The Discoverer Deep Seas is the largest exploration drill ship in the world. Matter of fact there is a shortage of these type of Enterprise Class Drillships. There primary mission is to explore and find oil. Once they do then the oil company moves in a production platform.
The Deep Seas , call sign (V7HC6) was the ship responsible for finding the Chevron Jack Well Field in 2006. One of the largest recent finds. That field according to Chevron has a reserve of 500 million barrels of oil with a revenue expectation of 3 Billion. The Deep Seas was drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf in the Walker ridge area when the fire occured.
According to source in the salvage community the fire started in the port engine room and the vessel lost 4 of its six engine generators which drive the ships dynamic positioning system, which keeps the ship stabilized on station and acts as its primary propulsion system. The Deep Seas was able to continue some operations on its remaining two generators. Fortunately there were no injuries during the incident.
An engine room fire will sideline Transocean drillship Discoverer Deep Seas for around 50 days, the US-based drilling contractor said today.
Earlier this month, a fire broke out on the rig while it was drilling for Chevron at the supermajor’s St Malo discovery in the Walker Ridge area of the US Gulf.
A Transocean spokesman said no one was hurt and the company is in the midst of determining the extent of damage to the vessel.
An investigation into the cause of the blaze is ongoing.
The rig has been moved off location and will be brought into a Gulf coast shipyard for repairs. Transocean has also elected to carry out a scheduled 14-day underwater survey of the unit while it is idle.
The Discoverer Deep Seas is under a long-term contract with Chevron in the US Gulf. The unit’s current day rate is $335,000. The rate jumps to $485,000 per day in March 2009.
This report made the rounds on the top weather list serves yesterday morning. Brian Barnes is a professional storm chaser and has the experience to guide tours through some dangerous weather systems. What happened here is really an unknown but by the sounds of this it appears that the sheriffs officer ..eh... the son-in-law of the Sheriff. may have over reacted.
Though this is an important issue for all chaser. Professionalism must be maintained at all times but law enforcement personnel must also understand that not all storm chasers are cowboy's and they do provide a valuable service to the public.
CRANE COUNTY--Chasing storms is what Brian Barnes does for a living. And it was while he was doing just that, that he says he found himself in a difficult and strange situation involving a Crane County Sheriff's Deputy. Barnes was out on Tuesday in Crane County as severe weather moved across the region. Crane County was under a tornado warning for about an hour Tuesday night.
"I told him that I was helping out the National Weather Service in San Angelo, and they were relaying my reports to Midland. He told me he didn't care, and that I needed to go."
Barnes thought it was his obligation to stay put and follow the storms, a decision that landed him in jail.
"He jumped out and put me in handcuffs. I turned around and I remember him slamming me up against his vehicle, and then it all got kind of scary."
Among the witnesses was Dennis Greer, who had a similar run-in, with the same deputy, just minutes earlier while he was shooting pictures of the same storm for the local newspaper.
"His first words to me were, 'are you a blankety-blank idiot?' He told me if I didn't leave, I was going to jail, flat out," Greer said. Barnes was arrested at a road side park on Highway 385 and charged with obstruction of a highway or other passage way. According to witnesses, there is plenty of room on on the road in front of the park for a vehicle to get by. That's why they are questioning the validity of the charge. Dennis Greer says, "The guy wasn't blocking anything. He was able to drive a full size truck by with no problem." In addition to the charges, people were taken aback by the deputy's attitude. "He came down there, and was just very abusive in his language. Never once did he state to me why he would arrest me, or why he was doing anything", Greer says.
Barnes adds, "He continued to say that I was the example why people were stopping and that I was putting those other people at risk, because they were stopping behind me." Barnes says that during his years of storm chasing, this is the first time anything like this has ever happened to him. And despite this one incident, he has good things to say, about West Texas. "I have to say that everytime I come to West Texas, the people here are outstanding. They are the most friendly people I've ever met," he said. Barnes was released on a $2,000 bond. He plans to hire a Dallas attorney to handle his case.
Calls to the Crane County Sheriff's Office for comment were not returned.
A public consultation process has been launched to decide on the future registration of ships in Ireland.
The Minister for Transport and Marine, Noel Dempsey, has called on vessel owners and the public to become involved in the process.
It is intended to create a new ship register in Ireland that will enforce legislation on safety and living conditions aboard and help improve maritime safety.
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New arrangements are being considered by the Department under which vessels not previously required to be registered will have to do so in the future.
The public consultation process will be used to prepare the legislation, which will result in a centralised electronic register to be used to enforce legislation on safety, security, living, working and environmental conditions.
There are 41 ships on the Irish register at present. Its numbers were reduced when Irish Ferries flagged out to other countries.
Arklow Shipping is now the biggest shipping company in the country.
In the following video we discus the various types of Position Indicating Radio Beacons. We explore the diffrences between an EPIRB, GPIRB, ELT and the increasingly less expensive PLB’s . We will also be taking a look at the new $149 Spot Satellite Messenger and ask if it’s the right solution for your emergency locator redundancy needs.
New Ocean Current Discovered ScienceDaily (May 2, 2008)Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered a new climate pattern called the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation. This new pattern explains, for the first time, changes in the water that are important in helping commercial fishermen understand fluctuations in the fish stock. They’re also finding that as the temperature of the Earth is warming, large fluctuations in these factors could help climatologists predict how the oceans will respond in a warmer world.
“We’ve been able to explain, for the first time, the changes in salinity, nutrients and chlorophyll that we see in the Northeast Pacific,” said Emanuele Di Lorenzo, assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
Since 1945, fishermen in the California current of the Pacific Ocean have been tracking temperature, salinity and nutrients, among other things, in the ocean to help them predict changes in fish populations like sardines and anchovies that are important for the industry. Studying this data, along with satellite images, Di Lorenzo discovered a pattern of current that he named the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation.
Recent satellite data suggest that this current is undergoing intensification as the temperature of the Earth has risen over the past few decades.
"Although the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation is part of a natural cycle of the climate system, we find evidence suggesting that its amplitude may increase as global warming progresses,” said Di Lorenzo.
If this is true, this newly found climate pattern mey help scientists predict how the ecosystem of the Pacific Ocean is likely to change if the world continues to warm, as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The research appears in the April 30 edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Citizens are urged to be aware and be prepared for weather emergencies, particularly for tornado events.
If there is a tornado warning for any area in St. Mary’s County, the county’s Emergency Communications staff will activate the Fire & Rescue Sirens with a “Take Cover” signal for Tornado Warnings.
This signal lasts for 13 cycles and is significantly different from a fire or rescue call signal. While this system is tested on the first Saturday of every month at noon, it will also be tested this Saturday, May 10 at noon.
Please be aware of the monthly test and do not confuse it with an actual Tornado Warning.
Things you can do to prepare include:
• Familiarize yourself with the terms that are used to identify a tornado hazard.
• A tornado watch means a tornado is possible in your area. You should monitor NOAA Weather Radio local radio and television news outlets for the latest developments.
• A tornado warning is when a tornado is actually occurring; take shelter immediately.
• Determine in advance where you will take shelter in case of a tornado warning.
• Storm cellars or basements provide the best protection.
