In This Issue:

• Catalonia Weather: You’re Being Watched
• Davis Weather Station Owners Show Creative Sides
• Charley Survivors, Tell Us Your Story
• Debris Flows: But Hopefully Not On You
• One More Abused Rain Collector
• You’re Brilliant! Answers to Quiz Questions
• Who You Gonna Call? Davis!

Catalonia Weather: You’re Being Watched

Keeping an eye on the weather at the Real Palace in Barcelona, this Vantage Pro is teaching students in Catalonia to be weather watchers.

We’ve long known that Barcelona, in the autonomous region in northern Spain known as Catalonia, is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Appropriately, its weather is glorious enough to match the area’s stunning architecture and rich culture and history. Basking in the Mediterranean sunshine, with enough rainfall to make everything green, Barcelona is near the top on our list of “Places to Put a Vantage Pro.”

As it turns out, our Barcelona distributor, Darrerra S.A., has peppered the city and Catalonia with VPs, thanks to an innovative educational program sponsored by the Catalonia government. Twelve cabled Vantage Pro Pluses, each with a web cam and WeatherLink software, have been installed in secondary schools in Catalonia, creating the “Meteorological Educational Network of Cataluna.”

The stations report data from all over Catalonia, documenting the many climates and microclimates of the region. The twelve stations are located in schools in Roses, Barruera, Igualada, Tortosa, Sant Feliu de Guixols, Barcelona, Berga, Girona, Vic, Lleida, Tarragona, and Terassa.

We guess these students will soon learn that when you have lovely weather, it’s very smart to keep an eye on it! (Also true when you have awful weather…)

Weather Check Quiz Question 1: Official weather forecasts are reported in “Zulu Time” or Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). If it is 2200 Zulu Time, what time is in Barcelona? How about in your neck of the American woods?

Extra Credit: But where did the name "Zulu" come from?

Davis Weather Station Owners Show Creative Sides

Is there no end to the creativity of our weather station owners? We’ve seen a few variations on the “pins-and-tape” method of making it very difficult for birds to land on the rain collector, but Ken Jackson, of Lyman, SC, took a different approach – by thinking like a bird. We’re not saying he has a bird brain, but he must have excellent sense of avian empathy to come up with this ingenious bird repellant for his Vantage Pro.

Ross Reid, of Branchton, Ontario, Canada, rather wishes his problem was a nice little birdy.

“Before I went to bed last night,” Ross wrote, “my Vantage Pro indicated there had been no wind for almost four hours. I didn't think it could be possible, since I live right at the top of a fairly high hill and the anemometer is almost 20 feet off the ground. There's almost always wind here or at least a breeze. By noon today, with the VP still indicating there'd been no wind since yesterday, I knew there had to be a problem. With my wife's help, I lowered the mast and tried turning the cups by hand. They would turn but, with more resistance than there should have been. I loosened the wind cup set screw and pulled the cups off the shaft. There, in all its supreme ugliness was a huge #$%!*&+^ earwig. I don't know about everywhere but, this area of the country is bothered with earwigs every summer and, they do manage to get into almost everything. However, I can't figure out how it could possibly have gotten through the space between the wind cups’ hub and the housing but, there it was.”

The story has a happy ending (well, maybe not for the earwig), with Ross happily reporting that his VP is “again working perfectly.”

Ray Smith, of Monmouth Beach, NJ, has a web cam site, NJSurfer, that has been operating continuously since 1997 and is the first beach cam in New Jersey. You can see his Vantage Pro data on his very fun website, that features, besides the all important weather, New Jersey lottery results, sports updates (go Devils!), satellite images, jokes, and yes, even a pretty girl (click “Surf Goddess”…). Ray, you sure know how to have fun with a weather web site!

Finally, we wanted to share this photo, sent to us by Keith Jones, of Mobjack, VA. When it’s too cold to venture out to the weather station, Keith counts on Wally the Green Monster who lives aboard the station to take care of things. Wally is the mascot for the Boston Red Sox, and according to Keith, “he thinks it’s time for Spring Training in Florida!”

(Florida you say? Wally, with your history of lilapsophobia, you may be better off in the snow!)

Weather Check Quiz Question 2: Why would a lilapsophobe like Wally want to avoid a lovely state like Florida?

