Jimmy

My blog has moved to blog.jimmybh.com. This current version of my blog will be going away very soon. Please plan accordingly.

Thanks.

-jimmy

Two days, a dozen articles read and a bunch of thought later and I still can’t figure out what’s so disturbing to me about Facebook’s new “we’re in your interwebz liking all your pages” announcement. To some degree I think it’s CEO Mark Z. I just don’t like the guy (and no, I’m not ruling out jealousy: the man is less than 5 years older than me and is worth $4 billion, who wouldn’t be jealous? *grin*) and my dislike was cemented when he needlessly (in my mind) called Facebook heaven, in so many words. Sacrilege aside, my personal experience with Facebook has been far from heavenly. Not all my friends are there and “everything” is far from how I want it to be.

But would I really care if, say, the founder of Foursquare called that service heavenly? I don’t really think I would, so I think my annoyance at that comment is just a mask of something deeper. But what?

Truth be told, I’ve never loved Facebook (I don’t love the design, the regular privacy changes make my head hurt, it seems to have database errors that only I seem to notice (unless items randomly disappearing from my stream is supposed to happen, which I think it might, in which case add “wonky relevancy algorithm” to my list of dislikes) and, well, aside from one or two people I’ve never really found it useful for keeping in touch with my social circle).

But should the dislike of a CEO and a few personal gripes really make me so disturbed by a company? It really shouldn’t, but here I am, disturbed by Facebook and their recent “we’re gonna be the center of the internet and we have half a billion reasons why” argument…nay, declaration.

I’ve been trying to think how I would react if Google or Twitter had suddenly announced a big internet-wide social graph hosted by them (actually, with the new “annotations” feature of their API, Twitter might be backdooring into this type of thing, as well). I think it depends on the implementation, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I would find it kinda disturbing. Most especially from Google, since they’ve never been able to get social right, and from Twitter I would just write it off as grandiose thinking, but FB has had massive success with social and is not exactly too small for this type of “grandiose” thinking. But I think maybe that’s what concerns me more than anything: the idea of any company being big enough to even be in the position of considering worming themselves into the center of the web like a parasite. Google is that big and every now and then I get a little concerned about how much power they have over the web, but they’ve got this whole “don’t be evil” thing which I honestly believe they try to follow. The minute I get the sense that Google has “turned” will be the minute that I stop defending Google.

Microsoft and Apple are also huge and have a ton of power, and I distrust both of them. My distrust of Apple has happened more recently and I still love their products more than I like Microsoft products (although I really can’t say enough good things about Windows 7, which I’ve been using, abusing and running 24/7 for 2 months and has crashed on me a grand total of once. Good on Microsoft for this one), but I deeply distrust Microsoft’s tries at social and I get too scared to think about the dozens of millions of people who Apple has an ironclad grip on the lives of (including myself with my MacBook and iPod Touch) and if either of them casually said “hey, we’re gonna become the center of the web because we have 500 million users and, well, we want to” I would have a freaking cow. And so would everyone else. That’s why I’m surprised at the relatively tepid response to the news from f8 from most of the tech web. My favorite line is, “well, like it or not, it’s gonna happen ’cause Mark Z has 500 million people on his side…so, why fight it?”.

Um, maybe because it’s evil?

Something has been nagging at me for years. Political lobbying is something we all know about and all hear about in terms of why a bill died in committee or why it’s so crazy so-and-so is now running such-and-such a federal agency because they used to work on K Street or what have you. And I don’t disagree that corporate political lobbying is out-of-control and needs to be checked, but the way we go about doing it, with so-called tougher “ethical standards” leaves out an important part of the lobbying process in my mind.

It’s that pesky word “ethical”.

I understand that nobody is perfect and everyone is bound to have lapses in judgment. But if you were staring at a disfigured child, say from some chemical spill or something, and a congressional bill that would regulate the types of chemical plants that hurt the child and make sure it NEVER, EVER happens again, what would you do? Rip up the bill, or sign it?

I pity anyone who even pauses in answering that question (unless it was to reread the question to make sure you didn’t answer incorrectly, than it’s OK). It’s a no-brainer, you rip up the bill, crumple it up and burn it. Then you take care of the child.

