The Foxes Are Heading Back Into Winter

melissaMy niece Melissa is expecting. This weekend is her baby shower. We’re heading to Milwaukee where it’s still winterish.

I’ll let the Weather Service forecasters try to polish this turd of a forecast.

WE WILL HAVE A PROLONGED PERIOD OF WET WEATHER THIS WEEKEND INTO EARLY NEXT WEEK.

Great!

We will see no sunshine in Wisconsin. Most of the weekend will be rainy. There’s a chance for snow late Sunday into Monday, though not much. That’s when we fly home.

It makes no difference. My parents are there, plus my sister and her family. Four generations together. It’s totally worthwhile. We’re very excited.

Of course I’m saying that in the abstract. A little winter might change my attitude.

Departure is VERY early tomorrow morning.

The 2011 Hurricane Forecast Is Out

This forecast gets a lot of attention (including from me). I’m just not sure how useful it is

The seasonal hurricane forecast came out from the Weather Service today. No surprises. The call is for another busy year.

This forecast gets a lot of attention (including from me). I’m just not sure how useful it is. More on that in a moment.

Across the entire Atlantic Basin for the six-month season, which begins June 1, NOAA is predicting the following ranges this year:

  1. 12 to 18 named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher), of which:
  2. 6 to 10 could become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including:
  3. 3 to 6 major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5; winds of 111 mph or higher)

Each of these ranges has a 70 percent likelihood, and indicate that activity will exceed the seasonal average of 11 named storms, six hurricanes and two major hurricanes. – NWS press release

Let’s say for a second this forecast is perfect (though it never is). What would/could we do differently? It’s a little late to move New Orleans, Miami or New Haven even if this forecast was geographically specific (and it isn’t).

Besides, a busy season doesn’t necessarily mean a deadly season. Look back at last year.

“The United States was fortunate last year. Winds steered most of the season’s tropical storms and all hurricanes away from our coastlines,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “However we can’t count on luck to get us through this season. We need to be prepared, especially with this above-normal outlook.” – NWS press release

This incongruity works better when reversed. 1992 was a light hurricane season. The “A” storm didn’t come until late August (my earlier citation of September was incorrect). It was Hurricane Andrew!

You would be hard pressed to convince the people of South Florida ’92 wasn’t a bad year.

Hurricanes, like real estate, are best analyzed by checking location, location, location.

The Buffalo Snowmap

Here’s a map from the Weather Service recounting this storm. The 1-3 foot area is only 12 miles wide! It’s not much more than 6-7 miles from three feet of snow to zero.

Earlier today I posted my Lake Effect snow story. If you read it one of the points I tried to bring home was how narrow these bands really are. Now documentary proof!

Here’s a map from the Weather Service recounting this storm. The 1-3 foot area is only 12 miles wide! It’s not much more than 6-7 miles from three feet of snow to zero.

Click the map to see a larger view.

A Tale Of Two Messages – II

Since I beat myself up when wrong…

Yesterday I wrote and quoted a viewer who was incensed I’d broken into a ‘soap’ for tornado coverage.

We are so tired of hearing these false alarm weather reports. Every time it’s a normal storm becomes a tornado watch. Are you serious people? You’re gonna scare the hell out of old people.

Since I beat myself up when wrong…

000
NOUS41 KOKX 251619 CCA
PNSOKX
CTZ005>012-NJZ002>006-011-NYZ067>081-261200-

PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT…CORRECTED
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW YORK NY
1151 AM EDT FRI JUN 25 2010

…NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CONFIRMS TORNADO IN BRIDGEPORT
CONNECTICUT…

LOCATION…BRIDGEPORT. BRIEF TOUCHDOWN ON MAIN STREET…NICHOLS
STREET…AND CEDAR STREET…1 BLOCK NORTH OF INTERSTATE 95.
ESTIMATED TIME…230 PM
EF-SCALE RATING…EF1
ESTIMATED WIND SPEED…100 MPH
PATH WIDTH…100 YARDS
PATH LENGTH…0.15 MILES

THE DAMAGE REPORTED IN EASTON AND TRUMBULL WAS ASSOCIATED WITH
STRAIGHT LINE WIND DAMAGE AND IS NOT CONSISTENT WITH DAMAGE CREATED
BY A TORNADO

.15 miles is a little less than 800 feet or nearly three times the distance of a football field. In a densely packed city a path that length covers lot of people and property. Thankfully no one was killed and injuries were light.

A Tale Of Two Messages

For instance here’s the transcript from a voicemail I received. It was sent during a live wall-to-wall cut-in. A tornado warning was in effect.

