In This Issue:

• Vantage Pro is This Landlord’s Right Hand Man
• All Alone in Fahrenheitville
• Hurricane Survivor Tales
• Time for Typos
• Storms in the Salt
• Philatelist-Meteorologists: Your Day Has Come!
• All Hail the Power of Hail
• You’re Brilliant! Answers to Quiz Questions
• Who You Gonna Call? Davis!

Vantage Pro is This Landlord’s Right Hand Man

So you think this is a boring photo? Well, Bruce Boylan doesn’t think so! That scar in the road is where he buried the temperature sensor that reports to his Vantage Pro (the transmitter is in the white box) and helps him save the Heath-Newark-Licking County Port Authority plenty of money in snow removal costs.

In 1996, when the Air Force base in Heath, OH, was closed, two cities and a county formed the Heath-Newark-Licking County Port Authority, a 355-acre commercial park. Bruce Boylan is the Senior Manager of Facilities (read “landlord”), and a good chunk of his job is dealing with Ohio’s weather and its ongoing efforts to prevent or hinder the tenants’ ability to do business.

One particularly Ohioan task is keeping the roads and parking areas free of snow and ice. That seems simple enough — you contract with a snow removal company. But snow removal is best done after work hours, when the lots and roads are empty. At a cost of $1,000 for a small snowfall, the trick is to get the snow removal contractors there after the snowfall, but before tenants start returning to work at 5:00 a.m. How do you know when to make the call? Being the very smart kind of Senior Manager of Facilities, Bruce knew what he needed to get a jump on the weather: he got himself a Vantage Pro.

“The Vantage Pro is great. I can’t tell you how much time and money it has saved us,” Bruce said. Besides forecasting and recording historical data, Bruce added a special custom feature to his system to help with the business of timely snow removal — measuring the temperature of the roadway.

“When we got our Vantage Pro, we added two remote sensor systems and buried the sensors a few inches into the pavement, then sealed over them with caulking. Now we can track the surface temperatures and, more importantly, the historical graphs showing what the pavement temperatures have done and enabling us to forecast what they will be doing over the succeeding hours. We can do it at any time of day and from any computer with internet access. During the first year of operations, we were able to avoid calling in crews to handle freezing rains that had no effect because the pavement temperatures were too high. Conversely we were able to accurately predict when any precipitation was going to stick and result in an icy surface that required attention.

“Avoiding one call out results in saving $1,000 in labor plus $400 in salt. Every time. The first time we used the Vantage Pro, it paid for itself. Aside from the initial capital, operating costs for the system are. . .well, we bought two new batteries this year, so let’s call it $20.” (Bruce’s boss must be dancing a jig on those snow-free surfaces!)

As if that wasn’t enough, the Vantage Pro has helped avoid a repeat of a flood that happened a few years ago.

“We are extremely attentive to the rain gauge,” says Bruce, “And we added our weather cam because we wanted to have visual confirmation of the weather factors particularly during the winter. It has worked out so well that we are experimenting with other high tech ways of providing a web cam view of construction and development projects on site where internet connectivity (and electricity) are not readily available. And our tenants (working in a building with no windows) and our contractors are able to check the site regularly for current conditions.”

There was a moment that the Vantage Pro gave Bruce a bit of a scare.

“During one of the hurricane rains of September we noticed the instruments were showing us a rainfall of over 200” in one night. Turns out a leaf stem had dropped directly into the rain gauge.”

But our Vantage Pro promptly redeemed itself: “I’ll add one, tiny little bit then I’ll shut up,” said Bruce, with a laugh that had just a touch of superiority complex in it. “As a cross check of readings and conditions, we can monitor weather conditions from an automated station at the local airport. We were looking at them a few days after the 200” rainfall event. They have a much more sophisticated system, very expensive, I’d imagine, although it doesn’t do as much or as well as ours. On September 16 at noon, it seems their weather station reported a temperature of 78.1ºF ,10 MPH winds, and light snow. Ours didn’t catch that.”

(We like nothing better than a sunny day at the lake in Heath, a gentle breeze, the kids building sand castles and snow men...)

