On preparedness, and reaction
Aug. 29th, 2011 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumSo, NYC was spared the wrath of Cat 1, or 2, hurricane.
Thanks be to God.
Now come the Monday Morning Quaterbacks to say Bloomberg overreacted to the possibility. Nonsense. I overprepared. The odds of a sewage backflow was minor. Damming the downstairs toilet, in case it did happen, and my books were washed in raw sludge, not really needed; but if it had happened, and I'd not done it... I'd have been guilty of not doing something simple.
It would have been far worse if Bloomberg had done the equivalent, and he had larger problems. On Thus. the prediction was for a strong Cat 1, or even a weak Cat 2 hurricane coming straight into the city.
At high tide, during a new moon. Hundreds of thousands of people live in the areas which such a storm would wipe out. People who, as with those in Katrina, don't own cars. People who need help to evacuate. People, such as those in nursing homes would take about 48 hours to get to safety.
He has to pull the trigger then, or gamble that the predictions were wrong. That's a hell of a risk to take with people's lives.
So no, he didn't over-react. He didn't even over-prepare. We got lucky.
Looking around the net the story isn't about how much damage there actually was, but more the tone is about how it's "minor" compared to what was prepared for. Stories about how it will only take a couple of days to get air-travel back to normal. Things about how unimpressed New Yorkers were with the storm. Wrap-ups that close with, quips about how the surfers are in love with the waves, or Atlantic City has already re-opened the casinos. Which is infuriating. We were lucky. It wasn't as bad as it could have been. What about the time is as bad as it could be?
As a grace note, it looks like the ability to monitor weather in general is going to take a big hit. Budget cuts affect satellites.
That could be bad.
"When you turn on your TV, or pick up your smart phone, the three- to seven-day weather outlook you see is coming from NOAA," she said, adding that the endangered polar-orbiting satellites are responsible for 93 percent of the data that is fed into her agency's forecast models and then provided to the likes of The Weather Channel and AccuWeather.
So what would happen if this information wasn't included? NOAA recently got a sneak peak by looking at data from the February 2011 blizzard that struck the East Coast.
Researchers reran the same forecast model for "Snowmageddon" without the polar satellite data and compared the result with the forecasts made during the epic snowstorm. In the test with blinded polar satellites, the storm's predicted track was off by tens of miles and snowfall figures fell short by nearly half, according to Sullivan."
The link goes to a presentation on the study.
Thanks be to God.
Now come the Monday Morning Quaterbacks to say Bloomberg overreacted to the possibility. Nonsense. I overprepared. The odds of a sewage backflow was minor. Damming the downstairs toilet, in case it did happen, and my books were washed in raw sludge, not really needed; but if it had happened, and I'd not done it... I'd have been guilty of not doing something simple.
It would have been far worse if Bloomberg had done the equivalent, and he had larger problems. On Thus. the prediction was for a strong Cat 1, or even a weak Cat 2 hurricane coming straight into the city.
At high tide, during a new moon. Hundreds of thousands of people live in the areas which such a storm would wipe out. People who, as with those in Katrina, don't own cars. People who need help to evacuate. People, such as those in nursing homes would take about 48 hours to get to safety.
He has to pull the trigger then, or gamble that the predictions were wrong. That's a hell of a risk to take with people's lives.
So no, he didn't over-react. He didn't even over-prepare. We got lucky.
Looking around the net the story isn't about how much damage there actually was, but more the tone is about how it's "minor" compared to what was prepared for. Stories about how it will only take a couple of days to get air-travel back to normal. Things about how unimpressed New Yorkers were with the storm. Wrap-ups that close with, quips about how the surfers are in love with the waves, or Atlantic City has already re-opened the casinos. Which is infuriating. We were lucky. It wasn't as bad as it could have been. What about the time is as bad as it could be?
As a grace note, it looks like the ability to monitor weather in general is going to take a big hit. Budget cuts affect satellites.
That could be bad.
"When you turn on your TV, or pick up your smart phone, the three- to seven-day weather outlook you see is coming from NOAA," she said, adding that the endangered polar-orbiting satellites are responsible for 93 percent of the data that is fed into her agency's forecast models and then provided to the likes of The Weather Channel and AccuWeather.
So what would happen if this information wasn't included? NOAA recently got a sneak peak by looking at data from the February 2011 blizzard that struck the East Coast.
Researchers reran the same forecast model for "Snowmageddon" without the polar satellite data and compared the result with the forecasts made during the epic snowstorm. In the test with blinded polar satellites, the storm's predicted track was off by tens of miles and snowfall figures fell short by nearly half, according to Sullivan."
The link goes to a presentation on the study.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-29 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 04:40 pm (UTC)Better to hold office in earthquake country, where everyone knows there is risk, but not the day or the hour.