Cyclone Phailin Takes Aim On India

Cyclone Phailin full track

02B_112330sairUntil a few minutes ago I hadn’t heard of Brahmapur. It’s an Indian city on the Bay of Bengal. There are around 350,000 residents–the size of Pittsburgh. The latest projections place Cyclone Phailin near Brahmapur as is makes landfall early Saturday evening local time (Saturday morning here in California).

This is no little storm. It’s likely to strike the coast with winds of 140 mph or higher. The Time of India quotes unnamed experts predicting winds over 190 mph!

Boston meteorologist Eric Fisher notes: “Over the past 200 years, 69% of tropical cyclone deaths worldwide were in India + Bangladesh.”

Squally winds speed reaching 45 to 55 kmph gusting to 65 kmph would continue along and off North Andhra Pradesh Coast during next 6 hours . Winds would increase in intensity thereafter with gale wind speed reaching 100 -150 kmph from forenoon of to-day i.e., 12th October 2013 and 210-220 kmph gusting to 235 kmph along and off coastal districts of North Coastal Andhra Pradesh at the time of land fall.

State of sea along and off North Coastal Andhra Pradesh will be rough to very rough and would become gradually phenomenal on 12th October 2013.

Storm surge with height 3.0 – 3.5 meters above astronomical tide would inundate low lying areas of Srikakulam district during landfall.

Extensive damage to kutcha houses, some damage to old buildings, large scale disruption of power and communication lines, minor disruption of rail and road traffic, uprooting of trees, flooding of escape routes with extensive damage to Agricultural crops.

— ISSUED BY CYCLONE WARNING CENTRE, VISAKHAPATNAM

Years ago I attended a hurricane seminar featuring then director of the National Hurricane Center, Dr. Bob Sheets. He talked about these cyclones which hit the Indian subcontinent and surrounding areas. The results are often tragic.

The US is a rich country. When there are warnings it’s possible to move out of harm’s way. In poor countries that mobility doesn’t exist, nor do many well constructed shelters.

Dr. Sheets talked about some communities building berms, artificial hills, not as protection from the wind but refuge from flooding. It’s a low tech solution with a decent payoff, but people remain exposed.

It will take a few days for the real impact of Phailin to reach the outside world. “Fog of war” conditions always follow a storm of this magnitude. I fear what we’ll find.

I Am An Expert In Blog Spam

Consider me your spam expert. My blog gets “comment spammed” on a regular basis. Most are caught, but the problem is so serious I run two spam catching plug-ins. They’re kept very busy.

Akismet has protected your site from 810,378 spam comments already.

Crazy, right?

Search engines decide which sites are important by seeing how many other webpages link back to them. So, if a spammer can get his link on 1,000 or 10,000 blogs like mine they move up with Google, Bing and Yahoo.

If the spammer posted the same comment everywhere the search engines would quickly ban them. They have to be sneaky by constantly varying the message.

This is a process I normally don’t see. I see it today!

A badly configured spam program sent me a template used for these spam comments. It’s a mistake. This isn’t supposed to go out without being parsed.

I thought I’d share it.

The template contains dozens of possible comment messages, each ending with “|”. Within these messages are ‘curly brackets’. When one is reached a choice is made and a word or phrase is randomly chosen.

This one script can produce an astronomical number of different comments, helping it evade detection.

Like I said, I’ve got defenses up. But the game is played around the clock because the payoff for the spammer is worthwhile.


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The Solar Decathlon

IMG_9345Helaine, Doppler and I spent the afternoon at the 2013 Solar Decathlon. This year the decathlon moved out of Washington to the Orange County Great Park (formerly El Toro Marine Air Station) here in Irvine.

It’s a two week event with college teams from the US and around the world. That’s how we ran into Jakob Doppler from Austria. I’m not sure how pleased he was to find our dog shared his name!

The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon challenges collegiate teams to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive. The winner of the competition is the team that best blends affordability, consumer appeal, and design excellence with optimal energy production and maximum efficiency.

The homes were modestly sized, all under 1,000 square feet. They felt more spacious through design and clever use of outdoor space. In fact all the homes managed to make the outdoor space seem an integral part of the inside of the house.

IMG_9488About halfway through the day I realized the future looks very much as if it was designed by Ikea! Lots of exposed, natural wood. Lots of clean lines.  Function integrated into form.  Murphy beds!

All the homes took advantage of the Sun with solar panels (and in one case solar shingles), and well placed windows, vents and doors. Many had living walls filled with plants.  Recapturing rain water was also a common feature.

IMG_9402Each house was designed for a specific environment, from the cold of Alberta, Canada to the desert near Las Vegas.

This is what the future looks like. There’s no reason not to make our homes more efficient and compatible with their environment. A few I’d live in tomorrow.

