Tag: effect

Katrina Timeline Straightening

I am one of those people who firmly believe FEMA and/or the National Guard should have been in New Orleans as soon as the wind began to die down. However, a great misconception most people have is the flooding started around the time the storm peaked.

Here’s what I wrote around 3:00 AM EDT Tuesday morning. By then the storm had moved north and New Orleans no longer had hurricane conditions.

Rick Sanchez was on the air, speaking by phone with someone from Tulane Hospital in New Orleans. The hospital’s spokesperson was talking about water – rising water.

The hospital had seen no real flooding while Hurricane Katrina passed by, but tonight, water had begun rushing in and it was rising at an alarming rate.

I could hear the fear in her voice as she described the water level rising an inch every five minutes. That’s a foot an hour. Already there was six feet of water outside the hospital. Soon, water would reach the level of their emergency generators on the second floor.

Sanchez was taken aback. I’m not sure he originally understood what she was saying. It was so unexpected – so out of context.

She said a levee keeping Lake Ponchartrain out of New Orleans had been breached. The cut in the levee was two blocks long and water was rushing in unimpeded. Even if there were pumps working, and she wasn’t sure there were, they wouldn’t be able to keep up with this deluge.

On CNN, Rick Sanchez kept asking questions, but it was obvious this woman wanted to get off the phone. Speaking to him wasn’t going to help her.

I heard terror in her voice.

The hospital had to get its patients out. Its patients were by and large critical. The only way to move them would be by helicopter and FEMA would be needed for that.

The other all news stations are in their usual reruns. I have no way of knowing if this is true. If it is, this is New Orleans’ worst fears are realized. Lake Ponchartrain could inundate the city.

As far as I can tell, that was the first national report of flooding in New Orleans.

From Editor & Publisher: On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff told Tim Russert that one reason for the delay in rushing federal aid to the Gulf Coast was that “everyone” thought the crisis had passed when the storm left town: “I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, ‘New Orleans Dodged The Bullet.'”

So, maybe that was what Chertoff thought on Tuesday… but where was he on Monday? Even before the flooding, New Orleans was in great need. The city was without power. Windows were blown out all over the city. Buildings had been destroyed. People were homeless or were housed in shelters with no food, water or sanitary facilities.

Yes, the flooding came late, but wasn’t anyone there surveying the damage or deciding what kind of support the city would need before then? Even before the flooding, the city had suffered a tragedy.

Why was he depending on newspapers (or any media) for his information?

Which Storm Is Next?

Tropical Storm Lee came and went in an instant. There’s a Tropical Depression in the Atlantic that will probably be Maria. It’s in a place that doesn’t favor a North American threat.

Next would be Nate.

There is a chunk of moisture with thunderstorms popping up in the Eastern Atlantic. It is very far away. The Hurricane Center has not seen fit to give it a name or track it in any but the most basic way. It’s a possibility for Nate.

Earlier tonight, my friend Bob, the hurricane expert (PhD and teaching position in meteorology at a fine large university), said this blob of cloudiness deserved watching… and so I have joined its observers.

These small clusters of thunderstorms pop up off the west coast of Africa all the time during this part of the hurricane season. Hurricane birth is very much a movable feast. There are different climatologically favored areas, depending on the time of year.

Most of them collapse under their own weight. Only a few grow.

Even when they grow, there’s a good chance they’ll be like Lee – far away from people and not very long lived. There are many more Lees than there are Katrinas.

Hurricanes are difficult to predict. A lot of that has to do with the very light steering winds they encounter. A mile or two per hour or the change of a few degrees in wind direction make a big difference in where a hurricane will move over an extended length of time.

Then there’s the water temperature. Have we accurately observed what it is… or have we been fooled (because satellites, radar and our other tools aren’t quite as good as the general public thinks they are when a system’s very far from ground based instruments)?

Hurricanes are also compact systems. They’re too small to be easily or accurately picked up by the conventional computer models we use. And, we need dates far in the future for something closer to Africa than America. Our errors are multiplied with time.