• If underground shelter is not available, go into an interior room or hallway on the lowest floor possible.
• In a high-rise building, go to a small interior room or hallway on the lowest floor possible.
• Stay away from windows, doors and outside walls. Go to the center of the room. Stay away from corners because they attract debris.
• A vehicle, trailer or mobile home does not provide good protection. Plan to go quickly to a building with a strong foundation, if possible.
• If shelter is not available, lie flat in a ditch or other low-lying area. Do not get under an overpass or bridge. You are safer in a low, flat location.
• Plan to stay in the shelter location until the danger has passed.
• Get a kit of emergency supplies. Store it in your shelter location.
We've got Google Earth and Google Sky. Next up will be a map of the world below sea level--Google Ocean.
The company has assembled an advisory group of oceanography experts, and in December invited researchers from institutions around the world to the Mountain View, Calif., Googleplex. There, they discussed plans for creating a 3D oceanographic map, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The tool--for now called Google Ocean, the sources say, though that name could change--is expected to be similar to other 3D online mapping applications. People will be able to see the underwater topography, called bathymetry; search for particular spots or attractions; and navigate through the digital environment by zooming and panning. (The tool, however, is not to be confused with the "Google Ocean" project by France-based Magic Instinct Software that uses Google Earth as a visualization tool for marine data.)
"We hope that one of the outcomes of Google Ocean will be an understanding of how much remains to be explored."
--Stephen P. Miller, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Asked to comment on Google Ocean, a Google spokeswoman said the company had "nothing to announce right now."
Oceanography researchers, however, say such a tool would be incredibly useful.
"There is no real terrain or depth model for the ocean in Google Earth," said Tim Haverland, a geospatial application developer at the Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "You can't get in a submarine and in essence fly through the water and explore ocean canyons yet."
Google Ocean will feature a basic layer that shows the depth of the sea floor and will serve as a spatial framework for additional data, sources said, adding that Google plans to try to fill in some areas of the map with high-resolution images for more detail.
Additional data will be displayed as overlying layers that depict phenomena like weather patterns, currents, temperatures, shipwrecks, coral reefs, and algae blooms, much like the National Park Service and NASA provide additional data for Google Earth and Google Sky.
"Google will basically just provide the field and then everyone will come flocking to it," predicted Stephen P. Miller, head of the Geological Data Center at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "There will be peer pressure to encourage people to get their data out there."
This is an image of a bathymetry map that shows the depth of the sea floor. It is based on sparse ship soundings and satellite altimeter measurements of subtle bumps and dips in the ocean surface which are produced by tiny variations in the pull of gravity.
(Credit: David Sandwell and Walter Smith/Scripps Institute of Oceanography)
While satellite imagery has the entire globe covered, as well as a good amount of known outer space, much less is known about the bodies of water that cover about 70 percent of the planet. Only a small percentage of the sea floor has been mapped in detail by sonar.
"It would take about 100 ship years to map the oceans at high resolution," said Dave Sandwell, a professor of geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Sandwell speculated that Google will get at least some of the basic sea floor data from Scripps' Predicted Depth Map. Created from ship sonar soundings and satellites, it infers the depth of the sea floor based on the tiny bumps and dips in the ocean's surface.
To bring more clarity to the sea floor, Sandwell and others said, Google will likely use high-resolution grids from oceanographic institutions showing the depths of select areas of the seas and paste them in. Data for those grids, which cover a very small portion of the sea floor, are created by ships using multibeam sonar.
One possible source for Google Ocean data are detailed "tiles" from multibeam and predicted topography compiled by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) of Columbia University. Tiles are high-resolution sun-shaded images as well as digital elevation models covering the entire global ocean that allow for interactivity similar to Google Earth, where you can get different views by zooming in and out and by tilting the planet's surface.
This screenshot shows an example of high-resolution imagery above and below sea level. The view is looking eastward at Monterey Bay on the California coast with the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the background. The continental slope is sculpted by submarine canyons with their numerous tributary gullies.
(Credit: GeoMapAppVG/Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University)
"Our application gets data from databases over the Internet without the user having to know the name of the database or how to connect to it. Google could talk to our databases," said William B. F. Ryan, an earth and environmental studies professor at Columbia's LDEO.
Ryan cautioned that "Google would have to put the tiles on their servers because their public of millions would bring the servers at Columbia University to their knees."
On top of the depth map, and in addition to the select high-resolution tiled areas, there will likely be various layers of specialized data from different sources. For example, NOAA already has made public visual information for Google Earth related to sea hotspots around coral reefs, Gulf of Mexico marine debris, surface temperatures and wave heights in the Great Lakes, and shipwrecks.
In addition to the "wow factor" Google Ocean will no doubt have for amateur oceanographers, marine enthusiasts, and anyone fascinated by the movie 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the project has the potential to promote more collaboration and advance research.
"We hope that one of the outcomes of Google Ocean will be an understanding of how much remains to be explored," said Miller of Scripps. "We know far more about the surface of Mars from a few weeks of radar surveying in orbit than we know of the bottom of the ocean after two centuries."
The Guardian's at thier Finest!
Coast Guard Air Station Houston hoists 4 people to safety after their boat goes over the Colorado River dam in Bay City, TX.
NAMMA – National Maritime Day Seminar
The North American Maritime Ministry Association (NAMMA) is sponsoring the 2008 National Maritime Day Seminar – The Environmental Imperative: Accelerating Solutions – on Washington, DC on May 21. (5/5/08).
ScienceDaily (Apr. 30, 2008) — As a powerful electrical storm rages on Saturn with lightning bolts 10,000 times more powerful than those found on Earth, the Cassini spacecraft continues its five-month watch over the dramatic events.
Scientists with NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission have been tracking the visibly bright, lightning-generating storm--the longest continually observed electrical storm ever monitored by Cassini.
Saturn's electrical storms resemble terrestrial thunderstorms, but on a much larger scale. Storms on Saturn have diameters of several thousand kilometers (thousands of miles), and radio signals produced by their lightning are thousands of times more powerful than those produced by terrestrial thunderstorms.
Lightning flashes within the persistent storm produce radio waves called Saturn electrostatic discharges, which the radio and plasma wave science instrument first detected on Nov. 27, 2007. Cassini's imaging cameras monitored the position and appearance of the storm, first spotting it about a week later, on Dec. 6.
"The electrostatic radio outbursts have waxed and waned in intensity for five months now," said Georg Fischer, an associate with the radio and plasma wave science team at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. "We saw similar storms in 2004 and 2006 that each lasted for nearly a month, but this storm is longer-lived by far. And it appeared after nearly two years during which we did not detect any electrical storm activity from Saturn."
The new storm is located in Saturn's southern hemisphere--in a region nicknamed "Storm Alley" by mission scientists--where the previous lightning storms were observed by Cassini. "In order to see the storm, the imaging cameras have to be looking at the right place at the right time, and whenever our cameras see the storm, the radio outbursts are there," said Ulyana Dyudina, an associate of the Cassini imaging team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.
