Tag: weather

Hurricane Dave

10/2017

The summer of 1980, I spent a long weekend of September 5th sitting on the couch, watching TV and waiting for Danielle. (1)  The drama was intense, for the time.  No Cable News Networks, they hadn’t been invented yet.  We had to suffer through the 4-times-daily broadcast of the news of old fashion TV.  The stores were just as barren of supplies then as today’s Houston and Florida residents were/are experiencing.  You know, no bottled water, no batteries, no canned goods, long lines at the gas pumps and all that.  But, Danielle never grew to hurricane status.

It was all about hurricane Danielle.  Local grocery store chains had grocery bags with hurricane charting maps on them, back in the day when paper sacks were used for grocery sacks.  The local news programs predicted that Danielle would come right up the Houston ship channel into Houston proper and cause all sorts of destruction and misery.

But it didn’t.  It was a tropical storm that hit near Galveston Bay and resulted in severe widespread flooding because of prolonged rain.  In Houston, we had some nice summer showers, but not much else.  Having just moved from the desert to subtropical Houston, I was angry because I had just wasted 3 days waiting for the predictions of mayhem to come true.  I could have mowed the yard or done something else productive.

So, this was my introduction to news hysteria (I’ve previously written about Marvin Zindler and Dave Ward of Channel 3 Eye Witness News in Houston).

Today, we are inundated with minute-to-minute reports on the status of hurricane Harvey and then hurricane Irma.  Every word out of the mouth of these reporters is a lie, exaggeration or something presented in a way just to scare the bejesus out of everyone.  Consider the following examples for comparison.

On September 8, 1900, The Great Storm (this was before the 1953 naming convention for hurricanes) hit Galveston. (2)  It accounted for somewhere between 6,000 and 12,000 deaths.  Because of contradictory forecasts (and the lack of technology at the time), there was a false sense of complacency.  Today we estimate that it was a category 4 hurricane and resulted in a 15-foot storm surge.  At that time the island elevation was 8 feet above sea level.  Subsequently, the island was raised 17 feet and a seawall was built along 10 miles of the south shore.  This was the deadliest natural disaster in US history.

In August of 2017, hurricane Harvey was touted to be the worst hurricane to hit Texas.  Because of unusual weather patterns, it hit landfall 3 times and on the second, hovered over the Houston area and dumped 54″ of rain.  This was touted as an “unprecedented” amount of rainfall causing severe flooding.

But on July 24, 1979, Hurricane Claudette dropped 54″ of rain in 24 hours on Alvin, Texas (the same Houston area). (3)  This resulted in severe flooding.  Just like the “unprecedented” Harvey.  I guess journalists use a different dictionary for the word “unprecedented”.

On September 13, 2008, Hurricane Ike visited Galveston. (4)  It has been classified as a “large” category 2 hurricane.  But, what the heck is a small category 2 and if one really investigates the issue, there is a lot of controversy over the current Idiots Guide to Classifying Hurricanes (fueled significantly by Hurricane Ike).  You see, this little ‘ole storm (using local Texas vernacular) dropped 18.9″ of rain and had a storm surge of 20 feet.  It was one of the deadliest and most costly of US hurricanes with 84 deaths and an estimated $19.3 billion in damage.

This week I have caught various news reports on Hurricane Irma.  About 3 days before landfall, Irma was billed as a “Monster” hurricane of the strongest category 5 (as opposed to the weakest category 5) and would run right through Miami. The storm surge was then estimated to be 4-5 feet.  About 2 days before landfall, we were told that it was a category 4 hurricane, but that it would most assuredly increase again to category 5 before Florida landfall with storm surges of 10-12 feet.  At that time there was a mandatory evacuation order for Miami. Over the next 3 days, we were told that the hurricane raged down to a category 2 and that somewhere between a few hundred thousand and 7 million residents had fled to refugee camps, oops, I mean storm shelters.

About 12 hours before landfall, FoxNews interviewed a local Miami resident live.  The guy, wearing his ball cap backward (this was a live broadcast after all), was being introduced by the reporter.  He suddenly fished his cell phone out of his pocket and stuttered with “uh” a couple of times distractedly before putting it away and replying to the interviewer’s question.  Seems, the guy had as little faith in the predictors as I do and was planning on riding out the storm in his high-rise apartment.  Of course, he had provisions as far as food and stuff.

