http://dogtime.com/salt-lake-city-dog-shot-by-police-sparks-protest.html

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/58109655-78/police-kendall-dog-lake.html.csp

I was in this little windstorm. I think my area got a quick burst of wind up in the 90mph range (West Valley City), as we had some extremely heavy things that got moved around--it only lasted about 2-4 seconds. It also made the house vibrate, so I know it wasn't in the 70'ish range...it was higher. Then the rest of the gusts were around 60-70.

BTW, if anyone was wondering, this little windstorm happened along the Wasatch Front--Salt Lake City. Nasty little wind storm, it sure killed a lot of trees, fences, etc...

Salt Lake City has an odd dichotomy. On the one hand it's the heart of the Mormon church. And if you do go to the temple and meet one of their leaders, he will be an old white man who takes himself way too seriously.

But on the other hand it's also the most liberal and democratic leaning part of Utah. One recent example. Last Friday when the federal court judgement came which struck down Utah's same-sex marriage ban. Clerks stayed late at the County Clerk's office and ministers flocked to volunteer to marry the hundreds of gay couples who showed up immediately after the news. I know a very devoted lesbian couple who were married by the mayor of Salt Lake City that night.

801 area code is Salt Lake City.

Nuff said.

Comment of the month!>> ^entr0py:

I like the last bit where they fade to a picture of the Salt Lake City skyline. If you pause mid-fade at 0:21 there's some precipitation flying onto the LDS temple. Well played Fox 13.

I like the last bit where they fade to a picture of the Salt Lake City skyline. If you pause mid-fade at 0:21 there's some precipitation flying onto the LDS temple. Well played Fox 13.

>> ^VoodooV:

I think Bill Maher is exactly right. He wants to be the first Mormon president...that's the long and the short of it.
Governing? whatever
bipartisanship? whatever
It explains perfectly why he is able to shift positions so drastically. HE DOESNT CARE! He's not a republican, he's not a centrist, he's not a democrat. He just wants to be able to say he was the first mormon president.


I live in Utah of course and I can tell you from FIRST-HAND knowledge that there are many Mormons that shoot up through the Mormon hierarchy (theocracy) and they DO NOT care about anyones problems unless you know them on a personal level; they just want to get to the next level...

Mitt has exuded a terrible personality from day one, even back here, in Salt Lake City when he *saved* the Winter Olympics. Which is what launched him into his governor position; boy did people fall for that shtick, "Hey, but wait, I FIXED the Olympics! I'm a national hero!". That is how he basically thinks, ego first everything else second. How he treats his dog on trips just implies that it's true...

I swear Mitt is either a sociopath OR has narcissistic personality disorder traits. No matter what he talks about on a personal level, he CANNOT relate, at all to anyone. It's quite disquieting, atleast to me.

This is happening in Utah as well. It's merely Tea Party members hiding under the guise of The Republican Party and getting in. Since the Republican Party doesn't seem to even care about this, NOW OLD-SCHOOL Republicans are getting forced out of the GOP by these new guys at their OWN CONVENTIONS. Like Cenk said these are ALREADY hard-line Republicans getting booted from even being in their own party's actions, conventions, which ultimately means they cannot get on the ballot unless they turn Independent.

People should be very concerned over this as the Tea Party and their related idiots (which include lots of Ron Paul's buddies and further on buddies of Ross Perot) are getting in wonderfully this way. People just don't like their old politician since there have been hard times, so without looking or really caring our idiotic brothers and sisters across the nation are voting them all in...

Utah, during this last year's session had some wonderful bill's put up by these idiots, like getting rid of the 12th grade (who needs that?, plus we save money!!!)... I'd have to look up the other one, but it was just as stupid--BOTH these bills created a LARGE uproar in Salt Lake City and surrounding areas (it's a far more Democratic area than anywhere else in the state--our lawmakers even "reorganized" our districts due to this fact so that all the Democrats would be stuck in one area and they could setup everywhere else to have a higher Republican base--basically gerrymandering 4 districts that were ALL Democratic before, now one is and the rest aren't...I have no idea how they got away with something so absolutely blatant) and were on national news and T.V., with interviews of the two "R.eally Tea Party" buffoons trying to explain why 12th grade was useless on CNN to Anderson Cooper...

I did a little amateur investigation, a bit of reading and some numbers but you can skip to the bottom for a summary.