Cassini's radio plasma wave instrument detects the storm every time it rotates into view, which happens every 10 hours and 40 minutes, the approximate length of a Saturn day. Every few seconds the storm gives off a radio pulse lasting for about a tenth of a second, which is typical of lightning bolts and other electrical discharges. These radio waves are detected even when the storm is over the horizon as viewed from Cassini, a result of the bending of radio waves by the planet's atmosphere.
Amateur astronomers have kept track of the storm over its five-month lifetime. "Since Cassini's camera cannot track the storm every day, the amateur data are invaluable," said Fischer. "I am in continuous contact with astronomers from around the world."
The long-lived storm will likely provide information on the processes powering Saturn's intense lightning activity. Cassini scientists will continue to monitor Storm Alley as the seasons change, bringing the onset of autumn to the planet’s southern hemisphere.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of Caltech, manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. The radio and plasma wave science team is based at the University of Iowa, Iowa City.
WEATHER NOTE
I just can't let this date go without mentioning that on May 7, 2007 the United States Coast Guard rescued three sailors aboard the sailboat Sean Seamour II during Tropical Storm Andrea in the Hatteras Trench region. This was one dramatic and dangerous rescue. My thanks to USCG H-60 Aircraft Commander, Lt. Commander Nevada Smith, his crew and the Master of the Sean Seamour II, Jean Pierre de Lutz.
MARITIME NOTE
Passengers rescued from cruise ship Latvia's coastguard evacuated a stranded cruise ship of more than 650 people after tug boats failed to pull the luxury liner off an underwater sand bank in the Baltic Sea.
In a five-hour operation, 651 passengers - mostly elderly Germans - and 11 crew members were transferred from the 660ft-long Mona Lisa on to two naval ships, coastguard officials said. They were taken about 22 miles to Ventspils, a port city in north-western Latvia, for onward travel to the capital, Riga.
Seven 30-foot boxes collapsed in to the Annabella's hold.
A SHIP manager caught up in an accident involving crushed containers is lobbying for every box to be weighed before loading.
That would prevent many of the incidents when either stacks have collapsed or containers have been washed overboard, Döhle (IOM) non-executive chairman Jörg Vanselow told an industry audience this week.
No single cause can be blamed for the sizeable number of container losses recorded in recent years, but Capt Vaneslow is pressing for more information about the cargo to be supplied to the ship’s master by the shipper or terminal operator.
That would enable senior officers to make a decision about the safest height of a container stack, said Capt Vaneslow, who was at sea for 16 years before joining the German shipping group Peter Döhle.
The company managed the 868 teu Annabella, which has become a cause celebre in shipping circles after seven 30 ft containers collapsed in to the hold early last year.
The UK’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch made a number of recommendations, including the need for a code of best practise that the industry is now working on.
Statistics on the number of container losses is hard to come by, but one industry estimate puts the figure at around 10,000 boxes a year. Of those, about 25% are lost over the side, according to Jos Koning, senior project manager at the Maritime Research Institute in the Netherlands, which is now working on a study of the dynamics and tolerances of a container stack on a super post-panamax ships which may be piled seven or eight boxes high.
The value of annual losses would probably be around $500m, an amount easily covered by insurance, but the real risk is the consequential damage such as schedule disruption, risk of a toxic leak, and a negative public image.
Addressing Containerisation International’s Global Liner Shipping Conference, Mr Koning said numerous contributory factors had been identified when investigating container loss accidents.
Some were caused by parametric rolling, others by bow slamming. Faulty twistlocks, ship size or design, poor stowage, lack of maintenance, or basic human error could all be blamed at various times.
“There is no one singe reason why cargo is being lost,” Mr Koning said.
Small ships may be more at risk than bigger vessels because of their lower freeboard and greater vulnerability to weather conditions or overweight containers.
But the Dutch institute has also embarked on its TallShip project to examine whether rules developed when containerships were very much smaller are still suitable for the latest generation of boxships with much higher stacks. The conclusions should be ready by June 2009 and may be submitted to the International Maritime Organization.
One concern is the relative inexperience of many ships’ crews and whether they have sufficient seafaring skills in the rare event of hitting exceptionally severe weather.
Pressure on the crew of small ships such as the Annabella is intense these days, with far more hectic sailing schedules then ever before, according to Capt Vanselow. In busy ports like Rotterdam, where feeders may have to call at several different berths, the crew is working virtually round-the-clock.
Furthermore, the captain may not receive details about the next port of call until he is alongside the quay.
But what a ship’s officers should be supplied with is information about the weight of containers being loaded, Capt Vanselow argues.
Procedures could easily be adapted so that each container is weighed as it is lifted onto the ship, and that information immediately conveyed to the captain.
Should an accident occur, a legal nightmare begins because of the highly complex contractual web covering a ship and its cargo.
There is no straightforward way of determining who is responsible, with each and every contract likely to be unique in some way, according to Holman Fenwick & Willan partner Craig Neame.
Contracts “are a complete and utter minefield”, with any parties involved in a loss advised to map out the relationships with each other that could involve the cargo owner, forwarder, shipowner, shipping line, terminal operator P&I club, hull underwriter, cargo insurer and more.
• A device designed by former insurance broker Toby Priestly could help solve the hazards posed by semi-submerged containers.
He has patented an automatic two-way valve that opens either on contact with water, or when under pressure, so that air can escape.
Four of these simple-to-manufacture valves fitted to each container would enable water to flood into a box lost overboard, ensuring it should sink quickly rather than floating just beneath the surface.
The Jason-2 ocean altimetry satellite has now arrived at its launch site in the United States.
The satellite is currently scheduled to be launched on the morning of 15 June 2008 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Jason-2 was transported by road from the Thales Alenia Space plant in Cannes, France, where it was built, to Toulouse, from where it was flown by a Boeing 747 aircraft to Vandenberg, with a refuelling stop in Boston.
Before its long journey to the West Coast of the United States, the satellite underwent various tests. All environmental testing was completed by the end of 2007 at the Thales Alenia Space plant in Cannes. This was followed by the spacecraft qualification review on 11-13 March, successfully reviewing the testing of the satellite and its instruments, including environmental, thermal, acoustic, mechanical and electrical testing. Operational readiness reviews were held at EUMETSAT at the end of March and between the four partners – EUMETSAT, the French Space Agency (CNES), the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – at the beginning of April. The pre-ship review authorising the beginning of transfer activities took place on 14 April.
Jason-2’s Ocean Surface Topography Mission will provide a vital contribution to the monitoring of climate change, ocean circulation and weather. Once in orbit and after it has been calibrated by the partners, the satellite will provide oceanographic products on an operational basis to the large EUMETSAT user community using the European weather satellite organisation’s proven dissemination capabilities. The main instrument onboard Jason-2 will be the Poseidon 3 dual frequency altimeter. The final orbit of the satellite will be 1,336 km above the Earth at a 66º inclination.
Ocean altimetry is important for meteorology, with Nowcasting and short range forecasting on one end of the spectrum and monthly and even seasonal forecasting on the other. The assimilation of satellite altimetry measurements (notably the wave height), have considerably reduced the error in two-hourly forecasts. Upper ocean thermal structures are a key factor in the development of storms that can threaten shipping and offshore industries and thus need to be monitored. It is therefore of outmost importance that the mission not only continues but that the resulting data and products are available on an operational basis for all user groups. The mapping and modeling of the upper ocean plays a central role in enabling predictions on the medium-range (10 days), monthly and seasonal timescales. Jason-2 will provide continuity in the monitoring of climate and rising sea levels carried out by Jason-1 and TOPEX/Poseidon over the last 15 years.
