Blogs 12 Long Island

The Making Of Long Island

By Bill Korbel

I saw a terrific documentary on the History Channel recently that is a must see for any Long Islander with the slightest bit of curiosity about how the place we live in came to be.  It's part of the "How The Earth Was Made" series.  Specifically the one on New York. 

Long Island was formed some 16,000 years ago when the last glacier receded northward.  The hills that run the length of the island along the north shore are made of rocks and boulders plowed up by the mile thick glacier.   Think of that!  Ice 5,000 feet thick!   When the ice melted, it left a huge lake that covered much of upstate NY.  The water from that broke through an ice dam and rushed southward opening what is now New York harbor to the sea and putting the finishing touches on the local area's geography.  If you want to make long range plans, the best science today expects the ice sheets to return to Long Island within 40,000 years.

Long Island is very young compared to NYC.  About 400 million years ago, what is now the east coast of the US was connected to North Africa and 20,000' mountains covered the area.  As the continents drifted apart, volcanoes covered much of the eastern US with lava.  Then came the glaciers that ground down the big mountains into the little ones we have now.

By the way, do you know why the tallest buildings in Manhattan are clustered in midtown and lower Manhattan?  I didn't, until I watched this episode.   It's because only in those two areas is the bedrock that makes up Manhattan's's base close enough to the surface to give sky scrapers the solid footing they need.

It's really a beautifully produced program and I highly recommend it. 

It will probably be repeated on cable, but it is also available on line at this site:

http://www.history.com/video.do?name=How_the_Earth_Was_Made&bcpid=9786056001

Click on the Full Episode box and look for it in the list.

Bill

Homework Assignment

By Bill Korbel

I recently received the following email:

Hello, my name is Emily and I am a 4th grade student at St Peters of Alcantara School in Port Washington.  We are doing a science project on weather.  Part of the project requires that we learn about meteorologists.  I hope you can help me.  Please tell me a little about your job and your training.  I hope to hear from you very soon.  Thank you for your help.  Emily

Emily is not the only student to request information like this for school assignments and to be honest, it takes a lot of time to answer them on an individual basis.  So, assuming there are more Emily's out there among our huge Long island audience, I decided to put my response out there for anyone else needing information.  It'll save us all (especially me) a lot of time.

Hi Emily

I'll have to keep this brief, but let me try to answer your questions.

Meteorologists are scientists who study the atmosphere.  Some, like me, are forecasters whose job is to predict the weather.  Others are researchers who try to learn more about the atmosphere and how it works.  For example, atmospheric scientists are trying to learn if there is a  threat of global warming by collecting and analyzing past and present data on worldwide temperature trends.  A few meteorologists chase tornadoes or fly into hurricanes so we can learn more about these powerful storms.  Other meteorologists predict the weather for aviation so the pilots know what weather to expect on a flight and can plan a route that will avoid the bad weather.

To become a meteorologist, you must attend a college that specializes in atmospheric science.  Mathematics and an interest in science are vital for someone who wants to become a meteorologist so it is very important to study those subjects in school.

Those of us who predict the weather on TV are a very small part of the meteorological industry.  It is our job to study weather patterns, formulate weather forecasts, make the graphics you see on television and present it all to the audience.  We have to be able to explain something very complicated in a simple way so everyone knows what to expect.  Not all the people you see talking about the weather on TV are meteorologists, but most, like all of us at News 12 Long Island, are. I spend about two hours each day preparing the forecast and making the graphics I use on air.  At News 12, I am on air from 5PM to 6:30 PM, from 7:30 to 8:30 PM and from 10 PM to 11 PM.  In between broadcasts, I continuously monitor weather conditions and update the forecast as more data comes in. 

Emily, if you want more information, look at the American Meteorological Society web page.  http://www.ametsoc.org/careercenter/careers.html#meteorologists

Thanks for writing and good luck with your project.

Bill Korbel
Chief Meteorologist
News12 Long Island

Deadly Ice

By Bill Korbel

The crash of Flt 3407 ended an extraordinary streak of air safety for US airlines which saw them transport 1.5 billion passengers over two plus years without a fatality.  The NTSB has not yet discovered the cause of the crash but at least a major factor would seem to be icing.

