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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! September 24, 2005 Lovely RitaBy Greyhawk Rita making landfall, as seen from the Lake Charles Doppler radar, 0742UTC 24 September 2005. Although it's fun to watch CNN and other networks reporting on the winds and rain, it's also interesting to look at real data from the National Weather Service and see what really happened as the storm moved ashore. Lake Charles, Louisiana and Beaumont, Texas are obviously being pounded at this point - the eyewall, where the most intense winds occur, is passing directly over them. The highest wind reported from either location was a gust of 91 knots (105 mph) at Beaumont. The strongest sustained winds reported were 56 knots (64 mph). The sustained winds define the hurricane category - these would indicate Rita was a tropical storm, near hurricane strength. Lake Charles' wind reports stopped a few hours before landfall - up until that time they were experiencing 46 knots sustained winds, with gusts of 64 (53 and 74 mph). It's not unreasonable to assume that their peak winds were ultimately higher than Beaumont's - they were in a more favorable sector of the storm for that, so Rita may have been a cat 1 hurricane at that point. There were category 1 hurricane winds reported at a coastal observing site, labeled SRST2 on the map below. There the sustained winds were measured at 71 knots, with gusts of 86. (82 and 99 mph).  We'll keep looking for reliable reports on the actual intensity of Hurricane Rita and update if found. In the meantime the coded observations are in the extended section, with peak winds highlighted. Lake Charles, La: KLCH 241253Z AUTO A2902 RMK AO2 SLP836 PWINO FZRANO TSNO PNO $ Beaumont, Tx: KBPT 241053Z AUTO 24038G51KT M1/4SM -RA OVC016 23/ RMK AO2 PK WND 28059/0957 SLPNO P0005 T0233 TSNO $ Station SRST2 - Sabine, TX: 09 24 8:00 am WSW 47 58 - - - - 28.97 Posted by Greyhawk / September 24, 2005 9:36 PM | Permalink 3 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
Greyhawk,
Maybe useful...105KT at landfall.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/dis/al182005.discus.027.shtml?
"REPORTS FROM AIR FORCE RESERVE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT AND
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE WSR-88D RADARS INDICATE THAT RITA MADE
LANDFALL JUST EAST OF SABINE PASS ABOUT 0730Z WITH MAXIMUM WINDS OF
NEAR 105 KT"
One of the problems of computer modeling is that nature has "built in corrections" that are not yet completely understood, just like the stock market. Leads to a lot of over reporting of ups and downs. Highly accurate global weather info hasn't been around long enough for anyone to be able to reliably predict 100/200 year storms.
In an almost inappropriately unrelated note, I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who's had that old Beatles song stuck in his head since this second hurricane swung around.
Excellent point, Soldier's dad! The crucial bit of info on that aircraft recon is that those winds were measured at about 8,400 ft aloft. What matters with a hurricane are the winds at the surface - those winds define the hurricane category.
The final actual vortex message is below, with key points highlighted. A "decoder" is available here:
http://www.hurricanehunters.com/vortex.htm
And Adam, I had to resist the temptation to add "Meter Maid" to the title of this post.
000
URNT12 KNHC 240809
VORTEX DATA MESSAGE
A. 24/07:55:40Z
B. 29 deg 46 min N
093 deg 48 min W
C. 700 mb 2588 m
D. NA kt
E. deg nm
F. 324 deg 067 kt
G. 223 deg 010 nm
H. EXTRAP 941 mb
I. 13 C/ 3051 m
J. 19 C/ 3056 m
K. 14 C/ NA
L. OPEN SOUTH
M. C18
N. 12345/ 7
O. 0.02 / 1 nm
P. AF309 2518A RITA OB 24
MAX FL WIND 111 KT E QUAD 07:20:30 Z
MAX FL TEMP 20 C, 223 / 10NM
SLP EXTRAP FROM 700 MB
CENTER 3 MILES INLAND, INTENSE EYEWALL CONVECTION ON RADAR