Jason-2 is the continuation of the existing successful cooperation between the United States and Europe. It is a global endeavour with responsibilities for satellite development and launch shared between CNES and NASA. CNES and NOAA will be responsible for satellite operations once Jason-2 has reached orbit. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is managing the mission for NASA. Data processing will be carried out by CNES, EUMETSAT and NOAA, depending on the type of product, with EUMETSAT acting as an interface for near-real-time product distribution to European users.
Nearly 4,000 people are dead and nearly 3,000 are missing and dozens are injured after Cyclone Nargis hit the country of Myanmar. The United Nations (UN) states that the death toll could exceed 10,000, in what it calls an “alarming” report.
“The UN will do whatever it can to provide urgent humanitarian assistance. Because of the lack of communications, we are not quite sure what will be the total extent of damages and casualties. I am very much alarmed by incoming views that casualties have risen to more than 10,000, according to Myanmar’s foreign ministry,” said the Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon.
The death toll has increased rapidly from Sunday’s count of only 351 deaths.
Food and water has become scarce and hundreds of thousands of people are homeless with several towns being completely destroyed. In the city of Yangon (also known as Rangoon), there is no power and much of the drinking water has been contaminated.
“What is clear is that we are dealing with a major emergency situation, and the priority needs now are shelter and clean drinking water,” said United Nations disaster response spokesman, Richard Horsey.
If the death toll continues to climb, then this would be the single most destructive natural disaster aside from the 2004 Tsunami which killed nearly 200,000 people worldwide.
There are 47.8 million people living in Myanmar with over 5 million in Yangon.
College of DuPage meteorology professor Paul Sirvatka shows video images of the tornado that hit Earle, Ark. on Friday during the chase team's stay in the Best Western Inn in Dyersburg overnight. On Saturday morning the team was returning to eastern Arkansas to survey the damage.
The tornado that tore into Earle, Ark. on Friday was captured on video as it descended from churning clouds by a community college a storm-chasing team from Chicago.
"We were north of it and behind it a little bit, watching the clouds," said College of DuPage meteorology professor Paul Sirvatka, whose team stopped overnight in Dyersburg after chasing storms across the Great Plains for the last week. "Then I said to them, there should be a tornado descend in about 20 seconds. About 20 or 30 seconds later, it did."
Sirvatka called 911 and alerted authorities to the tornado formation. There we no sirens, he said.
Sirvatka said debris was in there air and as the team drove north of the city, the destruction was evident. There were no deaths reported in Earle, but more than 100 homes were destroyed.
Two deputies had crawled from beneath their patrol car that had flipped were standing by the vehicle, said Sirvatka.
"They seemed pretty shaken," he said. "But they said they were alright."
Sirvatka said he was bothered by the number of school buses on the road near the tornado.
"There were busloads of kids literally four minutes away from the tornado," he said. "And we saw that again and again."
The college offers the nation's only undergraduate degree in meteorology. The spring storm-chasing trips are open to independent scientists and weather enthusiasts and students, said Sirvatka.
After following the twister that hit Earle until it dissipated before crossing I-55 about 10 miles north of Marion, Ark., the team crossing the Mississippi River at Dyersburg "and try to get in front of the storm."
The chasers caught swirling formations over the Crockett County area, but saw no more tornados on Friday.
The team overnighted at the Best Western in Dyersburg. They were planning to assess the damage in Earle on Saturday and return to Chicago on Sunday.
Sirvatka said his team had noticed the "Storm Ready" posting at the Dyersburg welcome signs.
"Congratulations for being a Storm Ready community," said Sirvatka. "That means Dyersburg takes dangerous weather seriously. You should."
Visitors anywhere in the world can now get a virtual tour of NOAA's National Hurricane Center. With the click of a computer mouse, the online link provides panoramic views of the different rooms in the facility, accompanied by an audio description. You will be able to move around each room in a circle, stop, back up, and zoom in. A text window is available for the hearing-impaired.
Those rooms included in the virtual tour are the National Hurricane Center operations, the Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch (TAFB) operations, the Chief Aerial Reconnaissance Coordination All Hurricanes (CARCAH), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) liaison, Media & Seminar Room, NOAA Miami Regional Library, and the NOAA National Weather Service Miami Forecast Office.
"This is an especially useful tool for students who are learning about tropical cyclones and weather forecasting", said Bill Read, director of NOAA's National Hurricane Center. "It also shows how the different branches of our facility work together for the best possible forecasts."
May 10 - Toronto Marine Historical Society Annual Dinner meeting After a social time and meal at Capt. John's Restaurant aboard Jadran, enjoy an illustrated presentation on the C.P.R. passenger steamer Keewatin which celebrated her 100th anniversary in 2007.
May 17 & 18 - Door County WI Annual Lighthouse Walk Annual tour involves five lighthouse sites from Sturgeon Bay north to Fish Creek, Wisc. Separate boat tours take passengers to or past five lighthouses on outlying islands. Sturgeon Bay, WI. www.dcmm.org
May 23-25 - 40 Mile Point Lighthouse 9th Annual Memorial Day Weekend Open House Sponsored by the 40 Mile Point Lighthouse Society. All buildings open to the public. Includes the 4th Annual Afternoon of Arts & Crafts Show on May 24 and 25, 2008. Free admission and complimentary light refreshments. Located north of Rogers City, MI.
May 25 � Lake St. Clair & River Cruise & BoatNerd Gathering An all day cruise leaving Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit and traveling up to the Blue Water Bridges. Co-sponsored by the Marine Historical Society of Detroit and BoatNerd.com, the trip includes a continental breakfast and deli lunch on board, and a buffet dinner at the historic St. Clair Inn. Tickets are $90.00 per person and reservations are required. Click here for details and a reservation form.
ScienceDaily (Feb. 15, 2008) — Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found that natural variability in the earth's atmosphere could be masking the overall effect of global warming in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Scientists have previously found that surface temperatures around the globe have risen over the last 30 years in accord with global warming. New data, however, shows that heat stored in the North Atlantic Ocean has a more complex pattern than initially expected, suggesting that natural changes in the atmosphere also play a role.
The Liverpool team, in collaboration with the University of Duke in the US, analysed 50 years of North Atlantic temperature records and used computer models to assess how the warming and cooling pattern was controlled. They found that the tropics and mid-latitudes have warmed, while the sub-polar regions have cooled.
Professor Ric Williams, from the University's School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, explains: "We found that changes in the heat stored in the North Atlantic corresponded to changes in natural and cyclical winds above the North Atlantic. This pattern of wind movement is called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which is linked to pressure differences in the atmosphere between Iceland and The Azores.
"The computer model we used to analyse our data helped us to predict how wind and heat exchange with the atmosphere affects the North Atlantic Ocean's heat content over time. We found that the warming over the mid latitudes was due to the wind redistributing heat, while the gain in heat in the tropics and loss in heat at high latitudes was due to an exchange of heat with the atmosphere.