After all that, knowing we’ll mostly be wrong, we look anyway. We often chatter among ourselves over these left field predictons. I’m not entirely sure why.

I’m attaching part of a computer model which picks up this pre-Nate cluster, allows the storm to engorge itself on warm, tropical, Atlantic water until it reaches hurricane strength, and then curves it up the East Coast.

I don’t believe it is true. I don’t think this forecast will happen. But, it’s all we have right now. It’s what the geeky boys are currently talking about

Will there be a Nate and will he be right off the New England coast Tuesday, September 13, 2005 at 8:00 PM EDT (9/14/2005 0000Z) as this maps shows? Stay tuned.

Stranger things have happened.

My Friend’s Mom Leaves Louisiana

I just got this email from my friend whose mom evacuated New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina was approaching. It was tough persuading her to leave the house she’d lived in over 20 years and the city she’d lived in all her life.

My mother rang this morning via a Red Cross phone in Baton Rouge. I pre-emptively booked her on a flight for today. Once I heard from her, I had my travel agent confirm her on a 5pm Continental flight to Hartford via Houston. She will arrive at BDL at 11:23 tonight, and will be staying with my sister. We just sent to her Macy’s Gift Cards and my sister’s going shopping now to buy some clothes for her so she has something new and clean.

And, after I confirmed my Amex with my travel agent and to see if he could get me a senior citizen or AARP rate, his assistant called back and said, the flight’s on them. A fine and unexpected gesture.

Who knows, you may even get an interview?

Thanks to you both for your concern. Geoff, my mother said, again, this morning, she can’t thank you enough for your call over the weekend. It means a lot!

It’s possible that my wife and I will be driving up for the weekend.

Best,

Will she ever be able to go back? It’s a question that won’t be answered for a long time.

The Storm’s Gone But It’s Getting Worse

The past 24 hours were the most difficult time yet to watch what’s going on in the areas struck by Hurricane Katrina.

First up was the emotional reporting of CNN’s Jeanne Meserve. Here’s what USAToday said.

“It’s been horrible. … You can hear people yelling for help. You can hear the dogs yelping, all of them stranded, all of them hoping someone will come,” Meserve told anchor Aaron Brown.

“Mark Biello, one of our cameramen, went out in one of the (rescue) boats to help shoot. He ended up being out for hours and told horrific tales. He saw bodies. He saw other, just unfathomable things. Dogs wrapped in electrical lines … that were being electrocuted.”

Brown said Tuesday: “Jeanne conveyed a human being’s view of what she saw. Her reporting was incredibly solid. Her humanity was incredibly real. The marriage of those two elements helped viewers understand the desperate situation.”

There was an equally emotional side to Robin Roberts live shot on Good Morning America. She had gone to the Gulf not knowing the condition of her family. This was where she grew up.

Later Tuesday morning I watched an interview with a man who had lost his wife. He was on the street, a child in tow. He seemed dazed or disoriented as he told the story of being on a rooftop, holding his wife’s hand and then having her slip away.

As she drifted off, she asked him to take care of their family.

It was as sad a moment as could be seen. This man was the embodiment of human tragedy.

When the reporter asked the man where he would go, he didn’t know. His simplicity was his eloquence.

I’m hoping that sentence makes sense to you. I wish I could think of a better way to explain, other than to say, he didn’t need to speak volumes of words to have his plight understood.

I got an email from my friend whose mother had been evacuated from New Orleans home he grew up in to Baton Rouge.

She just called from BR. She’s now being moved to a new shelter in downtown BR because the school where she’s been since Sunday opens tomorrow. Since she probably won’t be going back to NO for sometime, as it’s being evacuated, I told her, once they feel it’s safe, we’ll fly her up to Connecticut and buy her clothes and get her settled. Once NO is able to open up, which could be a month, we’ll go down and survey the damage and decide where she’ll move and get her a new car.

New Orleans looks like a war zone. Very very sad..

Until today this had been a New Orleans story. There is plenty of damage farther east in Mississippi and Alabama. The pre-Katrina story had been set-up better in New Orleans. Now it’s all coming into perspective.