What Kind Of Child Have We Raised?

It’s cloudy here in SoCal. Cool too. We’ve had a thimble full of showers. The ground’s wet, but not enough for a puddle.

My phone rang a little while ago. It was Stef calling from Hollywood.

“I love this weather,” she said. “My windows are open.”

Wow! What has happened to my little girl? Has she become so jaded by endless sunshine she’s lost all perspective?

She’s rebelling against sunny and 72&#176!

Stef’s been here three years. Maybe it’s gotten to her? Maybe you can get tired of too much of a good thing?

Nah.

Tuesday’s Aurora, But Not For Me

Aurora_Borealis_PosterWhen it comes to Sun and fun, few places compare with Southern California. Not Tuesday night.

On Tuesday our normally perfect location prevented us from seeing one of the Sun’s coolest effects: the Aurora Borealis, aka the Northern Lights.

From our vantage the Sun is unchanging. Looks can be deceiving.

If we could remove the Sun’s glare we’d be able to see constant activity on its surface and from time-to-time a Coronal Mass Ejection. In a CME huge clouds of charged particles are blasted from the Sun into space. When I’ve seen satellite images of CMEs they always make me think the Sun is burping!

The direction of these blasts are random, meaning sometimes they’re pointed at Earth!

They vary in speed, but Coronal Mass Ejections average around 1,000,000 mph. That sounds fast until you realize light travels at 670,616,629 mph! That means we see the CMEs before they get here and it helps solar forecasters make predictions to protect sensitive equipment.

The CMEs hit the Earth’s ‘day side,’ distort the our magnetic field and release energy into the upper atmosphere in the terawatt range on the ‘night side.’ A terawatt is 1,000,000,000,000 watts–a thousand times more that a gigawatt (Yes, gigawatts exist outside “Back to the Future”).

All this energy can cause the upper atmosphere to glow. That’s the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights! Most of the time the lights are centered near the Earth’s magnetic poles. That why Alaskans commonly see them as do residents of Scandinavia, Russia and Canada.

Depending on the energy received from the Sun (and a few more variable guaranteed to set your head spinning) the Northern Lights can extend south from the polar regions. Tuesday they were visible in Northern New England and Eastern Canada.

Do we ever see the aurora from SoCal? It’s extremely rare, but not impossible. In 2001 the Northern Lights were seen on Mount Wilson! One can hope.

The Correct Way To Be Excited About Snow SoCal Style

The weather forecasting computer models move a low pressure system south from Nevada, tapping into some offshore moisture and bringing SoCal a decent chance of precipitation late tonight and Wednesday.

No big deal. Albert Hammond lied. It does rain in Southern California… just not often.

Here’s the exciting part. The atmosphere will be cold enough to see snowfall on some mountains higher than 5,600 feet Wednesday evening! We’ve got one of those visible from my bedroom window, Santiago Peak at 5,689 ft. It’s 12.5 miles away.

It’s possible the snow will be mixed with rain up there, or the rain/snow line might drift higher for this storm. You know how elusive good snow predictions are. Beyond that, the ground is still very warm. Snow sticking on Santiago is no certainty.

However, this was a pre-California fantasy for Helaine and me–snow visible from the house while we walk around in shirtsleeves. We are hopeful.

Bring it!

Christina And Mike’s Wedding: Go Big Or Go Home (With Photos)

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Christina DeGiulio is Stef’s best friend. They were sorority sisters at Hofstra University. This weekend Christina married Michael Laterza. Helaine and I were thrilled to jet back east and attend.

We were promised a big Italian wedding. Promise kept! To me it meant warm and close knit families ready to have a great time.

The service was held at St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Jersey City. The church was finished in 1877 (here’s the original New York Times story from its dedication) and is magnificent in detail and size. Though the neighborhood surrounding the church has fallen on hard times, somehow this church has been maintained in the pristine condition befitting its past.

The silver-colored hammered granite from the Hallowell quarries in Maine highlights the door jambs, windows, buttress caps and cornices. The interior of the Gothic church features ribbed vaulting, with sixteen granite columns support the clerestory walls, a nave of 86 feet, side aisles, channel, side chapels, woodwork of black walnut and white ash, and stained glass windows, but no transept. The extreme length of the church is 272 feet and the extreme width is 138 feet; the spire rises to a height of 225 feet with a base 33 feet square. – New Jersey City University

It was a fear among the bridesmaids someone would stumble while walking the long aisle or catch a heel in the floor mounted heating grates! Fear unfounded.

Christina was beautiful. Mike beamed.

Here’s a wedding hint. Always marry someone who’s aunt and uncle own an amazing restaurant on the water in Liberty State Park with a killer view of Manhattan! Christina’s aunt and uncle own Liberty House and it was the perfect venue.