"These local changes in heat storage are typically 10 times larger than any global warming trend. We now need to look at why changes are occurring in wind circulation, as this in itself could be linked to global warming effects."
Although natural variability appears to be masking global warming effects in the ocean, scientists still believe that global warming is occurring, as evident through a wide range of independent signals such as rising surface and atmospheric temperatures, reduced Arctic summer sea ice and the reduced extent of many glaciers showing changes in the environment.
The research is published in Science. This study was jointly supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the US National Science Foundation.
For years, information about Cloud to Ground lightning (CGs) has been available from the National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN). The NLDN network, along with the long range lightning detection network which detect CGs over a portion of the oceaninc regions is maintained by Vaisala. Other smaller companies also maintain lightning networks across the continental United States, and other parts of the globe.
However, we know from various field experiments (and human observations) that Cloud to Ground lightning strikes represent only a small portion of the complete electrical signal within a thunderstorms. In fact, cloud flashes comprise the largest percentage of the lightning spectrum in all storms.
Researches from NASA, academia, and the private sector have often longed for better methods to detect and track these cloud flashes. One such method is to develop a ground based lightning mapper which detects radiation sources emitted within the lightning channel. Networks such as these have been installed at several locations across the country by researchers at New Mexico Tech and Vaisala.
Specifically, the North Alabama Lightning Mapping Array (developed by New Mexico Tech) has been operational across the Tennessee Valley since early 2003 and provides forecasters with real-time total lightning information for forecast and warning operations. This information has proved critical in assessing the storm scale characteristics of developing thunderstorms including updraft trends and echo top growth. The ability to correlate these trends with the onset of severe weather has also proved vital to the warning and decision making process. The downside to these ground based networks are the limited range of detectability and the expenses involved in expanding an existing network or installing a new network.
With the launch of the next generation of GOES satellites beginning with GOES-R around 2014, the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) will provide total lightning information for a large area extending from New Zealand to the west coast of Africa. This will cover a large oceanic region where we now have limited information concerning convective procesess, and also provided greater detail over the severe weather rich region of the continental United States. In addition to the GLM, the GOES-R satellite (and beyond) will contain the Advanced Baseline Imager which will provide high resolution imagery (up to 500 meters in the visible spectrum) at 16 different channels. The temporal resolution will be as great as 30 seconds when the satellite is operation in mesoscale sector format.
For more information on total lightning applications or other collaborative activities ongoing between NASA, UAH, and WFO Huntsville see http://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/sport/
You can select the "Meetings" link for a view of various conferences and individual presentations.
Gusty thunderstorms raked the Chicago area in waves Friday, peppering some locations with pea-size hail while unleashing downpours so heavy in other areas that motorists were forced to the side of the road.
The 1.28 inches measured at O'Hare International Airport broke the record of 1.26 inches set in 1979 and included 0.43 inches that fell in just 7 minutes. An evening cloudburst that hit west suburban Elgin just before 7 p.m. swamped that city with 1.5 inches in only 15 minutes. Other heavy rain totals included 1.32 inches in Glenview, 1.2 inches in Lombard and 1.14 inches in Northbrook.
Powerful south winds topped 40 m.p.h. in and out of Friday's thunderstorms, and evening storm gusts were estimated at 50 m.p.h. in sections of Rockford while Weather Bug wind sensors clocked gusts of 59 m.p.h. at Marshall High School in Chicago and 56 m.p.h. gusts at Lansing Municipal Airport in southern Cook County. Storm winds toppled a 2-foot diameter tree in Kankakee.
Welcome to the Eastern U.S. Weather conference website. For 2008, we have selected the Hyatt Regency Crystal City at Reagan National Airport as the location for our annual conference. You do not have to be a member of EasternUSwx.com to attend.The conference is open to all who have a passion for weather and want to learn more about the subject.
Highlights this year include: Three to Four workshops the day before the conference presentations and a Friday night get together/reception where you will have a chance to meet folks who share similar enthusiasm for a variety of weather-related topics, mingle and browse various weather exhibitions. Please take a moment, read through the site and be sure to register for what promises to be an unforgettable weekend.
IT has featured in countless newspapers, been shown on TV news around the world, attracted thousands of hits on YouTube and now the stricken ferry Riverdance has become the star of a pop video.
Blackpool's latest and most unusual tourist attraction has been picked as the location for the filming of a video by up-and-coming German band Fotos to accompany their single Explosion.
t was chosen as a set by director Uwe Flade, who had seen the wreck on various websites, and filming took place on the beach at Cleveleys yesterday.
Matt Cummins, producer from London-based production company Draw Pictures, said: " The director thought Riverdance would make a good, interesting backdrop.
"The band loved it, so we made some calls to the Blackpool tourist board and they were really helpful."
Mike Chadwick, from Blackpool Tourism, said: "Blackpool has been the setting for several pop videos over the years, including Simply Red and Robbie Williams.
"It just shows as well how famous Riverdance has become – making it into the world of pop."
A spokesman for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency said there was no progress on cutting up Riverdance –which was due to start this week.
(CBS) Rather than blame God when a massive, ferocious tornado hit their tiny town almost a year ago, the people of Greensburg, Kan. turned to their faith to help get them through.
That, perhaps, sums up their can-do spirit and refusal to give in to adversity as well as anything else.
As The Early Show continued its special weeklong series. "Tragedy to Triumph: Greensburg Rising" Thursday, we met a grandmother who suffered an unspeakable personal loss to the twister, but persevered by following her faith. We also heard from the pastors of two local churches about how they picked up the pieces -- literally -- left in the funnel's wide wake.
And it wasn't just people affected by the tornado. Their pets were, too. What became of them? We found out Thursday -- and heard from a man whose cats became his lifeline after his wife was killed by the twister -- the same day she'd finished chemotherapy for breast cancer.
We also saw the M*A*S*H*-like local hospital -- doctors needed somewhere to do their jobs after the funnel felled the building.
Among other highlights, a chat with Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius about Greensburg's remarkable comeback, a progress report on the playground being built all-green, and word on two New York City firefighters so moved by what happened to Greensburg that they went there last Christmas to help the town's 220 kids bring hope and inspiration back to their families and friends.
One of the firefighters is a 9-11 survivor, the other works in a firehouse directly across from Ground Zero.
Almost ever intersection in Greensburg has a star -- 220 in all -- each hand-painted done by one of the 220 kids who live there, and each with a personal message of hope, grieving, inspiration and love.
The firemen belong to the New York Says Thank You Foundation, a relief organization started after 9-11. Each year, volunteers help communities hit by disasters, much as folks across the country helped New York after 9-11.
A Texas family who lost their home in a tornado in 2006 was helped by the New York relief group. That family, in turn, made each of the stars to be painted and brought them to Greensburg -- their way to "Pay It Forward."