My point is thus: everyone (most everyone) has a pretty good moral compass and, as far as I can tell, is fairly ethical in such an extreme situation (though I’ve never actually met anyone standing in a field with a sick child and a congressional bill, that’d be weird). It doesn’t seem to me that most people that I know (normal “all-American folks”) really need to pause for very long when asked about how someone should be treated, but take that person to Washington, show ‘em a few suitcases of money, and suddenly they don’t give a shit about hard-working people having their houses foreclosed on them, polar bears drowning in ice-free waters, banks and credit cards charging fees loan sharks envy and generally doing a bum job of “representing the people”. Even the “good” ones are corrupted within days. President Obama passed new ethics rules his first week in office, only to break them two days later (it was important to have a former lobbyist running one the federal agencies he was just lobbying, apparently). That’s our knight in shining armor for all things good and noble [/sarcasm].

We make all this noise about how evil and bad corporate lobbyists are, but they’re just part of the political system just as an irate voter at a congressperson’s town-hall meeting is part of the political system. Both are lobbying for things. The corporate lobbyists use large sums of money (very, very large sums of money) and the voter lobbyist uses anger and emotion. I know the example of a voter is much smaller scale, but it’s the same principle and it serves to make a point: most of the time, the congressperson is going to nod, agree with the voter, spout some sound-bites vaguely related to the issue, maybe even say something about “looking into it” and then forget about the whole thing within days if not hours. One “lobbyist” taken care of. That lobbyist (voter) spent a lot on the lobbying effort (lot’s of emotion/anger and energy) and got zero return.

But suddenly it’s a bit of money being spent by a lobbyist (from K Street now, wearing a nice suit) and the congressperson is all ears and all understanding.

That, fair readers, is not ethical, moral or anything else.

It’s not really the lobbyists fault (although I don’t think former lobbyists should EVER be allowed into government until they’ve been through some sort of rehab and perhaps some spiritual confessions), it’s really not the corporations faults for HIRING lobbyists. It’s the fucking congresspeople who take the money AND THEN DO WHAT K STREET WANTS. They take our letters and phone-calls and e-mails and send us nice form letters that say “fuck you” in flowery language. They take our money, and unless we’ve given a fair amount, they don’t call us up and discuss the issues with us, most times we get an automated e-mail that says “thanks” (I’m not saying every $30 donation should be personally thanked, but my point is: we give money, lots of money, and we give feedback, lots of feedback, and it’s politely ignored).

I vote we disallow anyone in high-level government positions from using the words “ethical” or “moral” until they actually, you know, start acting that way.

Maybe this isn’t new, but it just seems to me that in the whole national conversation about “ethics reform” (WTF does that even mean? Ethics are ethics, you can’t “reform” how ethical someone is, only throw them out on their ass if they’re not. End of story.) and “lobbying reform” focuses only on the lobbyists and not at all on the zero will-powered folks who are being lobbied. Isn’t that why we elect these “leaders”? To, you know, lead? At this point it seems to me that we’ve got a whole lot of not leaders running our government, but followers, who see a shiny penny hang from a string and happily follow it without noticing that: A) they’re prancing in the opposite direction from the majority of average Americans, and: B) they’re following a corporate lobbyist who’s paid millions of dollars a year to hold that shiny penny on a string.

What’s in the water in Washington that seems to remove all true ethics and morality from our elected leaders?

Lobbying is only a problem as long as our elected leaders have no willpower. The day that they “just say no” is the day America’s will begin trusting our government again.

I have a little purple sticky-note half stuck to the shelf above my laptop on my desk that says “Europe has it right: disconnect track from train service”. I often leave myself such notes in the middle of the night (in those few minutes between when I put my computer to sleep and when I put myself to sleep), sometimes reminding myself to do things (I’ve had a pink one up for the past week that says “laundry” that I can remove now, actually), sometimes ideas for screenplays (two lime green notes have been up for the whole semester with ideas for my current project) and, sometimes (as in this case) ideas to turn into blog posts.

Not as many make it into blog posts as should.