 

Airplanes can run into many forms of hazardous weather including turbulence, strong winds, wind shear, heavy precipitation, hail, lightning,  reduced visibility and, perhaps the strangest and most difficult to forecast: icing.

Clouds are made of droplets of water or crystals of ice.  Which is present is dependent on temperature and other factors.  What is really weird about water in the atmosphere is that it can exist in liquid form even at temperatures below freezing.  Believe it or not, water can still be liquid at temperatures approaching zero! It’s called super-cooled water and can be super bad.  When a plane flies through super-cooled water droplets, they will quickly freeze on contact.  The ice that builds can affect the aerodynamics of the airplane by decreasing lift produced by the wings and increasing drag.  If allowed to build beyond a certain point, the plane will no longer be able to stay in the air and the change from controlled to out of controlled flight can be very, very sudden. 

 

 

To keep this from happening, all airliners and many smaller planes are designed to either keep ice from forming or remove it when it forms before it becomes a problem. As good as these syetms are, there are times when ice can form faster then a de-ice system can remove it. When that happens, the pilot must get out of the icing area fast.  Usually a change of altitude of a few thousand feet will suffice.

Thanks to improved technology and better forecasting, in-flight icing accidents have become very rare in airline flying.  The last major one was in 1994 when an American Eagle twin engine turbo-prop, in an eerily similar accident, ran into a rare form of heavy icing over Indiana and spun out of control from 8,000 feet, killing all on board

                       

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Eagle_Flight_4184

So why did 3407 go down when similar airplanes just before and after it had no problems with the ice (or at least nothing the airplane couldn’t handle)?  Until the NTSB completes it’s investigation we won’t know exactly what happened but it brings into the harsh light of reality something I have known since I first got into meteorology as an Air Force weather officer:  The atmosphere is full of surprises and pilots and forecasters can never relax their guard.

 

Hallf Way There

 

 

 

 

By Bill Korbel

This has been an annoying winter. It's been consistently very cold with temperatures running a bit more then 4 degrees below normal, but we have yet to see a big snow storm, just a bunch of little ones that have kept the ground covered most of the time. That however, could change, because most of our biggest snow storms hit in February.  Here are some of the biggest of the big. 

Feb 2, 1961      18"

Feb 7, 1967     17"

Feb 15, 1968    12-22"

Feb 6, 1978      Up to 26"

Feb 11, 1983    24"

Feb 16, 2003   16-24"

So, even though the next week looks rather mild, don't put away that snow shovel.  We haven't had any big snow storms in a few years.  We are overdue.

On a more positive note, we reached the mid point of winter on Monday.  The sun is up for 57 minutes longer then on the first day of winter and by the arrival of spring on March 20th, we'll pick up another two hours of daylight. 

Forecasting Snow

By Bill Korbel

If there is one thing that all meteorologists in the NY/Long Island area would agree on, it's that forecasting how much snow will fall is one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult thing we do.  Why? Let me explain.

To come up with an accurate snow forecast we must get many things as close to perfect as possible.  Obviously, we need to know when the snow will start and when it will stop.  That's not so easy on Long Island where we are often on the dividing line between snow and rain.  We need to know the temperature at the surface and up through 10,000 feet very accurately.  We have to factor in the temperature of the ground.  Is it frozen?  If so, the snow will start accumulating sooner then if the ground is not frozen. How much water is available in the atmosphere to turn into snow flakes.  A good average is 1" of liquid water equals 10" of snow (a 10 to 1 ratio).  But if the temperature is very cold, the ratio can be 15, 20, even 30 to 1.  The difference between  1" and 4" of snow can be as little as 1/3 to 1/10" of an inch of water. 

On the other hand, If temperatures are warmer, the ratio can be as little as 5 or 6 to 1.  That same 1" of water will produce only 5 or 6" of snow.  We also need to calculate the intensity of the snow and the rate of accumulation per hour based on all of the above. 

In a perfect world, our computer models would calculate all of the numbers very precisely. Alas, they don't.  We have many computer models and they all are based on different assumptions and equations.  Rarely do they all agree.  We try to find which one is handling the situation the best and go with those numbers.  We also monitor the storm to see if it is following or deviating from what we expected. 

