The community activist organization ACORN never was known as a particularly "fair and balanced" bunch, and its ceaseless parade of election fraud raids and accusations hasn't helped its reputation one bit. ACORN once was a legal client of Barack Obama's, so it's not hard to imagine the implicit political litmus test voters must pass to be registered by that organization: vote early, vote often, nevermind if you're a felon or U.S.citizen, and vote Democrat.
I had to laugh, however, when I read tonight that ACORN allegedly tried to register the Dallas Cowboys as voters in Nevada, a pivotal "swing state" in the upcoming presidential election.
- "[Nevada] Secretary of State Ross Miller said the fraudulent registrations included forms for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team.
"Tony Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada, and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4," Miller said."
This is one case where I wish somebody wasn't a Cowboys fan. What I wonder is: How shamelessly dumb must that registrant have been to think he could sign up Tony Romo, Marion Barber, Terrell Owens, DeMarcus Ware, Jason Witten, Felix Jones and the rest to vote and someone wouldn't notice? Equally alarming was the tidbit that all but 6 out of 1,800 names they registered in Washington two years ago were fake. Their actions in the 2004 cycle yielded an avalanche of charges of vote-buying, bogus registration, and voter intimidation tactics in various urban areas all across this land. And on and on...
Congratulations, fACORN. You've added a new level of ludicrous legend to your status as poster child for vote-rigging shenanigans.
This has me wondering. Will John Elway, Dan Marino and Troy Aikman be surprised to find out they each voted for Obama 38 times in Phoenix, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Virginia Beach? Jesse "The Body" Ventura might vote for Obama in ten states without even realizing it. Casting ballots from the grave, of course, is a prized tradition in that organization. Who will they register next in Vegas, St. Louis and elsewhere...26 Duke Waynes, 41 Frank Sinatras and 115 Elvis Presleys?
Hell, you don't even need to be a dead U.S. citizen to vote Democratic thanks to ACORN. I wonder where Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill, Sun Tzu, Judas Iscariot and Julius Caesar will show up on urban voter lists this year. How about entirely fictional names...think some Obama votes will come from Fred Flintstone, Scooby Doo, Martin Martian and Rudolph Reindeer? What are they going to use for the last names of Gilligan, Catwoman, Liberace, Socrates, Popeye and Tutankhamen?
Did you realize animals and plants can vote? it wouldn't be surprising to see Polar Bear, Chinook Salmon, King Cobra, Loblolly Pine and Spotted Owl punching the Obama-Biden ticket in a few urban precincts. The Democrats might even find they've got the vote of inanimate objects after seeing names like Water Fountain, Fishing Pier, Septic Tank, Andromeda Galaxy and Master Cylinder on the registration lists.
Ahh, election season...gotta love it.
[EDIT - 6 days later] Thanks to the St. Petersburg Times and the Orange County Election Board, we now have this (government agency = public domain) image of ACORN's registration of Mickey Mouse to vote in Florida.
And you thought I was kidding about cartoon characters?
What I wonder now is, would Bush's razor-thin popular vote loss to Gore be turned to a victory if all the bogus votes somehow could be subtracted from the 2000 election? It's at least possible.
Andrew Zahn of the MoneyNet Daily posted an eye-opening essay -- one that surely took a good deal of courage in the face of a likely barrage of hate mail to follow -- on the mortgage lending mess in this country.
Analysts point not to greed, but to social activist politics
In this day and age, this is just as plausible as the others most commonly proffered by Big Media for the ongoing mortgage lender mess. It's easy and popular to blame "corporate greed" and mismanagement since egregious examples of some of each clearly do exist. For the record, I do disagree with Zahn's implication that greed and mismanagement are negligible factors. AIG, Lehman, WaMu and Enron wouldn't have ended up like they did without colossally inept management.
But it's wise to look deeper into the source of the problem, and upon doing so, we shall unearth another common denominator of at least equal culpability. The racial quota/preference factor cited by Zahn probably is a significant contributor. After reading that article, I don't understand how it couldn't be, logically speaking.
Mortgage eligibility should be based entirely on ability to pay, not on race, color, gender or creed. If I'm lending a hundred bucks to someone, I absolutely don't give a damn what their color is. It's whether I believe, based on all available evidence and familiarity with that person, that they can repay. Sadly, such simple common sense hasn't followed in the mortgage industry, where far, far more money is at stake! History has shown that anytime we systematically discriminate against or for people because of their race, bad things happen; and this could be a sad example.
Whatever the cause, far too many banks lent to far too many people who had no business with a home loan. To give a mortgage to someone with crappy credit, unstable employment or insufficient income -- no matter their color or background, no matter who is pressuring them to do so, no matter the "noble" reason -- is absolutely irresponsible. Magnify that by many millions, and we now reap what others have sown.