The plane is a Stinson 108-3, 16500 foot service ceiling, 2400 pound gross weight limit (1300 empty weight), 50 gallon fuel capacity. Thats about 1100 of useful weight (2400-1300), with full fuel that lowers it to 800 (6lbs per gallon*50 gallons=300lbs), I saw 3 men in there the 4th passenger I'm gonna assume male, so lets say 180lbs for each (200 for the pilot) that comes to 740lbs for passenger weight. That leaves 60lbs for cargo. Although I couldn't see the cargo, they were still close to the weight limit but still could have been within normal limits.

The airport Bruce Meadows (U63) has a field elevation of 6370 feet. I couldnt find the airport temperature for that day but I did find nearby Stanley Airport 23 Miles southeast of Bruce Meadows. Their METAR history shows a high of 27 Celsius/81 Fahrenheit for June 30, 2012. Definitely a hot day but was it too hot? The closest I could find on performance data shows a 675 Feet per Minute climb at 75 Fahrenheit at sea level. Thats pretty close to what many small planes of that nature can do, so I took those numbers and transposed them over what a Cessna 172N could do. The 172N has a slighty higher climb performance about 750 for sea level and 75 Fahrenheit, a difference of 75 feet ill subtract out. At 6000 feet at 27C/81F the 172N climbs at 420FPM. Taking out the 75 feet brings it to 345 FPM, now I know this isn't perfect but I'm going with what I have. The plane began its climb out at 1:13 and crashed at 2:55, that leaves 1 minute and 42 seconds in between or 1.7 minutes. 1.7*345 means about 590 feet possible gain. But the plane isn't climbing at its best the entire video, at 2:35 it is apparent something is giving it trouble, that brings it down to about 1.58 minutes climb time which is 545 feet. Theres still another factor to consider and thats how consistent the altitude at the ground was.

The runway at Bruce meadows faces at 05/23 (Northeast/Southwest) but most likely he took runway 23 (Southwest) as immediately to the north east theres a wildlife preserve (Gotta fly at least 2000 feet over it) and he flew straight for quite some time. Although the ground increases in the direction he flew, by how much is difficult using the sectional charts. That means that although he may have been able to climb to about 545 feet higher than his original ground altitude, the ground rose with him and his absolute altitude over the ground would be less than that maximum possible 545. The passenger in the rear reported the plane could only climb to about 60-70 feet above the trees. The trees looked to be around 75-100 but thats still difficult to tell. That would mean according to the passenger they might have only been about 170 feet off the ground. It could still be wildly off as we cant exactly see the altimeter.

Finally theres that disturbance at 2:35 described as a downdraft. It could have been windshear, or a wind effect from the mountains. I don't have too much hands on knowledge of mountain flying so I cant say. If it was windshear he might have suddenly lost a headwind and got a tailwind, screwing up his performance. It could have been a downdraft effect. The actual effect on the aircraft may not have been much (lets say 50 feet) but near obstacles it was definitely enough to have a negative impact.



Summary:

Yes he was flying pretty heavy but he may not have been over the weight limit

The temperature in the area was definitely hotter than standard and the altitude was high, but he still had climbing capabilities within service limits. However he didn't give himself much of a safety threshold.

He might have been able to climb about 545 feet higher than the runway elevation, but the terrain altitude rose in the direction he flew, so his actual altitude over the ground was probably smaller than that.

The disturbance at 2:35 might have been some form of windshear which has the capacity to reduce airplane performance, and with his margins of safety so low already, that could have been the final factor.

Basically he may very well have been flying within the service limits of the aircraft, but the margins of safety he left himself were very low and the decision to fly over obstacles like those trees in that mountain enviroment could be the reason this would be declared pilot error.

Other notes:

The takeoff looks pretty rough but he trying to get off the ground as quickly as he can and ride ground effect until he gets up to speed.

I cant find anything resembling a proper PoH for this aircraft but I did find some data that looks pretty close to it. However this aircraft was a model from the late 40s, so the standards of performance may not be the same as now, and the transcribing I did to the 172N could be thrown off more.

On that note, I do realize that a 172 would have different aerobatic effects with altutude and temperature than a Stinson 108, but its the closest data I could use.