But in this case, I was reading, for about the millionth time, some of the Wikipedia pages for several European high speed rail companies and remembered something I was going to blog months (or even years?) ago (and maybe I did, but I don’t recall doing, and can’t find any place where I did, so): the idea of treating rail infrastructure/tracks as completely different from the trains that run on them. The European Union is just getting into doing this by making their member states’ various HSR agencies and companies separate the ownership of tracks and the service of running trains into two different agencies/companies (using France as an example, this means that the ownership of tracks has been transferred from SNCF (the agency that owns the TGV) to an new agency, the RFF, but both agencies are still owned by the French government), the benefit of this setup is that it will allow new companies to directly compete on the level of train SERVICE, without having to build their own (entirely useless and wasteful) track systems. So now (or, in a couple years, since the new rules don’t actually go into effect in the EU for another year or two), for example, a new company could form, buy some train-sets and give the TGV service in France a “run for its money”, using the same tracks as TGV, but not having to be at the mercy of TGV/SNCF (which perviously owned the tracks in what anybody could see was a conflict of interest) in terms of scheduling and track use fees, since all that is now (or will be) handled by a separate company whose sole purpose of existence is to manage, maintain and otherwise oversee the tracks, but nothing more.

And I think that’s what we need in America: federally owned and maintained tracks and signaling infrastructure and private companies using that track for freight, cargo and passenger services. (To be fair Amtrak already uses tracks it doesn’t own across most of the country, so this is not an entirely new concept.) Aside from a toll road here and there (my state’s local toll road, the 80/90 Indiana Toll Road was recently sold into privatization on a 99-year lease) and possibly a few airports (I haven’t done an exhaustive study of them all, but Google searches on several big ones revels them to be owned by the local city government) all transit infrastructure in the USA aside from rail infrastructure is government owned. Given my belief that transit infrastructure should be publicly owned (how else are we to get to stores to spend and keep the economy moving? Or to play, work, travel, etc.? It’d be laughable if ever time I stepped into the street outside my home I had to pay someone) I find it strange that a huge component in America’s shipping and even passenger travel system is privately owned. I think that, just like in Europe, if the tracks were owned by a third party (I’m voting federal or at least state governments, but there might be an argument for it being a private company…anyone want to try to persuade me?) I think that would foster better competition in the rail freight industry, take some strain off of rail freight companies (if all they have to focus on is their own trains rather than also having to maintain trackage it would make those businesses more streamlined and probably more efficient at their core business: quickly getting freight to the end users, which down the line is you and me, the consumer) and possibly, by extension, remove some strain from the Interstate highway system (if we can use federal dollars to improve the rail system rather than waiting for rail freight companies to do so it could conceivably speed up the rail system and remove the need for as many trucks on the roads) and, lastly, as much as the freight companies are told they have to give Amtrak the right of way (by way of a federal law) it sure seems to me (after sitting on more sidings than I care to remember on the one and only Amtrak trip I’ve ever been on [I was really excited to take the train before that, now I'm still excited to take a REAL train, but after comparing experiences on Amtrak and the Eurostar in Europe I've come to the conclusion that Amtrak does not represent real train travel in any way more than the tracks the trains run on]) that a third party managing the traffic would make Amtrak’s trips smoother.

This is all to say nothing of the need for high speed rail in America. But I think that the same model could be applied to higher-speed trackage, and, in fact, that federal ownership of the nation’s tracks could make upgrading those tracks to support higher-speed travel much easier than it is now (just look at the fastest trackage in America: it’s owned by Amtrak in the Northeast).

Today the BBC is reporting that the US recession is over as the economy grew 0.9% from July-September (CNN is reporting this as well, but not as the headline story that the BBC is making it). That’s awesome news (not lost on investors, who’re making today one of the larger gain days in the last few months) and much reason to celebrate. After all, this has been the worst recession in decades (technically the National Bureau of Economic Research hasn’t declared it over yet, so maybe I should say “is the worst”).

But what’s getting my goat on this fine October day is the reaction from our president:

President Obama said while “welcome news”, the US was still a “long way” from recovering from the “deepest downturn since the Great Depression”.

A “long way” huh?

Now before anyone flames me and points out that both articles cite numerous economists direly telling us not to get excited, I’d like to point a few things out:
1. I’m not an idiot.
2. are these the same economists who predicted a stock retreat in September, or who all summer kept telling us that the recent stock gains were not gonna continue? ‘Cause the Dow has jumped 25% since early July and gained about 200 points in September, so I’m not so inclined to believe these folks.