And all the responsible home loan payers -- with solid credit histories and due diligence in saving and spending -- are paying for the reckless irresponsibility of others, in spades. Now we're all stuck between choosing a partial form of socialism (Federal buyouts and takeovers of private institutions) and utter economic collapse. It's like choosing whether one rather would be bitten by coral snake or giant crocodile. Thus blackmailed, we choose the fangs of socialism, the slow-kill solution instead of a certain and savage drowning, and hope someone will deliver antivenin soon.
Now that we are are about to become a more socialist nation, this partially accomplishes a longstanding fantasy of the San Francisco/Boulder/Berkeley/Harvard crowd, for whom nothing short of full communism truly will satiate a gluttonously Marxist socioeconomic appetite.
Thanks to JEvans for yet another thought-provoking link.
Some post-Ike ramblings, now that I've been back several days and had a chance to check back on Hurricane Eisenhower and its impacts...
The first actual chase summary from Ike was a photographic one from the air, courtesy of Jason Sippel. Jason was lucky enough to get a seat on a NOAA plane into Ike when it was in the central Gulf. He didn't have a place to upload these excellent photos from his flight into the eye of Ike, so I gladly agreed to put up web-sized, low-res versions for him (used here by permission).
In the eye, looking down at the sea
A crop-n-zoom of the shot above, looking down at the whitecaps on the ocean surface
Outbound, leaving the eyewall (Great view of the curvature of the storm! Long-period swells are evident on the sea surface, lowest middle.)
Sunset in a convection-sparse part of the hurricane
This was during a period when satellite imagery indicated a paucity of convection in the inner part of the cyclone compared to most mature hurricanes, and now we've got an insider's view of that skeletal structure. During and long after Jason's flight, there were too many convection-deprived slices of that storm for its own good. This was the case both in terms of potential for reintensification when it got over pockets of high-heat content water in the central Gulf, and for tornado production during and after landfall. Looking back at soundings and radar loops, I agree with some reasoning that Bill McCaul wrote offline about the failure of Ike to produce more tornadoes than it did. Reproduced with Bill's permission...
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"...soundings and hodos in northern and eastern quads of Ike look highly anomalous, and rather unfavorable for lots of tornadoes. This is a continuation of the pattern that prevailed yesterday. There is way too much hot, dry air at midlevels on the north and east sides of this hurricane. Even the hodographs show only minimal veering at low levels, and some even show backing at midlevels! As further evidence of the anomalous character of this hurricane, the cirrus shield looks rather scrawny and confined for a storm whose low-level circulation is so large. With Rita in 2005, the cirrus shield was 2 or 3 times broader than with Ike."
I couldn't put it better. Ike had much too little sustained and supercellular convection, probably because of a strong negative influence from unfavorable environmental factors that Bill cited. Hence, my early thinking (on a couple of e-mail groups and discussion boards) that Ike would produce lots of tornadoes turned out to be overstated garbage. Much as in midlatitude systems, favorable thunderstorm-scale convective mode is so important to tornado potential, and this cyclone lacked that.
Damage-wise, similar to after Katrina, NOAA's got an image map up that will take you to high-res, color satellite shots of the affected areas:
http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/ike/IKE0000.HTM
That alone could divert one's attention for a good long time.
Also, here are a few "before and after" shots from an airplane, specifically focusing on beach houses at Crystal Beach TX (Bolivar Peninsula), that illustrate vividly the folly of putting homes out on a sand spit prone to hurricanes thanks to CB for these links).
Photo 1 | Photo 2 | Photo 3 | Photo 4
...And yet, the lesson never seems to take root, because of ridiculous, baseless and irrational local perceptions that these storms "happen somewhere else" or (a common rationalization often cited by those who rebuild) "won't hit here like that again." My main problem with these situations is if my dollars -- whether through taxes or elevated insurance rates for me -- involuntarily help to fund the building or rebuilding of beach houses in the path of hurricanes. The same story keeps coming up, over and over, from the Carolinas all the way around to Texas. If somebody wants to slap up a house right on a beach, fine...as long as they agree (and prove the means to) eat the cost, out of hide, if it goes down in a storm, including cleanup and environmental mitigation, and don't ask to be rescued at my (taxpayer) expense.
Since a basic tenet of mine is that complaints without solutions are worthless, I'll offer the solution: Quit building that crap there! Fortunately, Texas already has a cool little law that could help to prevent some of this from happening again.