Hurricane Irma made landfall as a category 4 hurricane and almost immediately was downgraded to a 3, then 2 and then 1.  Key West took the hit and Irma turned up the west coast of Florida.  12 hours after landfall, Irma was listed as a “powerful” category 2 hurricane (as opposed to a weak category 2, I suppose) with potentially lethal storm surges of 10 feet.  The reporter for FoxNews was standing in ankle deep water to make his report.  Yeah, I’ll bet Houston really misses that ankle-deep water.  The reporter commented, “This is the damage and devastation we expected.”  I guess ankle deep water is the same as 4-5 feet or 10-12 feet storm surges (whichever report you listen to).  Less than 24 hours after landfall, reporters were driving around Orlando surveying the damage, pointing out downed limbs and such from the relatively safe and security of their SUVs interior.

If you notice, there seems to be no relationship between the amount of rainfall, the number of tornados, the storm surge or the amount of damage done by a hurricane and the category assigned to it.  That’s because there isn’t any.

The only relationship I got out of this reporting is that hurricane Irma wiped hurricane Harvey off the cable news networks faster than a West Texas jackrabbit could run from me when I was 10 years old.

So, what about these evacuees?  Where will 30% (the latest census of evacuees) of the residents of Florida go?  You’d be surprised, but not if you really thought about it.

Schools, sports stadiums, National Guard Armories and the like are multi-tasked as shelters for a variety of natural disasters.  None of which were intended to be used to house masses of unrelated people for indefinite periods of time.  Maybe the Armories would come close to satisfying those needs, but not likely and most civilians are not accustomed to living in communal military style.  Evacuees have been housed in these facilities for weeks, sometimes months, under conditions that often are little better than where they left.  No running water, no toilets, no kitchens, no beds and no privacy.  Often there are individual or bands of thief’s, rapists, and murderers.  There are primitive communication facilities, if any.  Healthcare resembles refugee camps in most third world countries.  And when the hurricane is over, FEMA will put you up in a mobile home/travel trailer, just in case another hurricane or tornado comes along.

So, why wouldn’t someone want to brave the storm on their own?  Our ancestors have been doing just that since the beginning of mankind.  We’re here, so some of them must have done something right.

Why do live newscasts have an audience?

Why do natural disasters in Texas fall off the news focus so quickly?  I mean, they’re still talking about hurricane Katrina, but Harvey and Ike who?

All I know is that sailboat shopping is going to be good in the near future.

From your grumpy Uncle/brother, Hurricane Dave.

Weary.

 1.  http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/storm_wallets/atlantic/atl1980-prelim/danielle/prelim01.gif

2.  http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/history/article/Great-Storm-of-1900-brought-winds-of-change-7724171.php

3.  http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/storm_wallets/atlantic/atl1979-prelim/claudett/prelim01.gif

4.  http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/research/txhur.pdf

Wind farms and rotisserie chicken

7/2017

As I sit here contemplating my glass of iced tea, I thought of something.  It came to mind that the globing-warming crowd has been predicting that the oceans are gonna rise and coastal communities are gonna go swimming.  But, something is not right in this argument.

Now, I am not a physicist, but I decided to try an experiment.  I filled my glass full of water and poured it into a graduated beaker (if you haven’t been to science class for a while, that is what scientists call a measuring cup).  The glass held 12 0z of water. Then I filled it with ice and water and measured.  It held 12 oz of ice and water.  I then let the ice water warm to room temperature, i.e. I let the ice melt.  Shazam, there was less than 12 oz of water after the ice melted.

OK, so I didn’t really do this experiment but it can be confirmed easily even if you don’t trust the internet for correct answers. See, water expands when it freezes as opposed to other substances that shrink when they freeze.

So, the global-warmed melted ice in the oceans will lower the oceans, not raise them.

But what about the land ice melt runoff?  Huh, Uncle Dave?

Just maybe, the runoff will bring the shrunken coastline back to where it was thereby preserving the exorbitantly inflated coastal property values?

But, what if the windmill huggers are right?

To prevent global warming, as the story goes, wind farms will save the planet because it will decrease the dependence on fossil fuels.  Most can see the use of wind-generated energy (actually the energy is not generated at all, it is just converted from one form to another) to reduce the dependence on fossil-fuel-generated energy, but it takes a real visionary to see the use of wind sails for personal and commercial transportation, for moving products across this great nation and for powering all those energy consuming devices still miles from any generator.  Enter the law of unintended consequences and friction.