Let's assume that we have perfect predictions of start and stop time, intensity, moisture and temperature.  That still won't produce a perfect snow forecast because small things further complicate how much really falls.  Heavy snow tends to form in bands that are embedded in lighter snow. If one of these bands of heavy snow sits over your house for an hour or two, that could make a huge difference in how much snow falls.

What it comes down to is this. We make the very best forecasts we can using the tools available, but when dealing with snow, any forecast, because of the many variables involved, is just an approximation.  In warm weather, if we say 1/4" of rain will fall but it turns out to be 1/2", no one notices.  It rained. It's wet. There are puddles. It was a good forecast.  But, If we say 1-3" of snow will fall and we actually get 4-6", the forecast, to many people, is a bust, even though it was just as accurate as the summer rain forecast. 

Hopefully this will give you a bit of insight into the ever humbling world of meteorology.  Thank goodness spring is only 56 days away.

Bill Korbel

It's A Lot Of Bucks

By Bill Korbel

When you hear about trillion dollar government bailouts, can you even begin to comprehend how much money that really is?  For most of us, it's impossible, which may be exactly what the government wants.  Million, billion, trillion.  They all sound the same and all end in "illion".  If you write out the numbers it starts to make an impact.  Instead of saying one trillion dollars, how about writing $1,000,000,000,000.00.   It starts to look impressive, but still essentially incomprehensible.  Try this.  Start counting dollar bills.  Count one every second.  In one year you will have counted $31,536,000.  It would take 27.4 years counting day and night to get to 1 billion.  One trillion would take 27,400 years.  Change the dollar bills to hundreds and it would still take 274 years of counting.

Still, I don't think this makes a big enough impact.  Lets look at a more visual way of comprehending one trillion dollars.  For this I thank the web site 87billion.com.  They did most of the calculations for me, thereby saving me a lot of time.

One dollar is roughly 6" long and 2 1/2" wide.  If you place six together they are about the size of a standard 8 1/2 x 11" sheet of paper.

   

$3,000 is the size of a ream of paper (500 sheets)

  

Now, lets start piling these stacks of $3,000 on each other.  $9 million dollars would be a pile of dollar bills 10 feet long, 6 1/4 feet wide and 5 feet tall

So, how big a pile would one trillion dollars make?  How about something 125 feet wide, 250 feet long and 1,350 feet tall.  That's taller then the Empire State Building.  Stacked one on top of another the pile of dollar bills would be 59,664 miles tall.  That's 1/4th of the way to the Moon.  That, my friends, is what a trillion dollars really is. Keep that picture in mind as you hear more about our fiscal mess and maybe it'll make some sense to those of us who live in the real world.

Dangerous Radios

By Bill Korbel

My wife gave me a portable VHF aviation radio for Christmas.  With it I can listen to pilots and air traffic controllers, but even more important, it serves as a backup communication source when I fly.  Even though there are two radios in my plane, there is always the remote possibility that electrical problems could knock them both out.  In good weather, it's not a problem, but when flying in bad weather, communication is vital. 

Anyway, I had no idea how dangerous these radios can be.  I'm serious.  I understand there is a certain amount risk when flying, but little did I know that the most dangerous part of flying is associated with a seemingly harmless radio.

In the instruction booklet I found no fewer than 25 .. that's TWENTY FIVE, warnings of terrible things that can happen while using the radio.  There were cautions, warnings and some very ominous "Danger, Never" things to watch out for.  I've attached a photo if you don't believe me. 

 Do I really have to be told to never put the battery in a microwave oven or not to hit it with a hammer?  I'm serious. There are far fewer warnings in the aircraft operations manual and call me silly, but I would think 3,000 pounds of aluminum moving at 175 mph would in theory be more dangerous then a one pound radio.   It seems that in 2008, lawyers always have the last word. 

