Missing containers in BC waters

Today we’ll take a look at what happens to missing shipping containers when they go overboard, especially if they float. In this case, containers that recently fell off the Zim Kingston in the waters off British Columbia. Floating containers are subject to local currents, as well as wind and weather.

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An indepth look at atmospheric rivers

Today, an indepth look at the phenomenon of the atmospheric river, where this term came from, how common are they, and how much water do they really carry up in the clouds?

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Update on the Zim Kingston: 109 containers lost at sea

The chilling news from the Strait of Juan de Fuca today: the containership Zim Kingston, which suffered a container fire on board this weekend and lost containers overboard in rough weather – actually lost 109 containers overboard, close to three times the number first thought to be lost.

Those containers are in the water somewhere near Vancouver Island. It’s unknown how many have sunk, or how many are still bobbing around out there, just below the surface, presenting a potentially deadly hazard to navigation.

Image of the Zim Kingston courtesy USCG.

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As the weather calms down, ships wait

Today’s ship schedule, with most ship traffic in flux because of the weather, offers an interesting look at how vessels are affected upriver, in anchorages and offshore when weather prohibits ready transit across the Columbia River Bar.

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Weird words for a weird storm: what’s a bomb cyclone?

A look at the unusual weather terminology that we have heard the past few days, as meterologists described an unprecedented mega storm hitting the Pacific Northwest.

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The Columbus Day Storm of 1962, remembered

It was one of those “storm of the century” events in the Pacific Northwest – a huge storm that caused incredible wreckage over a huge swath of the region. Storms since have not equalled its intensity and level of damage. Today we look back on the Columbus Day Storm that hit this area in October  of 1962.

Special thanks to local historian Frank Lehn, and the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum in Ilwaco, Washington, for the information used in this podcast.

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The Great Shakeout, the Big One, and what you can do

Today is the annual Great Shakeout event, where we take a look at earthquake preparedness here on the coast, a place where we have the double whammy of earthquake damage and tsunami flooding. We’ll take a look at an article by infamous New Yorker magazine writer Kathryn Schulz (she wrote the scary and spot on article in 2015 about the Big One that shook us up big time). We’ll look at another more positive piece she also wrote, about simple things you can do to keep your home and yourself resilient in the event of a disaster like the Big One. And, what to do once you’ve done all that.

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A look at the deep blue sea and the Mariana Trench

Most of us land dwellers think of the ocean in terms of the shore, which is the interface between land and sea. But there is so much more to it than that – a vastness that we can hardly wrap our heads around, and which is still largely unexplored. Today we take a look at the ocean abyss and the Mariana Trench, the deepest spot in the oceans of the world. Seven miles deep…

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Abandoned ships: a look at how some ships and crews are abandoned by their owners

It’s a growing problem in a troubled world shipping market: some ships are being abandoned by their owners, with crews and cargo still on board, often at anchor in some foreign port far from the crews’ homes. Without pay, food or fuel, things become desperate for sailors who took jobs on board in good faith and with families to feed. Today we’ll look at abandoned ships.

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