax County, VA
9. St. Louis, MO
10. Minneapolis, MN

Cities with the worst water:

1. Pensacola, FL
2. Riverside, CA
3. Las Vegas, NV
4. Riverside County, CA
5. Reno, NV
6. Houston, TX
7. Omaha, NE
8. North Las Vegas, NV
9. San Diego, CA
10. Jacksonville, FL

Results are from The Environmental Working Group.