You can check out the Heath Vantage Pro readings on their web site.

Weather Check Quiz Question 1: How does salt deice roadways?

All Alone in Fahrenheitville

Fred Engel, we owe you a big, sloppy apology!

Way back in January of 2002, Fred sent us new year’s greetings and this interesting comment on the world: “I just read in the Smithsonian Magazine, that only Mali, Nigeria and the United States are still users of the Fahrenheit system and that NASA has had endless difficulties with world-wide space station suppliers using the metric system, whereas the USA is still in the Imperial Mode.”

We filed Fred’s message carefully away, where it was very safe (so safe in fact, it was practically invisible) until we had a chance to do some research. But Fred’s message surfaced recently, indignant at having been forgotten, and spurred us to try to find Fred’s original source and any others on the use of the two systems worldwide.

We were unable to find the original Smithsonian article. (But, oh my, what a fun site to wander! The Smithsonian Magazine, unlike many publications, leaves its archived articles up for a good long time, has them clearly organized, and with gorgeous photos, too. We found a delightful article about a bed and breakfast in Sweden made of ice! No heat! At the Icehotel, 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle, you sleep on slabs of ice, swim in an icy pool, read by glowing ice-light from 10-watt halogen bulbs embedded in the walls. Artistic decor is [how’d you know?] ice sculpture by international artists. There’s even a bar and chapel, so whatever cures your shivering, your needs will be met.)

But back on task, our groveling to Fred, we also could not corroborate (but certainly don’t question the Smithsonian!) his facts. One source, the FreeDictionary online encyclopedia says it is just the U.S. and Jamaica that still use Fahrenheit over Celsius. Another said it’s just us and Burma.

Clearly, Fred’s point is well taken: the U.S., which prides itself for its decidedly non-imperial history, is pretty lonely in its stubborn devotion to Mr. Fahrenheit’s scale, and all the other Imperial Mode systems as well. But, thank goodness, scientists the world over (even those in the United States, Jamaica, Burma, Mali, and Nigeria) speak the same language, and you can be sure it’s metric, with maybe a bit of Fahrenheit.

Thanks, Fred. And Happy New Year to you, too.

Hurricane Survivor Tales

Last issue we asked for stories from America’s weather front line: Florida. Amid the clean up, restoring power, putting up/taking down plywood window coverings, and watching the satellite pictures for next ominous swirl out in the Atlantic, a few kind Floridians took the time to let us know how they fared.

John J. Lopinot, of Royal Palm Beach, told us that his Vantage Pro has “performed flawlessly” since he bought it two years ago. But it faced the real test in early September — and did us proud! “

"This past September, I prepared my home as Hurricane Frances approached West Palm Beach, moving patio furniture and other objects in my yard to a safe place. I glanced at my Vantage Pro on my roof and decided to leave it there to record the weather during the hurricane. On September 5, 2004, Frances roared through our area. It knocked down every tree in my yard. Fortunately, my family and home and my Vantage Pro came through unscathed. I used your mounting system to attach it to the gable of my roof. It recorded the wind speed at 84 mph. Thanks for making such a great product.”

(You’re welcome, John!)

Jim Sebring, who lives in Lake Wales, had the eyes of both Charley and Frances pass within 10 miles of his home. During Charley, a local fire department just three miles west of his house reported a high wind speed of 105 mph. Unfortunately, by that time, his extra long anemometer mounting pole was bent at a 40º angle.

The storms wreaked other havoc in his yard, including removal of some 240 feet of wood fence (they found some of it in the neighbor’s pool), and in exchange left him a golf-ball-sized rock in the rain gutter. A 20-foot water oak came down, as did the most of the limbs and leaves of all the trees on his property.

Weather fan Jim wanted the full hurricane experience, and here’s what he had to report:

“During the height of Charley, I stepped out on the screened porch in the lee of the winds to experience what was happening. While there I heard what everyone calls a freight train sound not once but five different times. This seems to account for some of the tree damage about our community: for the most part the trees that fell did so in a southeast to northwest direction. Some were felled in different directions such as north to south or west to east. Also some tree tops were just twisted off and lying along the trunk.”

