That is also an interesting point, @Shaun !

That is a very interesting account, might be worth its own thread to discuss what this family is trying to accomplish. I keep meaning to do some water-related prep test runs, which would include keeping track of how much water I personally use when I can more easily track where everything is going. (How much for washing hands, dishes, drinking, showering, etc.) This account is also super interesting from a risk calculations perspective: this family felt the trade-off was acceptable (benefits of close to family, room for animals, cost, availability) to deal with the risk of only receiving water from a water hauling company (no municipal water, no well, no rainwater harvesting system). Looks like Rio Verde, AZ has an average annual rainfall of ~14″. Nearby Phoenix’s average is ~40″ (which still confuses me, but I guess it’s effects of the valley) and for comparison, Tucson AZ (home of Brad Lancaster, rainwater harvesting advocate and expert) gets ~11″. Here’s another article discussing this situation: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/01/19/scottsdale-rio-verde-foothills-water-crisis/11081256002/ Lots of interesting takeaways: a long-standing vulnerability that didn’t come to pass for years, and allowed people to live normally during that time period. People facing a rough housing market and general cost of living increases looking for a way to reduce those costs (through living in an unincorporated area). Companies (developers) that identified loopholes to increase their profit, downplayed the nature of the vulnerability, and maybe even obfuscated the process by which residents could do their own research. This is a very interesting current event from a preparedness planning standpoint.

Slow reply on my part, but glad to help, and thank you for leading me to the paper in the first place!

Oh wow, thank you internet and awkward timing — I just found a link to the website of one of the authors, Dr. Daniel Swain: https://weatherwest.com/

