What's in the cards for ... 2012

No one in Carson City needs a psychic to tell them that the Ormsby House won't open this year - but just to confirm, Miss Terry says it won't.

"No, I definitely don't see that for the next three to five years," she said.

The 58-year-old Austrian-born clairvoyant, who goes only by the name "Miss Terry," has lived in Carson City for 30 years and claims she became aware of her gift when she was 3 or 4 years old.

On Saturday, she offered a special reading for the Nevada Appeal, during which she used her psychic gifts to see what the future holds for Carson City.

In a softly lit room of her Carson City apartment with ethereal background music playing, Miss Terry listens to the questions posed to her, takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and concentrates on the images she says are given to her by spirits.

She looks up from time to time to focus on her crystal ball, cradled in a cloth on the table in front of her, and she spreads Tarot cards out to verify that they back up what she is seeing.

One of the things she divines for Carson City is that the City Center Project will move forward.

"It will come together, but there will be a delay of a couple of years," she said.

As for the future in general, Miss Terry said she sees many things locally as well as nationally.

"The first thing I sense is that 2012 will be a better year than 2011, especially by the summer and fall," she said. "The housing market will slowly recover in the next three years, and the economy will improve, but I also see more poor people and more homeless people if the job market doesn't change in 2012."

She predicts that technology is going to continue to advance so rapidly that people will have even more trouble finding work.

"People will need to be retrained, and stores will continue to close with more people losing jobs because most of the buying in the future will be done on the Internet," she said.

As for the weather, even though it has been a dry winter so far, snow eventually will come to the Sierra, she said.

"We will have snow, definitely, probably at the middle or end of January, but not as much as last year. Weather changes around us will occur very slowly," Miss Terry said.

"The downside, what I see in the next five years, is that there will be severe weather changes, with landslides and coastal flooding. From east to west, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes are already starting as the weather patterns shift. In California, the earth's crust will shift," Miss Terry said.

"Because of the weather changes, food will be much more expensive, and people will hardly have enough money to afford the food they need to feed their families," she said.

On the political front, Miss Terry sees a presidential race between President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney. She doesn't think Ron Paul will have enough support, and she doesn't see Newt Gingrich in the race.

"I don't feel him at all," she said.

She also worries about China over the next several years.

"I feel that China will be a big problem when it comes to technology. They will advance much faster than the U.S., and this could be a big problem. They could develop the technology to penetrate our water and power sources unless we catch up with them," she said.

Miss Terry advises people to have a supply of food and water storage, but also to remain vigilant in watching the changes to health care.

"Health care will become very scary. Many of the facilities will have to close because of money problems, and people with severe illnesses who have no insurance will pay the price with their lives because they can't afford the medicine or outpatient care they need to get better," she said.

Possibly because of the changes in weather patterns, Miss Terry said, she also foresees new viruses and bacteria that antibiotics can't touch, so new medicines will need to be researched.

"I also feel that there will be much progress in finding better medications or cures for cancer and diabetes, and this, I feel, will happen in the next five to 10 years," she said.

What bothers her most, though, are the changes in people she continues to see.

"It has already started - we have never seen so many murders and kids being taken in the past, but in the last three years, it seems like it gets worse and worse. Whole families are getting murdered - not from strangers, but from their own relatives. I also see riots coming, starting on the East Coast, and slowly stretching to the West Coast," she said.

And as for the Dec. 21 Mayan calendar doomsday prediction, Miss Terry says the end of the world is a long time off.

"That (2012) date is from years and years of computing what the Mayans did, but the world will not end then," she said.

"There are a lot of things that will happen before that. It will start with the shifting of the earth's plates and the weather pattern changes - and I've had this vision for five years now," she said.

"It will start slowly so people will have time to prepare and move, but California will be underwater someday, and parts of Nevada, Arizona, Washington and Oregon.

"But I'm more worried about the riots, which might be because of food and water shortages," she said.