Tag: date

Too Late For Snow

It’s snowing now, as I write this entry. There’s little wind, so I can watch the vertical path of the flakes as I look out the window.

My lawn is white as are the tree limbs. Some buds have started to form on the trees out front – and they’re covered too. The street and my driveway are wet, not white.

The bad news about March is, it can still snow. It was the middle of March that saw the greatest snowfall ever recorded in the Northeast, The Blizzard of ’88 (1888 that is).

Since the ground is warmer and the Sun higher in the sky, even a cloudy day can heat up road surfaces enough to melt what comes down… unless the snow is heavy and sustained. Then all bets are off. The snow preps the blacktop until it’s cold enough to allow accumulation.

We’re not there yet, and I don’t suppose we will be.

Still, these are giant economy sized flakes. Down on the lawn, the little piling up there is good packing snow – perfect for snowballs and building forts. There’s just too little of it to do anything.

This is a cruel snow, since it follows a tease of warmth. Being sick of the cold, I was ready. And now, at least temporarily, my hopes are dashed.

Yesterday, Los Angeles and San Diego went into the 90s. San Fransisco broke a long time recored getting well into the 80s. I’m jealous, very jealous.

Can’t we have just a teeny bit of global warming?

My blog – quoted in print

“It’s embarrassing to me,” Fox said. “Forget the movie. This was the perfect storm.”

I got a call from Pat Seremet at the Hartford Courant yesterday. She had heard how I missed my shot at WTIC. The weatherman, unable to attend because of weather. Now that’s news!

I’ve attached her story to the link below.

Let me explain the use of the term “Perfect Storm.” In order for us to have had this teeny bit of snow stop a significant portion of the state, everything had to fall in line in exactly the right order. It was an incredibly unlikely set of circumstances. If any single thing would have changed, we wouldn’t have noticed the snow at all.

Continue reading “My blog – quoted in print”

Slashdot – The Geek I Am

I love slashdot.org. It’s the website with the slogan: “News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.”&#135 There’s lots of attitude… maybe too much attitude at times. There’s certainly a lot of Bill Gates – bad; RIAA – bad; Big Government – bad; Linux – good.

Linus Torvalds, the Linux founder and gatekeeper, is worshiped with the ferver normally reserved Britney Spears or (until this past week) Michael Jackson.

To my friends and relatives I am a computer expert; the guy who’s called upon to provide tech support. On slashdot I’m way below the median in tech knowledge… way below.

What makes slashdot so interesting, and what is difficult to figure out when you look at the site, is that each subject gets about the same amount of space for easily accessible comments (with a little effort, everything is there). It is the vote or moderation of members that decides what stays and what is shuffled off to the back shelves.

So, as subjects get more comments, it is more likely that they will be interesting on-topic comments, and the off topic stuff and flamebait will disappear. It’s pretty ingenious and only works because of the huge size of slashdot’s audience.

In fact, when small websites mentioned on slashdot get swamped with browsers, it’s called being slashdotted.

Though moderation is the major arbiter of whether your comments stay or go, there is also the matter of “karma.” Karma is given based on how your previous postings were moderated, and whether you’ve submitted articles (usually just links to articles published elsewhere) that were added to slashdot itself.

Here’s how I’ve done:

2002-09-18 18:18:54 NYTimes endorses Open Source and Linux. Yes, endo (articles,news) (rejected)

2003-01-22 04:38:06 Earthquake data (articles,news) (accepted)

2003-08-20 18:38:39 If you know… how can you stop it? (askslashdot,tech) (rejected)

2003-09-25 03:12:13 Do geeks really need planes to fly? (articles,hardware) (rejected)

2003-10-02 06:41:07 Experience one hour in only thirty minutes (articles,games) (accepted)

2003-10-24 04:37:54 AOL tweaking users computers… and not telling (articles,spam) (accepted)

2003-10-24 07:17:56 Here Comes the Sun(spots) – they’re huge (radio,science) (rejected)

2003-10-29 08:10:39 Fire photos – amateurs as the new chroniclers (articles,media) (rejected)

2003-11-03 01:58:19 Is this the future of TV? (developers,tv) (rejected)

2003-11-19 22:37:35 Bill Gates and the Nightclub Video (articles,windows) (rejected)

2003-11-23 20:27:55 Synthesized Singers (articles,music) (accepted)

That’s 4 accepted of 11 received. I would complain, but to quote slashdot, “Note: grousing about rejected submissions is Offtopic and usually gets moderated that way. It happens, don’t take it personally.”

&#135 – Why Nerds is spelled with a capital “N” is beyond me. It’s not a proper noun, it should be “n.”

Paging Warming… Paging Mr. Global Warming

Last winter was horrendous. Very cold. Very wet. Very snowy. Who wants another of those? Yet my friend Bob had the gall to send this:

SXUS99 KBGM 030134

RERBGM

RECORD EVENT REPORT…CORRECTED FOR TYPO

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BINGHAMTON NY

930 PM EDT THU OCT 2 2003

…DAILY RECORD SNOWFALL TIED…

A TENTH /.1/ OF AN INCH OF SNOW ACCUMULATED AT BINGHAMTON REGIONAL

AIRPORT TODAY. THIS TIES THE PREVIOUS RECORD FOR THIS DATE SET IN

1974. IT ALSO TIES THE EARLIEST OCCURANCE OF MEASURABLE SNOWFALL.

Concerning global warming… bring it on!