I also couldnt not find balance information to get a rough idea of how the plane was balanced. The type of balance on a plane does have effects on performance.

http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/N773C.html (The aircraft)

http://www.aopa.org/airports/U63 (The airport)

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20120701X65804&key=1 (The NTSB link posted earlier)

http://personalpages.tdstelme.net/~westin/avtext/stn-108.txt (Closest thing I could find to performance data, the actual numbers are at the bottom)

http://vortex.plymouth.edu/cgi-bin/gen_statlog-u.cgi?ident=KSNT&pl=none2&yy=12&mm=06&dd=30 (Weather data at nearby Stanley)

http://skyvector.com (sectional chart data, type U63 into the search at the upper left, then make sure that "Salt Lake City" is selected in the upper right for the sectional chart)

>> ^entr0py:

>> ^kceaton1:
Utah, used to be the old number one, for insight. BTW, we are also a VERY heavily abstinence leaning state--outside of Salt Lake City, Park City, and Ogden. Some adults I know personally didn't truly know what sex was--fully and all its implications until they were 25 years old, almost seniors in COLLEGE...
Utah. Utah is almost all low to high middle income Caucasian urbanites... It's incredibly homogeneous. But, you could say due to the LDS church's influence this is a special scenario. Yet, in other states religion tends to be one of the highest reasons this subject comes up.
Luckily, my parents taught me early and I had Sex Ed in my health class and knew by 14 the full implications. Utah (our idiotic political carpetbaggers that have carved the state up so they can get these things into the pasture and passed easily due to the higher numbers of their types in office; that are all affiliated with the Tea Party strangely enough--and like Glenn beck...), this year, tried to BAN Sex Ed in its legislature. But the governor was forced to veto the bill due to public outrage (strangely enough, it pissed off a lot of people here). Basically they passed a bill that would have forced abstinence ONLY education even though (I believe) we are number two behind Mississippi.

I'm dubious about that. In fact, here's the first data I came across with a google search. Check out page 15. Utah is way below average and among the lowest in the country for every year they have data, going back to the 80s. In 2005 we were number 45 out of 50 in teen pregnancies.
But then again we're not an abstinence only state. If republicans manage to change that, as they nearly did, I guess we'll have a good case study.


Strange I'll have to check that out. Of course, I'm COMPLETELY basing everything I'm saying off of what a KSL report said pre-veto (of the 2012 Utah legislature's "Abstinence Only" Bill). Perhaps they had their data misconstrued and presented it the wrong way. I'll post the KSL story if I can find it in their history; then look at our information and statistics and then see what they may have possible misread and thought it was us, for some reason--they specifically said the previous cycle year to this study; so I'm confused to.

Thanks for catching that for me @entr0py, I appreciate that sort of thing.

So I admit I may be wrong, sorry if I am! I'll release another, "I'm sorry", later when I have better detail of why I got bad reporting.

>> ^kceaton1:

Utah, used to be the old number one, for insight. BTW, we are also a VERY heavily abstinence leaning state--outside of Salt Lake City, Park City, and Ogden. Some adults I know personally didn't truly know what sex was--fully and all its implications until they were 25 years old, almost seniors in COLLEGE...
Utah. Utah is almost all low to high middle income Caucasian urbanites... It's incredibly homogeneous. But, you could say due to the LDS church's influence this is a special scenario. Yet, in other states religion tends to be one of the highest reasons this subject comes up.
Luckily, my parents taught me early and I had Sex Ed in my health class and knew by 14 the full implications. Utah (our idiotic political carpetbaggers that have carved the state up so they can get these things into the pasture and passed easily due to the higher numbers of their types in office; that are all affiliated with the Tea Party strangely enough--and like Glenn beck...), this year, tried to BAN Sex Ed in its legislature. But the governor was forced to veto the bill due to public outrage (strangely enough, it pissed off a lot of people here). Basically they passed a bill that would have forced abstinence ONLY education even though (I believe) we are number two behind Mississippi.


I'm dubious about that. In fact, here's the first data I came across with a google search. Check out page 15. Utah is way below average and among the lowest in the country for every year they have data, going back to the 80s. In 2005 we were number 45 out of 50 in teen pregnancies.

But then again we're not an abstinence only state. If republicans manage to change that, as they nearly did, I guess we'll have a good case study.

>> ^dag:

I'm all for sex ed, but correlation is not causation - as is quickly skimmed over by Cenk, ethnicity, income etc would play a much larger role than just a few crppy high school health classes.



Utah, used to be the old number one, for insight. BTW, we are also a VERY heavily abstinence leaning state--outside of Salt Lake City, Park City, and Ogden. Some adults I know personally didn't truly know what sex was--fully and all its implications until they were 25 years old, almost seniors in COLLEGE...

Utah. Utah is almost all low to high middle income Caucasian urbanites... It's incredibly homogeneous. But, you could say due to the LDS church's influence this is a special scenario. Yet, in other states religion tends to be one of the highest reasons this subject comes up.

Luckily, my parents taught me early and I had Sex Ed in my health class and knew by 14 the full implications. Utah (our idiotic political carpetbaggers that have carved the state up so they can get these things into the pasture and passed easily due to the higher numbers of their types in office; that are all affiliated with the Tea Party strangely enough--and like Glenn beck...), this year, tried to BAN Sex Ed in its legislature. But the governor was forced to veto the bill due to *public* outrage (strangely enough, it pissed off a lot of people here). Basically they passed a bill that would have forced abstinence ONLY education even though (I believe) we are number two behind Mississippi.