Same goes with keeping exotic/invasive flora and fauna in hurricane prone areas. Stupid, stupid, stupid. You may recall that, after Hurricane Andrew, numerous monkeys escaped from various insufficiently robust and secure enclosures; and some still are on the loose today, both in inhabited and Everglades areas of southern Dade County. A private fish tank busted open in Andrew's surge and set loose lionfish into Biscayne Bay, and by a few miles' extension, the Gulf Stream. Untold thousands of stinging varmints descended from that release are causing trouble across the western Atlantic and Caribbean. Now comes word of a tiger loose on the Bolivar Peninsula. At least the big cat either will die or be rounded up eventually. In the meantime, there's probably plenty of wild and pet carrion on which for it to gnaw.
I wonder how many of the people from Bolivar to Beaumont will claim their water-surged houses actually were destroyed by a tornado (for insurance claim) as happened after Katrina, with the government "covering up" the supposed occurrence of "thousands" of tornadoes. I've heard some amazing stories from damage surveyors of Katrina's aftermath about such claims by homeowners and their attorneys -- tales from the lunatic fringe that would be riotously laughable if it weren't for the fact that some paranoid ignoramuses actually believe such rubbish. Let's hope it doesn't become too common with Ike.
Sarah Palin is no more qualified for VP than Obama is for President. Nor is she less.
I admire Sarah Palin as a person and speaker, and she seems keen, as well as tough. John McCain probably is right when he states that she won't be told to sit down. I admire and respect that trait in anyone, whether or not I agree with their ideals, because I never did respect indecisive pushovers. She clearly isn't a wimp. She also represents a fresh face to the tired Washington scene -- not because that face happens to be quite beautiful, but because behind the pretty face is the brain of a proven reformer yet uncorrupted by the den of sin that lies inside the Beltway.
While I won't yet gush over her the way Pat Buchanan has, he made a good point: She has more governmental executive experience than Obama, or even Biden or McCain for that matter. After all, remember that we are talking about an election for the executive department here. In the end, if elected, she may prove the gamble was worth it. I surely hope so. But in the meantime, indulge some reservations...
As with Obama for President, I cannot justify Palin for VP based only on metrics of experience and credentials that constitute the political equivalent of bench press, 40-times, high jump and other measurables in athletics. Both Palin and Obama have gaping weaknesses as far as credentials or specific expertise of any sort are concerned. McCain and Biden do not, though Biden is much more of a party hack than McCain has proven to be.
Fortunately the main vote here is for President and not VP, and as I've mentioned before, on the Presidential side, the credentials contest is so lopsided as to be laughable. Of course, my sociopolitical beliefs line up much closer to McCain/Palin than Obama/Biden, which is what most of us will base our vote upon anyway. So goes mine.
But I admit Palin was a risky selection -- more so than, say, Kay Hutchison (if McCain was hell-bent on a female VP), Romney, Huckabee or Pawlenty (whom I thought would be the choice). In a way, though, this maneuver fits a pattern with McCain's history as a maverick. Palin most certainly is no Washington insider. If McCain gets elected -- and for the sake of getting more socially conservative, constitutional literalists on the Supreme Court, I deeply hope he does -- then he had better stay fit and healthy for at least one full term, until she either shows on-the-job that she's fine, or he can replace her with more robust Presidential timber.
This looks to be a close election between candidates who are different as can be in so many respects that matter. Neither Presidential candidate is hapless cannon fodder, as with Walter Mondale and Mike Dukakis (or, arguably, Bob Dole and John Kerry). We all know that the right and left are going to dig in and vote for who they're going to vote for, period. That admittedly, and unashamedly, includes me (on the right).
Therefore, the deciding factor at large, as in Bush41-Clinton, as in Bush43-Gore, as in Bush43-Kerry, will be the relatively small but all-important bloc of the unsure or unconvinced. McCain's best hope in this election are those swing voters away from the bastions of flaming leftism that characterize the coasts and northern cities. My hope in that regard is that middle and rural America uses its collectively superior reservoir of common sense and sensibility, in order to turn out in force and outvote the coasts and northern cities in this Presidential election.
Another potentially dreadful scenario looms for SE Louisiana, and perhaps Mississippi and Alabama coastal areas. But the hurricane has some healing to do first.
Even with a fast motion across a very narrow part of Cuba, the eye got shredded a bit. The Loop Current and some eyewall re-contraction ought to repair the damage to the core structure, but there are cold eddies off the edge of the Loop Current that might offset gains the storm makes from the high OHC. I'm not convinced yet that this is going to rival Katrina, but there's plenty of time still. And if it does go berserk over the LC, there's plenty of precedent from 2004-5.