In Mississippi and Alabama the damage has been done. In New Orleans additional damage is piling on.

The breach of a levee I wrote about yesterday continued to pour Lake Ponchartrain into the city. Attempts to stop or slow the flow failed. As i understand it, flood control pumps only would pump the water back into the lake – a vicious cycle.

Civil law began to break down today. Looters were out in force. I watched people brazenly fillet a Wal*Mart. People were walking around with carts, as if they were really shopping.

CNN reported tonight there had been shootings and carjackings.

The city is preparing to move everyone out of the Superdome. It hasn’t been said, but I assume people inside are becoming volatile.

The New York Times is reporting a naval contingent on its way to New Orleans. Where have they been? Why wasn’t this done sooner? I don’t know.

Since the hurricane, the weather has been fine. On the Gulf that won’t last. Thunderstorms will fire up. There’s even the chance of more tropical trouble from the Gulf. After all, the hurricane season doesn’t peak for another few weeks.

Katrina Comes Ashore

I spent the night at Mohegan Sun, preparing to emcee and event for a few thousand teachers. It wasn’t a good night. My body doesn’t know whether it’s “Tuesday or Chestnut Street.”

I caught a few hours, but was up at four… drifting in and out of a light sleep until my wakeup call at 6:30.

This isn’t the hotel’s fault. This is a top notch hotel (more on that later). It was my body saying “Don’t treat me this way.”

Message received.

Up early, I started spinning the dial, looking for Hurricane Katrina coverage. It wasn’t tough to find. Seemingly everyone had a ‘cowboy’ out in the elements, flirting with disaster.

I saw Anderson Cooper, in the pouring rain, gesturing to a crane he said might topple.

Hey, Andy – get away from the crane. This is only television.

All in all I liked the local coverage I saw last night on WWL much better than what the national news showed. Obviously, their was a different purpose to each particular broadcast. I found WWL’s comforting.

Is that OK to say? Comforting was what was needed.

I moved downstairs to prepare for the event. In the featured speaker’s dressing room, a TV was showing CNN. My last contact with the storm this morning was the report that the roof of the Louisiana Superdome had been breeched.

I think the original story was worse than what actually happened. I would think it wasn’t hype but genuine concern from the anchors and reporters. I certainly was concerned.

Yesterday, I had written about what the forecasters might have been thinking. Today, one of those scenarios came true as the storm weakened prior to landfall and then jogged right, giving a more direct hit to Alabama and Mississippi than Louisiana.

New Orleans wasn’t totally laid to waste. There has been plenty of damage, and once we get out of the ‘fog of war’ we’ll find plenty more. The coasts of Alabama and Mississippi really took the brunt of Hurricane Katrina. That was more than expected.

After the fact, I still agree with the decision to empty out New Orleans. Yes, some people will crawl out of the woodwork to say they rode it out and it wasn’t that bad. That’s not the point.

Tonight I’ll drive home wearing my seatbelt, even though I don’t expect to get into an accident.

Blogger’s note: One of my fellow MSU students just started a new job, forecasting in New

Orleans! He sent a mass mailing to the class which I’ll attach after the jump.

Continue reading “Katrina Comes Ashore”

Katrina Heads West

When I called my folks yesterday to give them their “Katrina heads-up,” I immediately heard the discomfort in my mom’s voice. It’s not that she didn’t feel they could weather a hurricane. It’s that she already has.

Even if it creates no significant damage, a hurricane is a major inconvenience. My mom and dad remember the days without power, phone and air conditioning. Who wants to repeat that?

She said they were prepared in the things you’re supposed to have: lanterns, water, food, batteries.

I wish I could say they were off the hook. The definitely are not. The predicted track brings Katrina perilously close to Boynton Beach early Friday morning.

A hurricane is bad enough during the day. In the dark of night, it’s worse.

The only good news is the hope Katrina will stay a minimal hurricane. Much of South Florida is built to easily survive a category one storm.

This isn’t my last post on this storm.