We had some dicey weather in the state today. Tornado warnings went up between 2:00 and 3:00 PM.

We were on it at work, but who at home is really prepared for the possibility of tornadoes? People watch and hear my words, but how they react is anyone’s guess.

For instance here’s the transcript from a voicemail I received. It was sent during a live wall-to-wall cut-in. A tornado warning was in effect.

We are so tired of hearing these false alarm weather reports. Every time it’s a normal storm becomes a tornado watch. Are you serious people? You’re gonna scare the hell out of old people.

We pre-empted “One Life To Live.” This guy must be a big fan!

I’m not sure it was a tornado. Probably.

At Bridgeport the wind gusted to 75 mph at 2:23PM, then six minutes later to 78 mph. If memory serves me (and my friend Bob who tipped me off) that’s the highest officially recorded gust since Hurricane Gloria in 1985.

We’ll know better tomorrow when the Weather Service takes its survey and makes the official declaration.

In the end though what difference does it make? The damage was as bad as anything a tornado causes.

Not long after the voicemail I got this plain email.

Geoff: This may be silly but you are being talked about with a lot of admiration today. I’m in Rochester, NY and a viewer of yours wrote on a soap board how you came on TV during One Life To Live to talk about a possible tornado warning. You APOLOGIZED for interrupting the show. This never, never happens. And we often talk about how the soap fans are treated with such a lack of respect by television reporters. They interrupt the soaps when they would never interrupt a sporting event. I just wanted to thank you from here in Rochester, NY for respecting the soap viewer. It is much appreciated and you are becoming a hero on the board.

Maybe I should send her to the phone message guy?

These Snow Forecasts Never Get Easier

With all this heavyweight computing power and myriad observations this was the best we could do-vague and inconsistent guidance!

nws watches map.jpgThe weekend snow seems to be coming into sharper focus. I say “seems” because I won’t know for sure until the whole thing is gone. It’s been a wild, incredibly inconsistent ride which isn’t over yet.

Last night before going on-the-air I looked closely at the 00Z&#185 GFS and NAM models. The NAM called for a blizzard. The GFS had a windy day with light snow.

Before bed I took another look.

The 06Z runs were in. The NAM had gone from Armageddon to nothing! It was now showing the storm missing us! I sent a text message to Gil Simmons who was already preparing his forecast at work:

Geoff: Nam to 60h. Sorry snowman.

Gil: WTF. Gfs still had some measurable.

Gil: Nothing like flushing hrs of work

Gil: What a joke

He was right–What a joke. With all this heavyweight computing power and myriad observations this was the best we could do-vague and inconsistent guidance!

I went to bed.

I woke up this morning and checked my phone. Craig Allen, New York’s best known broadcast meteorologist, was on Facebook. He was complaining about the Weather Service’s freshly issued “Blizzard Watch” for Long Island. It was much too early considering the inconsistency of the forecast and the immense impact on the weekend before Christmas.

By experience on-air forecasters understand it’s easier to cancel an event than un-cancel it! There’s no harm in waiting a little while longer. On the other hand there’s plenty of downside committing to a watch too early.

Before starting this entry I took a look at the 12Z GFS and NAM. Major snow is back in the NAM. The GFS has become less of an outlier and is now closer to (but still less than) the NAM solution. These models and a few more will form the basis for my forecast today.

I will spend the next few hours mulling over each detail. How much wind? When will the snow start? Will there be a burst period? What about the critical cloud temperatures which will define the snow’s fluff factor.

In the end I’ll hope to be close. There’s no bullseye in snow forecasts. You’re never exactly right. You can only hope people are well prepared and critics cut you a little slack.

&#185 – To achieve global consistency all weather data is produced in “Z” time aka UTC or GMT. This time of year it’s five hours ahead of EST. So 00Z means 7:00 PM EST. That’s the initialization time. It takes a few hours for the results to trickle out.

The Deception That Is Winter

Snow is beautiful to see (though because of its high albedo and limited tone range difficult to photograph). It’s just a pain-in-the-ass to deal with!

snowy-pine-tree.jpg

snowy-rock.jpg

snowy-wood-pile.jpg

It’s been snowing again. This makes three over the last week and a half. The winter’s hardly begun.

Snow is beautiful to see (though because of its high albedo and limited tone range difficult to photograph). It’s just a pain-in-the-ass to deal with!

The tendency is to stay inside. I could drive away right now and probably handle it without problem, but I can’t trust the other drivers. They’re probably saying the same thing about me.