Now I know that the economy is still in the crapper, 1 in 10 people are without jobs and all that stuff. But isn’t the president supposed to lead and also inspire? Especially this president? Remember all the “hope” and “yes we can” when he was running? Or was that just “yes we can” get him elected? Telling us that we’re still a “long way” from seeing anything good in the economy while a whole pound of good news is staring us in the face seems somewhat less than hopeful or inspiring or “yes we can”ish. I wanna hear him calling out the companies that we’ve begun buying stuff from again to start hiring us again. Investors have been showing since July that if it were up to them we’d be out of this recession and they’ve been pumping money into the markets. And sometime in the last quarter consumers caught the same bug and increased spending:

Consumer spending rose at a 3.4% rate, the biggest increase in nearly three years. Spending by consumers accounts for more than two-thirds of the nation’s economic activity.

Wow, 2/3 of the economy is increasing at a rate above what was expected. Sounds good to me.

Let me repeat those two things:
1. investors are pumping money into companies.
2. consumers are pumping money into companies.

Just because the government is gonna stop pumping money into companies, it doesn’t mean those other two things are gonna stop.

Oh, and you know that housing market that crashed?

Other reports in recent weeks have shown that housing sales, home prices and new home construction rose during the quarter.
…
Hampel said that the gains in housing go far beyond the impact of the tax credit, however.

It’s time to stop being depressed about the economy. Things are turning around. Sure there’s still stuff that’s not good, 9.8% unemployment is totally not awesome, but stocks are rising, consumer spending is rising, the housing market is recovering, and the numbers look good enough that we can probably say it’s not all entirely the government stimulus money talking. Wouldn’t it be more “hopeful” if our president said some of those things, instead of telling us how awful things still are? Wouldn’t it be more “yes we can”ish if he got out there and reminded companies that people are buying things again and it’s their responsibility to start hiring again?

I think it would.

I don’t normally blog on other countries’ politics because I don’t want to seem like an arrogant American, but as a consumer of media and a user of the Internet, not to mention a computer scientist and a hopeful future content creator (and, well, because I’m bored right now), I gotta jump in to the debate raging across the pond in England in regards to music piracy and how to deal with it. The recent deal announced that will target illegal file-sharer’s Internet connections and reduce them “to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional” (after two warning letters) is such a stunning invasion of privacy and overreaction that I don’t even know where to begin.

First, let me say that I don’t pretend to think that just because it’s possible to very easily share media files over the Internet without compensating the original creators that it should be categorically allowed. As someone who hopes to create the type of content (films, in this case) that is daily massively shared around the Internet I see the problem. I do. For every torrent of Bones or whatever downloaded, that’s a few cents those awesome artists aren’t going to see. So, first point can be summarized thusly: just because you can download it for free is no reason to be a dick to the artists.

Secondly, show me the post offices where they open our mail and make sure we’re not sending illegal stuff or making illegal plans via letters and I’ll support this plan to track Internet users’ traffic and “shape” it. Show me the highways where there are roadblocks (outside of Iraq and the Mexican border, I mean) to check for people smuggling illegal goods and I’ll support this plan to cut off users who’ve paid for broadband service. Show me the phone company that taps our phones to make sure we’re not using the wires to do illegal things and I’ll support this plan to tap every broadband connection in England to listen for file-sharing traffic.

ISPs have one job: deliver us an Internet connection, and in return we pay them a ton of money. It’s a good agreement for both parties (usually) and in return both parties keep out of each others way for the most part. That means the ISP doesn’t tap my wires looking for “bad” traffic and I PAY THEM EVERY MONTH. If I want to game 24/7, that’s between me and Blizzard. If I want to download from iTunes all the time, that’s between me and Apple. If I want to illegally file-share, THAT’S BETWEEN ME AND THE RECORD COMPANIES. I can’t think what the ISPs involved in this deal are thinking. It’s got to be massively expensive (though less than opening all our mail, checking all our car trunks or listening to all our phone conversations), and for what in return? A big bag of money from the record companies? I suppose they’re hoping this will noticeably lessen the traffic on their networks, but the users are paying for that bandwidth. Plus, if they really succeed in cutting down the Internet connections of 7 MILLION PEOPLE, isn’t that gonna kinda make that 11% of the population really, really, really, really PISSED? I don’t know what over a tenth of the entire population of a country being pissed because they just lost their broadband looks like, but I can’t imagine it’d be pretty. So, second point in summary: just because it’s technically possible to track and attack people’s Internet connections is no reason to be a dick about it.