Gee Geoff, You Must Love This Stuff

It happens with every snow storm and every severe weather outbreak. Someone will come to me and say, “You must really enjoy this wild weather.” No. The simple answer is no.

I’m not sure why it happens. Would someone go to their doctor and say, “Boy, you must really love it when someone gets sick?” I hope not.

The truth is, though most weather is harmless… even most severe weather… some is not. A call came in a few minutes ago from a co-worker telling me about all the tree limbs down in his part of the state.

“Was it a microburst,” he wanted to know?

Sometimes lightning strikes. Sometimes bigs winds do blow things down, damaging property, hurting people. Snow storms cost money too, as well as having the potential to hurt you.

There are lots of people who do what I do because they grew up enjoying storms. I can’t blame them for that interest. But, as an adult, it’s time to look at this with perspective.

Last night I watched a lecture in one of my meteorology courses. The professor was practically frothing at the mouth as he talked about the setup for a possible tornadic outbreak. He used phrases like, “what you want,” while talking about what we actually don’t want.

I found it disturbing. I was getting angry as I viewed the DVD.

I’m sure he meant no harm and wouldn’t want people injured or property destroyed. That was, however, what he was excited about. He seemed unable to separate his fascination with storms from their reality.

I read things like this on a weather related bulletin board I frequent too. These don’t seem to be rare instances.

Maybe I don’t get it because I came upon weather later in life. It was originally a way of working inside during Buffalo winters. It wasn’t my passion as a child.

Whatever the reason, I find it distasteful.

Hurricane Info – Where To Go

This time of year, a lot of what I do is follow hurricanes. Many of the tools that are useful the rest of the year fail miserably with tropical systems.

There are a number of problems. Hurricanes… even big ones like Dennis, are often relatively small enough to fall between the cracks of the numerical weather prediction programs. So the computer models I’d normally follow aren’t particularly helpful.

Hurricanes can be very interesting when they’re far from land – away from radar and surface observations. Our government’s NEXRAD network is worthless until the storm is poised to hit land.

Here are some of the secondary sites I follow to try and get more info than would normally be available.

The spinning radar on the left side&#185 is from one of Cuba’s network of weather radars. On any given day, half of them might be out of service. In Cuba, that’s not unusual.

On the other hand, there are seven. That’s a lot for an island of Cuba’s size.

Even though the south coast of Cuba is within range of the Key West radar, there are mountains in the way. I think the Cuban radar does a better job at this position. It’s always surprised me that the Cuban images are on the net. I’ve used their sites for at least three years.

The College of DuPage, a two year college where you wouldn’t expect big time meteorology, has one of the best sites for ‘domestic’ imagery like satellites and radar images. DuPage has the full NIDS suite, meaning you can see the Doppler portion of Doppler radar – winds!

For prediction, I have been paying close attention to the MM5 model being run at Florida State by Bob Hart (originally of North Branford, CT). The MM5 was initially formulated at Penn State and runs on off the shelf hardware (though still beefier than what you’ve got at home).

What makes FSU’s iteration of the MM5 so special is its superior ability to properly see topography, ‘bogused’ data from the actual hurricane (to better set the initial parameters, and sophisticated physics.

Bob is among the smartest people I’ve ever known. It’s no surprise this forecast tool is run under his supervision.

Hurricanes are so difficult to accurately predict, especially using conventional methods. Any improvement in the state of the art becomes a possible life saver! What could be sweeter than doing your job and saving lives?

Finally, I look at the Hurricane Center‘s output. For me, seeing just the Hurricane Center’s work product removes the fun of doing it myself.

I do religiously read their technical forecast discussions. The link, unfortunately, changes each time they issue a new one. Links to NHC products are also on the right side of this webpage and on the Hurricane Center homepage.

&#185 – Because this webpage will live on long after Dennis is gone, this is a captured radar image. The link goes to the real thing.

Two Interesting Controversies… Well, To Me They Are

I thought I’d write about some interesting things I’ve read over the past few days.

The first seems to be a simmering controversy. It has not yet reached critical mass, but it should as soon as someone in the mainstream press catches on.