Tonight it gets exceptionally cold–both thermometer and wind chill. The Weather Service has switched to “mom mode.”

“WINDS WILL INCREASE TO 15 TO 25 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 35 MPH LATE THIS AFTERNOON AND CONTINUE THROUGH THE NIGHT. WIND GUSTS UP TO 45 MPH ARE POSSIBLE THIS EVENING. THIS WILL CAUSE BLOWING AND DRIFTING OF THE SNOW AND REDUCED VISIBILITIES INTO THE EARLY EVENING HOURS. IN ADDITION…VERY COLD TEMPERATURES COMBINED WITH THESE WINDS WILL RESULT IN WIND CHILL VALUES IN THE SINGLE DIGITS THIS AFTERNOON AND DOWN TO 10 TO 15 BELOW ZERO TONIGHT. LOCATIONS IN THE HIGHER ELEVATIONS AS WELL AS ISOLATED OTHER LOCATIONS WILL EXPERIENCE WIND CHILLS RANGING FROM 15 TO 20 BELOW ZERO. YOU SHOULD WEAR LAYERED CLOTHING AS WELL AS SCARVES…HATS AND MITTENS IF HEADING OUTSIDE. A WIND CHILL ADVISORY IS ISSUED WHEN THE WIND CHILL INDEX IS LIKELY TO REACH -15 TO -24 DEGREES FOR AT LEAST 3 HOURS. FROSTBITE CAN DEVELOP IN JUST 30 MINUTES WITH A WIND CHILL INDEX OF -20. IF YOU ARE HEADING OUTDOORS…DRESS IN LAYERS AND WEAR A HAT AND GLOVES.”

Who exactly will be in Times Square tonight? What kind of person will brave this weather in order to stand, penned up like cattle, as a backdrop for what is now at least a half dozen broadcasts.

On a day like today it seems like winter is eight months long. It’s depressing. The summer is so much easier to deal with.

Bad Night In Galveston

At some point there’s got to be personal responsibility. Society can’t immunize people against stupid choices.

Tonight on the news we reported a large number of people have decided not to leave Galveston Island. Talking to my mom tonight on the way home, she mentioned someone from Galveston on Nightline saying she’d be OK because she has a life preserver.

From Houston Chronicle: As Hurricane Ike pushed a swelling surge onto Galveston Island this morning, many of the estimated 23,000 Galveston residents who ignored a mandatory evacuation order phoned for rescues to no avail because emergency workers were called off the streets, officials said.

That’s about as scary an opening paragraph as I’ve ever read. It’s not like there hasn’t been warning. Thursday the Weather Service made a doomsday pronouncement for Coastal Texas:

ALL NEIGHBORHOODS…AND POSSIBLY ENTIRE COASTAL COMMUNITIES… WILL BE INUNDATED DURING THE PERIOD OF PEAK STORM TIDE. PERSONS NOT HEEDING EVACUATION ORDERS IN SINGLE FAMILY ONE OR TWO STORY HOMES MAY FACE CERTAIN DEATH. MANY RESIDENCES OF AVERAGE

CONSTRUCTION DIRECTLY ON THE COAST WILL BE DESTROYED. WIDESPREAD

AND DEVASTATING PERSONAL PROPERTY DAMAGE IS LIKELY ELSEWHERE.

VEHICLES LEFT BEHIND WILL LIKELY BE SWEPT AWAY. NUMEROUS ROADS

WILL BE SWAMPED…SOME MAY BE WASHED AWAY BY THE WATER. ENTIRE

FLOOD PRONE COASTAL COMMUNITIES WILL BE CUTOFF. WATER LEVELS MAY

EXCEED 9 FEET FOR MORE THAN A MILE INLAND. COASTAL RESIDENTS IN

MULTI-STORY FACILITIES RISK BEING CUTOFF. CONDITIONS WILL BE

WORSENED BY BATTERING WAVES CLOSER TO THE COAST. SUCH WAVES

WILL EXACERBATE PROPERTY DAMAGE…WITH MASSIVE DESTRUCTION OF

HOMES…INCLUDING THOSE OF BLOCK CONSTRUCTION. DAMAGE FROM

BEACH EROSION COULD TAKE YEARS TO REPAIR.

At some point there’s got to be personal responsibility. Society can’t immunize people against stupid choices.

Scary Observation From Houma, LA

In a less enlightened time no one would have guessed a hurricane was close and aimed at the area around this sleepy outpost.

