Tag: North Carolina Coast

From the Airplane

I’m writing this while flying just east of the North Carolina coast at 30,998 feet. I know that because I’m on Song, Delta’s airline within an airline.

Song is supposed to be an airline that can compete with the discount independents like Southwest and JetBlue. My round trip fare to Florida, $116.70&#185 is certainly a bargain.

The plane itself is a pretty pedestrian Boeing 757. It is configured as a one class with 3+3 seating. The color scheme is blue and a muted light green. The flight attendants wear designer outfits from Kate Spade (or possibly her husband, I can’t remember).

The pre-flight briefing was done by a recorded voice. She was over the top sultry with an over the top script to read. I presume it’s part of Song’s positioning.

On the back of each seat is an LCD touch screen. Once the plane is in the air, the screen controls individual channels of entertainment (movies, live satellite TV, music, a trivia game or flight tracking).

I like the idea of live TV while flying. It works pretty well, though not perfectly. As we were taking off and the plane made some turns, we lost the signal. Every time an announcement is made or someone hits a call button, the TV audio stops.

People hit the call button more often than you’d think!

I like the idea of a TV, but the flight’s half over and I’m not watching. I’m playing the music trivia game – fighting it out with whoever’s in 15F.

The monitor itself is wider than a normal TV. The broadcasts that are seen are stretched to fit, so everyone looks a little heavier… a little dumpier. As someone who is on TV, this bothers me. It probably won’t bother you as much.

If my two checked bags are out on time, I’ll consider Song a success.

&#185 – the $116.70 fare includes $25.54 in tax leaving $91.16 for the airline.

Hurricane Alex

This link will get stale quickly, but right now, Hurricane Alex looks amazingly potent as it moves just off the North Carolina coast. The weather website at College of DuPage in Illinois has some of the best imagery for this.

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.