Is someone else fudging when it comes to global warming? Last week there were questions about a pro-industry push. This is just the opposite.

It starts with some comments on global warming from a respected scientist representing a respected organization

Kevin Trenberth from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) claims that warmer oceans and increased moisture could intensify showers and thunderstorms that fuel hurricanes.

“Trends in human-influenced environmental changes are now evident in hurricane regions,” Trenberth said. “These changes are expected to affect hurricane intensity and rainfall, but the effect on hurricane numbers remains unclear. The key scientific question is how hurricanes are changing.”

All well and good, except this is a conclusion and a report steeped in controversy.

Dr. Chris Landsea is from the National Hurricane Center. He’s the guy who wrote the Hurricane Center’s FAQ. He is not a happy camper.

Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4’s Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe.

Landsea goes on to say global warming will have minimal impact (if any) on tropical systems down the road. In fact, Landsea has resigned from this board in protest of the books being cooked.

Earlier today Matt Drudge was linking to an article which quoted Dr. Trenberth with no opposing viewpoints or perspective I was upset, so I wrote the author of the story.

Hello,

I appreciate you pointing this out. Unfortunately, the article was

published before I was finished with it. It was pulled off our site (but

not before it was picked up in other places), and I have now added some

context.

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050616_hurricane_warm.html

I apologize for this mixup.

Michael Schirber

LiveScience

How much damage has been done? Who can tell. Even bad or retracted research sometimes takes on a life of its own. I’ll wait and see what’s quoted later.

On to the second bit of reading which concerns the space program. It’s not often I see something in the National Review I agree with (in fact it’s not often I see the National Review). Today was the day.

This time it’s an article by John Derbyshire about the space program and its dubious current value. This is something I’ve written about before here in the blog. It’s not a popular thing to say the space program is a total waste… but it is.

I wrote John (whom I’d never heard of before this evening) and he wrote back.

Thank you, Geoff. Excellent comments. I just did a radio spot with Jerry

Doyle — he’s a big shuttle fan & has swallowed all the NASA guff about

microgravity manufacturing & the rest.

I think of the Shuttle program as a sort of Brasilia of the skies — pure

1950s thinking. Who else, today, is riding a vehicle designed by slide

rule?

Best,

John Derbyshire

A Brasilia analogy – wow!

Another Nice Mention in the Day

I spoke to Rick Koster at the New London Day yesterday. He was writing a story about weathermen and comments their viewers make, and asked me to participate. I’m always scared I might say something I’ll later regret. This one came out very nicely.

I’ve attached the story to the link below

Snow Rage?

Just Blame It On The Weathermen, They’re Used To It

�There will be no school tomorrow. At least I’ll be a hero to kids.� – Geoff Fox, WTNH Channel 8 weatherman

By RICK KOSTER
Day Staff Columnist, Arts & Entertainment
Published on 3/1/2005

Something irritating this way comes.

It was Monday afternoon and the clouds were the opaque gray of a killer’s eyes. The Nor’easter was roaring up the Atlantic Coast and forecasters were describing a weather system that would utilize the Connecticut shore as a sort of tightrope between heavy rain and snow, or both.

Among area meteorologists, the mood was a cross between the excitement wrought of any storm and the anxiety that comes with predicting tough and complex systems. After all, at this point in the season, the citizenry can be a bit testy � and need someone to blame the weather on.

�It’s the nature of the game,� said Matt Scott, a meteorologist at WTNH in New Haven who called the impending Nor’easter �a complicated one.�

�This is a troublesome storm,� he said. �This is the first storm of the winter where I think we could see some power outages.�

That would certainly increase the potential for public dissatisfaction.

�Well, we’ve had a lot of snow � more than average � and when we’re a little off the mark some folks get agitated,� Scott said.

Geoff Fox, one of Scott’s meteorological colleagues at WTNH, who has worked in the area for 20 years, is more than familiar with irate weather-followers blaming the messenger. He remembered several years ago when a tourist board in Cape Cod was upset with him because members thought Fox’s long-range forecasts, which in this part of the country usually included a day of rain, were affecting business. They theorized Connecticut residents would not make the trip to the Cape if Fox suggested inclement weather.

Another time: �I was collared by a guy who owned a car wash where I used to take my car,� Fox remembered. �He didn’t like weather forecasts that could hurt his business. I tried to kid around, but he had no sense of humor and I came to believe, in his case, that he had some connections and could actually hurt me. So I get my car washed somewhere else now.�

Fox will presumably not worry about the aesthetics of his car over the next few days. He said Monday afternoon that the Nor’easter was pushing farther and farther to the east. Since snow systems have a relative warm and cold side � the cold is to the west � each turn to the east increases the likelihood that southeastern Connecticut will get more snow.

�There will be no school tomorrow,� Fox said. �At least I’ll be a hero to kids.�

Today’s technology makes it easier for viewers to convey their irritation with meteorologists.

�E-mails are easy to fire off; there are no faces or identities attached,� said Bruce DePrest, chief meteorologist at WFSB in Hartford. �The sender might even be mad at a forecast from another station, but any weatherman will do. Anything can trigger it, too � the timing of a storm, calling for snow and getting rain. … A lot of things make people mad, and sometimes they just want to be annoying because it’s easy to do.�

Michael Thomas, a meteorologist for the Connecticut Weather Center in Danbury, can perhaps understand the concept of what might be called �snow rage� even if he’d never heard the phrase. He said, �I think southeastern Connecticut is looking at five to eight inches of snow with this storm. I was already tired of (snow) last month. Now I hate it.�

Meteorologists say they take their forecasts seriously.

�People should understand that a storm like the one headed our way is my Super Bowl or my Oscars,� Fox said. �It’s really important to us to get it right. There is no upside to making an inaccurate forecast. This is where we make friends or enemies.�

Perhaps it’s possible to do both.

Last week, after several more inches of snow, Fox and his boss received �incredibly irate� e-mails from a viewer in Gales Ferry. The guy was mad because, after the station’s forecast called for snow, his caf� lost business and his son’s wrestling practice was canceled.

�I wrote back and said I didn’t cause the snow,� Fox said. �In the meantime, my boss, who never throws an e-mail away, remembered the guy’s name from an earlier communication and sent a return e-mail: �I’m really surprised to hear from you since you wrote in 2002 and said you’d never watch us again. So it’s good to have you back.’ �

Another Storm

Every time the Connecticut Department of Transportation rolls their plows they keep an online log. So it’s easy to go back and say there have been 16 storms so far this season. Not all of them were very significant, but they were storms none the less.

Number 17 comes tomorrow.

I was very pleased with my forecasting on the last storm. I was a few hours late on the scheduled arrival, but 90% of the state got what I predicted. The corner that got more than anticipate had been forecast to get the heaviest snow already.

Very few complaints – that’s how I judge the effectiveness of a forecast. I’d like to say no complaints, but I’ve gotten tagged even when I was dead on… and even gotten complaints based on the Weather Channel’s forecast (honest – I wouldn’t make that up).

This next one is made tougher by the failure of the two most trustworthy models, the NAM and GFS, to agree. Their disparity isn’t small. It’s the difference between snow to rain or snow, period! That’s an immense difference.

Because of the timing, I get to take my last shots when the storm will still be 16 hours away. Much of what I say will be based on changes in structure that won’t have happened yet. So, my prediction will be supposition, piled on supposition, piled on supposition. They’re all interlocking predictions. Blow one and the rest tumble like a house of cards.

Don’t get me wrong. This is a great job. I love what I do. It’s just sometimes forecasting the weather is more difficult than other times, and those are always the times that are most critical.

Asian Earthquake

I really haven’t written much about last week’s massive earthquake. It’s not that I haven’t been thinking about it. Like everyone else, it has been impossible for me to look away.

On of the more interesting aspects of this story, though certainly minor in comparison to the human tragedy, is how it has unfolded.

In 2004 we are used to getting all of our news all at once. In fact, the 24/7 cable outfits often have trouble with big stories because they’re able to pretty much cover them as they happen and that’s that. After a while extended coverage becomes repetitious and boring.

This story has dribbled out. I saw the first earthquake bulletins before I went to bed, a few hours after the quake had taken place. It was originally labeled a magnitude 8.9, then upped to a 9 (not an insignificant difference as this is a logarithmic, not linear scale).

It wasn’t until the next day that we heard about the tsunami. Then a little later we heard from people and a little bit later still we saw video.

Even today there is a lot about this story that is unknown. There are islands full of people that are so isolated no one knows what’s really happened, though speculation centers on the worst. There have been dozens of additional earthquakes, aftershocks but substantial earthquakes, in that region (around Sumatra and the Adaman and Nicobar Islands).

There will be, unfortunately, more deaths reported. Where the destruction has been the greatest there will also be disease.

There is much more new information in this story to be reported.

The Guiness Book of World Records shows a flood in 1887 killed 900,000, an earthquake in 1556 killed 830,000, and a more recent earthquake killed 655,000 in 1976&#185. This most recent quake and tsunami still has the potential to top the list.

&#185 – Amazingly, all three of those disasters took place in China.

Comair – It Was The Software

A few days ago, while pondering the Comair Christmas meltdown, I said:

Comair isn’t letting me into their inner sanctum, but it’s probable that the structure of the computer system that handles their crew assignments, weight balance, manifesting and the like wasn’t equipped to handle all the ‘exceptions’ it was asked to ponder this past week.

I hit it right on the nose! Linked below is a story from today’s Cincinnati Post which details exactly what happened.

Comair says the computer system was due to be replaced. I wonder if the DOT inquiry will show it should have been replaced a while ago. How long was Comair operating close to the limits of their system? Was this problem predictable?

Continue reading “Comair – It Was The Software”

It’s Not Easy Being Florida

The forecast for Hurricane Jeanne shows no mercy on the Sunshine Sate. If things go according to plan, by Saturday night Jeanne should be bearing down on the Florida coast with a path similar to Frances.

I can’t imagine Jeanne will move as slowly, but it’s quite possible her winds will be stronger than Frances. Much of the East Coast has already been weakened without repair.

Can a state throw its collective hands up in resignation?

This hasn’t been a particularly good year to live in Florida. I can’t ever remember this many storms hitting one state. And now, the possibility of a Category 3 storm right where Frances hit a few weeks ago.

I spoke to my folks tonight. My mom and dad still have enough batteries and bottled water to start a store. The unknown adventure that faced them with Frances is now gone. They’ve seen this enemy before and aren’t please by the implications.

They are now paying a special assessment from their condo association to cover the cleanup from Frances. The four days and three nights they spent without power is still fresh on their minds. My dad doesn’t want to go another week without Internet service (as he did).

Forget for a second how this will affect people who currently live in Florida. Over the longer term how will this affect who moves to Florida? A lot of people who would have jumped to Florida a month or two ago, won’t!

Will this be a blow to the Florida economy? I can’t see how it won’t. Yes, there will be outside money coming in to rebuild (insurance, federal aid, etc.). At the same time there will be unreimbursed personal financial losses, the immediate loss of tourism dollars and the longer term repercussions of people staying away.

It doesn’t have to be a large percentage to create a large problem.

We know this hurricane season is unusual, but we don’t know if that fact is meaningful in any way. Is this an anecdotal aberration? Is this the beginning of a trend where strong hurricanes forget to turn into the ocean and hit the coast?

Is this an incredible run of bad luck or have we just been uncommonly lucky in the past?

Flying Through A Hurricane

Back in July 1996, I flew through the eye of Hurricane Bertha. I wrote about it then, but it’s been mostly forgotten. I thought this might be a good time to repost it here:

The most common question I’ve been asked the past two days is, “Why would you ever fly into the eye of a hurricane?” Fair question.

First of all, I have convinced myself that it isn’t dangerous. Think about it. Career government employees. Not exactly a prescription for risk takers. The plane, a 31 year old Lockheed C-130 Hercules, seems incredibly sturdy and is as stylish as a UPS truck.