Then Frances came through. Although she didn’t do any damage to his home, Jim reported that she did drop 8.1 inches of rain. And, thanks to Jim’s "been-there-done-that-foresight" in lowering of his anemometer by ten feet, he recorded winds of 58 mph during Frances’ visit.

Richie Semmelmeier, reporting from Boynton Beach, tried to be upbeat after Frances, claiming that everyone was okay, despite the lack of power, telephone, cell phone services; limited water supply, and wastewater being pumped into the street for four days straight. There were long lines at the gas stations, stores and schools were closed, and most traffic signals were out. There was a curfew during darkness. Richie must have felt he’d been living right when he found his home without serious damage, while almost every home near his was missing shingles, fences, screened enclosures, trees, signs -- whatever could be torn loose, was.

“We got pounded by the southern eyewall for some six straight hours during Saturday night. It was just relentless. Hurricane force winds for six straight hours recorded by my personal weather station!” Richie told us. His station recorded a high wind speed of 89 mph, lowest pressure of 28.85”, and total rainfall of 9.56”.

Then Jeanne stopped by to see if Frances had left anything to blow away. This time Richie’s house had some shingle damage, but again it came out better than most of his neighbors.

“Again, we are the lucky ones,” he wrote. “We got pounded by the southern eyewall for a few hours. It was just relentless again. The only good thing this time was that the storm moved much faster.”

His weather station’s data on Jeanne included a high wind speed of 87 mph, low pressure of 28.93”, and total rainfall of 4.69”.

We also heard from Paul Marcuzzo, the Flotilla Commander for the Coast Guard Auxiliary on Charlotte Harbor.

“A couple of weeks ago we had a visitor use our little piece of paradise as ground zero for a Cat IV hurricane. Our radio room and towers were destroyed. Gusts were reported up to 200 mph! Miraculously, when our 60-foot towers blew down, most of our Vantage Pro instruments survived. Our anemometer and wind direction look fine. But our rain catcher bucket and flipper are gone as well as the little solar panel to recharge the battery.”

The roof left the premises, taking with it all of their records and manuals. Now Paul and his crew were faced with getting it all put back together, and we were ready to help where we could. We got them got all the replacement parts they needed and they were able to get the station ready for in time to monitor Jeanne from Paul's home. (It will be another few months before they have a new radio room and towers replaced.)

"Jeanne gave us tropical force winds with a high of 50 mph per our weather station," Paul wrote. "We'd also like to express our thanks for Davis replacing our parts for us!"

Big thanks to our weather survivor/reporters, John, Jim, Richie and Paul – and of course, their heroic little weather stations!

Weather Check Quiz Question 2: This question is on NOAA’s Hurricane FAQ page: Which hurricanes have been at Category Five status the longest?

Time for Typos

After reading last months’ quiz question, Charles Van Ameyden, of Ludington, MI, asks the following question: “When did they move New York from the Eastern time zone to the Atlantic time zone?” Well, Charles, didn’t you see the Times story describing how New Yorkers were so distracted by the GOP convention, that they didn’t even notice when a couple of trash tugs and a ferry got tangled and pulled the entire Big Apple a few miles to the East? No? Neither did we. We know New York is in the Eastern time zone, honest, we do. But Charles gets the E-News Sharp Eye prize anyway!

But while first place goes to Charles, G. David Thayer takes second. We haven’t heard from David in some time, and we’d like to claim that we had to put in that typo just to get him to drop us one of his fascinating notes. And it worked!

After pointing out just where New York is, David went on to enlighten us about why Greenwich got to be Z or Zulu Time. “I don't know where the other letters came from,” says David, “but the Z from which Zulu Time gets its name stands for Zero Meridian Time (Greenwich is at zero degrees longitude). In NWS data it is indicated by a Z, as in 1100 Z.”

And then he moved on the subject of typhoons. “A Pacific hurricane becomes a typhoon if it crosses the International Date Line (going west, of course). I believe there was once such a hurricane that zigzagged, becoming a typhoon, then back to a hurricane, and finally ended up a typhoon.”