I don’t really have a lot of ideas for fixing the problem, but one thing I do know: the Internet has changed the game and nothing (NO THING) is going to stop people from sharing. What we need to do is redefine the model from one of paying for the actual content to one of paying for what’s around the content. This is already what happens on TV. TV viewers don’t pay money when watching on the TV, but they do pay (in time) for what’s AROUND the content: the 17 minutes every hour of advertising. The small field of web comics also embraces this model: the actual comic is free, but fans pay by looking at ads on the website, buying books, t-shirts, hoodies, coffee mugs, posters, etc. and by making the occasional paypal donation. Only a handful of web cartoonists are able to live full-time off this model, but it’s an idea. The equally small field of web series’ is also actively creating a new way of making content free of charge. Most people who’re looking more than 5 or 10 years into the future understand that the current model is going to be dead and rotting very soon. The RIAA isn’t scaring enough people (and never will be able to) to reverse the ongoing evolution and (as Shakira puts it) “democratization” of the music and movie industries. I don’t pretend to have the answer, but I think at the most basic level it will involve the content creators getting closer to their fans and in a lot of cases the “middleman’s” role being drastically reduced if not completely eliminated. This is obviously what scares the RIAA and the like, but it’s really exciting to me as a fan (I’ve had personal interactions with some of my favorite cartoonists via Twitter) and as a hopefully future content creator. I think because this new model is going to be decentralized, it will take everyone each adding a piece to the puzzle to the BUILD the new systems of income for content creators. The world is full of awesome creative people. How long until someone who has not a lick of musical talent but who’s awesome at finding business models on the Internet teams up with a few budding musicians or bands and becomes their personal manager and helps them create a gainful income via a model that bittorrent won’t undermine?

It’s 3:30am and I’m getting really tired. I’m gonna leave this post here and apologize for all the typos (for which I know there are many, as I’ve fixed quite a few dozen already). I also apologize if this doesn’t make as much sense and/or flow as well as I think it does, because I’m pretty tired and might be reading it completely wrong.

‘k enough apologizing. Not gonna apologize for calling a ton of pirates dicks or for calling most British ISPs dicks. Both well deserved titles.

Cheers,
-j

Frequent readers may recall I posted a video last spring of the little character I’d modeled in 3D for my 3D Animation II: Character Design class. This semester we students are using the same characters we made last semester and building little environments for them. First up to learn about is lighting, and we’ve spent the last 3.5 weeks on that so far. We’re trying out all kinds of different types of lighting on our characters, and I’ve rendered still frames of some of my favorite lighting environments so far. Read on…

First up is: setting/late evening sun

(Click on any image for larger version.)

And the obvious follow-up to that is: dusk

I can’t remember what we were actually doing here and I’d done something wonky with the texture/color of the floor of the room (made it bright blue and reflective) so it came out differently from what the prof was expecting/wanting/demoing, but I liked the result, which I’m calling: ice palace

Again I can’t for the life of me remember what my prof called this, but at least it came out the way he was expecting this time. For lack of any better name, I’m calling it beaming fire

I’ve really enjoyed looking at lighting so far (despite what I’ve said to my family on the occurrence of not being able to simply take a walk at night anymore without noticing all the different colors of lights) and hope you, fair reader, have enjoyed seeing some of my favorite lighting scenes as well. We’re also working on building whole environments for our characters (I’m modeling a circus tent) and I’ll try to post pictures of that sometime, as well.

Cheers for now,
-j

First, a couple of disclaimers:

1. this is purely fun intellectual speculation. I highly respect the tireless work the amazing folks down at the National Hurricane Center do all year long.

2. The NHC has had this to say about the topic of this post discussion:

SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS ASSOCIATED WITH A BROAD AREA OF LOW PRESSURE LOCATED ABOUT 850 MILES EAST OF THE WINDWARD ISLANDS HAVE DECREASED DURING THE LAST FEW HOURS. HOWEVER…ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS STILL APPEAR FAVORABLE FOR DEVELOPMENT…AND THIS SYSTEM HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BECOME A TROPICAL DEPRESSION DURING THE NEXT DAY OR SO AS IT MOVES WEST-NORTHWESTWARD AT AROUND 15 MPH. THERE IS A HIGH CHANCE…GREATER THAN 50 PERCENT…OF TROPICAL CYCLONE FORMATION IN THIS AREA DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS. INTERESTS IN THE LESSER ANTILLES SHOULD MONITOR THE PROGRESS OF THIS SYSTEM.