Several U.S. tornado chasers are planning hurricane intercepts in Louisiana. I think chasing a hurricane in Louisiana is borderline insane for logistical reasons, but hope they give us some good observations and don't need to be rescued...or worse. I posted the following elsewhere...
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Don't forget to factor in the contraflow logistics of the highways if you're thinking of chasing Gustav in LA. Many roads will be running one-way-out, only. And this should go without saying, but NOLA/SIL areas and anything near Lakes Pontchartrain/Maurepas/Borgne should be avoided at all costs.
Good luck to anyone planning to chase this in LA. You'll need it. The strategy of taking plenty of fuel is wise because it will be scarce. Whatever is essential to escape and survival of humans and equipment -- load up on spares (e.g., fuel, food, water, tires, waterproof coverings/bags, chain saw, first aid kits, etc.).
I love chasing hurricanes and being in them, but unfortunately the opportunity just doesn't present itself very often. Even if it did this time, I wouldn't go because of where it is, the lack of roads near the coast, and the unsafe nature of the few that are with respect to storm tide levels, potential blockages and freshwater flooding. Give me the middle-upper TX coast (outside of Houstink), FL Panhandle/Peninsula or Carolinas any day for observing hurricanes...but not Louisiana. Bad news.
Above all else...stay safe. We don't want to lose anyone here.
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I cannot state that plea strongly enough -- stay safe! I absolutely, positively don't want any storm observers hurt or killed out there. Not in the past, not now, not ever.
I'll be watching this one from the mesoscale desk at my unnamed workplace, and from home when not on shift. Might even BLOG about it some more if there's some time. [On a personal level, I pray that my pre-Katrina fears about New Orleans don't come true again!]
We severe storms forecasters at the unnamed center surely will have some tornado related forecasts going (outlooks, MCDs, watches). Should be fun and challenging from a tornado prediction pespective, as they all are.
Some forecasting tips for TC tornadoes...
Of the four needed ingredients for tornadic supercells (moisture, instability, lift, shear), two are there in ridiculous abundance in a landfalling or newly inland hurricane: moisture and shear. Lift is subtle outside bands, strong in them, but the crappy lapse rates aloft also bottom out with weak or no substantial capping in the typical TC environment. A big wind envelope increases the area of large 0-1 km hodographs and the area covered by a wind environment favorable for supercells. This is one reason why Katrina and Ivan produced so freaking many tornadoes...they were big as well as strong and long-lived.
Instability is a huge key. TC tornadoes can and do happen at night, but climatologically, peak during the day. This is no accident. Surface thermal analysis (every 1 or 2 deg F) especially within the outer ~340-120 Cartesian degree sector (NE quad plus some cushion either side) of the envelope is critical. This is particularly true by day when insolation in cloud breaks and dry slots tends to create or magnify inhomogeneities (baroclinic features like differential heating boundaries) and thermal axes. A hurricane is an MCS, and can and should be mesoanalyzed! In addition to supercells either alone between bands or embedded within them, watch for those supercells or even strong, persistent nonsupercellular convective elements that are about to cross any thermal inhomogeneities.
Integrate satellite trends, radar echo loops, VAD wind profile tendencies, upper air maps and environmental mesoanalyses into a 4-D diagnostic model in your mind, and TC tornado prediction becomes much less mysterious. Still challenging, to be sure, but with success achievable.
In 12 hourly upper air analyses, watch for areas and especially gradients of drying aloft, per Lon Curtis' study on upper drying in TC tornado outbreaks. Bill McCaul's climatologies showed CAPE tends to increase outward away from the CDO where more opportunities exist for (differential) heating. My experience analyzing and forecasting TC tornado situations bears all this out.
Also remember that the storm spins down slower just above the surface than at the surface, so hodographs in the NE quadrant, at least 1-2 days inland, still can be really big; because even as the surface winds weaken, the shear stays large. Alas, the favorable tornado envelope for Gustav, based on NHC's forecast track, will cover lots of pine forests where actually observing tornadoes would be a huge challenge, to say the least -- even more so than low cloud bases, rain, and small, transient nature of most TC tornadoes typically presents. Another reason I rather would chase hurricanes in south Texas...
A couple days ago when I was cutting the front acre with a push mower, as usual, I kept noticing a fat female cicada hovering around me and landing nearby, as unusual. This specimen was peculiar also: fat, with a mottling of reddish tan and black that blended to an overall orange appearance from the distance, and about 30% larger than most of the endemic, green and black "dog day" cicadas (e.g., Tibicen pruinosa, photo) that are so prevalent in these parts. I haven't seen one before, here or in Dallas, though I've read since that they're natives --- the bush cicada (Tibicen dorsata, photo).
