Hurricane Sandy Forecast Game results

We set a record for the number of players with the Hurricane Sandy contest, and the winner is the deceptively-named StormsHitGeorgia. Full results are at http://weather.funnelfiasco.com/tropical/game/2012-sandy.html. The scores were among the lowest I’ve ever seen, although the relatively short forecast period probably helped. It’s interesting to note that the last official forecast from the NHC, roughly converted into a forecast for this game, would have finished in 11th place.

“Frankenstorm”: or how a passing reference can become a popular sensation

It’s not often that career civil service employees get to spark a national craze. Certainly that’s not what forecaster James Cisco of NOAA’s Hydrometeorological Prediction Center (HPC) had in mind when he was writing the HPC’s preliminary extended forecast discussion on Thursday morning. His discussion included the following:

…AND ONCE THE COMBINED GYRE MATERIALIZES, IT SHOULD SETTLE BACK TOWARD THE INTERIOR NORTHEAST THROUGH HALLOWEEN, INVITING PERHAPS A GHOULISH NICKNAME FOR THE CYCLONE ALONG THE LINES OF “FRANKENSTORM”, AN ALLUSION TO MARY SHELLEY’S GOTHIC CREATURE OF SYNTHESIZED ELEMENTS.

It was, in my view, a harmless way of pointing out the unusual hybrid nature of what is setting up to be a sequel to the “Perfect Storm“. But the media saw the discussion and immediately latched on to the name (seemingly forgetting that it already had a name: Hurricane Sandy). Before long, the name “Frankenstorm” was setting the social media world alight, too.

Not everyone was a fan of this label, though. The Weather Channel’s Eric Fisher complained about it, and apparently so did many others. In a media briefing earlier today, NOAA officials said that “Frankenstorm” would not be used in any further NWS products. Since only the one discussion ever used that term, NOAA is effectively saying “we’re going to stop doing what we already weren’t doing”, but I get the point. They don’t want to create confusion by having two names for the storm.

The Weather Channel, after recently announcing they’d be naming winter storms, has wisely decided to stick with “Sandy” for this storm, even though some of the impacts will be decidedly wintery. Still, the name, much like the monster, won’t die. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. There’s anecdotal evidence either way. On the one hand, the unusual name might cause people to pay more attention. On the other hand, calling by a non-hurricane name might give a false sense of diminished impact. Only a post-event analysis will tell.

New discussions added to the Hall of Fame

The Forecast Discussion Hall of Fame has three new entries. Two are submitted by loyal “fans” of the site, and the third is sort of a big thing in the news right now.

Hurricane Sandy contest

It’s time to take a risk on Hurricane Sandy. I’ve opened the Sandy forecast contest. Forecasts are due at 8 PM EDT on Friday (27 October at 00Z).

Some rule clarifications:

  • If the storm takes on extratropical characteristics, it still counts so long as the National Hurricane Center is tracking it at landfall.
  • Landfall is defined as the first hit of the mainland, regardless of country. Barrier islands, etc, do not count.

A datacenter on the moon

Last week, Wired ran an article entitled “Why We Need a Datacenter on the Moon“. Surprisingly, it was a serious article, although more wistful than persuasive. The basic premise is that there’s a coming congestion problem for the Deep Space Network, a system of antennas that provide communication support for interplanetary satellites. By placing receivers on the far side of the moon, electromagnetic noise from the earth can be reduced. Presumably, the datacenter would be placed there so that only the “interesting” results would have to be sent back to earth.

All of this depends on two things: getting the equipment to the far side of the moon and getting people to the far side of the moon. These are obviously far from trivial dependencies. There are other technical hurdles as well. For one, communications back to Earth would require either highly elevated antennas or enough cable to reach to the light side. Although cooling would be cheap since the temperature on the dark side is -280°F, something has to dissipate the heat. The proposal suggests water cooling, which means the water will likely need to be heated to prevent freezing (there are multiple ways to accomplish this, including housing the equipment in a space designed for human occupancy).

Long before such a datacenter could be powered on, other workarounds will likely be put in place. The Wired article mentions the use of lasers for space-to-earth communication. Still, it’s an interesting idea that may inspire future space exploration efforts. If NASA is ever looking for a sysadmin for their Luna office, you can believe that I’ll have my resume submitted.

The Weather Channel is naming winter storms

On Tuesday, The Weather Channel announced that they would be naming winter storms beginning this season. The reaction on Twitter was swift and mocking, and perhaps for good reason. The Weather Channel insists that there is real benefit to this, including raising awareness and improving communication. The research supporting these assertions was conspicuously absent.

Supporters of this idea insist that the naming of tropical storms was received with similar ridicule. I wouldn’t be surprised, but the ideas are not entirely consistent. For one, tropical systems spend most of their time over the ocean, and there are few landmarks to use as reference points. Since multiple storms may be in existence at once, some naming scheme is required. Tropical systems also have well-defined and consistent criteria for naming. The Weather Channel’s scheme is vaguely defined and depends on geography, time of day, day of the week, etc.

The Weather Channel has the weight to try to make this work. With their recent acquisition of Weather Underground, they are the most influential private sector weather player. However, I can see AccuWeather ignoring the names out of spite, and the National Weather Service ignoring them out of indifference. Will local media use the names? Without the backing of an organization like the WMO, I don’t see all of the players coming together on this.

Europe has apparently been naming extratropical systems, and I’m not sure what effect (if any) it has had on the public. I’m not necessarily opposed to the naming of winter storms (though it’s sorely tempting to use a slippery slope argument), but I need convincing that it’s a useful act. Perhaps next spring we’ll have some data to work with. Or not. This seems to be more about ratings than science.

Proposed change to Fedora docs schedule

In the most ideal situations, project management can be a challenge. In a fast-moving, community-driven, highly-visible project like Fedora, it can be near-madness. Although the Docs group tries to keep to the schedule when producing guides, the unfortunate reality is that guides rarely meet the scheduled milestones. I’m a firm believer in the idea that if the schedule is never met, it’s the schedule that’s wrong, not the contributors.

With that in mind, it was proposed in this week’s Docs meeting that the branching of guides be 4 weeks prior to the final release date, instead of shortly after the Alpha release. This buys guide writers more time to incorporate the changes a new release brings. Unfortunately, it puts an extra crunch on translators since they then only have four weeks to update translations if guides are to ship in concert with the OS.

The reality is that it doesn’t change much, I expect. Since the reality is that the guides don’t come in on time, it does little harm to have the schedule reflect that fact. I hope. I posted a message to the Docs and Translation teams earlier this week requesting comment. Modified schedule proposals are available at http://bcotton.fedorapeople.org/docs_schedule/.