KHUM 302350Z 09004KT 7SM SCT070 34/17 A2986 RMK LAST

That’s the weather observation from Houma-Terrebonne, LA, as relayed by the Weather Service. Winds are light. The temperature is 93&#176 and the dew point 62&#176 under partly cloudy skies. It was an uncharacteristically beautiful evening at 7:00 PM CDT when this observation was taken.

In a less enlightened time no one would have guessed a hurricane was close and aimed at the area around this sleepy outpost. Hurricane Gustav is less than a day away. The time available before Houma will be cut off is much less.

It’s the last “ob” for a while. RMK LAST means they’re closing down. Houma doesn’t normally provide late night readings, but I doubt the airport tower will be open tomorrow. FlightAware.com shows a bunch of locally based aircraft leaving. A few big Sikorsky copters normally used to shuttle crews to oil rigs (the only entries I see on their flight logs) have gone to Pascagoula, MS.

It will be a long night on the Gulf.

An Evening In Enemy Territory

Because our professional interests are the same, we end up together from time-to-time. Such was the case last night when WFSB hosted a National Weather Service Skywarn seminar.

All businesses are different in this regard, but I am friendly with my competitors. There are a few I’ve known for over twenty years… even one who sat on my lap when he was a little boy and I was Santa&#185!

Because our professional interests are the same, we end up together from time-to-time. Such was the case last night when WFSB hosted a National Weather Service Skywarn seminar.

Skywarn is the NWS program to train laymen to spot severe weather. No matter how sophisticated our equipment gets, eyes on the ground are nearly always better. Skywarn is sometimes affiliated with ham radio, though not always.

At least a hundred folks, mostly men, assembled in a conference room at WFSB-TV’s new facility in Rocky Hill. Two meteorologists from the Weather Service’s Taunton, MA office

worked their way through a PowerPoint presentation, telling why and showing what severe weather is all about.

In the back of the room, a gaggle of meteorologists from Channels 3, 8, 30 and 61, stood and kibitzed. This was material we’d each seen many times and knew well. We were glad to be there… glad to see the public’s interest… but probably already well beyond the program’s level.

From time-to-time there is interstation criticism on forecast or warning decisions NWS makes. On a night this, it’s difficult to see anything but the dedication and passion these ‘government boys’ have. They do want to save lives.

As long as I was at the station, I asked for a quick tour. Mark Dixon, one of the meteorologists took me around. The facility is impressive.

The construction is new, so WFSB’s studios are designed to operate with a lot of computer assisted equipment.

Instead of three or four cameras rolling around the studio, there are eight, each at a fixed position. The control rooms are meant for smaller crews, without discrete audio or font operators. The working newsroom is large with clusters of desks and lots of monitors.

Though my station has dozens of monitors in the control room, the trend now is to digitally split immense flat panel screens, allowing them to show all the video. It saves space and eliminates heat. WFSB uses this concept in its control rooms.

Doesn’t that create a single point for catastrophic failure?

Our weather areas are similarly equipped and similarly in the studio. I couldn’t resist having my picture taken in theirs.

Kudos to WFSB for offering up their facility.

&#185 – Ryan, if you’ve been scarred for life by that experience, my apologies.

Very Cold January New York City Adventure

We left Connecticut late Thursday morning, driving the 90 or so miles with minimal interruption. Our destination was the Affinia Manhattan Hotel on 7th Avenue, across from Madison Square Garden and Penn Station.


Our story starts with Santa. The old guy knows if you’ve been naughty or nice, sure. He also knows when a deal’s a deal! That’s how Santa found, and placed in our collective stocking, this week’s trip to New York City.

He found a highly rated hotel at half price and show tickets to Legally Blonde The Musical, also half price.

No wonder he’s jolly.

What Santa didn’t care about, being a fulltime resident of the North Pole, was New York City is on sale this time of year because the temperature is also likely to be half off.

We left Connecticut late Thursday morning, driving the 90 or so miles with minimal interruption. Our destination was the Affinia Manhattan Hotel on 7th Avenue, across from Madison Square Garden and Penn Station.

I pulled up to the curb behind another car, barely clearing the intersection. There was no sign of help! We waited.

A few minutes later, Helaine got out, entered the hotel and found the doorman. Within a minute or two, we had traded our SUV for a perforated piece of paper and walked inside.

The Affinia Manhattan is older, though in very good shape. It seems from all outward appearances to be a hotel that caters to tourists, as opposed to businessmen.

As we checked in, we met our first Affinia employee. We would come to find, they are all “Vegas friendly.”