The Faithful Keep The Faith -- And It Keeps Them
Pets Rescued -- And To The Rescue
Also, Del Monte Foods gave the people of Greensburg 50,000 pounds of pet food.Firefighters To The Rescue
Greensburg, Kansas Greensburg needs your help with reconstruction. Please send your donations to: Greensburg Rebuilding Fund % Greensburg State Bank, P. O. Box 787 Greensburg, Kansas 67054
Every dollar you donate will go to rebuilding our city. 620.723.2131
ScienceDaily (Mar. 12, 2008) — While every mode of transportation in the U.S. will be affected as the climate changes, potentially the greatest impact on transportation systems will be flooding of roads, railways, transit systems, and airport runways in coastal areas because of rising sea levels and surges brought on by more intense storms, says a new report from the National Research Council. Though the impacts of climate change will vary by region, it is certain they will be widespread and costly in human and economic terms, and will require significant changes in the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of transportation systems.
The U.S. transportation system was designed and built for local weather and climate conditions, predicated on historical temperature and precipitation data. The report finds that climate predictions used by transportation planners and engineers may no longer be reliable, however, in the face of new weather and climate extremes. Infrastructure pushed beyond the range for which it was designed can become stressed and fail, as seen with loss of the U.S. 90 Bridge in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
"The time has come for transportation professionals to acknowledge and confront the challenges posed by climate change, and to incorporate the most current scientific knowledge into the planning of transportation systems," said Henry Schwartz Jr., past president and chairman of Svedrup/Jacobs Civil Inc., and chair of the committee that wrote the report. "It is now possible to project climate changes for large subcontinental regions, such as the Eastern United States, a scale better suited for considering regional and local transportation infrastructure."
The committee identified five climate changes of particular importance to U.S. transportation;
increases in very hot days and heat waves;
increases in Arctic temperatures;
rising sea levels;
increases in intense precipitation events; and
increases in hurricane intensity.
In addition to climate changes, there are a number of contributing factors that will likely lead to vulnerabilities in coastal-area transportation systems. Population is projected to grow in coastal areas, which will boost demand for transportation infrastructure and increase the number of people and businesses potentially in harm's way; erosion and loss of wetlands have removed crucial buffer zones that once protected infrastructure; and an estimated 60,000 miles of coastal highways are already exposed to periodic storm flooding.
"Rising temperatures may trigger weather extremes and surprises, such as more rapid melting of the Arctic sea ice than projected," Schwartz said. "The highways that currently serve as evacuation routes and endure periodic flooding could be compromised with strong hurricanes and more intense precipitation, making some of these routes impassable." Transportation providers will need to focus on evacuation planning and work more closely with weather forecasters and emergency planners.
Infrastructure vulnerabilities will extend beyond coastal areas as the climate continues to change. In the Midwest, for instance, increased intense precipitation could augment the severity of flooding, as occurred in 1993 when farmland, towns, and transportation routes were severely damaged from flooding along 500 miles of the Mississippi and Missouri river systems.
On the other hand, drier conditions are likely to prevail in the watersheds supplying the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes as well as the Upper Midwest river system. Lower water levels would reduce vessel shipping capacity, seriously impairing freight movements in the region, such as occurred during the drought of 1988, which stranded barge traffic on the Mississippi River. And in California, heat waves may increase wildfires that can destroy transportation infrastructure.
Not all climate changes will be negative, however. Marine transportation could benefit from more open seas in the Arctic, creating new and shorter shipping routes and reducing transport time and costs. In cold regions, rising temperatures could reduce the costs of snow and ice control and would make travel conditions safer for passenger vehicles and freight.
Preparing for projected climate changes will be costly. Transportation decision makers continually make short- and long-term investment decisions that affect how the infrastructure will respond to climate change. Response measures range from rehabilitating and retrofitting infrastructure to making major additions to constructing entirely new infrastructure.
The committee noted the need for "a more strategic, risk-based approach to investment decisions that trades off the costs of making the infrastructure more robust against the economic costs of failure." In the future, climate changes in some areas may necessitate permanent alterations. For example, roads, rail lines, and airport runways in low-lying coastal areas may become casualties of sea-level rise, requiring relocations or expensive protective measures, such as sea walls and levees.
The report calls for the federal government to have a strong role in implementing many of its recommendations that require broad-based action or regulation, such as the creation of a clearinghouse for information on transportation and climate change; the establishment of a research program to re-evaluate existing design standards and develop new standards for addressing climate change; creation of an interagency working group on adaptation; changes in federal regulations regarding long-range planning guidelines and infrastructure rehabilitation requirements; and re-evaluation of the National Flood Insurance Program and updating flood insurance rate maps with climate change in mind.
Many of the committee's recommendations need not wait for federal action. Local governments and private infrastructure providers can begin to identify critical infrastructure that is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Professional organizations can single out examples of best practices, and transportation planners and climate scientists can begin collaboration on the development of regional scenarios for likely climate-related changes and the data needed to analyze their impacts. Focusing on the challenges now could help avoid costly transportation investments and disruptions to operations in the future.
This report is a collaborative effort between the Transportation Research Board and the Division on Earth and Life Studies of the National Research Council. The sponsors of this report are the Transportation Research Board, National Cooperative Highway Research Program, U.S. Department of Transportation, Transit Cooperative Research Program, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. A committee roster and two charts follow.
The Moroccan ferry LE RIF, owned by IMTC, was evacuated in the early hours of this morning following a fire in her hold last night, various sources of the Spanish media are reporting.
The reports say that crew and 14 passengers, mostly lorry drivers, were taken off the ferry at the port of Algeciras and there were no injuries.
The ferry was originally Sealink's GALLOWAY PRINCESS, built by Harland & Wolff, Belfast in 1980 and became the STENA GALLOWAY in 1991 with Stena Line. She was sold to IMTC in 2002 and took up the daily schedule on the Algeciras-Tanger route.
The level of damage and cause of the fire is unknown. Equasis reports the vessel as having 10 deficiencies when inspected at Algeciras on the 27th April. Amongst these was a failure in Fire Safety measures.
Some media reports say those on board had to be evacuated with the aid of ladders as the stern doors could not be used due to the location of the fire, which was extinguished by firefighters and the tug SIROCO.
ScienceDaily (Apr. 17, 2008) — The Earth's jet streams, the high-altitude bands of fast winds that strongly influence the paths of storms and other weather systems, are shifting--possibly in response to global warming. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution determined that over a 23-year span from 1979 to 2001 the jet streams in both hemispheres have risen in altitude and shifted toward the poles. The jet stream in the northern hemisphere has also weakened. These changes fit the predictions of global warming models and have implications for the frequency and intensity of future storms, including hurricanes.
Cristina Archer and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology tracked changes in the average position and strength of jet streams using records compiled by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, the National Centers for Environmental Protection, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The data included outputs from weather prediction models, conventional observations from weather balloons and surface instruments, and remote observations from satellites.
Jet streams twist and turn in a wide swath that changes from day to day. The poleward shift in their average location discovered by the researchers is small, about 19 kilometers (12 miles) per decade in the northern hemisphere, but if the trend continues the impact could be significant. "The jet streams are the driving factor for weather in half of the globe," says Archer. "So, as you can imagine, changes in the jets have the potential to affect large populations and major climate systems."
Storm paths in North America are likely to shift northward as a result of the jet stream changes. Hurricanes, whose development tends to be inhibited by jet streams, may become more powerful and more frequent as the jet streams move away from the sub-tropical zones where hurricanes are born.