Time Travel

By Bill Korbel

I had to go to LaGuardia Airport this morning and as I drove along the Whitestone Expressway, just after passing to New York Times plant, I glanced to the right as I always do and looked at a flat marshy area now mostly filled with water.  Why you ask?  Because that nondescript piece of land was once the site of Flushing Airport where as a young boy I had my first airplane ride.  Something that set into motion my life-long love affair with planes and flying.  For many years, there was still part of a hanger visible, but I noticed that even this was now gone.  Torn down by someone unknown. All that's left are memories of an exciting event in my life.

Traffic was light, and at the speed limit I was soon pulling alongside Shea Stadium.  Or should I say the shell of Shea.  The Met's new stadium is essentially finished now.  They were testing the lights this morning which made the site of Shea even more troubling.  Like Flushing Airport, Shea Stadium was a place of excitement and memories for over 40 years.  I remember going to my first game there the year it opened.  I went not to see the rag-tag Mets, but to see the team I rooted for as a kid, the New York Giants.  Sure they had moved to San Franscisco the year before but when they came back, how could I not go see one of the greatest ball players in history, Willie Mays.  It was a night game, and somewhere I have a photograph of the brand new ball park. 

 

Now, the wrecking ball is whacking away at it, just as it eventually does to all of us.  Things come and go, but the thankfully, the memories go on.

Bill

$1.95 a gallon

By Bill Korbel

Yesterday was a great day.  I  found gas for less then $2.00 a gallon and filled up for less then 30 bucks.  That's the first time gas been that low since January 2005.  Almost 3 years ago. 

I have a small book in my car and enter maintenance, oil changes, and fuel purchases,  so, I can easily look back and see trends in car operation or in this case, fuel prices.

On January 1st, 2002 I filled my tank for $1.15 a gallon.  On July 1st of this year I paid $4.30 a gallon. That's $3.15 more per gallon.  An increase of over 300%.   Ouch!  That really hurt. Actually the average from January 2004 to January 2007 was a fairly reasonable $2.30 a gallon.  But 2007 started off with gas at $3.15 and it only went up from there reaching a max late this summer before thankfully taking a nose dive back to the first sub $2 a gallon price since early 2004.

My wallet certainly will benefit from cheaper gas,  but the trick now is not to fall back into bad habits because you know this is not going to last.  There is only so much oil in the ground and it is inevitable that the price will start to climb again back to the painful levels of August.  Think of this as a gift but let's not take our mind off the goal of smaller and more efficient vehicles and other forms of energy.  I have always considered gas efficiency when buying cars and I am still leaning towards getting a hybrid when I buy my next car. Fool me once, same on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.   

Enough Already

By Bill Korbel

Things have gotten way too complicated.  I grew up at a time when we had one television in the house and it could only tune 7 channels:  2,4,5,7,9,11 and 13 (which by the way no one watched even 40 years ago).  There were no remotes so you tended to keep the set on one channel and channel hopping was a very limited option.

Look at the remotes I now have to accomplish the same thing. Here's what I found on the table last night.

 

From left to right you see the DVD remote, TV remote, portable phone, cell phone at the very top, cable remote and Audio remote.  Those two white things are Wi controllers.  And this is not all.  I have a similar collection of devices in the bedroom and televisions in 3 other rooms.  Of course there is an advantage to all of this. I would not be happy without the wide screen HDTV, stereo surround sound and ability to answer the phone without getting off my butt.

Bill

Global Cooling?

By Bill Korbel

I saw a very interesting article last week in the Anchorage Daily News and guess what,  it wasn't about Sarah Palin.  It was about something even more controversial than Sarah's spot on the McCain ticket.  It was about climate change.

It seems that for the first time in many, many years, a number of large glaciers in Alaska stopped receding and got bigger. In general, glaciers in Alaska have been shrinking since the end of the Little Ice Age.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age    Arctic sea ice has also increased significantly this year compared to last year. 

This image shows sea ice (shades of purple) for this year versus last year.

Of course, one winter of increased snow and ice and one very cold summer do not necessarily mean that global warming has come to an end.  It could be a one time thing.  A blip in the overall warming trend.  Then again, there are a great many atmospheric scientists who are skeptical about the prevailing human induced global warming theory.  They feel that while humans may be influencing climate to a degree, natural climate patterns and the sun, earth, ocean interactions have a much greater affect on long and short term temperature variations.  Some well respected scientists including Dr Roy Spencer, Dr William Grey, Dr Richard Lindzen and an old friend of mine, Prof. Joe D'aleo think the Al Gore edict that the global warming debate is over is very, very wrong. 

