Storm Surge and Flooding Prediction Dropped in New Scale
NOAA’s National Weather Service will use a new hurricane scale this season called the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. The scale keeps the same wind speed ranges as the original Saffir-Simpson Scale for each of the five hurricane categories, but no longer ties specific storm surge and flooding effects to each category.
Herbert Saffir, a consulting engineer, and Robert Simpson, who was director of the National Hurricane Center from 1967 through 1973, developed the original scale which was a useful tool to convey the threats of tropical cyclones. Changes were made to the Saffir-Simpson Scale because storm surge values and associated flooding are dependent on a combination of the storm’s intensity, size, motion and barometric pressure, as well as the depth of the near-shore waters and local topographical features. As a result, storm surge values can be significantly outside the ranges suggested in the original scale.
For example, Hurricane Ike in 2008 was a very large storm that made landfall on the upper Texas coast as a Category 2 hurricane with a peak storm surge of 15 to 20 feet. In contrast, Hurricane Charley struck Southwest Florida in 2004 as a Category 4 hurricane, but produced a peak storm surge of just 6 to 7 feet. [Continue Reading →]
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Nautical charts and pubs change nearly as fast as the tide sending each sailing second mate back to kintergarden’s cut & paste lessons each time a new notice to mariners arrives with the ship’s mail. So it may seem ironic that the one chart which hasn’t changed much in over 200 years, was created by am man shipwrecked at age fifteen due to a faulty chart… The Beaufort Scale. Wikipedia tells us:
Beaufort developed the first versions of his Wind Force Scale and Weather Notation coding, which he was to use in his journals for the remainder of his life. From the circle representing a weather station, a stave (as in musical notation) extends, with one or more half or whole barbs. For example, a stave with 3 ½ barbs represents Beaufort seven on the scale, decoded as 32–38 mph, or a “Fresh Gale”. Beaufort didn’t really invent something new here; rather, he eventually succeeded in getting others to adopt it as a standard when there was no existing standard.
While the information hasn’t changed much (nor has chart most of us are familiar with, shown in the picture above) the way in which the information is displayed can be depicted in a variety of ways. Below is just a sampling, be sure to leave a link to your favorite rendition of the scale in the comments below…. and not, the Beaufort-esque chart for determining the scale of a bar fight, doesn’t count. [Continue Reading →]
The earliest form of ship routing may have been when early humans used the prevailing easterly winds to sail from island to island in the Pacific or when Arab traders sailed portions of the Indian Ocean based on the prevailing monsoons.
By the time of Columbus, Portuguese sailors had taken advantage of their knowledge of the prevailing trade winds and helped Portugal become a powerful maritime power. When Columbus set forth on his voyage of discovery he used the prevailing trade winds to carry his fleet to the New World and then took the more northerly route for his return taking advantage of the prevailing westerly winds.
Benjamin Franklin, in 1786 noted that vessels were “sometimes retarded and sometimes forwarded in their voyages by currents at sea”. He knew that ships coming from Falmouth to New York took a fortnight longer than those coming from London to Rhode Island. [Continue Reading →]
The following has been submitted to us by gCaptain member Fredwx and originally published to the Weather section of the gCaptain forum:
With Thanksgiving approaching I thougt I would post this on the famous Thangsgiving storm of 1950:
The November 1950 storm caused widespread flooding and wind damage along the East Coast while inland areas were coping with heavy snowfalls and very low temperatures. The storm developed over North Carolina then deepened rapidly into an East Coast Bomb as it tracked northward into Pennsylvania before turning northwest en-route to Lake Erie and later curving southwest and then east across Ohio. The storm caused havoc along the East Coast as the high winds coincided with the high tide creating widespread flooding along the New Jersey, Long Island and New England Coasts. Wind gusts were clocked at 94 mph in New York City, 108 mph at Newark Airport, 110 mph at Concord, NH and 160 mph at the top of Mt. Washington, NH!
While strong winds and rain pelted the East Coast, farther inland heavy snow and blizzard conditions prevailed. Nearly 28 inches of snow fell in Pittsburgh, about 36 inches in Steubenville, OH and up to 62 inches was reported at Coburn Creek, WV. Strong temperature contrasts were reported across relatively short distances during the height of the storm. While Buffalo, NY was reporting rain and temperatures in the 50’s, Pittsburgh about 200 miles to the south was reporting heavy snow and temperatures falling into the single digits. [Continue Reading →]
Here’s some important information regarding the Voluntary Weather Observation program at NOAA, brought to us by our friends at AMVER.