So it’s certainly on the Center’s “radar,” so to speak.

However, my informal analysis of the system, dubbed Invest 94L, tells a different story: one of a tropical depression about to become a tropical storm (Erika, soon?).

Let’s back up for a second and look at the definition of a “tropical cyclone” according to the NHC’s “Glossary of NHC Terms” a tropical cyclone is defined as follows: “A warm-core non-frontal synoptic-scale cyclone, originating over tropical or subtropical waters, with organized deep convection and a closed surface wind circulation about a well-defined center.”

If we ignore the rather technical terminology in the first half of the sentence and just focus on the second half we can emerge with our two important pieces of information: organized thunderstorms and a closed surface circulation.

Here’s an infrared satellite image of “Invest 94L” about an hour ago:

We can see what the NHC means about minimal thunderstorm activity, but it is looking more organized than a few hours ago (here’s a loop, but it’s live so if it’s much past 1am Monday August 31 you won’t get much out of it) and since the official Center definition of tropical cyclone doesn’t declare how much “deep convection” (read: strong thunderstorms) have to be present we’ll just say that this qualifies.

Now for “closed circulation,” which is usually much harder to find and less likely to be present in “tropical disturbances” (read: areas of thunderstorms in the tropics) we can turn to NASA’s QuikSCAT satellite for data about ocean surface winds to begin our investigation of this issue: the satellite passes over any one spot about every 11 hours and so the data is sometimes dated (it also takes a few hours to post online) but there’s some data covering Invest 94L from 21:13 UTC yesterday (roughly 7.5 hours ago). (Again, that map will be updated with new data sometime on Monday so it might not be what I was looking at. Sorry.)

The QuikSCAT data tells us an interesting story: not only does Invest 94L have a closed circulation, winds at 5:13pm EDT were generally weak, but there was one measurement of 30 knot winds, just 4 knots below the definition for tropical storm force winds (a buoy located near that measurement reported winds of 23 knots and a gust of 29 knots at 2am last night). And as I noted earlier, this system was looking much less organized several hours ago, when that measurement was taken. By now the storm not only has “organized deep convection” but also has a “closed surface wind circulation” with winds of very near tropical storm force. I feel certain that what’s out in the Atlantic, only 48-72 hours away from affecting the easternmost islands of the Caribbean according to some forecasting models (click on “Storm 94″ and again, the data is live, results may vary, blah, blah, blah), is already Tropical Depression Six and should be defined as such. I understand that the thunderstorms are not all packed close around the center of the storm, but the system’s organization over the past few hours has really improved to where it looks just like any other tropical depression: somewhat disorganized, but with the potential (under a favorable atmospheric environment, which the NHC says it has) to turn into a better organized storm, and probably Tropical Storm Erika.

I hope the NHC will do one of the following at the 5am advisory time:
1. start advisories on Tropical Depression Six, or
2. send an Air Force or NOAA Hurricane Hunter airplane to take a closer look at the system;

I should head to bed, fall semester classes start tomorrow….

Cheers,
-jimmy

Well, it’s been a big day in the Atlantic, and it doesn’t look like it will end any time soon.

You may have read my history of Tropical Depression Two (now Tropical Storm Ana) yesterday morning, and you may have further seen my tweet about the formation of Tropical Storm Bill (only 6 hours after being declared a Tropical Depression) on Saturday evening.

Coming on the heels of a completely quiet June, July and first half of August, this is all pretty intense. But it’s not over yet. Not only are both Ana and Bill heading toward land (Ana has prompted a Tropical Storm Watch for parts of the Leeward Islands and Bill is currently forecast to pass near the same area as a hurricane next week), but now there’s a new system brewing much closer to home: the Gulf of Mexico, just off the coast of Tampa, FL.

Dubbed Invest 91L*, here’s the latest from the Hurricane Center on this new system:

SATELLITE AND RADAR DATA INDICATE THAT A SMALL AREA OF LOW PRESSURE IN THE EASTERN GULF OF MEXICO…CENTERED ABOUT 80 MILES SOUTHWEST OF TAMPA…IS BECOMING BETTER ORGANIZED AND MAY BE DEVELOPING A CLOSED SURFACE CIRCULATION. ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS ARE FAVORABLE FOR ADDITIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND THERE IS A HIGH CHANCE…GREATER THAN 50 PERCENT…OF THIS SYSTEM BECOMING A TROPICAL CYCLONE SOMETIME TODAY.

[*systems that aren't quite organized enough to be called Tropical Depressions but that bare watching are called invests and numbered from 90-99 (when they hit 99 they just go back to 90).]

(live IR satellite image of invest 91L)

Invest 91L is already looking like it’s spinning on radar imagery out of Tampa (and on infrared satellite, for that matter) and the radar presentation is overall fairly impressive (see image below). As the NHC noted above, the one thing holding this system back from being declared T.D. 4 (or even T.S. Claudette?) is the surface circulation. Not closed, not a storm. Closed, and the NHC declares it. It’s that simple.

(Click to visit UCAR for latest images.)

If the system does get a closed circulation (which I’m 90% sure it will by 5am EDT, when the NHC issues advisories and would likely start advisories on this system if deemed necessary) it doesn’t have a lot of time to mature before it makes landfall. The NHC has it moving to the NNW at 15mph, and most models bring it inland near the Florida/Alabama state line within the day.

Given the presentation of the system on radar and satellite my money is on T.S. Claudette by the end of Sunday, but we’ll see.

Gotta say, this weekend isn’t boring in the Atlantic!

Stay tuned and stay safe.

Cheers,
-j

OK, maybe it’s not THAT crazy, but I find it amusing, mostly how the National Hurricane Center is handling the whole thing.

Some history:

It’s August and we’ve yet to see a Tropical Storm in the Atlantic. Last year at this time T.S. Fay (the 6th storm of the season) was just forming. All in all, it’s been REALLY BORING in the Atlantic, and I’m guessing (being a weather/hurricane nut just as I’m assuming most of the NHC forecasters are) that the good folks down at the National Hurricane Center might be getting a wee bit bored?

So when T.D. 2 formed last Tuesday morning I imagine it was a bit of a celebration in the office (sometime I need to take a post and explain the fine balance between concerned for the safety of those in harms way and oh finally something is gonna happen I was about to explode this is so exciting I love storms even though I’m not a sadist that I think most severe weather nuts experience).

Almost 24 hours later (on Wednesday morning) the storm was looking so good that I tweeted my belief that at Advisory 4 (24 hours after the initial advisory) the system would become Tropical Storm Ana (with winds of at least 40mph).

Alas, all was not well with our newest Tropical Depression. By Wednesday evening, barely 36 hours after it formed, the NHC was reporting that it was basically dead but they kept issuing advisories on the system. This turn of events prompted me to create a twitvid on Thursday morning noting my amusement that the NHC was still issuing advisories on a system that they themselves were saying was basically dead.

Finally on Thursday evening, 24 hours after the storm died according to the NHC, they stopped advisories.

Later that evening I logged on and looked at satellite images of the storm only to be amused to see that T.D. 2 was playing cat-and-mouse with the NHC by visibly increasing in organization after the Center had stopped officially issuing advisories on the storm. By Friday afternoon it seemed obvious to me that T.D. 2 was determined to makes fools of the NHC forecasters who had (rightfully) pulled the plug on the storm the day before.

It took until 12:30am tonight for the NHC to decide that T.D. 2 was back and re-start advisories on the system. To the Center’s credit, according to the forecast discussion they waited for data from no less than four different sources (satellite images, surface wind data recorded via satellite, buoy data and data from a special NOAA jet equipped to fly over hurricanes and tropical weather) before reinstating advisories on the storm. Fool me once, shame on you, feel me twice, shame on the overeager NHC forecasters, right?

The current forecast calls for the storm to become a Tropical Storm on Saturday evening and to pass over or near the northeastern Caribbean islands on Monday.

I know weather forecasting is supposed to be all about science and hard facts, but I’ve seen enough crazy weather (including tropical storms that just screw with the forecasters trying to keep one step ahead of them) that I’m a firm believer in individual storms sometimes just having a mind of their own, and if the story of T.D. 2 so far tells me anything, it’s that this system might just be one of those storms.

Buckle up, it’s gonna be a fun ride.

-j