Tag: United States

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”

Ees No My Yob

After I emailed the note to Meredith, concerning their server which was sending bounce messages to me – hundreds of them – even though they knew (or should have known) I wasn’t the culprit, I got this response (I have not corrected the spelling):

Geoff, Thanks for raising the issue of the SoBig virus infection. From the information that you have provided, it does look like the infected machine is located at Jeter Cook & Jepson Architecs, Inc. of Harford, CT. Their contact information is provided below. Have your IT technical staff contact the admistrative contact or the technical contact below. They may not realize that they have a SoBig infected machine and that it needs to be cleaned.

Jeter Cook & Jepson Architects, Inc. (JCJ4-DOM)

450 Church Street

Hartford, CT 06103

US

So, I wrote back:

Dan,

You misunderstand. In my case, Meredith is the guilty party. You are the

ones sending these hundreds of emails to me. And, you’re sending them to me

even though both you and I know they are coming from JCJ.

Why should I be the person contacting JCJ? I have nothing to do with this

at all. It is your server which is improperly set to respond to these

messages that you know are bogus.

You must take action to stop this before close of business today.

Geoff Fox

Maybe I should just forward all the messages to him? I’m not sure what to

Hot electrons, I guess

When I built my current home computer (what a geeky thing to be able to say), I installed a small applet that sits in the system tray, that little area on the lower right hand part of the screen near the clock. The applet does one thing and one thing alone. It monitors the temperature of my computer’s CPU.

I thought it might be a good idea because sometimes the room gets warm or cool and I wanted to make sure it didn’t suffer. Truth is, My AMD Athlon 1600+ is capable of running at much higher temperatures than what I subject it to. I also thought another cool readout on the screen would be… well… cool.

I was worried about heat, even in the design stages. I have so many fans in the case that it sounds like a Beechcraft 1900 taxiing out for departure.

Give me a sec… I’m getting to the point.

What I found was the biggest contributing factor to higher CPU temperatures was not environmental but actually how much thinking the computer was doing! That was weird., and it took a while to put 2+2 together.

If, for instance, I edit video (which is very math intensive and can take a long time) the CPU’s temperature starts creeping up. On a long session it can be 15-20 degrees warmer than what I normally see. If I’m surfing the net or typing email or working on this blog, it idles relatively cooly.

I’m not sure if this is because in high stress applications there are more electrons trying to move faster, making it a friction thing? The clock that runs the chip keeps a constant beat, so it’s not heating up because its little silicon heart is beating faster.

But, it is a puzzlement.

Here’s what brought this to mind. Tonight, The National Weather Service’s computer, which run the forecast models, had to be shut down because of heat. Since these machines run the same basic programs every night, I don’t think they’re experiencing the same kind of anomolies I see at home. It’s probably mechanical and will need a plumber or air conditioning expert rather than a computer expert. Still, it’s interesting to see that heat is the enemy of computers everywhere.

The link below connects to their statement on the computer failure.

Continue reading “Hot electrons, I guess”

Bad Forecasting 101

Whatever the reason, the forecast through the Great Lakes tonight has been atrocious. A strong line of thunderstorms stretched from the Quebec/Ontario border southwestward into the United States.

At least two tornadoes touched down in Michigan. There was NO Severe Thunderstorm or Tornado Watch in effect.

There might have been a Tornado Warning or Severe Thunderstorm Warning for the counties affected, but since those don’t get issued until a storm is sighted, they afford little in the way preparation time.

I’m not at the Storm Prediction Center and certainly don’t know what goes on in their mind(s), but over time, it has seemed to me like they are reticent to issue a watch box once a storm has already gotten going.

I’ve seen it in Connecticut, and tonight in Michigan. It’s wrong.

Certainly issuing a watch while the storm is already in progress signals a blown forecast, but it allows all sorts of secondary actions to take place which will sensitize residents to what is taking place.

I will read, with interest, the Michigan newspaper websites over the next few days.

Cool Blackout Satellite Imagery

This entry has been updated. Click for the new information.

The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program takes pictures of the earth from space and usually I don’t get to see them. Over the past few evenings – clear evenings – as they flew over the Northeastern United States they were taking visible light images (it maybe their norm… they don’t share with me), literally looking at the nighttime sign of civilization most noticable from space – electric light.

At the TV station, we mostly use infrared satellite images because they show weather patterns even when it’s dark. And we use geosynchronus satellites, whose orbital position seems to remain motionless in relationship to the Earth.

The DMSP photos here are from a low Earth polar orbit satellite sensing visible light, a totally different animal.

With clear skies Wednesday and Thursday, the setup was right for an incredible comparison of before and after during the Northeast Blackout.

Very impressive.

Phantom Lightning

As the power failure/blackout story progresses, the Canadian power authority has begun to blame a lightning strike in Northern New York State.

This would be a subject I have some expertise in. So, take my word. There was no lightning strike in Upstate New York this afternoon that might have set off the blackout. Period. End of story.

Continue reading “Phantom Lightning”