Charley Survivors, Tell Us Your Story

Speaking of Florida, we can’t help but wonder if any of our readers unlucky enough to live in the path of Hurricane Charley would be willing to serve as field reporters and tell us what they experienced.

Floridians are still trying to get on their feet after Charley, a Category 4 storm, ripped through their state on August 14. The end result of Charley’s vicious 145 mph gusts was the loss of at least 17 people in Florida, another four in Jamaica and Cuba, the destruction of half a million homes, millions in business losses, (Charley’s hotel bill alone tops $30 million) and the devastation of Florida’s $9.1 billion citrus industry. Even weather fans have to admit that while some weather drama is a good thing, Charley went way over the top. Florida readers, once things are getting a bit back to normal, we’d love to hear your take on what Charley looked like from a “front row seat.”

If you missed Charley, we see that Frances is zeroing in on the southeastern US. As we write, she is a Category 3 storm and is expected to become a Category 4. If Frances blows by your house, we’d like to hear your story!

Debris Flows: But Hopefully Not On You

Floridians and Cubans aren’t the only ones facing Mother’s recent wrath. The series of typhoons that have battered Asia this month have dumped more water than the land could handle, creating the perfect conditions for mudslides.

At least 25 people died in an early morning mudslide in the Zhejiang Province of China when Typhoon Ranamin, the 14th typhoon to rip through the East China province this year alone, hit just a few days ago. The saturated hillsides of the mountainside community came down suddenly, taking 52 homes, classrooms, and dormitories. Those lost in the mudslides added to the typhoon’s death tool of at least 115. A few days earlier, Typhoon Aere attacked Taiwan with a vengeance, pouring five feet of rain over two days on northern Taiwan. The worst damage caused by this storm happened in a flash – a mudslide in a remote northern village buried the entire community’s 24 homes in just 10 seconds, taking 15 lives.

Few of us will ever forget the images of a devastated Nicaragua after Hurricane Mitch slammed into that country back in 1978. In that catastrophe, at least 1,500 people died in the mudslides that followed. Last December, mudslides triggered by heavy rain in the Philippines in an area stripped of trees by illegal logging killed 94 people, near the area in which 5,000 people died after a typhoon in 1991. We could go on, but we don’t need more convincing that that mudslides, though not “weather” themselves, are a deadly stepchild.

According to the American Red Cross, in the US landslides and “debris flows” in the United States alone cause up to $2 billion in damages and from 25 to 50 deaths annually. Even when homes and lives are not involved, mudslides create risks to public health by disrupting “electric, water, sewer and gas lines. They wash out roads and create health problems when sewage or flood water spills down hillsides, often contaminating drinking water. Power lines and fallen tree limbs can be dangerous and can cause electric shock. Alternate heat sources used improperly can lead to death or illness from fire or carbon monoxide poisoning. Mudslides are also associated with volcanoes and earthquakes and can result in respiratory problems due to breathing of ash, fumes, heat or gases.” (From the Washington State Health Department.)

Debris flows, also known as mudslides, (or lahars, or debris avalanches), are the more destructive, wet cousins of landslides. They occur when a slope is weakened by water, snow, erosion, fire, volcanic or earthquake activity, or the misguided effects of construction or mining. While “dry” landslides can be slow moving, mudslides happen very fast – often without warning. They can be huge – taking down whole hillsides to bury acres.

It is important to know whether you live in area prone to landslide and mudslide hazards. Areas most often at risk are mountains, canyons, and coastal regions. According to the Red Cross, at risk locations also include existing old landslides; the bases of steep slopes; the bases of drainage channels; and developed hillsides where leach-field septic systems are used.

If any of this describes your neighborhood, the Red Cross advises you to be very vigilant during storms, being especially aware that intense, short bursts of rain may be particularly dangerous, especially after longer periods of heavy rainfall and damp weather. It also advises that during such storms, you consider evacuating or, if that is unsafe, moving to a second story; listening for unusual sounds that might indicate moving debris; watching for sudden increase or decrease in the water flow of streams; and being especially vigilant when driving. FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) adds to this list that you learn to recognize landslide warnings such as doors or windows that jam or stick for the first time; new cracks that appear in plaster, tile, brick or foundations; outside walls, walks or stairs that pull away from the building; slow-developing, widening cracks on the ground or paved areas; the breakage of underground utility lines; bulging ground at the base of slopes; water breaking through to the surface in a new location; fences, retaining walls, utility poles or trees that tilt or move; and the ground sloping downward in one specific direction.