But, I thought Fox News was the most watched and liked! Yet everyone I see them meet in reality has either major issues with them or has an outright hatred for them and their profession.

Strange that...

/(Outside of Ogden, Salt Lake City, and Park City; people love him here in Utah. Religion may be a factor...

--> @kceaton1
--> @peggedbea

The only reason I upvote these is that I think it's good for discourse. It's more useful for the lurkers on this site than really the involved members. I knew I would be bringing up a very neutral standpoint as I am on the fence; especially, recently as more biological evidence has direct implications on who you may be later in life. That is VERY important to remember for everyone reading. You have to remember that your brain collects and stores information and then processes it through "filters" before it is distilled into what you would say. Biologically you may be far more likely to be an atheist than a believer (the study makes no distinction religion wise; so they are talking about Islam, Christianity, Norse, Greek, Roman, Buddhist, Hinduism, etc...).

We need a table that we can (we, as in, the religious versus non-theist) talk at. More importantly logical minds and compassion MUST prevail for society to remain intact. If Richard Dawkins (maybe I'm thinking of Hitchens) really can't talk with creationists then he is as much a problem as the creationists themselves (of course one of these parties ARE correct, but the lack of civility is extremely annoying--from both sides).

If you want others to learn sometimes you need to act just like Mormon, Catholic, Evangelical, missionaries. You must expect the vitriol and swearing that usually comes out as highly defensive "maneuvering" or hate; the same that the missionaries get day in and day out. Sorry, "my brethren", but answering the door to purposefully create an unnecessary rude or hateful situation comes off as hate/bigotry speech or dismissive attitudes which is just as bad. This is morally corrupt behavior in my eyes. I suggest answering the door and being able to identify to them issues you have strongly opposed views of and why compared to what they do and about what they say. You have to hope, in this day of the Internet, that people will take ONE aspect of what you said and learn more about it.

I had Mormon seminary teachers that taught creationism, but creationism is extremely limited in acceptance within the Mormon church. For crying out loud BYU (Mormon based university for those that don't know; just south of Salt Lake City) accepts evolution WITHOUT ANY hesitation. They are very active in the sciences as well which is why they do believe; furthermore they are huge researchers when it comes to genealogy which eventually loops into evolution. In many situations the Bible is a work of allegory and followers that take it literal are the uneducated Mormons; even unto their own religion.

So when I have these seminary teachers it truly makes me wonder how they got to their position as they seem to follow their own set of tenets which ends up creating Mormons like Glenn Beck who literally don't stand for church beliefs as I knew them (and again why hasn't he been excommunicated--this actually bothers me a lot as he only hurts the churches standing; which is poor to begin with and is nothing like the Mormons I know). Science was always taught to be incredibly important; if not the most important as it was a way to "uncover even more of Gods truths"; plus it is the applicable "science". That is that it gives us our modern day of living and quality of life (like airplanes, microwaves, TV, energy, etc...). I may not believe in any religion now. But, I appreciate that sentiment; as I think it's a very healthy objectivity to have if in a religion: adaptability.

/ I have to agree somewhat with @gwiz665 as religion (like all things) from an atheists vantage point looks a lot like fear manipulation. I love the Golden Rule as it truly does incorporate perhaps the easiest summary of what it is to be good. But, I know religious people use this to their own ends, including what we see in Libya or on Fox News. To them, people and their beliefs are a joke and they abuse it. It often makes me wonder if these CEOs are truly religious (the ones that say they are) or just using it as a gateway--who knows. Which goes back to my first point. It's entirely possible that we as a species have a tendency to vote "sociopathic" or likewise people into office as they themselves, much like drug seeking personalities (like bi-polar) seek out these positions. The abuse of these positions are partially hard wired into their makeup. All this means is that we must be more diligent. We've come too far as atheists and the religious to let this civilization slip away out of our hands.

//If this is tl;dr, to you, go watch a monkey flinging poop on youtube.

It's ground water forced up and basically related to sand "volcanoes". This is formed due to liquefaction (Salt Lake City will get the same thing when our earthquake comes. This happens all the time in earthquakes if the land is an ancient seabed, has ground water near the surface, or any other situation that is similair like this reclaimed land.

Don't worry about it too much unless it's a huge one (which would be rare). The big problem is that since it acts like quicksand all the buildings (or anything weighing the right amount) will sink into the ground.