Cicadas of all species make great snacks for the Mississippi kites that stay here in the warm season. In fact, Elke once tossed a male dog day cicada out of the garage, only to see a kite swoop in and snatch it mid-air, the insect's obnoxiously loud buzz sounding from every point along the kite's flight path before predator and prey receded somewhere into the distance. Listening to the Doppler effect manifest in a rapidly receding cicada alarm is an interesting and uncommon experience, but well worth the novelty should the opportunity arise.
We've got a mating pair of roadrunners that visit quite often. In addition to their obvious decimation of my property's toad and tarantula populations the last few years, the roadrunners love to grab any cicada they can. It's downright hilarious to watch one of these dinosaur-like creatures dart back and forth a short distance with a buzzing cicada, throttle it a spell, then gulp it down.
Cicadas also are an edible snack for people, and like crickets and termites, a nice source of protein in survival situations. [We'll make an exception for one cricket-consuming Dallas Cowboys fullback!] I'll eat cicadas, but only if necessary. It ain't necessary yet. In the meantime, I'm content to listen to their summer choruses and watch them get devoured by other fauna.
Somehow, my bold little interlocutor somehow escaped the kites, roadrunners and cicada killer wasps, only to pester me incessantly. She flew above and around, then landed on the mower or in the grass near me, again and again. Each time, I picked her up and either threw her in the air, whereupon she would swoop about and descend back down near me, or placed her on one of several little lollipop trees we've planted between the native ones out in the lawn. The cicada would climb the stick-trunk slowly, get near the top, take off, and...head right for me again. I kept wondering, what was this bug's major malfunction? If I were a predator, I would have consumed it a dozen times over by now.
Finally, I figured out why the cicada just wouldn't leave me alone. The attraction wasn't anything about me, fortunately. It was the machine.
The cicada was lookin' for love...from the lawn mower!
It took me awhile to figure this out, but what else is there to occupy the idle mind while cutting high, damp grass in 75 degree dew points? The noise of the mower does bear a fleeting resemblance to a magnified male cicada call. Somehow, miss lonely-heart cicada became convinced that she had located the ultimate male cicada - from the bug's perspective, a huge, strong, uncommonly loud and magnificent dude, clad in red exoskeleton, bursting forth a most powerful and irresistible call, a mighty stud that surely could deliver the goods better than any other. What bush cicada in her right mind would turn down such a romantic opportunity, right?
Alas, the mower ran out of gas, and the cicada wasn't seen again. Poor bug...jilted by a Troy-Bilt.
This listing also may be uploaded soon to the journal website, but in the meantime, here is a full, two-way bibliography (with direct links) of all papers published so far in EJSSM. EJSSM articles are cataloged onsite using volume and issue number, where each manuscript is its own issue. But this format will provide yet another way to browse the journal. Each link opens a separate window or pane with the jump page that will let you choose the abstract, HTML or PDF version of the paper for viewing.
Once on the site in whatever format we ultimately choose, the bibliography would be updated each time a new paper is published (several more are in various stages of review and editing as I write this).
==================================
Full Bibliography of the Electronic Journal of Severe Storms Meteorology
(as of 4 August 2008)
CHRONOLOGICAL -- Most Recent First
Esterheld, J. M. and D. J. Giuliano, 2008: Discriminating between tornadic and non-tornadic supercells: A new hodograph technique. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 3 (2), 1-50.
Ostuno, E. J., 2008: A case study in forensic meteorology: Investigating the 3 April 1956 tornadoes in southwest Lower Michigan. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 3 (1), 1-33.
Straka, J. M., E. N. Rasmussen, R. P. Davies-Jones, and P. M. Markowski, 2007: An observational and idealized numerical examination of low-level counter-rotating vortices in the rear flank of supercells. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 2 (8), 1-22.
Lewis, J. M., 2007: A forecaster's story: Robert H. Johns. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 2 (7), 1-19.
Kennedy, A. D., E. N. Rasmussen, and J. M. Straka, 2007: A visual observation of the 6 June 2005 descending reflectivity core. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 2 (6), 1-12.
Doswell, C. A. III, 2007: Small sample size and data quality issues illustrated using tornado occurrence data. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 2 (5), 1-16.
Doswell, C. A. III, and M. J. Haugland, 2007: A comparison of two cold fronts -- Effects of the planetary boundary layer on the mesoscale. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 2 (4), 1-12.
Lindley, T. T., and L. R. Lemon, 2007: Preliminary observations of weak three-body scatter spikes associated with low-end severe hail. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 2 (3), 1-15.
Bunkers, M. J., and J. W. Stoppkotte, 2007: Documentation of a rare tornadic left-moving supercell. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 2 (2), 1-22.