I don't know who is right and who is wrong.  All I know is that science is the search for truth and discouraging dissent is the surest way I know to make sure that the truth is not found.  Remember, once the best science on the planet decided the earth was the center of the universe.  It was accepted as thruth for thousands of years.  Science eventually discovered that not only is the earth not the center of the universe but that we inhabit the outer suburbs of a group of billions of stars called the Milky Way which itself is just one of billions of galaxies in the universe.

Meanwhile, the global warming debate will go on.  At least I hope it will.

A Really Big Bang

By Bill Korbel

  Fifty Thousand years ago a 150' wide hunk of iron weighing 300,000 tons slammed into the earth in northern Arizona.  The nearly mile wide, 550 foot deep hole it made is an impressive example of the destructive power of the kind of collisions that have happened throughout Earth's history and will happen again.  Until my recent trip to the west coast I had only seen the crater from 35,000' in a commercial airliner, in photos and the 1984 movie "Starman".  It was on my list of things I wanted to see and when I finally did make the journey, it was well worth the effort.      

Peering into the huge depression, I wondered what would happen if something like this hit Long Island.  The power was estimated to be 150 times as great as the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. On the other hand, perhaps some things are best not thought about too long.  There are plenty of depressing things in the news as it is. 

There are some other interesting things that have gone on in the crater's recent history.  NASA astronauts trained for moon missions at the bottom.  Once a pair of foolish pilots flew a single engine Cessna into the hole only to discover that because of the 5,500 foot elevation of the crater, the heat and downdrafts, they couldn't climb back out.  They circled around until they ran out of fuel and crash landed inside.  They survived, but bits and pieces of the plane are still down there.

If you are so inclined, Meteor Crater is located about 40 miles east of Flagstaff Arizona and not far south of another really big hole in the ground that's worth seeing; the Grand Canyon.  Here's the link to the homepage: http://www.meteorcrater.com/index.php

Hurricane Gloria

  By Bill Korbel

23 years ago Hurricane Gloria hit Long Island as a strong Category 1 hurricane.  It was the last hurricane to actually hit the island and if you were living here at the time, I'm sure you will never forget it.  Gloria was not a Katrina or Ike, but it still did a lot of damage.  What I most remember was the incredible number of trees that the storm knocked down. Everywhere I looked were huge 50 year old trees toppled by the winds as if Paul Bunyan had run amuck through the neighborhood. 

   

A 75' tall oak in my backyard snapped in half.  Fortunately it did not fall on my house.  Power went out, of course, and it stayed out for 5 days. It was eerily quiet and without lights, the night sky was beautiful with many, many more stars then we normally see. It's the way it must have looked 200 years ago.  The next year I bought a portable generator.  We haven't had a hurricane since.

The storm arrived at low tide, which was very fortunate.  Still the storm surge reached 7 feet along the south shore and destroyed quite a few homes on Fire Island.    

Here is an excellent review of Hurricane Gloria and it's impact on Long Island.

http://www.geocities.com/hurricanene/hurricanegloria.htm

Where Am I?

By Bill Korbel

It's not true that men never ask for directions. I know I have a few times.  Yes, most of us may be hesitant to stop and ask how to get someplace, but that's not because we hate to admit we don't know where we are or where we are going. Not at all.  It's because we hate to stop at all for any reason short of taking a potty break.  Now, thanks to GPS navigation this is no longer even a question. 

I have used GPS as the main navigation system in airplanes for nearly 10 years but only recently have I started using that technology in a car and I never cease to be amazed at how well it works.  The accuracy is phenomenal.  Of course it does have some quirks.  The voice in my device has trouble pronouncing some street and highway names.  It completely mumbles it's way through Sagtikos Parkway, and for some reason it thinks Sunrise Highway is Powmia highway.  I know some sections are called POW-MIA highway but it should be pronounced P. O. W. M. I. A.,  not powmia.  I also get a kick out of ignoring a turn and making the GPS come up with a new route.  It may be my imagination, but I swear the voice giving directions starts to get a bit testy every time it says "recalculating".  I fully expect that one day it will simply say: " You idiot!.  I told you to turn on Camp Avenue but no, you had to turn on Park.  So now you figure out how to get out of this mess.  I give up".