The cocktail hour was accompanied by three appetizer stations with pasta, sushi and fresh mozzarella. The waitstaff carried even more appetizers through the room. On top of that there was a long table in the center of the room with more appetizers.

I can’t remember exactly when, but at some point I realized there was a full meal to follow. And all this with the Manhattan skyline shining through the windows.

We moved upstairs for dinner. The dancing started as soon as we walked in and never stopped. This was fully a party crowd!

The food was fab including a huge steak as the entree. How I waddled back to the hotel afterward is beyond me.

This was our second wedding in less than a month. First Rachel and Aram, now Christina and Mike. It’s tough to remember two parties that were more fun and surroundings more amazing.

(Do yourself a favor and watch the video fullscreen)

Bored At 40,000 Feet

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I was flying home yesterday and I was bored. I reached for my tablet and started playing around with a function I seldom use while home, GPS. With the Global Positioning System my tablet figures out where I am by measuring how long signals from a constellation of Earth orbiting satellites take to reach it.

This is mind boggling math done instantaneously. I’ll spare you the details. Just say it’s magic! That works for me.

Surprisingly, after a few minutes the tablet locked on and started reporting the plane’s position and speed.

Screenshot_2013-10-06-19-06-38-w1200-h1200We were flying over Imperial, Nebraska. Our track was 257&#176, a little south of west. The ground speed was 484 mph. Our altitude was 41,110 feet.

Uh oh. That couldn’t be right. The pilot said we were assigned 40,000 feet. Flying 1,110 feet higher could cause problems.

I checked the FAA’s records this morning. They agree with the pilot, 40,000 feet. Could my GPS have been that wrong?

Truth is we were probably closer to 41,110 feet than 40,000 feet. But it doesn’t matter because the altitude the pilot gives is hardly ever correct!

Here’s where weather enters in.

Years ago before fancy electronics and satellites, pilots needed a way to know how high they were flying. The simple answer was to measure atmospheric pressure. We already had an instrument for that, a barometer.

As you climb higher the atmosphere become less dense. The barometric pressure gets lower. Calibrate the barometer to measure this pressure fall in feet and you’ve got an altimeter. There’s one (or more) on every plane.

Of course it’s never that simple. The barometric pressure over any spot on Earth is constantly changing. The barometric pressure between any two points also varies. If pilots set their altimeters at different airports they’d constantly be at different altitudes. The skies above us would be chaotic!

A plan was devised. Once a plane is airborne and above 18,000 feet the barometer reading is reset to 29.92″, no matter what the ‘real’ pressure is. Once my plane was set to this ‘standard,’ its 40,000 foot reading matched all the other planes claiming 40,000 feet.

Disaster averted, even though none of them were actually at 40,000 feet.

This system works beautifully for high altitude jets in flight–not so well near the ground. Planes taking off and landing reset their altimeters to the actual pressure at the airport so they know exactly where the runway is.

This system has been in use for decades and continues today in spite of technological advances, because it works!

I Smell Smoke

baker fire

We’re back in SoCal.

After taking Stef home, then dodging the traffic (and detour) near the Hollywood Bowl, we made decent time down “The Five” to Orange County.

There is one change since we left Friday. The air is pungent with the smell of charcoal! We’re feeling the effects of the Baker Fire in Silverado Canyon, around five miles away.

It’s far enough not to be a worry, but close enough to make its presence felt.

This is a mulch fire. It started in a nursery then spread to the surrounding wilderness. The fire covers around 50 acres and is 25% contained tonight.

The are multiple problems with a fire like this. The natural brush is very dry. There’s been no rain for months, then a Santa Ana wind this weekend. Beyond that this fire’s in a steep canyon with limited access.

Even California’s gentle weather packs some danger. Yes, it’s scary.

The Familiar Place

We’re on a plane again. Less than 48 hours after landing at Newark we’re heading home, westbound for LAX via Denver.

Friday Denver was in the 30s. Today 60s! I’m not sure there’s another major US city with more schizophrenic weather!

We went east to attend a wedding. It was spectacular, but I’m going to hold off writing about it until I can include some photos. I shot over 800. Even I’ll admit photography is an obsession.

I did have one unusual note on the trip. We drove from the airport to the hotel via the Pulaski Skyway. As we approached our turn just before the Holland Tunnel I had a feeling of familiarity, as if I’d been there before. It didn’t take long for the details to come back.

I was a kid–maybe four or five. We were driving back from the Catskills in horrible traffic. Just before the tunnel something broke. We pulled, or maybe were pushed, into a gas station.

I remember sitting there through the night watching the full moon travel across the summer sky.

