Re: OT: Humor - If Dr. Seuss were a technical writer.

Sycho wrote:
This just in to the alt.2600 news room. On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:17:55
-0400 it was announced to all in a public briefing, Rev Turd
Frederıcks <turdfred2@xxxxxxxxxxxx> made the following declaration
and shocked the world when the following was announced:

Sycho wrote:
This just in to the alt.2600 news room. On Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:07:52
-0400 it was announced to all in a public briefing, Rev Turd
Frederıcks <turdfred2@xxxxxxxxxxxx> made the following declaration
and shocked the world when the following was announced:

Sycho wrote:
This just in to the alt.2600 news room. On Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:53:11
-0400 it was announced to all in a public briefing, Rev Turd
Frederıcks <turdfred2@xxxxxxxxxxxx> made the following declaration
and shocked the world when the following was announced:

Sycho wrote:
This just in to the alt.2600 news room. On Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:08:19
GMT it was announced to all in a public briefing, Rev Turd Frederıcks
<turdfred2@xxxxxxxxxxxx> made the following declaration and shocked
the world when the following was announced:

Sycho <imalittleteapot@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This just in to the alt.2600 news room. On Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:15:52
-0400 it was announced to all in a public briefing, Rev Turd
Frederıcks <turdfred2@xxxxxxxxxxxx> made the following declaration
and shocked the world when the following was announced:

Sycho wrote:
This just in to the alt.2600 news room. On Sat, 27 Jun 2009
00:31:23
-0400 it was announced to all in a public briefing, Rev Turd
Frederıcks <turdfred2@xxxxxxxxxxxx> made the following
declaration
and shocked the world when the following was announced:

Sycho wrote:

SNIP>>

Not commenting on that post, but I haven't seen you around much
lately, you been chasing storms? If so, South Eastern Kentucky has been
the place to be lately. Not a lot of tornadoes, but the potential is definitely there. That weather radio you advised me to get has
gone off with warnings a couple of times. It went off yesterday with flood warnings. Where I am, I'm not in any flood danger, but the rain
REALLY came down last night, if I was in a low lying area, it could have
saved my life. I have never seen so many thunderstorms as I have seen in

Kentucky, we seem to have them daily.
I've been quite busy lately in the new module that I'm in right
now.
This class is very homework intense. Not only are we studying
network
security, but we have had a lot of assignments on customer server
and
the help desk (call center). To me the CS is too simple and rather
boring at the same time.

As I tell people in my class "If you don't know how to deal with
customers then CST (Computer Support Technician) isn't for you."
Since
I've been doing computer repair over the past 9 years I have
developed
a knack when it comes to talking with customers. I do my best to
reassure them in every aspect of their computer/data and treat each
one as a friend by the conversations. I don't talk "techy" with
them
and help them to better understand their computers. Every customer
that I've ever dealt with, both young and old, seem very
comfortable
when talking to me about their computer issues.

The thing that I hate most though about this mod is that I have no
intentions now or in the future to work as a help desk tech or in a
call center. That's not for me. I would be much happier working as
a
technician. Either in a mom & pop computer store to Best Buy or
Microcenter. I've always enjoyed doing computer repairs ever since
I
first started.

As for chasing, I wish.. *sigh* It's been the same for the past 5
years now. All the storms moving in after dark when spotting is
more
difficult as well as dangerous. Just once I would like to see a
strong
cold front move through by early afternoon during the heating of
the
day. I just can't seem to get that lucky. I wish I knew the
reasoning
behind why this has been the case year after year. I have my
theories
but I have no way to prove or disprove them.. At least not yet.
Life has a habit of interfering with stuff. Way back when (late 80's)
I worked 2 jobs and went to school. It was tough, but I'm glad I did
it. Managed to save a decent house down payment and advanced my knowledge

both at the same time. I missed out on some popular TV shows of the
time like "Full House" and shit like that, but I think I was better off in

the long run:-)

We get plenty of the cold fronts comeing in during early afternoon,
but they mostly affect the southeastern part of the state which seems to
be under a perpetual severe weather watch.

I'm glad to hear about your weather radio though. I'll bet it's
been
interesting to say the least when a severe thunderstorm or tornado
warning is issued. I can't remember if I had asked you about this
previously, but does your weather radio display the alert message
on
the screen? I don't live in a flood plane or a flood prone area. So
I
have everything flood related blocked on my portable weather radio.
I
still get the text messages for them, the alarm won't go off for
that
product.
My radio displays alert messages with a blinking light and an audible

alarm. It's very loud and can be heard throughout most of the living areas of the house. Of course normally you can see severe weather approaching and that's when bring the radio into my office or
wherever I am at the time. My radio only receives warnings and forecasts, I
can't pick and choose. That's fine by me, it works when it's supposed to.
The old weather radio I have is pretty loud too. You can also adjust
the volume on it as well. There have been a number of times, after
bringing in the weather radio to the bedroom with me late at night the
alarm would sound and I would sleep right through it. Even with the
alarm volume full blast. My wife wasn't too happy that it interrupted
her sleep. lol oops? :)
My wife would hear it for sure, but would probably be happy for the
warning. We had a he'll of a storm the other night, it's very unusual
for a storm to wake me up and keep me up, but that one started about
3:30 am and kept on going for at least an hour. The alarm didn't go off
though.
That may be because the storm was in it's weakening stage and/or was
just below severe limits. Weird thing is that I've seen many a radar
image where storms that should be severe never had warnings for them
and storms that didn't look severe did.
It didn't quite have the high winds that the "flagged" storms have, but the thunder and lightening should have been enough. They usually run the tickertape thing on the local stations telling people to stay away from windows and seek shelter etc. when there will be a lot of lightening, but I guess the storm was maybe too localized for an overall radio warning. There were also very heavy rains.
Unfortunately no, since it's common in even so-called "garden variety"
thunderstorms were there's a lot of lightning activity. Be definition,
at least when I was learning about severe weather "back in the day"
was classified as having one or all of the following criteria:

Hail 3/4 of an inch (penny sized) or larger. Winds to 57 MPH or greater.

That criteria has been recently revised to 5/8 inch diameter hail and
winds greater than 58 MPH.
That is one thing I haven't seen here yet; hail. We had 70mph winds back in early spring and that was pretty scary, I was watching this big picture window just bend and was waiting for it to smash, but it held up. I have a feeling they exaggerate the expected wind speeds in order to issue warnings. Around here, I guess because there are so many outside workers (farmers, gardeners, people trimming trees and cleaning up after the ice storm etc.) they want to get the severe weather alerts out there so these people can seek cover. The storms come up usually in the middle to late afternoon when a lot of people are out. I think our severe weather radio alerts have gone off at least 5 times (once a month maybe) since we have been here, and only once did we have extreme winds. So I conclude that there must be a "manual over ride" on them issuing the alerts, or, I have simply dodged the bullet and didn't actually get what they were warning about.
It could have been the radar technician may have expected hail or
damaging winds on Doppler. Rather than issuing a warning for the
entire county or counties like they've done in the past, they're now
more specific on the area that's being impacted by severe weather.
Which I feel is a good thing that they changed their methods when
issuing warnings.

The general public isn't aware of this as far as I know, but all of
the National Weather Service offices across the country use an
automated system now called AWIPS - Advanced Weather Interactive
Processing System along with NWR 2000 - N.O.A.A Weather Radio 2000
which uses the computer generated voices that you hear instead of the
meteorologists voices (unless NWR2000 is taken offline or the system
is down for some reason).

This transition took place on November 1, 1999. It was designed to
help improve warning times that would have taken longer to broadcast.
Now all they do is select the product that they need to issue a watch
or warning for and in seconds it's broadcast over the weather radios.

Recently, and again across the country, they have upgraded their
Doppler radar software which is said to be more fine tuned and
enhanced to allow the technician to see more of the storm's features
than before. Basically a higher resolution image. This took place two
years ago. My guess is they're still trying to fine tune the software.

Currently there's a new type of radar being tested by NSSL - National
Severe Storm Lab in Norman, Oklahoma. This radar is supposed to be far
more advanced than Doppler. Rather than a dish that makes a scan and
sends one image every 6 minutes to the display screen, this one is
flat. It's believed that the time it takes the scan and the time it's
displayed is almost cut in half. Which would allow a far better lead
time than before. I forget what it's called and I believe that it was
developed by the Navy. I think a prototype was used several weeks ago
when Project Vortex 2 (Verification of the Origins of Rotation in
Tornadoes EXperiment) was out doing more tornado research.

http://www.vortex2.org

Going back to what you were saying though about the severe
thunderstorm warnings, I honestly feel that the radar techs and
meteorologists have itchy fingers and I'll explain why.

Last week there was a tornado warning that was issued for a county in
southern Ohio (Ross county). Ohio was under a slight risk for severe
weather and isolated tornadoes were possible throughout parts of the
state.

I was in class at the time and had my portable weather radio (alarm
turned off of course) with me and my storm spotter shirt (which I call
my "work shirt") on that day. I believe it was around 3 PM that the
National Weather Service office in Wilmington, Ohio (Clinton county)
had issued a tornado warning. One of my friends in the class happens
to live in that county so I informed her of the warning that was
issued. Mind you this was a few minutes prior to our scheduled 10
minute break.

After the break was over and I sat at my workstation, I went to the
radar page and viewed both the radial velocity display along with the
storm relative motion display. Both of these two displays show the
winds blowing towards (in green) the radar as well as away (in red).
None of which showed any signs (a very bright green and a very bright
red color side by side, also referred to as a "color couplet"), as far
as I was concerned, of any organized rotation of any kind. Needless to
say, my friend still called her mother since her two young daughters
were there to warn her of the tornado warning. Come to find out that
all she experienced was marble sized hail and some strong winds.

My friend was at least grateful that I told her about the warning and
I tried to reassure her that there was nothing to worry about.

To give you an idea of what the color couplet looks like on a velocity
display, here's a link to an image of what the Oklahoma City tornado
of May 3, 1999 looked like on the WSR-88D. Note the bottom 4 images,
the last 3 show a very good detail of powerful winds in and around the
wedge tornado.

http://www.cimms.ou.edu/~smith/may3/0012-8panel.gif

Of course the top 4 show the "hook echo" (that looks kind of like a
figure 6) on the precipitation display.

I would blame itchy fingers for the weather alerts, but I'm happy to get them. They aren't frequent enough to be ignorable. I got one on a nice sunny day, and still paid attention. Within about 40 minutes, it was dark as night, the wind came up and lightening was coming every few seconds. We get crazy weather here. They aren't that resolute on the counties they issue the warnings for, but as you know, Kentucky must have at least 100 counties. Nearest to me, Madison and Polasky seem to get the most severe weather. My county doesn't really have it that bad, the storms seem to blow through without doing any damage. Except our neighbors who are having some renovations done and a porta potty got blown over, which must have been pretty nasty for them :-)

I would have to agree with you on the itchy fingers. I think some of
the meteorologists just want something to happen so badly so they have
something to brag about to their friends and family. That or to keep
their jobs. I'm almost inclined to think they're just that bored with
their job when no severe weather is occurring.

Heh, I don't think there would be much problem with that in Kentucky :-) Now San Diego...
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OT: Humor - If Dr. Seuss were a technical writer.
    ... That weather radio you advised me to get has ... be under a perpetual severe weather watch. ... warning is issued. ... We had a he'll of a storm the other night, ...
    (alt.2600)
  • Re: Severe Warnings?
    ... warning was issued when one was warranted. ... help if I explain a little more about our severe weather warning ... and the forecasts issued today. ...
    (uk.sci.weather)
  • Re: Bizarre weather warning
    ... severe weather did occur. ... The rain ceased here before 1700 BST yet the warning was re-issued at ... way the weather situation was developing. ...
    (uk.sci.weather)
  • Re: Category 4 Charley Strikes Fla. Mainland
    ... He changed the subject from data reporting to drawing conclusions. ... He's the weather guy the newspapers asked him to explain why they got ... It is science that produces ... In the capital, where there was a severe weather warning last night, ...
    (sci.geo.meteorology)
  • Re: OT: Humor - If Dr. Seuss were a technical writer.
    ... That weather radio you advised me to get has ... be under a perpetual severe weather watch. ... We had a he'll of a storm the other night, ...
    (alt.2600)