Of course it only gets better.  I just bought a new cell phone and guess what.  It has a built in navigation system.  It's slower and not quite as clever picking routes, but the female voice is very pleasant and never seems to mind when I make a wrong turn.  Maybe it just likes me better.

Bill Korbel

9-11 Responders

By Bill Mooney

Greg Quibell arrived at Ground Zero in the hours following the 9-11 attacks.  He stayed working on the pile through thanksgiving.  All the while he was breathing in what his partner claims was a toxic cloud of poisons that she says ultimately led to him getting Leukemia.

I met his partner Theresa Galoppe - at North Shore LIJ Hospital in Manhasset - where Greg will be allowed to go home today.  But he is not going home a cured man. He is going home to die.  The Leukemia that has ravaged his body has left him frail and weak, his once large frame now a gaunt skeleton lying in a hospital bed.  He can no longer speak.  His breathing is labored. 

Theresa says she knows the leukemia is the direct result of being at Ground Zero.  And she says now, seven years after the attacks, another wave of death is about to grip the nation, this time in greater numbers than the first attacks.  They are the men and women who rushed there to help and now are under attack from disease themselves.

Quibell was one of four first responders to be featured in a documentary - produced by the Feelgood Foundation - that will be released on Thursday, August 28th at the Bellmore Theater at 7pm.  John Feal, the founder of the foundation, says they produced the documentary to get the attention of lawmakers, whom he says have left this group of heros to die alone.

Feal says the documentary is intended to shed light on how first responders are being treated by the government when it comes to getting proper health care.  And while he says it may make lawmakers more aware, and convince them to make sure first responders are taken care of, he admits it won't be in time to help Greg Quibell, and many other responders, who are now in the battle of their lives for their lives.

The Good Old Days

By Bill Korbel

Sitting in the weather center surrounded by not one, not two, but seven computers, I started thinking how my profession has changed in the 35 years I've been involved in the at times humbling task of forecasting the weather.

My first job was as a 2nd Lieutenant weather forecaster at Griffiss AFB near Rome NY.  We had a state of the art weather operation for the time with clattering teletype machines, like the one in the photo to the left, and weather fax machines.  These were diabolical monsters that printed on an eighteen inch wide roll of wet paper.  They often jammed and it was not uncommon to get into work only to find 8 hours worth of weather charts crushed into a useless mass of paper.  Did I mention there were no computers?   The only computers around were the size of a refrigerator and had less computing power then the average cell phone.  We did have some very crude satellite images like this one taken by an early TIROS weather satellite.  If you look carefully you can see the coast of New England and Nova Scotia. 

With this crude equipment we still managed to put together some very good short range forecasts for say the next 24 to 36 hours.  Beyond that, it was pretty much a guess.  Now of course, we have more information then we can possibly use and the forecasts are much, much better.  A lot of people still complain about our accuracy, but we now can give forecasts for fours days with the accuracy of one day forecasts back then.  We can even pick up decent patterns up through 7 and 10 days, a forecast that 2nd Lt Korbel could only dream about. Perhaps 30 years from now, our current News12 weather station will seem as quaint as my old Air Force version.  No doubt forecasts will be even more reliable.  I will however wager that they still won't be perfect and probably never will be.

Wild Weather

By Bill Korbel

I have seen and done lots of exciting things over the years.  I watched a space shuttle launch from just 5 miles away.  I've seen the Aurora Borealis.  I even had a flight on Air Force One. But one thing I have never seen is a tornado. Not that I want to be too near a really big one, but safely distant from even a weak one would be just fine.   Well, I was almost able to scratch that one off my to do list (or considering my age, my "bucket list") yesterday afternoon. 