As we increase the Earth’s resistance to rotation, that is what all those windmill blades do, the velocity (speed) of the earth’s rotation may eventually slow down.  As the rotation slows, the time allowed for the sun’s rays to contact the earth will increase, increasing the core temperature and causing the ice to thaw.  Hence, the oceans will rise.  Exactly what the wind farms were touted to prevent.

I prefer to think it in terms of the rotisserie chicken on a July 4th BBQ.  If the rotisserie turns at the proper speed, you get nice juicy run off and moist perfect chicken.  But, if it turns too slow, or not at all, you get dry burnt crap on one side and near raw chicken on the other.

Just what the global-warmers are offering us, half ass’ed chicken crap.

Just some more random thoughts from your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary.

Global Warming Gardening

4/2017

I worked out in the shop and in the garden, briefly, on Friday.  It was about 73′ F.  I got over heated and nauseated.  Monday morning (April, the friggin 17th of APRIL!), I got off work and there were snow and ice on the windshield of the truck.  The highway west was closed over the bridge for a couple of hours ’cause of the wrecks.  It was a sheet of ice.

I think it’s supposed to be 67’F today.

Happy global warming gardening! Your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary.

Over Shoes

7/2017

Galoshes; dickersons, overshoes, 4 buckle artics, Russian valenki or Qubecian claques.

You may or may not remember your mother yelling at you to put on your galoshes before you leave the house in inclement weather (I pretty much presume nobody does and I understand).  In my day, this was a common warning from parents, teachers and those given the responsibility of caring for children.  Actually, the concern was not for the children.

We’ve had a wet year, locally.  So, why do I not hear of galoshes?  Well, there is a reason.

The weather has not changed, regardless of what you hear from Hillery, Al and the like.  It is either wet or dry.  It has been forever and will be forever.  So in times past, people have looked for ways to deal with the weather, something about which they have no control.

Galoshes were a device to protect a valuable piece of clothing.

Back in the day, shoes were made of leather, they were expensive, semi-custom made and labor intensive. Leather is a very hardy material that resists abrasion and impact, protecting the feet from injury.  But if repeatedly exposed to extremes of heat and wetness, will shrink, crack and fall apart.  Those without galoshes would have all leather shoes that suffered the ravages of weather, thereby becoming useless.  Shoes back then were expensive and expected to last for several years, even generations.  They were protected and rather than being used relentlessly, were often protected leaving the children to go barefoot in weather unfathomable today.  Things have changed.

So, somebody (an unknown Scandinavian inventor of the wooden shoe, Radley, Rickman or somebody) invented shoe covers that would delay this.

Goodyear and Candee found that rubber would prevent wet damage.  And vulcanized rubber would better withstand the drying and cracking that natural rubber succumbed to.  It was easier to manufacture in a variety of sizes and relatively inexpensive.

Now, kids/we wear %100 nylon (used generically here to refer to the multitude of modern plastic fabrics), and other water resistant/porous compounds that if they become wet will dry in minutes.  Materials that supposedly are tougher, more weather resistant, cheaper, kinder and more stylish than leather.

So as parents and grandparents we send our children out into inclement weather knowing that their feet will become wet, but knowing that their precious feet will dry, eventually.  Or, we don’t send them out at all.

Today, galoshes refers to a variety of shoe coverings, not that the exact term is always used. (1)  The modern equivalent of galoshes are;

nylon and synthetic rubbers that cause all sorts of skin problems in factory workers exposed to wet environments of a variety of sources;

boots that cowboys think look so cool;

steel toed work boots that industrial workers have to wear to satisfy OSHA;

overshoes that protect slaughterhouse workers from the blood and guts of their work;

and the dainty nylon-ish paper covers I wear to protect my shoes (I guaranty are not $300 Nikes) from the blood and guts of … .

From your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave, with similar thoughts on synthetic clothing for warmth and dryness.

  1.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galoshes)

Weary

a

Hot

7/2017

For us, the summer has arrived with a passion.  100 ‘F and high 90’s humidity.  But the real issue is that the A/C in both of my trucks are out.  So driving in at 6 pm, rolling down the windows only accomplished turning the sauna into a convection sauna, like a convection oven.

I told everybody that today it seemed that every woman I saw looked really Hot. But every man I saw looked Hot, also.  So I guess it is not too sexist.

Comments from your Hot grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary