Weather

There are 44 posts filed in Weather (this is page 5 of 5).

Hurricane Irene

Hurricane Irene spent the day moving lazily up North Carolina’s Outer Banks, rolling ashore this morning and exiting into Virginia this evening. By landfall the storm had weakened to Category 1 status: just barely a hurricane. Even so, the storm cut a wide swath across the state, though reports of damage (other than power outages) seemed few. Last I heard, four people had died from flooding accidents.

I watched the TV coverage of the storm all day and then wondered why I bothered. There were only so many things one can say about Irene and after the first hour I’d heard them all. I did enjoy watching the live video uplinks from the beaches all up and down the East Coast, courtesy of my Free to Air (FTA) satellite dish. As soon as the studio would cut away from the soggy reporters getting blown around on the beach, those reporters would whip out their Blackberries.
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Quake “foreshock” quote censored by Washington Post?

This Washington Post story ran yesterday with this quote from USGS Director Marcia McNutt (according to the International Business Times):

Minutes after the quake, the director of the USGS, Marcia McNutt — who watched objects falling from the shelves in her office — cautioned that the shaking might not be over.

“What the concern is, of course, is that this is a foreshock. If it’s a foreshock, then the worst is yet to come,” McNutt told The Washington Post.

Curiously, today the Post’s version of the article has removed that quote and substituted a much more mundane one:

Minutes after the quake, Marcia McNutt, USGS director — who watched objects falling from the shelves in her office — concerned about aftershocks, cautioned that the shaking might not be over.

“When something like this happens, remember what to do in the case of a seismic event. Duck, get under something sturdy like a desk or a doorway, get away from falling glass. Make sure that you are not in the way of falling objects like pictures, bookshelves, books, anything that’s not firmly connected the wall.”

The Post has provided no explanation for the change in the quote.

via Virginia Earthquake 2011: USGS Warns it May be a Foreshock – International Business Times.

Weather Plotting Added

I added some graphs from my weather station as I continue to put things together.

You can see a nice graphical summary of the day’s observations by clicking here.

Weatherboy

I spent yesterday installing a mast I’d been meaning to mount for a TV antenna and my new weather station instruments. They now sit six feet above my house, gathering each’s respective data.

I also got the info into my server, Maestro, using Wx200d. I went with Wx200d because it is the least-neglected project of the three I mentioned earlier, having last been updated at the end of 2002. Then again, I suppose its possible for an application to actually be FINISHED some day. Maybe Wx200d is there. One thing I need to fix is its reliance on PostGRES. No MySQL support yet.

There is also a nice looking GTK client for Wx200d called GWK. No *ed Hat packages available for it yet, though I can remedy that.

As I was working on mounting the equipment yesterday, I saw the weather station predicting clouds for today. Since it was sunny at the time, I thought the thing needed calibrating. When I woke up today, though, it was overcast – just like the weather station indicated. Kewl.