Newsgroups: ont.uucp
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Toronto Hydro (was re: sq down for the count)
Message-ID: <1989Mar17.163320.20457@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1989Mar15.173203.23116@utzoo.uucp> <1989Mar16.024344.17471@tmsoft.uucp> <367@ists.ists.ca>
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 89 16:33:20 GMT

In article <367@ists.ists.ca> mike@ists.ists.ca (Mike Clarkson) writes:
>Hydro Quebec first attributed their massive outage last week to sun-spots.
>At first I said "poppy-cock", but there may be something to it.  We are at
>a sun-spot peak, and are seeing the highest levels in something like fourty
>years (4 cycles).

Definitely not poppy-cock.  People have forgotten what really heavy solar
activity can do, since it hasn't happened in several decades.  The Earth's
magnetosphere can really get tied in knots when the Sun starts acting up,
and magnetic-field fluctuations can induce quite substantial voltages in
long power lines.

>Other possibilities ... the odd coincidence that
>we are in the middle of a Hydro strike.

Undoubtedly that is not helping.
-- 
Welcome to Mars!  Your         |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
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