There’s a nice flash animation illustrating a mudslide on the Arizona GROW (Geotechnical, Rock and Water) website. Hopefully this is as close as you’ll ever come to seeing mudslide live and in person.

Weather Check Quiz Question 3: What’s the difference between a hurricane and a typhoon?

Extra Credit 2: What is Typhoon Tip famous for?

No Credit Whatsoever: How do you make a mudslide?

One More Abused Rain Collector

Dear Customer Support,

Why doesn't my rain gauge work?

Bob Edelman Lake Sawyer, WA. (He’s the father of Ambient’s Ed Edelman)

(Hey Bob. Three words: Rain. Collector. Heater.)

You're Brilliant! Answers to Quiz Questions

Question 1: Barcelona time is UTC+1 or 11:00 p.m.. If you live in New York City (Eastern Time: 5:00 p.m.; UTC-5 hours); Central Time: 4:00 p.m. (UTC - 6 hours); Mountain Time: 3:00 p.m. (UTC – 7 hours); Pacific Time: 2:00 p.m. (UTC – 8 hours); Alaska Time: 1:00 p.m. (UTC – 9 hours); Hawaii Time: Noon, (UTC – 10 hours).Check out everything you ever wanted to know about time zones at Orange Air Cargo’s website.

Extra Credit: Because Great Britain was world’s maritime bigwig, the prime meridian, (that longitude on which all world times were based) was chosen as the one that runs through the Royal Greenwich Observatory in Greenwich, England, southeast of London. This designation, called Greenwich Mean Time, worked just fine until timepieces and science became advanced enough to realize that the earth does not rotate at a constant rate. A new timescale, UTC replaced GMT. UTC is based on an atomic clock to which adjustments in units of a second (called a leap second) are sometimes made to allow for variations in the solar cycle. The Zulu comes from Naval and civil aviation phonetic alphabet. The world time zones are divided into 24 hours, each with a letter to assigned to it. The “Z” corresponds to the prime meridian. There is also Tango time (US Mountain), Romeo time (US Eastern,) and, of course, Whiskey time (US Hawaii).

Question 2: You probably won’t find many in Kansas, either. Lilapsophobia is a fear of tornadoes and hurricanes. Charley probably inducted a few more into the ranks of lilapsophobia.

Question 3: Location: hurricane and typhoon are different names for the same creature. We call it a hurricane if it’s in the eastern North Pacific and North Atlantic Ocean, but it’s a typhoon in the western North Pacific Ocean, and a cyclone in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific.

Extra Credit: The lowest barometric pressure ever measured, 870 millibars (about 25.70 inches), was taken in the eye of the gigantic western Pacific Typhoon Tip. But for all his braggadocio, he was a rather gentle giant, brushing by Japan harmlessly in 1979.

No Credit Whatsoever: To make a mudslide, mix one ounce each of Kahlua, vodka, and Bailey’s with two scoops of vanilla or coffee ice cream; add crushed chocolate cookies. Do not drink during a typhoon. For teetotalers, how about a pie made from chocolate cookie crumbs, coffee ice cream, and chocolate sauce? You can find the recipe on FoodNetwork.com !

Who You Gonna Call?
Each month after the E-News goes out, we receive messages back. Sometimes the messages are in response to a story we shared; other times they are a request for help of some kind. We read all the emails, answer those we can, and pass the rest on to the appropriate departments.

We think you should know, though, that if you're interested in the fastest possible reply, news@davisnet.com may not be the best place to send your message. Questions about how things work should be addressed to tech support directly at support@davisnet.com. For general information about the products, such as how much cable comes with a station contact sales@davisnet.com. To request a catalog, you’ll find links for catalog requests on our web site at http://www.davisnet.com/contact/catalog.asp

Please continue to send your comments, weather URLs, and story suggestions to news@davisnet.com. We look forward to getting your comments and any responses you have to the E-News. Member participation is what keeps the E-News alive and kicking.

Well, that’s it for this edition. You’ll be hearing from us again next month!


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