That’s a compliment. Las Vegas is built on a hospitality economy. Everyone who works there knows it, and buys into it. Friendly staff brings return guests (who tip well).

Like the hotel, our room had been in its current state of decoration for a while. It was the largest single hotel room I’ve ever had, with two full size beds, a kitchenette and postage stamp sized bathroom.

Our main view from the 11th floor was 7th Avenue – a blessing and a curse. 7th Avenue is cooking ’round the clock and noisy!

We (meaning Helaine) unpacked the clothes. I set up our ‘comms station’. Passing on the hotel’s $9.95/day Internet, I hooked up via my cellphone. The G3 connection was about T1 speed, meaning 1/6th what I get here at home, though probably faster than what the hotel provides.

Stef had come prepared with a list of places (meaning stores) she wanted to visit. We headed to the subway and Greenwich Village. It was a 10 minutes ride on the “A” train.

At Belvedere Castle in Central Park, the official Weather Service observation site, the high was in the low 30s with a light wind. In the canyons of the city, with Bernoulli’s principle ramping up the wind like water through a garden hose’s nozzle, it felt closer to zero.

We were looking for Marc Jacobs on Bleeker Street. In this lower part of Manhattan, where streets no longer run parallel and perpendicular, it was tough to find. Luckily, along the way I spied the Magnolia Bakery.

This was a place I knew nothing about until Saturday Night Live featured it in “Lazy Sunday” a digital short. Even then, it took Stef’s sense of ‘what’s hot’ to move it onto my radar.

I saw the sign and could only think one thing – cupcakes!

Good God, they’re amazing. I can’t imagine there’s anything healthy about them but you’ll die happy.

As Helaine and Stef looked in stores, I stayed outside, freezing and photographing.

The Village is a very nice, very citified residential neighborhood. People move here to live an affluent lifestyle without looking ostentatious. Sorry, your cover has been blown.

We moved farther south to Century 21, a major discount clothing store across the street from Ground Zero. If you’re wondering whether Lower Manhattan has changed since 9/11, the answer is yes, there’s a huge construction site where WTC towers once stood. Other than that, people move about their business as they always have.

This part of the city is busy because it’s particularly convenient (something lost on me as a kid growing up in Queens). You’re only a few minutes from Midtown, Brooklyn (via the subway) and New Jersey (via the PATH trains) and 25 minutes from Staten Island via the ferry.

Back at the hotel we all changed to more sensible shoes and headed uptown on foot toward the Theater District and Times Square.

Helaine, our organizational beacon, made reservations for dinner at Joe Allen, a well known theater hangout on Restaurant Row (aka 46th Street between 8th> and 9th Avenues). I’d actually been once before, doing an interview there while shooting on location as host of PM Magazine/Buffalo.

Stef and I shared a guacamole dip appetizer. It was smooth in texture with a spicy tang. For the main course, she ordered a warm chicken salad while Helaine and I had meatloaf and mashed potatoes. I was comforted.

When we arrived, the restaurant was empty. When we left, it was full. This is a place that does huge business, mostly timed to make an 8:00 PM curtain. We had other ideas before the show began.

Before heading to the theater, we headed into Times Square and the oversized Toys ‘R Us. It’s tough to explain how large this store is, except to point out it has a full sized, full motion, Jurassic Park dinosaur and a Ferris Wheel!

Some things in life don’t get questioned. Stef wanted to ride and she and Helaine had already decided the ride would be with me (the less height fearful of the parents).

As Ferris Wheels go, with wasn’t particularly high nor particularly scary. After all, it wasn’t put up in a parking lot by safety ambivalent Carny’s! It was, however, indoors. That was the attraction.

Ride finished, we found the door, turned right and walked another block or so to the Palace Theater, where we had tickets to see “Legally Blonde The Musical.”

As with most Broadway houses, it’s been here for a while. The Palace opened in 1913, and much of that old school feel is still in it, though the theater has obviously been refurbished.

It is an immense house with orchestra, mezzanine and balcony&#185.

Ours seats were upstairs in the first row of the mezzanine – an astounding view of both the stage and the orchestra pit. On this Thursday night in mid-January, only the first few rows of the mezzanine were full. I assume the balcony was mostly abandoned as well.

About 20 minutes into the show I said to myself, “This is going much too fast.”

There was too much story with too few details in too little time. It was the theatrical equivalent of fast food. And then, with the story established, Legally Blonde hit its stride.

This is not Shakespeare. It’s a very light, tightly choreographed musical, based on the Reese Witherspoon movie. It’s light and fluffy and… well, it’s blonde! It was a lot of fun.