I told my dad. He had no recollection. But I know the story is true. And even though things have been rebuilt or redesigned, there was enough sameness for me to immediately reconnect.

Why was this particular night so memorable? No clue. Maybe the feeling of my parents being powerless in my presence was traumatic at that age?

How strange seeing that spot brought it all back?

Room With A View–Jersey Style

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It’s cloudy in Jersey  City, but that’s not enough to spoil our view of Manhattan and the Freedom Tower at ground zero.  I’ll try and get some better shots with “Clicky” later.

Who Turned The Heat Off? Who? Who? Who?

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We’re at Denver International.  Good grief, it’s cold! 

The Aviation Weather Center showed lots of turbulence on its prog maps.  They were right.  We rocked and rolled our way here.  Knowing the weather in advance isn’t always an advantage.

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It snowed lightly early this morning at DIA.  Now it’s just grey and the ground crews are wearing hoods and gloves. Temps are in the upper 30s with a wind chill.

“Welcome to West Palm,” said Sully, standing in the jetway as we deplaned.  He was smiling, but it didn’t seem funny at the time.  I was too busy shivering.  Jetways aren’t heated.  Terminals aren’t much better.

Now we wait.  Our layover is around two hours.  Once we fly east we’ll lose two hours on the clock and gain (at this hour) 50° on the thermometer.

Newark seems more appealing all of a sudden.

The 5,600 Mile Weekend

We’re at LAX.  We’re flying again.  Helaine and I are headed to New Jersey for the wedding of Stef’s best friend, Christina.

This trip will be brief.  Out Friday.  Back Sunday. 

We’ll spend more time in transit than we will celebrating!

The easiest way would have been to take the daily non-stop from John Wayne Airport.  That would have cost over $1300. 

Southwest to the rescue. We have enough miles to fly free, as long as we go from LAX.

This will be a long trek. LAX-DEN first, then a two plus hour layover followed by DEN-EWR. Once we’re in Newark we’ll have to find our rental car then find our way to Jersey City.

We’re looking forward to the wedding itself which we’re promised will be full blown Italian–big church service then reception in a restaurant on the Hudson looking across to Lower Manhattan.

All we have to do is make it cross country in one piece.

We Live In A Boomtown

IMAG0011-w1200-h1200

I just came back after driving to the store. Look left or right, construction is nearly everywhere. We are living in a boomtown. It’s such an unusual situation, I’m not quite sure how to deal with it!

An elementary school planned for this part of town has been pushed ahead by two years. The Orange County Register reports:

Portola Springs Elementary will be the district’s 22nd elementary school and the second of six school’s the district plans to open by fall 2020.

IMAG0010-w1200-h1200The demand is crazy–as are the prices. Million dollar plus homes on postage stamp lots don’t merit an eye blink! Neither do developers who only entertain cash buyers.

Before we closed on this home our real estate agent was offered money for our place in line!

Construction in our development is nearly complete, but a half mile away 726 additional homes are going up. There are literally thousands more in the planning stages in this very planned city of 230,000.

IMAG0013-w1200-h1200I drove through “Pavillion Park,” a few hours ago to take some photos of the works-in-progress. It looked like Black Friday at the mall! There were people going through model homes as if they were the last homes on Earth.

I understand the appeal. Irvine has excellent schools, plenty of shopping and an exceptionally low crime rate. Oh yeah–no winter either.

I worry. Boom can bring bust. It wasn’t long ago this city was in the doldrums. There were plenty of short sales and repos.

Memories are short. Builders don’t want to slow down while there’s so much money to be made. It will be interesting to watch.

The Day I Met Tom Clancy

Tom_Clancy_at_Burns_Library_croppedIt’s sad to read about Tom Clancy’s death, especially at such a young age. He was a true American success story, an insurance salesman turned author with no expectation of commercial success.

I met Tom Clancy at ABC in New York. I was filling-in, doing the weather on Good Morning America. Back then the show originated in TV-2, a cramped studio in ABC’s oddly configured labrinth on West 67th Street.

Clancy was one of dozens of famous guests who passed through while I was there. I met him in the narrow hallway that led to the makeup and dressing rooms. It was a brief encounter.

He was taller and broader than I expected and wearing his signature aviator sunglasses in the poorly lit hallway.

I’d read a few of his books and told him so. He smiled and thanked me. We talked for a moment. I remember him showing interest in my weather maps.

Tom Clancy didn’t need anything Geoff Fox could give him, but he was friendly and gracious and made me feel like my compliment was the first he’d ever received.

It’s been a long time, but I remember him fondly because of that brief meeting in a hallway. It doesn’t take much to make a lasting impression.

(Photo credit: Tom Clancy at Burns Library, Boston College. Taken by Gary Wayne Gilbert.)