Second, it sounded like a great story. Interesting, informative, maybe even a little exciting.

Any time there’s a tropical system worth investigating, the Air Force flies to a forward base and sets up shop. The idea is to have two planes with almost continuous penetrations of the eye. This week, the 53rd Weather Recon Squadron USAF (reserve) was at Homestead AFB in Florida. It’s an eerie starting point, considering wreckage from Hurricane Andrew still litters the base and surrounding town.

Flight time to Bertha would be about 2 hours and we’d be in the air for anywhere from 10 to 12 hours. That meant 69,000 pounds of fuel in the wings, under the wings, and in a 10,000 pound tank adjacent to the port-a-john in the ‘cabin’. And enough noise from the four prop engines to force everyone to wear earplugs or earphones.

Being on the ground during a major hurricane will change you. They’re not surprises like tornadoes or earthquakes, yet they cause damage that’s often more widespread and impossible to prevent. And there’s the paradox of the eye, an area where the strongest and weakest winds are amazingly close. A hurricane’s eye passing overhead is so enticing that people have been known to leave shelters only to be ‘zapped’ as the storm started up again.

Leaving Homestead, we flew directly toward the storm. Miami Center didn’t need to vector us – we weren’t going to run into much company. Not many people do this as a hobby. At 20,000 feet the ride was smooth.

A little over 100 miles out, we descended to 10,000 feet and started taking readings. Temperature, dew point, barometer, wind speed and direction. The sea surface below had enough whitecaps and spray to show the wind direction, even at altitude. Intermittently there were patches of green. The Air Force manual carried by just about everyone on board said that that was an indication of winds over 40 knots. The clouds thickened. There was rain, hitting the windshield at almost 300 mph. My photographer, J.P. Coleman, and I made our way up the stairs onto the flight deck.

My commercial flight to Florida had two in the cockpit. This flight had five, and they all seemed to be working. I started to interview the pilot, a Lt. Colonel, until he stopped for a radio call and then a checklist. The radar, mounted on the plane’s dash, about where the radar detector is on my car’s dash, started showing a somewhat circular green area. This was Bertha.

The blip moved closer to the radar’s center as we approached. I started thinking about the turbulence. How the plane would pitch and roll. How my stomach would trick me into thinking I was about to die, when I was only going to throw up. There are hand holds in the cockpit and I grabbed one, but a funny thing happened. Nothing!

All right, not quite nothing but close. We shook for ten, maybe twelve seconds before settling back to smooth flight.

As it turns out, Bertha was “Big” Bertha because of size, not strength. The eye was not round, but oval. It had more holes than Albert Hall (If you understand this, Ann B. Davis is Schultzy, if you don’t she’s Alice).

The eye was where the real work would be done. In the back, a Master Sergeant prepared a cylindrical instrument pod called a radiosonde. He watched the wind speed at altitude. From 70 to 50 to 30 knots. And then to single digits. As the wind dipped he typed “launch” on a keyboard and the radiosonde slipped out the tube. We knew from the rate of descent that its parachute had opened. It was transmitting back to the plane while falling at about 1,000 feet per minute. As soon as we got the numbers, they were satellited to the Hurricane Center and relayed to the National Weather Service data feeds. All of a sudden, anyone with a computer could get the results of Bertha’s physical.

These numbers are still the absolutely best way to fix the hurricane’s location and estimate her strength. Lower pressure, higher temperature, bigger storm. There is currently no better way to know this than by penetrating in a plane.

And that’s the way the day went. Ten and a half hours in the air with hardly a bump. We flew 100 plus mile legs in a bowtie shaped pattern, passing through the eyewall four times.

So, what did I get out of it? Well, two live phoners, from the flight deck, at 6 and 11. The airchecks are nowhere to be found, but I’m told it sounded exotic and dangerous. That’s probably because we went from the plane to the ground via single sideband shortwave radio and had to say, “over” all the time. Today (July 11) , we aired two separate packages at 6 and 11. And, I’ve gotten a little more insight into the data I use from the National Hurricane Center.

I’d do it again