SHARKNADO!

"What's wrong?" "Your son wants to go in a helicopter and drop a bomb into a tornado."

Well, there's a whole lot more wrong with the movie... or, at least, the science part of the movie. Otherwise, Syfy's attempt to make the quintessential B-movie went very, very beautifully right.

Anyone who lives in LA can tell you that one of the most ridiculous parts of the movie - aside from the idea that these sharks aren't too disoriented by being thrown around by a tornado to still eat people - is the amount of LA that's covered in water. If you're not familiar, the term for rising waters caused by a hurricane hitting the land is called "storm surge."

So first of all, the storm surge is causing flooding Santa Monica. While this may be plausible for the most low-lying beach residences, anyone who's been in town knows that "ground level" for anything that's not on the sand is pretty high: This awesome website gives us an elevation of 16 meters, or 54 feet, at the location where Colorado Blvd and Ocean Blvd cross over the PCH. Anyways, this remarkably high storm surge causes someone to worry about his ex-wife and child, who are over six miles inland, and probably at least a hundred feet higher.

Someone helpfully gives us a reference for where the next scenes will take place, by saying "Take the 10 to the 405, that's almost to Beverly Hills, and there's no way the storm has gone that far inland." But, we see that that character is wrong, and the waves are crashing over the 405.

So how far has the storm surge risen by now? According to that handy elevation website, the elevation where the 10 crossed the 405 is 49 meters, or 160 feet. According to Google Maps, this is between 3.5 and 4 miles directly from the beach.

It gets even better a little later, when someone says "We have to go to Van Nuys to get Matt!" Going back to that amazing GPS website, that helps us determine that the Van Nuys airport is a whole 235 meters (or 771 feet) above sea level.

Why did I choose the airport? Well, when they find Matt, someone explains "Instead of letting live sharks rain down on people, we're going to get into the chopper, and drop BOMBS into the tornado!" because something about cold and warm air and "maybe bombs will equalize that." What. That's just too much for me to get into right now.

So how ridiculous is that level of storm surge?

In NOAA's website about storm surge, most of the heights appear to be between 10-20 feet, with the higher ones reaching well over 20 feet. The highest in the US happened during Hurricane Katrina at 27.8 feet, and the highest in the world has been estimated at potentially up to 48 feet, although this figure is disputed as it was calculated over 100 years ago, and the highest measured in recent years was only 34.8 feet.

So while the water reaching Santa Monica could be *almost* plausible in a super-hurricane-disaster movie, the idea of it flooding Westwood/Beverly Hills is very far off.

And, just because I don't get a lot of opportunities to post non-copyrighted photos on here, here's one that yours truly took while stopping at Savannah, GA during spring break one year:

"That's a tiger shark!" "How do you know that?" "Shark Week."

Ancient Aliens: NASA is covering it all up, of course.

aka "The NASA Connection"

In the first five minutes, the only two thoughts going through my head were "this is nothing I haven't heard before" and "oh everyone involved in the moon landings was male I'm glad I didn't live in the 60's because they were soooooo sexist!" and then I got too bored and turned it off.

That's all for that one.

Yearly TV update!

What I'm watching that I wasn't watching last year, or I feel the need to tell you to watch again:

Agents of SHIELD (ABC, Tuesdays 8 PM): I LOVE THIS SHOW. Everyone's so shippable! And so pretty! And the MCU references! And the Marvel Comic references! And how it all ties into the movies and hints at the movies! And a Dollhouse reference! And Samuel L. Jackson cameos! EVERYTHING I WANTED AND HOPED FOR OUT OF THIS SHOW! (Except they haven't had a musical episode yet, and I expect this from the exact same production team that made a musical supervillain web series)

Almost Human (Fox, Mondays*): It started only months before the Robocop reboot, but this is definitely much better, and yay for Karl Urban! However, Fox decided to Firefly it, meaning they pushed back the premiere after all the advertising was already printed/filmed, and then aired it all out of order, then shuffled the finale around with the Sleepy Hollow finale and the premiere of The Following. So there's been basically no character development, and if there was supposed to be a plot arc, I can't see it. Hopefully it'll get another season.

Arrow (CW, Wednesdays 8 PM): The first season skipped right over all that typical first-season cheesyness, making the finale feel like a second or third season finale. The second season has only improved, and it's one of the most underrated shows on TV.

Cosmos (Fox, Sundays 9 PM): Neil DeGrasse Tyson rebooting a Carl Sagan thing with good science and glorious HD space photos. It's everything I never knew I wanted... it's like the total antidote to Ancient Aliens.

Intelligence (CBS): This is only on the list because I wasn't watching it last year. It's not spectacular, but it's a nice solid action-y filler for when the DVR is running low.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Hub, Saturdays 10:30 AM EST/7:30 AM PST): Oh, I love this show, and this season just keeps increasing the quality. From exposing shame homeopathic cures to realistic depictions of fashion week to the Doctor Whooves thing just keeping on going, there's nothing I don't love about the show.

Orphan Black (BBC America, returns April 19th): LET ME TELL YOU HOW I LOVE THIS SHOW. I may love this show about as much as Agents of SHIELD. It's a unique concept with stellar acting and a storyline that really picks up at the end and amazing acting and a whole boatload full of female characters who do stuff and their lives don't revolve around men and did I mention that Tatiana Maslany was totally robbed of that Golden Globe?

Rizzoli & Isles (TNT, Tuesdays, on hiatus): NOOOOOOOO! I love this show so, so much, but I am still procrastinating on watching the midseason finale because we know what's going to happen....

Sleepy Hollow (Fox, Mondays*): This was possibly sillier than National Treasure at first. And then there started being supernatural elements... so now it's some kind of horror show. There's also very little on TV as entertaining as seeing a character from the 1700's get outraged over the tax on Starbucks, or try to use Siri.

The 100 (CW, Wednesdays 9 PM):  England a space station holding the post-apocalyptic remnants of humanity is getting overcrowded, so they decide to send their convicts juvenile delinquents down to Australia Earth and see if they can survive and found a new civilization while all the local fauna trying to kill them. Given how Australia contains almost 0% unattractive people and it started from convicts and idk, sheep ranchers? and this show is populated with CW actors, several generations on their descendants will probably be simply too beautiful to look at directly.

The Tomorrow People (CW, Wednesdays on hiatus): Follow up Stephen Amell in Arrow with his cousin Robbie Amell: How could you not watch, at least at first... I kind of gave up because it just didn't hold my interest.

Warehouse 13 (Syfy, on hiatus): I'm so excited for the second half of the fifth season to return, but sadly, it's the final season. This is another show I've stuck with for years on end and loved very much. If you haven't watched this, catch up while you can!

*Fox has not learned one single thing from Firefly. Not. One. Thing. Sleepy Hollow premiered, like usual. And then when Almost Human premiered it was supposed to have a special premiere timeslot and a normal timeslot, but then after all the advertising for the special premiere time, they pushed it back by a week or two and changed the special timeslot. Then, in the middle of all the out-of-order Almost Human episodes, there were more "special time slots" for the season finale of Sleepy Hollow and the season premiere of The Following. And then, they not only shuffled around those timeslots, but the weeks on which those things would take place, and stuff like that. I couldn't keep track of any of it.

Ancient Aliens Meme Generator!

While hunting around the internet for things, I found this image:

It made me laugh, and then I realized you can go online and generate memes using this image of "Ancient Aliens Guy" on this website.

Enjoy!

I'm getting a tablet!

So now I may have little doodles or graphics to accompany some of this... it hasn't arrived yet, but I'm excited to see how it'll turn out.