Category: Miscellaneous babble

Man, I’m just having no joy with any of my electronic stuff this weekend. Now there’s no audio coming out of the DVD player. I was watching Casablanca, turned it off to head out to a Christmas party, and when I start it back up after coming back, no audio!
Argh.

There’s a late-comer to the party named Olga which probably won’t be sticking around for very long.

OLGA CURRENTLY HAS GOOD OUTFLOW OVER THE NORTHWESTERN SEMICIRCLE…WITH OUTFLOW AND CONVECTION IN THE SOUTHEASTERN SEMICIRCLE SUPPRESSED BY THE UPPER-LEVEL LOW. IN THE SHORT-TERM…THIS PATTERN IS FAVORABLE FOR SOME STRENGTHENING…AND THE INTENSITY FORECAST CALLS FOR MODEST INTENSIFICATION BEFORE THE CENTER REACHES THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC ON TUESDAY. AFTER THAT…THE LARGE-SCALE MODELS FORECAST STRONG WESTERLY VERTICAL WIND SHEAR TO DEVELOP ALONG THE FORECAST TRACK. THAT…COMBINED WITH THE LIKELY DISRUPTION OF THE CIRCULATION BY PASSAGE OVER HISPANIOLA…SHOULD CAUSE WEAKENING.

And I missed them! Why didn’t anybody tell me! They were practically underneath my office in the ‘Confederate Steam Gun ‘ episode that aired last night.
The Mythbusting trio of Grant, Tory and Kari were here checking out the fMRI lie detecting research going on. Not sure when it was filmed, but they were here getting scanned on the 3T magnet to see if they could beat the fMRI lie detector.
Oh, I’m so bummed I missed seeing that go on.

The 2007 season officially ended a couple days ago with no signs of any late brewing storms (yet) like in 2005.
The synopsis from NHC:

THE 2007 HURRICANE SEASON PRODUCED FOURTEEN NAMED STORMS…OF WHICH SIX BECAME HURRICANES…WITH TWO OF THE HURRICANES ATTAINING MAJOR HURRICANE (CATEGORY THREE OR HIGHER ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON HURRICANE SCALE) STATUS. IN ADDITION…TWO OTHER TROPICAL DEPRESSIONS FORMED DURING THE YEAR. THE NUMBERS OF HURRICANES AND MAJOR HURRICANES WERE NEAR THE LONG-TERM AVERAGES FOR A SEASON BUT THE NUMBER OF NAMED STORMS WAS SLIGHTLY ABOVE AVERAGE. IN TERMS OF THE NOAA ACCUMULATED CYCLONE ENERGY (ACE) INDEX…WHICH MEASURES THE COLLECTIVE STRENGTH AND DURATION OF NAMED STORMS AND HURRICANES… THE SEASON HAD ABOUT 82 PERCENT OF THE 1951-2000 MEDIAN ACTIVITY… THE LOWEST OBSERVED SINCE 2002. DESPITE THE NEAR-AVERAGE OVERALL ACTIVITY…TWO CATEGORY 5 HURRICANES…DEAN AND FELIX…MADE LANDFALL DURING THIS SEASON FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE RECORDS BEGAN IN 1851.

The NOAA summary contains some interesting info too.