Doswell, C. A. III, 2007: Historical overview of severe convective storms research. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 2 (1), 1-25.
Doswell, C. A. III, and D. M. Schultz, 2006: On the use of indices and parameters in forecasting severe storms.
Umscheid, M. E., J. P. Monteverdi, and J. M. Davies, 2006: Photographs and analysis of an unusually large and long-lived firewhirl. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 1 (2), 1-13.
Edwards, R., and D. M. Schultz, 2006: Editorial: Introducing EJSSM. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 1 (1), 1-2.
ALPHABETIC
Bunkers, M. J., and J. W. Stoppkotte, 2007: Documentation of a rare tornadic left-moving supercell. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 2 (2), 1-22.
Doswell, C. A. III, 2007: Historical overview of severe convective storms research. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 2 (1), 1-25.
Doswell, C. A. III, 2007: Small sample size and data quality issues illustrated using tornado occurrence data. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 2 (5), 1-16.
Doswell, C. A. III, and M. J. Haugland, 2007: A comparison of two cold fronts -- Effects of the planetary boundary layer on the mesoscale. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 2 (4), 1-12.
Doswell, C. A. III, and D. M. Schultz, 2006: On the use of indices and parameters in forecasting severe storms.
Edwards, R., and D. M. Schultz, 2006: Editorial: Introducing EJSSM. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 1 (1), 1-2.
Esterheld, J. M. and D. J. Giuliano, 2008: Discriminating between tornadic and non-tornadic supercells: A new hodograph technique. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 3 (2), 1-50.
Kennedy, A. D., E. N. Rasmussen, and J. M. Straka, 2007: A visual observation of the 6 June 2005 descending reflectivity core. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 2 (6), 1-12.
Lewis, J. M., 2007: A forecaster's story: Robert H. Johns. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 2 (7), 1-19.
Lindley, T. T., and L. R. Lemon, 2007: Preliminary observations of weak three-body scatter spikes associated with low-end severe hail. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 2 (3), 1-15.
Ostuno, E. J., 2008: A case study in forensic meteorology: Investigating the 3 April 1956 tornadoes in southwest Lower Michigan. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 3 (1), 1-33.
Straka, J. M., E. N. Rasmussen, R. P. Davies-Jones, and P. M. Markowski, 2007: An observational and idealized numerical examination of low-level counter-rotating vortices in the rear flank of supercells. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 2 (8), 1-22.
Umscheid, M. E., J. P. Monteverdi, and J. M. Davies, 2006: Photographs and analysis of an unusually large and long-lived firewhirl. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 1 (2), 1-13.
I'm fortunate to work at an unnamed national severe weather forecasting center that serves as one of the last bastions of frequent manual map analysis in the nation. Twice a day, the mandatory level (925, 850, 700, 500 and 250 mb) upper air charts appear from printers on 11" x 17" paper for analysis in support of the core forecast mission. Surface maps are printed for analysis many times per day as forecasters take the time and interest to do so. When these analyses are done in a careful, detailed way, this is a very, very good thing; for it forces the mind to slow down and truly immerse in the observations, connecting them into a carefully constructed, multivariate conceptual model of that snapshot of our atmosphere.
Excellent analysis is time-consuming, and requires a good deal of both skill and practice. Unfortunately, especially in local offices, hand analysis is vanishing, partly because of increasing volumetric workload (and resulting loss of time) and partly from ignorance and laziness. I often feel that time pressure myself, and fear that the same fate may befall the national center(s) if we're not diligent and careful. The slow creep of forecast automation -- and of the related phenomenon of "meteorological cancer" (first noted in this 31 year old paper by Snellman) -- is on the move in some insidious ways. As I've pointed out here before, procedure is taking over forecasters' time at the expense of meteorology.
Sometimes it seems like those of us who bother to do detailed hand analysis are becoming an endangered species. It utterly baffles me why so many put so little value in it, and why the quality of many hand analyses is so poor -- with lines on the wrong side of data, closed highs or lows unlabeled, missed boundaries, unlabeled lines, time continuity jumps (e.g., a cold front oscillating backward from one map to the next) and other fundamental errors. Were I still a synoptic meteorology teaching assistant, I would assign grades of "D" or lower to 90% of the drawn maps I have seen, anywhere, in the last several years. I don't understand this inattention to excellence in hand analysis. Is it lack of exposure or training, time pressure, disinterest, inexperience or all of the above?
Acquiring the deepest possible grasp on the current state of atmosphere is absolutely essential to forming the conceptual models needed for consistently good forecasts, and also, for good forecasts of rare and extreme events that are most poorly handled by objective analyses and guidance. Throughout all the technological advances, this basic truth remains unaltered.