Check out this photo taken within a mile of the News 12 studios. It sure looks like a tornado, although in the Photo Shop age, one never really knows.  Of course I was inside doing weather updates and never even had a chance to look out.

We did however see a very strong radar image with what might have been the signature of rotation. The arrow points to the area in the photograph.

There was also a waterspout that developed in the Oyster Bay/Center Island area on the north shore.  We received a great photo of that one and there is absolutely no doubt what it was.  We even showed a video on air.  A water spout is essentially a tornado over water, but there are some significant differences. First, they tend to be weaker than tornadoes with most producing winds in the 60 to 90 mph range.  They also form differently.  Tornadoes develop as rotation in a cloud extends to the surface.  Water spouts on the other hand normally develop on the surface of the water and extend upward to the cloud.  The rotation becomes visible as water vapor within the funnel condenses.

Maybe This Year?

By Bill Korbel

When I was a kid, hurricanes hit Long Island as often as the Yankees won the World Series; just about every year.  Now they hit Long Island about as often as the Mets win the World Series; hardly ever.  But that doesn't mean we can just ignore them because it is a mathematical certainty that one summer, perhaps this summer, a hurricane will again pummel the island.                                                                        

This year has started out to be quite busy with four storms already. We are still in July and if this pattern continues, we could easily see eight to ten more storms before the season ends.  Pure numbers, however, do not mean much.  All it takes is one storm, if you happen to be in its way, to ruin your whole day. 

So, please take some time to review your hurricane safety plans.  And don't put it off.  Some preparations take a bit of time and waiting until a hurricane warning is issued is much too late. Here are some things you should consider:

Discuss the type of hazards that could affect your family. Know your home's vulnerability to storm surge, flooding and wind.

Locate a safe room or the safest areas in your home for each hurricane hazard. In certain circumstances the safest areas may not be your home but within your community.

Determine escape routes from your home and places to meet. These should be measured in tens of miles rather than hundreds of miles.

Have an out-of-state friend as a family contact, so all your family members have a single point of contact.

Make a plan now for what to do with your pets if you need to evacuate.

Check your insurance coverage - flood damage is not usually covered by homeowners insurance.

Stock non-perishable emergency supplies and a disaster emergency kit. Here's a web site with details: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/prepare/supply_kit.shtml

Here are more links to help you prepare: 

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/disaster_prevention.shtml

http://www.fema.gov/hazard/hurricane/index.shtm

For hurricane tracking and forecast information, here is the link to the National Hurricane Center:  http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

Bill Korbel

Science on a Sphere

By Bill Korbel

I mentioned in my last blog that I recently spent some time at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.  A place with more PhDs per square foot then almost any spot on the planet.  Besides doing critical research in facets of meteorology and climatology, they have some really cool toys. 

My favorite is something called "Science on a Sphere" or SOS for short.  Basically, Science On a Sphere uses computers and three projectors to display various images on a 6' diameter sphere, creating the illusion of the earth, or any astronomical body, floating in the middle of a dark room.  It can show the earth in stunning detail.  It's  like looking down on it from thousands of miles in space.  Want to see the weather?  Sure.  Just tell the computer to project the latest satellite imagery.

But that's just one use.  Historical weather can be added.  Projections of future climate conditions can show how the earth might look in 100 years.  Ocean currents can be displayed, as can hurricane tracks and even the shifting of continents over millions of years.  All of this is stunningly realistic because it is on a 3 dimensional globe and gives scientists a different way to look at data.  Realizing that this was too good a thing to keep all to themselves, Science of a Sphere is now being placed in science museums around the country.  Here's a link to locations.    Here's the home page:  http://sos.noaa.gov/index.html    Check out the  download section to see more images and animations.  Here's one of my favorites.  It's an animation showing hurricanes since 1950

Now if only they would just make one small enough (and cheap enough) to set up at home. 

Weather Forecasting For Outer Space

By Bill Korbel

If someone were to ask you if there was weather in outer space, you’d probably answer no. There is no atmosphere out there, so how could there be weather? Well, there are storms in space and they can be every bit as dangerous the earthbound variety.

 A few days ago I spent some time at the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. I’ll wager you had no idea such as place even existed, but it does, and the forecasts made there have a huge impact on our lives.