The observed changes are consistent with numerous other signals of global warming found in previous studies, such as the widening of the tropical belt, the cooling of the stratosphere, and the poleward shift of storm tracks. This is the first study to use observation-based datasets to examine trends in all the jet stream parameters, however.
"At this point we can't say for sure that this is the result of global warming, but I think it is," says Caldeira. "I would bet that the trend in the jet streams' positions will continue. It is something I'd put my money on."
The results are published in the April 18 Geophysical Research Letters.
A new study has been released by the Centre for Occupational and Health Psychology, at Cardiff University, entitled "Fatigue and health in a seafaring population", by Emma J. K. Wadsworth, Paul H. Allen, Rachel L. McNamara and Andrew P. Smith.
Background Occupational fatigue is relatively common within the general population and has been linked to reduced performance, injury and longer term ill-health. Despite growing acknowledgement of this problem in the maritime sector, little research has been conducted into the risk factors, prevalence and consequences of seafarers' fatigue.
Aims To examine the prevalence of fatigue among seafarers, identify potential risk factors and assess possible links with poor performance and ill-health.
Methods Cross-sectional questionnaire survey of seafarers working in the offshore oil support, short-sea and deep-sea shipping industries. A number of tools were used including the fatigue subscale of the profile of fatigue-related symptoms, the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire, the General Health Questionnaire and the SF36 General Health scale.
Results In all, 1855 questionnaires were completed giving an overall response rate of 20%. Fatigue symptoms were associated with a range of occupational and environmental factors, many unique to seafaring. Reporting a greater number of risk factors was associated with greater fatigue [e.g. OR = 2.53 (1.90–3.35) for those with three or four risk factors and OR = 9.54 (6.95–13.09) for those with five or more risk factors]. There was also a strong link between fatigue and poorer cognitive and health outcomes, with fatigue the most important of a number of risk factors, accounting for 10–14% of the variance.
Conclusions Seafarers' fatigue could impact on safety within the industry and may be linked to longer term individual ill-health. It can only be addressed by considering how multiple factors combine to contribute to fatigue.
In a dramatic distress case yesterday, NOAA satellites helped the U.S. Coast Guard respond to a major engine room fire aboard the merchant vessel M/V Sea Venus 1,200 miles east of Cape Cod, Mass.
The 577 foot Panamanian-flagged vessel, with a crew of 23, was en route from Rhode Island to Belgium when the fire broke out. At about 7:30 a.m., NOAA’s satellites detected a distress signal from an emergency position indicating radio beacon (EPIRB) onboard the vessel and relayed the ship’s location to search and rescue personnel at the Coast Guard’s Rescue Coordination Center (RCC) in Norfolk, Va. The Canadian Navy, and two other merchant vessels in the area, also provided critical coordination.
NOAA’s polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites are part of the international Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking System called COSPAS-SARSAT. This system uses a network of satellites to quickly detect and locate distress signals from emergency beacons onboard ships and aircraft and from handheld personal locator beacons.
“Yesterday’s incident was a tragedy averted,” said Chris O’Connors, acting program manager for NOAA SARSAT.
In Canada, personnel based at RCC Halifax contacted the Coast Guard at the RCC in Norfolk that they established voice communication with the Sea Venus' crew, who initially reported the engine room fire had been extinguished with the ship's automatic CO2 systems and no assistance was needed.
But rescue officials received a second distress call from the ship that the fire had re-flashed, the CO2 system had been depleted, and the crew was fighting the blaze with water and hand-held extinguishers. After regaining control and finally extinguishing the fire, fourteen of the 23 crew members were then safely transferred from the Sea Venus to its sister ship, the Olympian Highway. Nine crew members remain onboard to await a tug from Halifax that is scheduled to arrive on Sunday.
“The SARSAT program worked as designed, especially with the international coordination and teamwork between the U.S. and Canada,” O’Connors said.
Now in its 26th year of operation, COSPAS-SARSAT has been credited with more than 22,000 rescues worldwide, including more than 5,800 in the United States and its surrounding waters.
NOAA is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and information service delivery for transportation, and by providing environmental stewardship of our nation's coastal and marine resources. Through the emerging Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), NOAA is working with its federal partners, more than 70 countries and the European Commission to develop a global monitoring network that is as integrated as the planet it observes, predicts and protects.
Prevent Yourself From Making Wrong Decisions During Dangerous Conditions
By JOY CIARCIA-LEVY
April 15, 2008—
You never know where you'll be when severe weather strikes. You could even be in your car. So, when driving gets hazardous, we rely on habit, and tried and true techniques. But how true are they?
Myth #1: You Can Dodge an Oncoming Tornado in Your Car
Let's say you're driving and encounter a tornado. The first reaction of many people is amazement at nature's fury. But then reality sets in, maybe panic. People need to make a split-second decision about what to do. Too often they decide they can outrun the tornado in their car. But automotive expert and former race car driver Lauren Fix says that is pure myth.
"Tornadoes change direction without any notice and you don't know what the road in front of you is gonna look like," Fix said. "There could be debris. You could have a roadway that's blocked. Where are you gonna go?"
"But I've seen this," ABC News' Sam Champion said. "I've seen people in cars out-drive tornadoes."
"You've seen the storm chasers," Fix replied. "These people are professionals and this is not something the average driver should even attempt."
The best advice, Fix said, is "if you see a tornado, find shelter immediately. Your car is a 4,000 pound toy and it can be tossed at anywhere, anytime."
Myth #2: Steer into the Skid
The winter season is filled with myths about snow, ice and freezing temperatures. So, what better place to get to the cold hard truth than about 9,000 feet up in the Colorado Rockies, where places like Steamboat Springs can get 30 feet of snow in a winter season, and it rarely gets above freezing.
That's great for the ski conditions, but for driving ... well, that's something completely different, as Mark Cox of the Bridgestone Winter Driving School knows firsthand.
"If you start to skid on the ice or snow, just realize that it's not the end of the world," he said. "First and foremost, don't panic."
Normally, Cox said, people react by letting go of the steering wheel, yanking on it or jamming on the brakes. "None of these things helps you in correcting a skid," he said.
We're often told to steer into a skid. But is that the right thing to do?
Let's say you turn a corner in the snow or ice, and the car skids. You realize the front end is turning to the right. Many people would believe 'steering into the skid' means turning the car to the right ... big mistake! This is an over-steering situation in which the skid actually happened because the rear wheels skidded to the left. So, if you were to steer into the skid, you'd be steering to the left. But this can get confusing, so Cox tells students, instead of steering into the skid, "Look in the direction that you'd rather have the car be going, and steer that way."
CLICK HERE to see an explanatory diagram from the Bridgestone Winter Driving School.
Myth #3: Always Warm Up Your Car
Another winter driving myth: always warm up the car. But this one simply isn't true. Cox explains that "modern cars deal really well with cold. And you can start it up pretty quickly, and take off right away, within thirty seconds, and it's fine."
In fact, experts say idling the car wastes gas, and that's bad for the environment.
Myth #4: You Can Drive Through a Flooded Roadway
After winter snows, drivers have to deal with April showers. So, if torrential rains flood the roads, don't buy into the myth that you can drive right through, even if you think it's just a puddle. Fix warned, "if it's flooded roadways from a river, a creek, or a lake, you do not want to drive through it because anything that's even a foot deep of water, which is not much at all, can cause your vehicle to float."