I engage both hand-drawn maps and objective analyses of all kinds on a daily basis, in considerable detail, and can assure you that the latter is a piss-poor substitute for the former, when excellence in hand analysis is made top priority. Now please understand that I wouldn't violate the Golden Rule by holding anyone else to a greater standard than myself; nor do I claim to be a more skilled analyst. The principle of (and need for) analytic excellence absolutely applies to me as much as anyone. I can (and do) go back and find inexcusable and shameful mistakes in my own analyses.
A missed max or min here or there, or a boundary not drawn under hurried circumstances, may not seem like much, but how does one know what "minor" feature is really unimportant until the event is over?
Superficial skimming of objective, computer-drawn analyses -- which often miss or misplace small but critical features -- is not the same as truly diving into the data, taking the time to thoroughly draw for and interpret it. If it comes to a choice between more hand analysis or more model output, I'm choosing the hand analysis. An informal (not yet published) experiment called Project Phoenix, managed by Pat McCarthy of Environment Canada's Prairie and Arctic Storm Prediction Centre, showed over several seasons that forecasters who looked at observational information only (including hand analyzed charts, as well as satellite, radar and other observed data) performed better at forecasting basic variables during day-1, and often into day-2, than those on regular, operational shifts looking at numerical models. Why would this be?
I don't advocate eschewing model guidance any more than I would dropping hand analyses. In the practical sense of operational forecasting, it would be dumb to ignore the most pertinent nuggets of prognostic information. I make intensive use of models in day-to-day forecasting, including an increasingly heavy reliance on clues provided by short-range ensemble forecasts (SREF). But when pressed for time, I'll sacrifice a deterministic model or two for more insight into the current state of things. After all, how can we consistently predict the future atmosphere without deepest possible understanding of the present atmosphere? Those who claim to have such understanding by ignoring manual diagnostics and looking at objective analyses instead have deluded themselves, amidst the intoxicating abundance of quick-n-ready digital diagnostics -- the choice drug of forecasting, so to speak. These forecasters are dooming themselves to a fate they probably deserve -- automation of their jobs -- but in the process, increasing that risk for the rest of us as well. Just remember: garbage in, garbage out. Without corroboration from reality, how does one know the computer drawn map is accurate?
Failing to do good hand analysis also is quite selfish. The subjective analyses are not just for the forecaster doing them; they are for the entire forecast team and shift successors, and are important to continuity of understanding of an evolving situation. Even if a forecaster doesn't "get much" from his own analysis (which is a surefire sign of a scientific and conceptual deficiency on his/her part), it has meaning to others, and as such, should be done and done thoroughly. Hence...
Understanding the current state of the atmosphere isn't a matter of personal choice; it's a matter of professional responsibility.
The solution for the troubled forecaster is simple: Get out those colored pencils and start drawing! To help get going, here are links to online, national upper air maps, ideal for hand analysis and optimized for 11 x 17 printer paper (but useable at smaller sizes):
12Z Plots with VAD and Profiler Winds (PDF format): 925 mb | 850 mb | 700 mb | 500 mb | 250 mb
00Z Plots with VAD and Profiler Winds (PDF format): 925 mb | 850 mb | 700 mb | 500 mb | 250 mb
- The first step in making the best forecast that the science permits requires a thorough high quality diagnosis. Successful short range forecasts are more the result of good diagnosis than of prognosis.
- - Len Snellman, 9 October 1991
Some colleagues and I have had a discussion about the merits and demerits of wind farms when storm observing, which also wandered into some concern over the impact of removing gigawatts of energy from the boundary layer. The latter is very nebulous, but photographically speaking, one thing is clear: One man's eyesore is another's photogenic desire. I've found the wind farms in some sky-scape settings to make great subjects or foregrounds (e.g., from SkyPix, Outflow Power and Solar Powered Wind Power), and fully intend to make use of them in the future as opportunity permits.
Some other storm observers have taken great shots using wind farms as foregrounds or silhouettes. Elke and I also took a bunch of mixed wind-farm pics (old style windmills in front of the giant new turbines) recently in Baca County CO, just W of US-287 (not while chasing). I'll post those links once we get the shots processed. [Still working on images from 2008 chase vacation...]
I'm in favor of more wind farms, which is fortunate since their numbers across the Great Plains are rising no matter what we think about them. They provide relatively clean energy and an economic boost to remote and downtrodden communities. In the process of learning more about the Roscoe wind farm shown in that last link, I came across this article from NPR online, which illustrates the point well.
