Recently in the Weather Department:
January 16, 2009
17 Degrees Below Zero
I have to drive to a client's office today.
They say it's -17° F outside today. (For my non-U.S. readers, that's -27° C.) That means the air is 115° below my body temperature. If it suddenly got 45° warmer, it would still be 4° below the freezing point of water.
I am really, really glad I bought the remote starter for the car.
Update: Made it in without incident.
It's funny how snow gets when it's this cold. It kind of stops being wet, and is just another powdery solid.
I'm breaking one of my safety rules today. Having driven a lot of junker cars over the years, I normally like to wear clothing that's heavy enough to keep me warm if the car breaks down and I have to spend a few hours waiting around in the cold. Today, however, I'm just wearing my usual hoodie and leather jacket. I guess I just feel daring today.
September 15, 2008
Hurricanes and Bad Luck
Hurricane Ike turned out not to be as bad as predicted. Aside from a lucky shift to the east just before landfall, it also appears that the computer models made an inaccurate prediction about the height of the surge around Galveston.
Now some people are complaining that Ike was over-hyped by the major news media, the National Hurricane Center, perhaps in furtherance of some sort of "nanny-state" agenda.
I can't say what the major news media did, because I didn't pay any attention to them, but there's no evidence the NHC over-reacted. Amateur hurricane blogger Brendan Loy, who also predicted dire consequences when Ike made landfall, explains why:
I believe the information I disseminated, and the warnings I relayed, were accurate and reasonable at the time I posted them. And that, as I know Sullivan would agree, is the only standard by which statements about hurricanes can be fairly evaluated: the standard of contemporaneous reasonableness, not 20/20 hindsight.
That's exactly right. Weather prediction is filled with uncertainties, and no matter how good the prediction, there's always plenty of randomness in the actual behavior of a hurricane.
To be clear, what actually happens certainly does matter if the model that lead to the prediction needs to be adjusted. But it's not some form of moral failing---hyping or downplaying the danger, depending which way things actually go---if you rely on the best available model to make decisions and that model turns out to be wrong.
It's not just hurricanes, either. I believe that all of life is like this. A doctor can do his best to treat a disease and still lose his patient through no fault of his own. A cop can rightfully shoot an armed bad guy, only to discover that the bad guy's gun was fake. The driver of a car can do everything right and still hit a pedestrian.
Bad luck is not a mistake. It's just what happens.
September 12, 2008
Those That Remain
I'm reading stories that up to 24,000 people may have decided to stay on Galveston Island. There are rumors that fires have broken out. Ike's storm surge is huge. The last time a surge this big struck Galveston, 8,000 people died. That's about 20% of the population.
Building construction is a lot better now---lots of stilt houses---but that won't help you survive if your entire house is underwater.
Hopefully, the death toll will stay under four figures.
Update: 2:45 CDT. It looks like Ike is coming ashore far enough east that peak of the surge is hitting over around Chambers and Jefferson counties. The tidal gauges at Galveston didn't get up over 11 feet, which I think is not enough to overtop the sea wall, and they're starting to come down. These people will probably live through the night.
Lucky Galveston.
Update: 3:15 CDT. Took another look at the tidal gauges. I think a couple of them have failed. Galveston Bay entrance, definitely, and the data from Pier 21 looks weird. Maybe they're not out of the woods yet. The trailing eyewall it hitting Galveston.
Update: 8am CDT. Looking good. The storm did not live up to predictions, for reasons not immediately clear. No good damage reports yet.
They call Chicago the Windy City, but that was always a reference to members of our political class, not our weather. This weekend, the real windy city is going to be Houston, Texas, which is going to be hit hard by hurricane Ike.
When I was a kid, I used to wonder if we could prevent hurricanes from killing people by using an atom bomb to disrupt the circular winds and make the hurricane collapse. It turns out that hurricanes are much bigger than atom bombs. The mushroom cloud would just blow away in the wind, like everything else.
I looked up the math at the NOAA and Wikipedia, and here's how it works out: The bomb that hit Hiroshima had a total energy yield of 6.7x1013 Joules. A large hurricane generates that much energy in about 1/9th of a second. Call it 32,000 Hiroshimas per hour.
That's what's headed for Houston tonight.
Fortunately, most of that energy is expended raising millions of millions of tons of air from sea level to the stratosphere. Only a tiny fraction of it is converted to wind, and only a tiny fraction of that brushes against anything on the ground. But it's still going to make a big mess.
Ike isn't going to be another Katrina, though. Most of the killing done by hurricanes is due to the storm surge---water pushed ahead of the leading edge of the hurricane. Unlike New Orleans, Most of Houston is safely above sea level.
I wouldn't want to be on Galveston Island, however. It was completely submerged by the surge from the hurricane that hit it in 1900. They have a seawall now, but parts of it are already flooding.
And for residents who don't evacuate from certain areas around Galveston Bay, the National Weather Service forecast is "certain death." Seriously.
All this is bad news for the only person I know in Houston, Mark Bennett, pictured here:
He's 50 miles from Galveston Island, 25 miles from the bay, and high enough above sea level that he doesn't have to worry about the surge. On the other hand, the projected storm track goes right over him, so he'll get some really high winds.
(The NOAA puts those red lines on the side for a reason, so Ike could pass to either side of him, or weaken before making landfall, but the best current guess puts the center of the storm within 3 miles of his house.)
I think Mark will be fine, but I predict some home repair in his future.
August 24, 2007
Wind and Rain!
In the time-honored journalistic tradition of running with a story because we've got pictures, here are a few shots I took on my 3-hour drive home after the storms we had yesterday.
 |
| Larger ImageA Rare Moment of Speed |
 |
| Larger ImageTree Down On Road and Power Lines |
 |
| Larger ImageBigger Tree Down on Road |
 |
| Larger ImageLine Down on the Road |
Update: John Ruberry got some good shots of the damage.
.