Years ago, Broadway suffered because the players voices faded over the long distance to the upper deck seats. Not so anymore. Actors wear mics (which you sometimes see protruding from their foreheads).

I’m mention microphones because for this performance, I think there was too much amplification. Less would have been more. Voices could have carried without being overpowering.

Laura Bell Bundy, who we saw in Hairspray, is physically perfect for the lead role, sorority girl Elle Woods. She sings and dances well, but Helaine felt her voice ran out before the show ended, sometime in the second act. Toward the end, it became grating.

The real standouts in the cast were Orfeh, the déclassé hairdresser who explains life to Elle and Christian Borle, the ‘pulled up by his own bootstraps’ law student/love interest.

Orfeh’s voice is strong, brassy and vibrant. Her presence is strong on stage. And, as they read this, my family will find out, she’s working with her husband!

Orfeh is Paulette, the unlucky-in-love Bostonian hairdresser who becomes best friends to Elle Woods, and Karl is Kyle, the UPS man of her dreams. Needless to say, Orfeh is thrilled to get to bend-and-snap for her husband eight times a week on Broadway.

Christian Borle reminds me of Eric Bogosian. That is if Eric Bogosian could sing… and maybe he can – who knows? In one of those weird stage intangibles, he’s really likable, though I can’t give you bullet points why. That’s good, because this part demands likability. When he was on the stage, it was tough to look away.

Oh – there are two other cast members I wanted to mention – Chico and Chloe as Bruiser and Rufus respectively. Both pound dogs, they are incredibly well trained (though you do see food move from actor’s hand to dog’s mouth after each bit of acting) and integral parts of the show.

Stef asked me to go backstage and bring them home. A father hates to disappoint his child, but the show must go on. I resisted.

After a slow start, Legally Blonde finished strong for me. We left in a good mood and hoofed it back downtown to the hotel.

Manhattan was reasonably quiet until we got to the Garden, where the Rangers game was letting out. The crowd was in a good mood. The Rangers had won.

Checkout time at the Affinia is very late – noon. We were out earlier, leaving our bags with the bellman. Breakfast/lunch was at The Bread Factory Cafe on 7th Avenue.

As is so often the case, Helaine and Stef had walked by the day before, stared in the window and decided this particular would be worth our while. I don’t quite know how they do it. Good decision.

I stood at the pasta station as my linguine with rock shrimp and garlic pesto sauce was prepared. It was tasty, and enough carbs to get me going.

Stef and Helaine decided a neighborhood store (Macy*s in Herald Square) was the place to go. I begged off. Stores just don’t do it for me like they do for them.

I cut across 34th Street to 5th and into the Empire State Building. It was me, Clicky, three lenses and three batteries (each of which would fizzle prematurely).

As a native New Yorker, I can’t remember ever going to the Empire State as a kid. It’s a tourist thing, like the Statue of Liberty and the U.N. – something the locals don’t do.

My first trip up was on a Saturday night in the summer of 1967. A fellow student from Brooklyn Tech had gotten his FCC First Class Radiotelephone license and latched on as summer relief transmitter engineer for WABC-TV. It seems like a hell of a responsibility for a 17 year old, but he was working odd hours and making big money in a unionized position.

The observation deck is on the 86th floor. He worked somewhere in the 90s… with windows that opened and a ledge some of the more senior engineers claimed they walked out on. I remember a fresh breeze blowing in toward the rack of transmitters and the glow of the city below.

I wish I remembered his name. I’m not sure if I really liked him as much as I liked the idea of going to this very special techie place.

I went back to Empire (as the transmitter guys called it) a few years ago with Stef. This was in my pre-Clicky days. Did it count without Clicky?

Back then, we waited in line for a few hours before taking the two elevators up&#178. Today, there was no crowd and I breezed right through an abandoned rope line and up to the top.

Holy crap it was cold!

The Sun was shining and the sky blue as I stepped onto the deck. Groups of people clustered around the diamond shaped fencing, peering out, trying to figure where they were looking. The city below was familiar. I looked east, trying to find our old apartment complex in far off Queens.

This time of year, the Sun is never very high in the sky. Looking south was very different than looking north. To the north all the detail was distinct. Looking south was looking at buildings in silhouette.

I watched as people took snapshots with the city as the background. It’s tough to make that kind of shot work when all you’re doing is pointing and shooting. Cameras are designed to compensate and correct exactly what you want to show uncorrected!

One of the most fascinating parts of the observatory are the pigeons. “How did they get up here,” I heard someone ask?