Champion's advice to drivers is to "slow down and make a good solid judgment about where the water's coming from, how much water do I think it is before I pursue."
Myth #5: Your Car Provides Protection From Lightning
Those April showers also bring something else ... lightning, and the myth people continue to believe, no matter what they've been told: you're safe in your car if you get struck by lightning because of the rubber in the tires.
Fix said that people believe the rubber in their tires acts as an insulator that will keep them safe from the lightning. But in reality, he said, "if you get struck by lightning, it will travel down to the ground and stop itself. But you will hear a loud bang inside the car, and it's very scary."
The popular British TV show "Top Gear" put this myth to the test with host Richard Hammond as the guinea pig.
"They're going to zap me and this car with 800,000 volts," Hammond said to the cameras during the demonstration. "You might think the tires are going to protect me, by insulating the car from Earth because they're rubber."
Inside the car, he waited and then suddenly, Hammond said, "I'm being hit by lightning!"
He quickly realized, "now it's doing stuff to the car, got error message up on the dashboard."
After the ordeal, Hammond was thankful, yet amazed, to say, "I'm alive."
It wasn't the tires that kept Hammond safe. As this experiment proved, the one thing that will protect you from a lightning strike is your car's metal frame, because the electricity travels around the passenger compartment and down to the ground.
But what happened to the car?
To Hammond's surprise, "it starts, it still works, amazing."
But not everyone is so lucky.
"My poor little car was totaled," said Wendy Allen, a graduate student at the University of Florida, who was struck by lightning as she drove on a rural Mississippi highway a few years ago.
"It was raining very heavily, it was thundering and lightning, and I just saw bright light," she said. "Intense light filled up my car for just a split second. But it was a deafening bang."
Her car antenna was destroyed because that's where the lightning hit, and a tiny scorch mark on the trunk showed where the lightning exited after it fried the car's electrical system. It wasn't the car's rubber tires that protected Allen. It's because she wasn't touching anything metal in the car.
And that, Fix said, is the best advice if you get caught in your car in a thunder storm.
"In the vehicle, there's a lot of plastic and a lot of non-metal components," he said. "Best thing is don't touch anything metal. Keep your hands ... to yourself. Pull over and park in a safe place, if you can. It's absolutely safer to stay in the car than get out of the car."
At the end of the day, Allen admitted, "there is not a doubt in my mind that I'm incredibly lucky to be alive today. My car saved my life."
Release Date: April 24, 2008 Release Number: HQ-08-063
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Exercise Program (NEP) will conduct National Level Exercise 2-08 (NLE 2-08) a combined functional and full scale exercise from May 1 through May 8. NLE 2-08 will merge the objectives of U.S. Northern Command's (NORTHCOM) Ardent Sentry 2008 exercise, FEMA National Continuity Program's (NCP) Eagle Horizon 2008 exercise (formerly known as Forward Challenge), and FEMA Disaster Operation's Hurricane Preparedness Exercise (HPE).
The purpose of NLE 2-08 is to exercise national capabilities to prepare and respond to multiple incidents including both natural disasters and terrorist incidents. The exercise was designed to include scenario elements addressing hurricane preparedness and response, national continuity capabilities, and Defense Support to Civil Authorities coordination in response to weapons of mass destruction terrorist attacks. The exercise venues involve a Category 4 hurricane impacting the Mid Atlantic Coast and the National Capitol Region and multiple terrorist attacks in Washington State.
Also during NLE 2-08, the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP) will test it's response to an accidental chemical agent release at the Umatilla Chemical Depot in Oregon. Canada will also participate through their Staunch Maple Exercise.
The exercise allows Federal officials to implement continuity plans, test communications connectivity, operations and procedures for performing essential government functions from alternate locations, and interagency coordination. Additionally, it serves to demonstrate that essential functions can be effectively conducted during threats and emergencies.
NLE 2-08 is a NEP exercise conducted within the five year exercise schedule. The NEP is the nation's overarching homeland security exercise program, provides the federal government with a national, interagency wide program and a multi-year planning system to focus, coordinate, plan, conduct, execute, evaluate and prioritize national security and homeland security preparedness-related exercise activities.
FEMA coordinates the federal government's role in preparing for, preventing, mitigating the effects of, responding to, and recovering from all domestic disasters, whether natural or man-made, including acts of terror.
Brad Shannon Disaster-response experts still are drawing lessons from December's flooding that killed a half-dozen people in Washington and caused millions of dollars in damage.
The storms that flooded the Chehalis River basin also forced hundreds of families out of homes. Community groups have received a stream of donations to help victims; United Way of Lewis County alone raised more than $1.1 million.
The single-largest donation came from Olympia-based The Community Foundation of South Puget Sound, which gave nearly $155,000 through two relief funds, executive director Norma Schuiteman said. But the needs are larger than the help, three experts told the foundation's annual meeting in Olympia on Wednesday.
"I figure per capita damages were about $500 per person in Mason County," Martin Best, Mason County emergency management manager, told the crowd of about 85 at Indian Summer Golf & Country Club.
Federal aid to individuals totaled a little more than $1 million, Best said, so "right there we're facing close to a $10 million shortfall for individuals affected by this disaster."
"We ended up taking in more than seven tons of clothing. That actually became the second disaster," said Debbie Campbell, director of United Way of Lewis County, whose efforts at storage were hampered by flooded buildings. "I would recommend you learn how to deal with that."
Be ready
Best, Campbell, and Thurston County Emergency Management director Kathy Estes carried a kindred message: Government and aid groups cannot do it all, and individuals need to be ready for the first days of the next bad storm or earthquake.
"How prepared are you? Are you really ready to spend a week without being able to get to the store? And I encourage you to be. Many people locally found that was a reality for them," Estes said. "Each individual really needs to take care of themselves and their families."
Best said residents should have an out-of-state phone number that family members can call in an emergency, so messages can be relayed among relatives when local phone connections break down.
The foundation distributed its aid through two funds — the Community Foundation Relief Fund and the Boistfort Valley Flood Relief Fund.
Campbell said about 400 Lewis County residents still are waiting to get back into their homes. In Thurston County, nearly 30 families still are rebuilding near the river, said Marcee Stiltner of Rochester Organization of Friends Community Services.
This video was taken by my friend Michael Hester in Portsmouth, Virginia during the Tornado that destroyed the neighborhoods in the nearby city of Suffolk
My name is Jay Cafasso and I am a retired hazardous mateials specialist and corporate executive. I am also a NWS advanced storm spotter. Robin Storm seeks to educate the public regarding severe weather as well as scientifically intercept and observe severe storm.
We chase safely to intercept and observe storms and report our observation to the local NWS/WFO so they can keep you better informed.
Remember, safety first always!
The purpose of this site is to educate the public on the topics of 'severe weather" and its effects on the "maritime service". Articles are drawn from a variety of sources both government and private and re posted in partial or full text. Article credit is linked or posted.
The information contained on this site is for educational purposes only and is not intended for any particular person and or circumstance nor for profit.
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What a time for this casualty to happen!
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