(You’ve got a good memory, David. It was Hurricane/Typhoon John, which lasted for 21 days back in August of 1994.)

“And Typhoon Tip would not have been gentle had he hit anyone head on while at full strength. He was what I call a Category 6: sustained winds over 180 mph and a storm surge of more than 20 feet. Only two Category 6 hurricanes have ever hit the US: the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 that devastated the Florida Keys, and Camille that hit the Pass Christian area of Mississippi in 1969 (and whose storm surge carried ocean-going vessels as far as five miles inland). Gilbert was also a Cat 6 storm (back in the 1980s I believe).

“Category 6 is common enough with typhoons that they have a special name for such storms: ‘super typhoons.’ There was one such critter just last week.”

Nice to hear from you, David. (Were you seeking more weather when you moved to Sarasota, FL?)

Storms in the Salt

James Rice, our friend from the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA), sent us this lovely photo of the SCTA’s weather station at this year’s SpeedWeek at the Bonneville Salt Flats. It got quite a workout – the rainbow was a small treat after one of five storms that week battered the cars and drivers.

Weather Check Quiz Question 3: Why are rainbows usually seen in the east in the middle latitudes?

Philatelist-Meteorologists: Your Day Has Come!

Weather enthusiasts should be delighted with the USPS this month! They’ve just released the most beautiful stamps we’ve seen yet: the 37-cent Cloudscapes. The pane includes 15 different, but all stunning, photographs of cloud formations.

Jan Null, of the Golden Gate Weather Services is stocking up on them. Jan stopped by our Hayward facility to pick up another temperature sensor to use in his work on preventing hyperthermia deaths of infants and children left in vehicles. He has become an expert on the sad subject and told us that there have already been 34 such deaths this year.

But on a happier note, when we got round to the new stamps, Jan gushed, “They are beautiful, and their descriptions are even accurate, which make them really great.”

Meanwhile, David Rivinius shared some of his own lovely cloud photos with us, and we, being the generous type, are sharing one with you!

Thanks, David.

Weather Check Quiz Question 4: NOAA has issued a press release stating that it expects this winter’s “outlook to reflect a blend of impacts associated with weak-to-moderate El Niño.” If you were sipping a mug of tea with Jan Null, as you waited for our persistent, gray morning overcast to burn off, and , in an effort to impress him, you said, “Well, Jan, looks like El Niño will be coming to California this year.” Would you? (Impress him, that is!)

All Hail the Power of Hail

Oklahoma storm chaser Val Castor, who was featured in our May, 2002 issue, has had some up-close-and-personal encounters with weather. One of the more memorable of those encounters was when a playful Mother Nature tossed some not-so-soft softballs at his storm chase vehicle. The hail stones smashed the side and rear windows, punched a nice hole in the windshield, and pockmarked his hood. Among the photos he sent of that adventure was one of a sad little Weather Monitor II console, dusted with shards of broken glass.

That storm happened in Texas (surprise, surprise!), near Woodson, back in 2003, but hail happens wherever thunderstorms happen. Folks in Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma get hail-hammered frequently, but China, Russia, India, and northern Italy get their share too. (Click here for more on this particular adventure of Val’s.)

While hail is a chunk of ice, it is not just frozen raindrops (that's sleet). Hail starts out as a water droplet or snow flake that gets picked up by the strong updraft of a thunderstorm. The droplet flies upward, where it is very cold, and begins to freeze. Next thing it knows, it’s falling again, this time on a cold downdraft, and it might even have a chance to thaw out a bit. But if the storm is a big one, another updraft will grab it and hurl it up to have another layer of ice frozen on to it. The once teensy droplet can grow and grow after repeated cycles, until it is just too heavy to be lifted up again. Then it falls to the ground. Although hail is ice, it usually occurs in the summer – because that’s when thunderstorms usually occur.

How big can a hailstone get? The ones that pummeled Val were in the “grapefruit” size range of four inches in diameter. Most hailstones are from “pea” (1/4 inch), to “golf ball” (1 3/4 inch) size. But anything over “dime/penny” (3/4 inch) and the NWS calls the thunderstorm “severe.” (Other ways to earn the “severe’ title: boast damaging wind gusts (58 mph or more) or bring along some tornadoes.)