Hello – they’re birds. They fly. There are numerous ledges. They don’t have to do it all at once.

I kept my mouth shut. I wanted to say it, but resisted.

These city pigeons, used to people and cognizant of the protective fence, stayed mere inches away. They were scoping us out as we returned the favor.

I came prepared, bringing all my gear. I didn’t bring enough battery power. I knew this might be a problem. New batteries were already on order (and arrived at home today) for these fading ones.

Don’t feel sorry for me. I still got plenty of shots. I just had to stop before I wanted to.

Oh – one more thing. By virtue of its incredible height, the Empire State Building is an awful place for cell service! I tried making a few calls. Mostly they failed before they could be completed. When I did get a connection, it didn’t last long.

When you’re on top of the Empire State, it’s very easy to appreciate the wisdom of having this once building tower over all the others. A city of ‘equi-heighted’ skyscrapers would look wrong and the effect of this observatory would be diminished.

I met the girls for our last stop before leaving. It was a snack at Pinkberry on 32nd> Street, a street of mainly Korean businesses and Asian faces.

This was a Stef call. Pinkberry is trendy. Stef likes trendy. The American Express ads touting Pinkberry’s “swirly goodness” only add to that aura.

It’s not ice cream. It’s not yogurt. And, I’m told, it’s not terribly caloric.

Pinkberry was the coldest dessert I’ve ever had… and on a day that was already cold! There’s no doubt, it was tasty and really pretty.

I’m hoping Pinkberry doesn’t come after me, as the store has a lovely ‘no photography’ decal on the glass.

So, here we are, home again. This adventure is over. It’s amazing what we were able to accomplish in about 24 hours.

This explains why I came home and crashed!

&#185 – Writing in the NY Times before the Palace opening of Beauty and the Beast, Alex Witchel wrote, “Even if the cost is $11.9 million, that’s still a lot of money by Broadway standards, if not Disney’s. Can jealous fellow producers at least hope it will take years to recoup the investment, especially given the Palace’s hard-to-sell second balcony?”

&#178 – The first elevator goes from the ground floor to the 80th. You change there for 86.

Blowing The Forecast

This entry has been edited because, it has been pointed out, most of the state was properly forecast by me… just not the city where the station sits.

I went to work Sunday night, handling the forecasting details on-the-air. A storm was brewing.

Though my call was significantly below the Weather Service and was the lowest snow prediction in the state (as usual), the forecast busted on parts of the shoreline&#185. Thankfully, my low number call was good for most of inland Connecticut.

After two hours of sleet and mixed precipitation, New Haven had six straight hours of snow at the airport… but no accumulation. The ground was too warm or too wet and the snow was already close to melting as it approached the surface.

Schools were closed. People cancelled appointments. There had been snow in the sky, but without impact.

Here’s part of an email I received:

I’ve been watching WTNH more years than I care to remember. I think the habit you have of hyping a storm coming our way is unacceptable. I’m at the point now where if I watch the weather forecast and you are the weather forecaster, I can rest assured it won’t happen. May I make a suggestion, refrain from the excitement you seem to possess, when a storm is headed our way make sure you are reasonably correct before you announce the worst scenario. With all your modern equipment you are no more correct than my father was when he went outside and looked up at the sky.

My first words at 11:00 PM were, “My wife asked me not to scare everyone,” which is what I tried to do. Of course with the Weather Service’s “HEAVY SNOW WARNING” in effect, it was tough to avoid.

Yesterday, I went on the air and apologized. I don’t know if it will make the viewers feel better. It helps me.

Bill Evans from WABC was quoted in the NY Daily News today:

“I feel like I let the public down. We didn’t get it right. At the same time, we worked as hard as we could to get it right.”

Exactly, though Bill’s bust was orders of magnitude bigger than mine.

It’s not just the forecast was wrong. It’s that it was wrong in spite of doing everything we could do to get it right. Going back, I probably would have made the same forecast. In fact, a meteorologist friend was giving me reasons to raise the numbers just before air time (I resisted).

This is the most frustrating part of what is normally a fun job. I want people to trust me. No one wants to drop the ball. No one wants to get those emails. No one wants to be quoted in an article, as Bill Evans was, titled “Now that was a flaky weather forecast

&#185 – The rest of the state’s forecast – covering 90% of the landmass and around 75% of the populace, was accurate.

How We Change Our Mind

This is actually related to my last entry. In it, I pointed out how, early Wednesday morning, the NWS changed their forecast thinking radically over the course of an hour or so.