Quoted in SCSU newspaper

I was quoted concerning Hurricane Isabel in the Southern Connecticut State University newspaper.

Continue reading “Quoted in SCSU newspaper”

Hurricane Isabel

Unfortunately, when this website crashed and took over a week’s worth of entries, much of the back story on Hurricane Isabel disappeared too. It has been squarely in my sights for over a week now, and as I type it is about 200 miles from the North Carolina Coast.

A little hurricane background might be helpful here. Though hurricane season begins in June, the ‘real’ season doesn’t get going until the end of August and September. Take a look how long it takes to get to the third named system, and how little time it takes to get three more.

Table 1. Progress of the average Atlantic season

(1944-1996). Date upon which the following number of events

would normally have occurred.
Number Named systems Hurricanes Category 3 or greater
1 July 11 Aug 14 Sep 4
2 Aug 8 Aug 30 Sep 28
3 Aug 21 Sep 10 –
4 Aug 30 Sep 24 –
5 Sep 7 Oct 15 –
6 Sep 14 – –
7 Sep 23 – –
8 Oct 5 – –
9 Oct 21 – –

Throughout the season, as conditions change, the favored locations for storms changes. So, it’s no surprise that Hurricane Isabel is going to hit the coast 2/3 of the way through September, or that The Hurricane of ’38 did too. It’s climatology.

With climatology in mind, and with this system in the far Atlantic about a week ago, I started talking it up on the air. There is a fine balance you must walk with these storms. There are two possible outcomes of a busted forecast and neither are pretty.

If you say a storm is coming, and make a big deal of it, people take their time forgetting. On the other hand, if you don’t predict a storm and it comes, someone will get hurt… maybe killed.

Then, Isabel blossomed. All of a sudden, the storm was classically shaped and drawing in winds of 160 mph with gusts to 195, a true Category 5 hurricane.

People come up to me all the time and say, “You must love hurricanes (or tornadoes, or snowstorms, or anything strong weatherwise).” No! I don’t. First, I always see the potential for damage and injury. Then, I see the potential for a blown forecast. I don’t want to be wrong.

As late as last weekend, the forecast models, and climatology, said Connecticut could be a target. By early this week, it looked less likely. I started lessening the potential on the air. Still, it stayed in the back of my mind that it could be tragic to have the wrong forecast.

Now the national media started to kick in. Isabel was the big story on the cable and broadcast networks. And, some others in Connecticut continued to hang with the ‘what if’ scenario. My forecast became more confident, but not without qualms. I began to reinforce my belief that it would be windy and rainy… dreadful… but not a hurricane.

It was something we could handle with little inconvenience. There might be power outages and minor coastal flooding and little else.

Now, we wait. Within the next 24 hours I’ll know how I did. There’s no doubt, the satellite images show Isabel a shadow of her former self. The Hurricane Center is officially saying 105 mph, but their technical discussions say they think it’s less.

I’m sure at some point someone will accuse me of hyping the storm, though I’ve done everything possible to keep it in perspective. That comes with the territory.

Last thing before I go. In the past, I have been critical of The National Hurricane Center. Not so with this storm. As far as I can tell, I give them an “A” on forecast track and a “B” on intensity forecast.

Hurricane Pissing Match

Sometime in the next day or so, I’ll write more about Isabel. But, tonight, I saw an incredible press release from AccuWeather from earlier this summer. It’s posted on the link below.

This is the kind of sniping you seldom see between government and private industry. It’s obvious, the gloves are off.

But, should anyone who forecasts for a living ask to be judged on specific individual forecasts, as opposed to forecasts over periods of time? We all make mistakes from time-to-time. Is one event’s forecast indicitave of anything?

Meanwhile, the most interesting part is that this really is a pissing match, in public.

Continue reading “Hurricane Pissing Match”

Even the NY Times feels my pain


From the New York Times op-ed page (during a very rainy summer)

August 5, 2003

And the Forecast Is . . .

By MICHAEL RUBINER

Wednesday in New York : Rain. Heavy at times. Followed by periods of precipitation.

Thursday : Lingering showers throughout the day. Chance of rain 800 percent.

Friday : Moist. Damp. Sodden.

Saturday : Rainish. Showery. Precipitacious.

Sunday : Light rain followed by heavy rain followed by pouring.

Monday : Unseasonably rainy in the morning. Uncharitably rainy in the afternoon. Unconscionably rainy in the evening.

Tuesday : Endless showers broken up by occasional flooding.

Wednesday : Remember “Waterworld”? Like that, only with more rain.

Thursday : Not sunny. The opposite of sunny. Just forget about sunny, O.K.?

Friday : Clearing just long enough for you to make weekend plans. Followed by obscene amounts of rain.

Saturday : Take a wild guess.

Sunday : Incessant, spirit-crushing rain. The kind of rain that makes it futile to get out of bed in the morning. The kind of rain that seems as if it will never end. And guess what? It never will. Ever. Do you understand?

Monday : Please go away.

Tuesday : Ample, brilliant sunshine throughout the day. Wait