According the NOAA, the biggest hail stone ever recorded landed in Coffeeville, Kansas, in 1970. It weighed almost two pounds and had a circumference of 17.5 inches (over 5.6 inches in diameter).

Hail does plenty of damage (just ask Val’s insurance company). Annually, the United States gets socked with $1 billion in crop and property damage. The good news is that hail, at least in the United States, is not often deadly. According to USA Today, the last known U.S. hail fatality was an infant killed in Fort Collins, Colorado, in August 1979.

Val will be the first to tell you that where you don’t want to be is in a severe thunderstorm with hail. Storm chasers like Val will also tell you that it is not a good idea to look at a storm in the distance and decide whether or not hail will be an issue. Although hail storms often have a “typical” appearance, many of them don’t fit the mold. Meteorologists use weather radar to see inside a thunderstorm – hail appears differently than raindrops.

If you live in hail territory, you probably know enough to listen to carefully to the NWS. And you probably also have a running tab at the auto body shop!

Weather Check Quiz Question 5: If you see large hail, you better head for the cellar, as that often means a tornado is next. Right, Dorothy?

Extra Credit: How can a big hail storm make an already dangerous flash flooding situation even worse?

You're Brilliant! Answers to Quiz Questions

Question 1: Sodium chloride in solution with water forms brine that has a much lower freezing point than water. Water freezes at 32ºF, while salt water brine freezes at 20ºF. (Dry salt is not brine. If the snow is very dry, salt won’t do much unless is it premixed into a brine.) The brine actually does more than just melt the ice: it “bores” down to the surface, where it spreads and prevents the ice or snow from bonding to the pavement. Salt isn’t the only deicer. Calcium chloride, magnesium chloride, potassium chloride, and urea are also used. But salt has one big advantage: it’s cheap. Deicers can cause some problems including corrosion of vehicles, and can affect the environment by runoff into streams and lakes.

Question 2: Floridians would assume that the grand prize winner in this category of Dubious Hurricane Greatness (and in all others, for that matter) would have to be some Atlantic hurricane. But no, the West Pacific has the top five: Nancy, 1961, 5.5 days; Karen, 1962, 4.25 days; Sally, 1954, 4 days; Dinah, 1959, 3.75 days; and Nina, 1953, 3.5 days. The top billed Atlantic storm, Allen, 1980, stayed there just 3 days, followed by Dog (Hurricane Dog?), 2.5 days. And Mitch was just 1.75 days! .

Question 3: To see a rainbow, you have to be standing with the sun to your back while rain is falling in another part of the sky. Most rainstorms in the middle latitudes occur in the afternoon, when the sun is shining from the west. Most storms travel from west to east, so you see the rainbow after the storm. (In the tropics, storms travel from east to west, so rainbows are usually seen before the storm.)

Question 4: ‘Fraid not. On Jan’s web site he has a list of El Niño myths, and El Niño’s visit to California is Myth Number 1. Jan writes, “El Niño never comes to California. It is a phenomenon that periodically occurs in the warm equatorial waters of the Pacific Ocean. Normally the trade winds along the equator push the warmest waters into the western portions of the Pacific. But about every three to five years the trades slacken, or sometimes even reverse direction, and warmer-than-normal water accumulates along the equator in the central and eastern Pacific. This warming is called El Niño, referring to the 'Christ Child' because its effects are greatest in the winter and often disrupt fishing along the South American coast around Christmas. (The converse case, La Niña, is when the waters of the eastern Pacific are cooler than normal.)” Before visiting Jan, you better check out the other myths.

Question 5 : Maybe. Large hail does mean large updrafts and downdrafts, which are an indicator of tornadic activity. But not always. Tornados do sometimes follow storms with large hail, but they also occur when nary a bit of hail has hit the ground. This, according to the NOAA.

Extra Credit: It’s not because it melts and adds to the flow – it’s because it floats and blocks drainage paths. ChaseDay, a storm chaser web site, has a cool photo of three or four inches of hail flow floating on top of a couple of feet of flood runoff.

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


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