@pnwsarah, thank you so much for finding this and also noting it in the current events discussions. I didn’t remember ever learning about California megafloods and everything you linked has been an engaged and unsettling read. (Even as someone who never plans to live in Californa, the impact of a flood on the rest of the country is still looming, and I’m spending time reading about this risk due to those impacts.) Did you ever end up spending more time on this paper (in the last half a year)? I’m reading/skimming Huang and Swain (HS2022) now. I am not a meteorologist, but I liked your idea for trying to pull useful features from HS2022. However, after reading, I think the article alone won’t provide the information an individual household needs to make good evacuation decisions faster than those 5-7 day out weather reports you already mentioned. I’ll suggest that California preppers might get better mileage finding a meteorologist who is interested in the paper and interested in tracking practitioner/research updates for how to predict such a storm (eg. someone else to talk to other meteorologists and also track/read/translate subsequent papers for non-weather-pros). I think finding such a person (or people) and subscribing to their updates(/getting on their phone tree) for a warning when conditions look sketchy, could be a more helpful alert than preppers trying to search NWS detailed forecasts themselves for these features. (Unless someone out there already wants to learn to understand these features enough to become a hobby/pro meteorologist, in which case, please post your social media updates here when conditions look sketchy!) My comment is super long, but here are my notes from reading the parts of the paper I thought relevant about what conditions could lead to such a really big storm. In the introduction, the authors state “This work builds upon previous research by…characterizing large-scale ocean and atmosphere conditions associated with such severe storm sequences,” which gave me hope initially, since that communicates their intent to give information that could lead to predictors of a megaflood. (I say could lead because they rightfully say “conditions associated with” rather than “conditions causing”.) The immediate next section, “Large-scale and regional climate conditions associated with megaflood scenarios,” dives into these associated factors that could one day lead to credible predictors of a megastorm event. For their modeling, they created regional weather simulations from two sets of climate data: (1) historical* climate data from 1996-2005, labeled “ARkHist”, and (2) simulated climate data for 2071-2080 from another model that assumes a “high [global] warming” scenario, labeled “ARkFuture”. * (I’m 90% certain it’s actual, highly detailed historical data and not instead a highly-detailed model that does the best-in-class job predicting less-detailed actual historical data and thus is used by scientists to fill in the details, but that 10% uncertainty means I might re-read the methods section more closely later.) For each of these two regional weather simulations, they checked each 30-day period possible and looked for the three 30-day periods that weren’t right next to each other and that had the highest total (cumulative) precipitation. The authors picked one out of the three periods to focus on when discussing the conditions and impacts of the storms and when comparing the historical data to the high warming future data. (They picked which one out of the three 30-day periods in a subjective but still practical manner: they assessed which of those top three storms would be difficult for emergency managers across the whole state of California to handle.) For just the two chosen storms, they discuss the following features: Both occurring in El Nino years (“warm-phase ENSO”) “maximum SST anomalies located in the tropical central Pacific … consistent with so-called “central Pacific” or “Modoki” El Niño “ “Warm (positive) SST anomalies are also present in the western Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk, as well as along the immediate California coast, in both cases.” “a broad region of negative sea level pressure (SLP) anomalies is centered over the Gulf of Alaska and adjacent portions of western North America—consistent with traditional El Niño teleconnections—although the zone of negative SLP anomalies extends farther westward across the North Pacific in ARkHist.” However, then they do good scientific diligence and go on to say “We acknowledge, however, that these large-scale patterns and associations with ENSO are drawn from only two individual scenario instances, and we cannot determine from this analysis alone whether these relationships are robust across a wider range of potential megastorm events.” (Emphasis added by me.) Basically the list above can’t effectively be treated as credible predictive features of an incoming megastorm. It’s super tempting, but that’s really just a start. And maybe future research will end up supporting a few of these features as credible predictors. But maybe future research will end up casting doubt and identifying much better predictors not mentioned here. From this part of the paper, there’s not nearly enough information to go on for predicting the when of a megastorm/megaflood. Which is not really a surprise, because I think the major goal of this paper was to create a plausible scenario for emergency managers use in exercises (and also check “is it worse with a warmer global temperature?”). Given they acknowledge this limitation to these initial features discussed, the authors introduce an additional analysis that goes back and grabs the top 4 thirty-day periods of greatest precipitation from both simulations (top 4 for ARkHist and top 4 for ARkFuture), once again simulates the super detailed weather models for these periods and then discusses the following features after looking at all 8 thirty-day periods of highest precipitation: “anomalously warm conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean” “Niño 3.4 SST anomalies are uniformly positive” They also check a better quality measurement of ENSO Longitude Index (ELI) (“an ENSO metric that tracks the average longitudinal position of ENSO-associated deep convection”). The ELI suggests these storms have less in common than the Niño 3.4 SST anomalies might imply (“ELI values more clearly illustrate a wider range of ENSO spatial variability and dynamical intensity”). The ELI measures can be categorized as either “strong El Niño” (4 of the events), “moderate El Niño” (3 of the events), and a “nominally” moderate El Niño (the last of the events). At this point, they’re comfortable enough to say some magic words (“these findings suggest”), but the discussion is again about features of those eight 30-day periods identified in their simulations: “These findings strongly suggest that there is a substantially elevated likelihood of month-long storm sequences capable of producing very large precipitation accumulations during moderate to strong El Niño conditions and that the conspicuous anomalous deepening of the Gulf of Alaska low present in most of these eight events (fig. S3) is plausibly linked to El Niño teleconnections.” The following two paragraphs then discusses a whole host of other metrics and patterns observed. The first following paragraph introduces the integrated water vapor transport (IVT) metric, then discusses a “primary storm mode” of atmospheric rivers, things like “a well-defined moisture transport axis extending northeastward from just north of the Hawaiian Islands to central California,” and atmospheric river families. The second following paragraph discusses “composite atmospheric instability,” including levels and spatial distributions of “convective available potential energy (CAPE).” Then the section on these characteristics ends and I am left with the strong impression that this is a list of features that will be great for future researchers to look into, but not helpful for households trying to set credible alarms for brewing CA megastorms and megafloods. (Especially if someone wants to evacuate for a 30-day megaflood, but to stick around for a two-week parade of atmospheric rivers, and needs predictive features that will distinguish between the two.) The final kicker reason I think this paper can’t help laypeople predict a megastorm+megaflood event shows up in the more detailed “Materials and Methods” section at the end. The two underlying periods (1996-2005 historical and high warming future) were chosen because they were pretty much the only two currently available with detailed enough data to run the cool weather simulation model used here. So this paper did a nice job with its goal of “if we simulate plausible weather with cutting edge models and study a megastorm that formed in the simulation, here’s what that storm actually looks like, and let’s give this to emergency managers for the ARkStorm 2.0 efforts.” But this paper hasn’t really made notable progress on the question of: what are all the various weather conditions that could give rise to a megastorm that generates a megaflood, and which conditions are the best/better predictors of such a storm? (Which is the question we’d like to have answered for getting a heads up on danger looming.) Ok, now it’s time for me to get off the stage here. 🙂

Thank you for this story! Years ago I spent an uncomfortable night on an air vent in an airport, and added a small, folding piece of a closed-cell foam sleeping pad to my carryon backpack ever since. I always keep some sort of coat with me (rather than in a checked bag). But I usually don’t carry much more than a few snacks with me on the day of a flight — so this is very good food for thought.

6.4 magnitude earthquake in Northern California (Humboldt County): https://ground.news/article/magnitude-64-earthquake-strikes-offshore-northern-california_d37dbf

Cold weather incoming: “A significant and disruptive storm system is forecast to produce a multitude of weather hazards through midweek, as heavy snowfall, strong winds, and dangerously cold temperatures span from the Northwest through the Plains, the Great Lakes, and the central Appalachians.” (US NWS Short Range Public Discussion, https://origin.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/discussions/hpcdiscussions.php?disc=pmdspd ) I’m re-posting this from last week, since the cold front and storms are still current events. Linking to National Weather Service details this time.National Forecast Maps: https://www.weather.gov/forecastmapsShort Range Forecast Map: https://origin.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/basicwx/basicwx_ndfd.php

Awesome! Thank you for reporting on your tests with this — I look forward to hearing more experience as you are able to share it.

