Storm Team Reports

Email to Amanda:
Those damn NOAA folks have changed the CONE. We can’t obsess over the lit­eral draw­ing of a cone, and an uncer­tain one at that. I adored the “cone of uncer­tainty” aspect of hur­ri­cane living.

Well, screw them. Jane is in high hur­ri­cane mode, get­ting ready to leave town if nec­es­sary and all that. Hav­ing lit­tle kids really changes your dynamic from pub­lic ser­vant EMT to pri­vate servant.…

Me? I, like you, have only myself to worry about (and pets but you know what I mean) and this year, with no 90 year old woman to pre­pare for relo­ca­tion, I am calm. Let it do its damn­d­est. Rob will be home tomor­row. Biggest thing we need to do is get all the crap off the front porch — it’s filled with stuff going to stor­age like Bose radio, parts of some­thing unknown, chairs… very inter­est­ing pro­jec­tiles. I imag­ine that Bose would crack right through a car wind­shield with a good 80 mph wind. Fun to watch, but I will move it.

Kat­rina made peo­ple react dif­fer­ently to storms. It’s inter­est­ing to say the least. I do need to get a flash­light or two, find the can­dles and matches, make sure I have instant cof­fee and all my scripts are refilled at CVS. And buy some Pop­Tarts and trail mix. We also will park cars on higher ground when the time comes.

Neigh­bors across street haven’t lived through hur­ri­cane sea­son here, not one with real warn­ings. The rest of us have been here since the fun days when you and I wan­dered the streets after the wreck­age in 1996 onward.

more as I learn it, mean­while, here’s the NOAA state­ment about the death of the cone, dammit.

Addi­tion­ally, these prob­a­bil­ity prod­ucts are avail­able on the National Weather Service’s National Dig­i­tal Fore­cast Data­base (NDFD) graph­i­cal trop­i­cal web­page.

The pre­vi­ously pro­vided strike prob­a­bil­ity prod­uct (dis­con­tin­ued after 2005) con­veyed the chances of a “close” approach of the cen­ter of the cyclone. How­ever, these new prob­a­bil­ity prod­ucts are about the weather. That is, these cumu­la­tive wind speed prob­a­bil­i­ties pro­vide the chances that wind speeds of at least 39 mph will occur at indi­vid­ual loca­tions. The cumu­la­tive prob­a­bil­i­ties can answer the ques­tion, “What are the chances that sus­tained winds of trop­i­cal storm or hur­ri­cane force will occur at any spe­cific loca­tion?” This can also help one answer the ques­tion, “Do I need to take cer­tain actions to pre­pare?” A com­pan­ion prod­uct, the wind speed prob­a­bil­ity text prod­uct, will also be issued and updated with each advi­sory pack­age. That prod­uct is rec­om­mended to more eas­ily assess when winds of each thresh­old are most likely to start at any spe­cific loca­tion, help­ing to answer the ques­tion, “How long do I have to pre­pare?” Over­all, these prob­a­bil­i­ties pro­vide users with infor­ma­tion that can enhance their abil­ity to make pre­pared­ness deci­sions spe­cific to their own situations.

It is impor­tant for users to real­ize that wind speed prob­a­bil­i­ties that might seem rel­a­tively small at their loca­tion might still be quite sig­nif­i­cant, since they indi­cate that there is a chance that a dam­ag­ing or even extreme event could occur that war­rants prepa­ra­tions to pro­tect lives and property.

c