No matter how powerful we become as a species with our technology, we are still at the mercy of the clouds. Pretty cool if you think about it.

The cloud is no match for the cloud!

haha

I'm completely ignorant here. But aren't these outages usually solved by having backup servers in different locations? As many datacenters do, and as I imagine something as huge as heroku would?

Or if we just built our power grid underground like rational people.

Underground cables have more expensive set up costs, lower lifetime, and higher maintenance costs. The price you pay for electricity doesn't even come close to justifying burying power lines. There's also the ecological stuff if you find that a reasonable argument. Bottom line, burying power cables just so you don't have to light a candle for a night isn't worth it.

Until earthquakes.

Depending on where you are in the world, earthquakes are much rarer then insane storms. I'm speaking as a Floridian. I'm fairly ignorant on this issue, but would it be that difficult to use one or the other depending on which natural occurrence is more likely? Or is this also a cost issue?

Massive cost issue, plus some technical issues.

According to this document [1]:

"The North Carolina Utilities Commission studied the cost of placing Duke Power’s distribution facilities underground and found it would cost more than $41 billion, resulting in a 125 percent increase in customer rates."

[1] http://www.sceg.com/NR/rdonlyres/465E6534-2FFB-4069-BF84-814...,

Underground cables have many problems like rats (and other vermin) or people harvesting copper/metals.

Do they? Here in Germany the entire cabling within cities is underground, only the high voltage long distance lines are above ground. I've never heard a story about people stealing underground cables (they do steal e.g. train track above ground cabling). That also wouldn't make sense, digging up those cables is much more effort than taking them down from a post.

I've also never heard stories about issues with rats.

Power outages still happen, but they are quite rare - in 30 years I can only remember twoish.

Rats are a common menace with all sorts of cabling. Large parts of scotland recently lots broadband due to rats eating cables (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/12/dirty_rat_downs_virg...).

Apparently it's the insulation on the wires that they like.

Really? Rats and copper harvesters?

Like it's gonna be some unprotected plastic cables 1 foot under the ground?

I don't know but I've heard stories. Stealing cables underground is not common but it happened. And rats and underground water is quite a problem for underground (copper) cables.

Sometimes they don't even steal the cables... This guy just liked the sparks. http://www.westvalleyview.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleI...

Not cool at all.

All it means is that humans are not yet powerful enough to make the environment work as it should (ie serve humans).

Well, until we figure out plausible ways to control weather reliably on a large enough scale, at least. Without killing the atmosphere or our species or anything like that.

Or each other...

I see what you did there.

Stormpulse.

this is pretty bad, really bad ...

Hopefully one day it will be feasible to host our computing architecture in space and avoid all these terrestrial obstructions.

Until a solar storm hits, and our servers are no longer under the protection of the Earth's magnetic field.

How do satellites deal with solar storms currently? Surely they could put a ton of iron around the servers to protect them.

I have a feeling the electromagnetic conditions are much more stable on earth than in space. The magnetosphere and the atmosphere deflect a great deal of energy.

What about when a booster goes off by mistake and sends your data flying into the sun?

Sun is far away, you'd still get data back before it hits, but if buster made satelite hit another satelite or descend to earth it would be a worse situation.

Or as the religious people call it, "The Act of God". No seriously, people actually write that shit in their terms. Hilarious.

It's a legal term with a specific meaning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_God

Which is why I brought it up, it's hilarious. I thought people were just trolling at first but man, the first time I saw it, it made my day. Relating something like "God" with natural disasters. I love how people come up with that kind of stuff.

Religious people be mad!

Presumably in this case - Thor ?

That, or Ramuh? Or Quezacotl?

Well it's hitting N America and his movie didn't do that well - so he might be a bit annoyed

Zing!

Seems pretty severe actually. Washington Post has a live blog going on about it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/pos...

In other words, Amazon's power backups failed again. On the bright side at least they are not running a nuclear reactor.

Was watching a movie in a big 20-screen theater in Richmond, and they told everybody to just leave (incidentally, not through the emergency exits, instead they funneled 100s of people into the lobby all at once :/)

I live in DC. It was an amazing storm. A transformer in my area went down fairly quickly. Fortunately, I live near a large hospital.

Saw this post here on HN, pulled up www.chart.state.md.us to watch the live traffic cams in the area. Clicked through a couple, some of which showed heavy rain, wind & lightning. Then the stream froze and now the site is completely unresponsive.