 Like earth weather, space weather starts with the sun. From time to time, storms and explosions on the sun shoot high energy particles towards the earth and these solar particles can not only be lethal to astronauts but can have disastrous affects right here on the earth. For instance, strong geomagnetic storms can cause widespread power grid failures if precautions are not taken before the storm hits.

Is a cell phone or blackberry an important part of your life? Communication satellites can be damaged if certain procedures are not followed to protect them. The GPS system in your car can fail. That’s really not so important, but GPS is used in aviation for everything from navigation to landing in bad weather. Losing a GPS signal in an airplane can be very dangerous. Long range radio can be knocked out. That means re-routing long range airliners because they must always be in radio contact. So those trans-polar flights may take several hours longer. The radiation produced by solar particles can be a danger for crews and passengers flying across the north pole. Airlines must monitor storms so their crews don’t exceed safe levels of exposure. Several airlines make sure any pregnant crew members do not fly when solar storms are hitting the planet.

For more information, The web site for the Space Weather Prediction Center is:  http://www.swpc.noaa.gov Here are two more:  www.spaceweather.com and: http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/sftheory/spaceweather.htm

Bill Korbel

 

The Unfriendly Skies

By Bill Korbel

As a nation, we love sure love a good conspiracy, don’t we? Was there a second gunman on the grassy knoll?  Are aliens ( the ones from another planet ) being hidden by the government? Did NASA fake the moon landing?  And one that is rather new to me... It has to do with something called “chemtrails” and could have come from an X Files script.

A chemtrail, as I understand it, is the result of high altitude spraying of some sort of potentially dangerous chemical. This program has been undertaken by the government for unknown but possibly nefarious reasons. Others feel it has to do with weather modification. Sometimes people get sick after these trails appear in the sky. It’s very scary stuff. These trails can be seen stretching out from high flying jets, sometimes in thin lines that cross each other making very obvious patterns. At times, they spread out covering the sky. But the truth of the matter is these so called chemtrails are nothing but exhaust condensation trails called contrails, and are a natural product of aircraft operating high in the cold, upper reaches of the troposphere.

Here’s what happens... Every engine that burns a carbon fuel like gasoline, or jet fuel, produces along with heat, carbon dioxide and various pollutants, water--plain old H2O. You can see it dripping from your automobile exhaust pipe. In the cold upper atmosphere, the water vapor produced by the jet engine condenses quickly into microscopic ice crystals which combine to form contrails. It is essentially a man made cirrus cloud that stretches behind the plane. If the air is too dry, the ice crystals quickly disappear. But if the humidity is high enough, the contrail will persist, sometimes forming lines many miles long. If upper winds are just right, they can spread out horizontally and cover large sections of the sky.

But what about the ominous patterns that often show contrails crossing each other?  Some think that is proof of a planned spray pattern.  Actually, this is simply the result of jets flying specific routes. If you look at a high altitude navigation chart you will see just how many paths jets can take. Some go north south. Some east west. Some in between. These are contrails and nothing more. They are a perfectly natural formation that we have seen since WWII when planes first started flying above 25,000 feet. Many people say there are significantly more of these sinister trails now than 20 or 30 years ago and they are right. But they are right primarily because there are a lot more jets flying in the upper atmosphere than back then. So it stands to reason you’d see more of these things.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume someone does spray something 5 to 7 miles up in the air. Where would it reach the surface? It could take days for tiny chemical particles to fall 35,000 feet. All the time, jet stream winds that can exceed 150 mph will carry any spray particle many hundreds if not thousands of miles down wind. Please note that crop dusters spray fields at an altitude of 5 to 10 feet so the spray hits the crops in a useful way.

I know this will not convince any true believers who will consider that despite my 35 year as a meteorologist (which included over 20 years as an Air Force meteorologist and my many years as a pilot) that I really don’t know what I’m talking about or I am part of the conspiracy.  Of course, if it is a conspiracy, it would have to be a world wide one since these trails are seen above every nation on the planet.

If you want to read more, here are some links:

http://contrailscience.com/

http://www.astro.ku.dk/~holger/IDA/notes.html