Amver wants to pass along this information we received from our partners at NOAA.Their is a new and more streamlined E-mail address for ships to use to submit their weather observations. Please start sharing SHIPOBS@NOAA.GOV to all your ships that may be using the NOAA email process for submitting their ship observations and assist them in converting from our initial webship@inetsrv email address. This updated address allows routing redundancies to ensure receipt and processing within the NWS Telecommunication Gateway and onto the GTS.
It also allows the emailed ship observations to be shared with the USCG and the Amver program so all position reports are captured thus improving SOLAS support.
REMINDER – The observation MUST BE in the body of the email and it should be in TEXT format (NO HTML if possible – although scrubbing can occur – its just slows routing process down a bit) Ensure an equal sign (=) is affixed to the end of the message to tell the computers end of transmission.
Additional information on the Voluntary Weather Observation program and sending ship observations via email can be found here.
While perusing the NOAA website this morning, I came across an interesting article on something we are all to familiar with here on the Central and Northern California Coast: FOG. As much as it is literally a daily part of our lives here, it never ceases to amaze me just how quickly a marine layer can roll in off the Pacific, sit in the valley’s and then just as quickly burn off in the heat of the sun.
The article looks at the phonomenon of fog, exaclty what it is costing us and what NOAA is doing to mitigate the loss of life, property and resources from this everyday occurrence. [Continue Reading →]
NOAA has completed implementation of the final phase of a nine year, $180 million contract by installing the newest generation of IBM supercomputers for weather and climate prediction. The primary system, “Stratus,” and its backup, “Cirrus,” will allow NOAA to run more complex models in an effort to improve forecast accuracy and extend watch and warning lead times for severe weather, including hurricanes, tornadoes, air quality, wildfires, floods, tsunamis and winter storms.
The new supercomputers, based on IBM Power 575 Systems, are four times faster than the previous system, with the ability to make 69.7 trillion calculations per second. Higher computation speed allows meteorologists to rapidly refine and update severe weather forecasts as dangerous weather develops and threatens U.S. communities. Billions of bytes of weather observations are fed into the system each day, including temperature, wind, precipitation, atmospheric pressure, and other oceanographic and satellite information taken from the ground, air, sea and space.
Interesting facts about Stratus:
The microprocessors inside Stratus contain 2,000 miles of copper wiring, enough to stretch from Washington, D.C. to the Grand Canyon.
It would take one person with a calculator 3 million years to tabulate the number of calculations that Stratus can perform in a single second.
Stratus would fit in half the size of a tennis court.
Stratus is 34 times more powerful than the most powerful supercomputer in existence a decade ago.
The folks from “Rite in the Rain” were at the Pacific Marine Expo, and I picked up a brochure, an all-weather pen, and another pocket-sized spiral notebook…thanks guys!
See, I use these products every day. Into my pockets each morning go my keys, wallet, coin purse, cell phone, and my little Weems & Plath-branded Rite in the Rain 3″ x 5″ all-weather spiral notebook.
I have been using these products for many years in fairly harsh environments aboard ship and highly recommend them for use on deck.
The Exploratorium brings us live earthquake monitor and mapping links! Normally I wouldn’t cut an paste so much info but in light of messages I’ve received from mariners worried about their families, here it is:
Southern California Integrated GPS Network Mapsurfer
Mapsurferer is an interactive mapping system that allows visitors to overlay different layers of information on a map of California. These layers include seismic stations, highways, geological features, major faults, and more. While information about the Bay Area and northern California is available, this map focuses on southern parts of the state.
Quakes in the last 7 days: USGS Earthquake Hazards Program
The USGS has many maps of live earthquake data. This section lets visitors see quakes that have occurred anywhere in the world in the last week. You can also focus on geographic regions. Zooming in to a specific quake, you reach a page with specific data and links to the area’s seimic and quake damage history
Shake map of California and Nevada showing fault lines
These maps are nice illustrations of the fact that earthquakes occur along faults. You can click the small boxes to zoom in and get more details on specific quakes
Did you feel it?
Seismometers can measure shaking, but how much does that reflect what people actually feel? On this site, people in the area of a quake can report their experiences to the USGS, and the results are made into a map. This can be compared with other shake maps for the same quake that were generated from seismometer data.
IRIS Seismic Monitor
IRIS (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology) has developed their Seismic Monitor that offers data about quake in near realtime, lets you search the Web for information about them, and view seismograms.
Real-time seismograms
Recorded by stations in the Northern California Seismic Network, these seismograms update every 5 minutes. The site also includes information on interpreting seismograms and examples of different magnitudes.
USGS Global Positioning System (GPS) monitors
USGS keeps many live earthquake monitoring stations that track movements of the earth’s plates using GPS. Because plate movement is fairly slow, the data are recorded over long periods of time. So the information on this site records events in the last year, or last decade, rather than the last week.
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