Many of these areas have been beaten into submission economically and welcome both the income infusion and the opportunity to contribute some cleaner energy to the power stream than what's come out of the ground beneath. The expensive part, from various sources I've read, is providing the high-capacity transmission infrastructure to get this power from remote, windswept reaches of the Great Plains to somewhat nearby areas of high demand (e.g., the Metroplex, DEN, MKC, etc.).
Boone Pickens wants to set up essentially a nearly unbroken chain of wind farms from west Texas to the Canadian border. The guy's motives are questionable and his schemes often laced with more hyperbole than legitimacy. Still, whether it's by his doing or from an aggregated collection of lesser fat-cats, you can count on the same basic thing happening: numerous wind farms from west TX to the Dakotas within 10-15 years. The energy source exists, and as it becomes more economically feasible, will be exploited to the extent that environmental regulation, private landowners and market economics allow. And it's going to be a lot harder to regulate something as wholly subjective and purely judgmental as "sight pollution" versus measurable, tangible, physical emissions from fossil fuels.
Like other Great Plains enthusiasts, I would like to keep the wind farms out of some areas of special scenic meaning to me as well (e.g., Flint Hills, Badlands, Wichita Mountains, national grasslands). [Incidentally, a part of the power I'm using to post this comes from that OEC wind farm N of the Wichitas, near Meers OK. That sucker slices across the northern horizon every time I'm atop Mt. Scott.]
Compromises will be necessary between competing aesthetic/economic/societal interests if this is going to work at all. But if we as a civilization decide to keep either exhausting or checking off sources like wind, coal, nuclear, oil, solar, hydro, etc., from the list, for various reasons large and small, then we might as well let the roads crumble, close down our offices, and go back to a mixed hunter-gatherer/agrarian society, and storm chasing and all BLOGs are moot matters anyway. [I am, BTW, for vastly expanded nuclear energy production in this country as well. ]
As far as the kinetic energy removed by wind turbines from the boundary layer, this needs to be analyzed better to see what, if any, physical feedbacks there are among pressure/height gradients (wind origin), forcings aloft for related isallobaric fields in the lowest ~100 m where the energy is being extracted, and the response/restoration of said gradients to that energy extraction (if any). I'll hypothesize that it's a negligible gnat fart of an effect given the small aggregated cross sectional area of the blades compared to any vertical cross section of the entire boundary layer across the Plains, but let's find out if that's valid.
Does an array of turbines extracting a few gigawatts of energy alter del-p at the surface, or isallohypsic patterns aloft by upward propagating influences of boundary layer processes? How big of a butterfly is a wind farm in Texas relative to a tornado in Kansas? We do know one thing: Ultimately, wind energy is solar in origin, and the sun's output is independent of kinetic energy removal in the ~100 m layer above ground. Beyond that...who knows? It's a great area for research.
For background, I wasn't the kind of kid who asked questions like, "Mommy, why is the sky blue." At 7, I knew the answer to that (differential scattering across the visible spectrum). [This probably had to do with the fact that I learned to read not in school, but around age four, out of an old set of World Book encyclopedias.]
Instead my questions tended to hover along the lines of, "How can Ford possibly continue the previous administration's policies, like detente with the Soviets, if he is under such heat with the fallout from pardoning Nixon?" [This probably had to do with our one consistent splurge -- a subscription to the daily Dallas Times Herald.]
Recently, while engaging in the reasonably mindless but necessary chore of mowing grass, a series of previously scattershot questions came to me that I realized still have not been satisfactorily or completely answered, and about which I have wondered since childhood.
* Why is elementary school often referred to as "grade school," when middle (a.k.a. junior high) and high schools also have grades?
* What is the name of the person who decided that "ain't" shouldn't be a word, and what gave him or her the authority to make that decision for me?
* Smoking causes disease in oneself and others, tars lungs and teeth, fills the house with noxious fumes, makes one's breath stink, and costs lots of money. Why do it?
* What, exactly, is the modern function (not purpose, but practical function) of a necktie? If "none," what's the point of using one, really, other than to waste time and effort?
* How can it matter which hands you use to cut the meat and hold the fork, as long as you're keeping your elbows to yourself and the food gets in your mouth without making a mess?
* How can it be anything but hypocritical for those on the left who advocate "tolerance," "diversity," and "tolerance of diversity," to be so bitterly intolerant of those with opinions radically different than their own (e.g., neoconservatives and evangelical Christians)?
* Yellow Cab, Greyhound and Amtrak never "overbook." [Neither does JetBlue these days.] Why should United, Delta or American?
* Two identically sized bottles of shampoo have the same ingredients in the same proportions, and smell the same. Only the labels are different. Why on earth would anyone pay three times as much for one as for the other?
* For more than a few months, my parents could not get away with spending more than what they earned, even if the spending was for what we believed to be necessities. How does the government?