Weather report concerning next week: “Extremely cold air from Siberia will send US into deep freeze days before Christmas. A bitter blast of cold air will challenge records that have stood since the 1980s from the northern Rockies to the Southeast, as well as stress energy grids, in the run up to the Christmas holiday.” Link: https://www.accuweather.com/en/winter-weather/polar-vortex-christmas-weather-cold-forecast/1385381

I took a course that mentioned some very basic thermal cooking (in order to get beans while camping without spending hours and hours next to a campfire), and the instructor mentioned those books as a good reference for both recipes and for more discussion of the ideas behind thermal cooking. (For example, that water’s high heat capacity makes it a good “storage” material for enough heat to properly cook the food — as you mentioned in a test above– and that’s why a certain amount of water is typically used in recipes to create that heat bank.) I believe both books also address how to consider doing more delicate things like pasta. Another good discussion you might enjoy: https://theprovidentprepper.org/thermal-cookers-powerful-solution-for-efficient-emergency-cooking/ When I learned about thermal cooking, the instructor was emphasizing the reduced energy requirements, the largely unsupervised (and somewhat stealth) cooking process, and the freedom from energy/grid connections at point of serving. This may be harder with a larger hay box, but for the smaller vaccuum/foam-insulated based thermal cookers, a common example is preparing everything on the stove at home, letting the meal cook in the trunk of a car, and then opening it up whereever the family decides to stop for a picnic (no outlets or battery banks required). And that’s a routine, “no emergencies here” use, which is very cool. So I haven’t been too worried about this type of cooker being limited to boiling or steaming, because I’d be planning to use it for its energy- and supervision-saving strengths, and supplement it with other methods when dry heat is needed.  By that I mean, my idle “what do I hope I could do?” daydreams about bugging in if “the grid is down for weeks and we still have to cook for people!” involve a kitchen + backyard with a collection of thermal cookers, solar cookers, a “charcoal” grill (but building small hardwood fires in the grill, instead of limiting ourselves to charcoal briquets), plus a rocket mass heater stovetop with oven that I “conveniently” had in my backyard for entertaining long before the emergency (eg https://walkerstoves.com/photos-and-video.html). Also, plus some pressure cookers, although I don’t have real experience with them yet. (The provident prepper website has a really nice “cooking off grid” experiment/practice adventure that they reported on, which includes discussion of putting the pressure cooker into a haybox to take advantage of both of those technologies.) That was a bit of a ramble, so anyways, thank you for sharing your ongoing tests with haybox cooking!

Great stuff — thank you for sharing your tests and results!

“Thermal cooking” is another search phrase to use for modern recipes. For example, a great resource is https://www.thermalcooking.net/ Cindy Miller, the author of that website, has also written: “Let’s Make Sense of Thermal Cooking Cookbook”, as well as produced a number of youtube videos. And I also picked up the book “Fireless Cookers Haybox Cookers & Retained Heat Cookers: Making & Using Off-grid Cooking Devices” by Mr George Eccleston. I still have a bunch of experiments to do (out of curiousity, I ended up picking up several vaccuum and foam thermal containers, but haven’t run as many tests as I’ve wanted just yet).

Thanks for the reminder that it’s easy to make a sleeve — I had been overlooking that and would wrap mine hot water heater in a towel. Speaker of low tech ways to maintain personal heat: When I converted to working from home, I found my apartment was colder to work in than the office, and since years before I had already had some non-ideal interactions with my landlord about making the heat higher when it was cold outside, I was looking for some low-tech alternative methods to keeping warm at home. I found this article discussing the author’s approach to heating a specific person (the example being, while they are working at a desk): https://richsoil.com/electric-heat.jsp After reading the article, I was making a shopping list of electric warmers for my feet and hands, when I decided to try out the principles with items I already have. I had a spare pair of wool felt liners meant for winter boots (it was the size that didn’t fit quite so well in my boots), so those became my “sitting at my desk” slip on shoes. I had a chunk of closed-cell-foam (that I normally carried in my backpack to the office, as an emergency insulator), so that went under the desk for me to place my feet on top and further insulate them from the cold floor. I also had plenty of blankets, and spot intended for external keyboards under the top of my work desk, so, I took several blankets and draped them over the external keyboard shelf and created a way to easily drape the blankets over my lap when I pulled my chair into the desk (but also not require me to put the blanket anyway when I left the desk). I also draped more blankets over and around my chair, to block air movement from behind me (onto my back, or onto the back of my legs). After two years, I’m still using all pieces of this system to stay more comfortable when at my computer, and I notice how much warmer I am when I get up from the desk on cool days. When I finally get back into an office, I might have to risk some odd looks and keep up with the blanket on my lap approach.

Very glad to see this book reviewed on these forums — I picked it up a year or so ago and thought it was awesome. The concept that “first aid” even exists for mental health was an empowering eye opener for me. I found the stories and examples very helpful for reinforcing the metaphor of “first aid” for mental health. Some of the most powerful moments are realizing there are concrete steps we can take to fix problems, and this book was it for me in realizing how many more options I had (than I previously realized) for maintenance and improvement of my mental health.