I don’t mean to pick on NWS. Their forecasts are normally excellent. It would be unfair to judge them based on a single forecast.

I have been through the same angst they experienced, but my forecasts aren’t as well documented. That’s why they’re being used as my example – convenience, nothing more.

How do we change our minds? In most cases, change in thought comes gradually, but there’s usually a tipping point when you go from one way of thinking to the other. That point is not, as you might think, simply where evidence on one side outweighs evidence on the other.

My first experience with this was in the 60s, with the Vietnam War. I was, as were most, a supporter of that war in its earlier days&#185.

I remember doing a term paper on Vietnam for a class. I sat in the Jamaica Public Library and tried to balance arguments. I couldn’t. The preponderance of what I read made me think we shouldn’t be there.

I rode the Q17 bus home feeling conflicted. It was a significant enough episode to remember 40 years later. Yet, even in the face of that evidence and deep contemplative thought, I continued to support the war.

I did later change my mind, probably sometime in ’67 or ’68, and became fervently anti-Vietnam. My realignment came long after the my internal balance of evidence had shifted. Looking back, I’m sorry I waited so long.

Isn’t that strange? Even when my better judgment should have pointed me one way, my earlier decisions made it much more difficult.

My suspicions say that’s what happened last night at the Weather Service. I wasn’t there, but I’ve been through many similar forecast decisions. What you’ve called for isn’t going to happen… and yet you don’t want to let go of the forecast.

Is it an ego thing? Is there a worry the mere act of having been wrong is a blemish to be avoided?

Flip flopping was portrayed as a weakness when John Kerry ran for president. Is it possible having the ability to easily flip flop is really a positive trait?

Making that second decision… overruling your first call… is the weightier of the two processes. It takes much more evidence to change an opinion than to form a similar opinion in the abstract.

I’m not sure what’s to be learned from this, except to say it seems better to make these radical shifts in opinion sooner, rather than later. That’s much easier said than done.

&#185 – Actually, in its earliest days, American involvement in Vietnam was so small and obscure, few realized we were there and even fewer cared.

A Tornado For Brooklyn!

This is pretty over-the-top. Early this morning, as a line of very strong storms moved through the region, an EF2 tornado (111-135 mph) dropped down over the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn.

When I was in high school, my dad worked a few blocks from where this twister hit!

It’s an area on Brooklyn’s south shore, near the Verazzano Narrows Bridge and close to the cool waters of the harbor. It’s a surprising place to get this kind of weather event.

When I looked at the photos, I wondered, “Beirut or Bay Ridge?” It was really that significant damage.

After the jump, the Weather Service’s official pronouncement.

Continue reading “A Tornado For Brooklyn!”

Bad Weather Duty

A strong line of thunderstorms slid into Connecticut this afternoon. Though no ‘watch box’ was up first, the Weather Service issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning, then Tornado Warning, in pretty rapid succession.

I was on the air within minutes of getting into the station. I didn’t even have time to tie my tie.

I spent two hours on-the-air, assisted by Matt Scott&#185 for a while, but mostly on by myself. That’s two hours of non-stop talking… or attempting to non-stop talk.

It’s very difficult. It was made more difficult since I had to both talk and operate my computers.

I don’t want to rehash much of the two hours, but I would like to tell you about one specific moment. It was more than a little weird. Eerie is a good descriptive word.

While tracking the strongest cell at-the-moment on the radar, I zoomed in tight. My map couldn’t have shown more than a few miles on a side. At that range individual streets show up as off-white lines on the otherwise Earth toned map. The radar echo returns were bright – the sign of strong downpours.

I clicked a few on-screen boxes and pressed the left mouse button as my cursor hovered over an unmarked street. The name popped up – W TODD ST. I looked at the map and briefly stopped my rhetorical conversation.

It was my neighborhood. I could see my street, not far away.

Helaine and Stef were watching at home. I later learned, when I talked about how strong this particular storm was and how I could actually see the street where I lived on this map, they headed to the basement.

It was an out-of-body experience to realize I had inadvertently stumbled upon a storm headed toward my home. How could I not pause for a moment to collect my thoughts?

There was some storm damage in Connecticut this afternoon and evening. A tornado is suspected in New Milford based on the damage and a spotter’s report of a funnel cloud. I passed some large downed tree branches on my way home tonight.

At my house, the greatest impact was a nasty leaky from our dining room skylight. Leaks can be fixed.

&#185 – Matt came in on his own, out-of-town friend and infant daughter in tow. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that he chose to help out.