Book review: “Tornado Warning”

Three years ago this month, the city of Joplin, Missouri was devastated by an EF-5 tornado. Not only were numerous buildings destroyed, but 159 people lost their lives. This was the first 100-fatality tornado since 116 people died in a 1953 tornado in Flint, Michigan. As word of the impact spread, I can recall being thankful that my chasing range was limited to northern Illinois that day. Author Tamara Hart Heiner drove through the Joplin area in the days after the tornado and was struck by the extent of the devastation. After speaking with survivors, she decided to write her first non-fiction book. Tornado Warning, released earlier this month, tells the story of the tornado through the eyes of seven women who survived it.

The women of Tornado Warning led varied-but-normal lives before the storm. Normalcy would not survive the day. I found the early part of the book a little dull, which is to be expected. The women and their families were going through their usual Sunday routine. When the tornado hits, the book becomes positively riveting. One woman rides it out in a bathtub, covering her children with her body and a mattress. Another was in her van. That she and her son survived is nothing short of miraculous.

Heiner does not dwell on the tornado itself. Indeed, the narrative moves the tornado along quickly; like its real-life counterpart, it is here and gone within moments. Much of the book focuses on the hours immediately following the tornado when Joplin residents frantically search for loved ones, rescue their neighbors, and try to come to grips with the stark new reality.

Although scenes shift quickly from one protagonist to another, the reader gets a definite sense of each woman’s personality. The narration seems to take on some of the character of the woman being followed. The rapid shifts made it difficult to keep track of the characters initially, but it proved to be the appropriate style during and after the tornado.

In all, this is an excellent read. It showcases the human side of tornadoes that never seems to make it into IMAX films. The tornado preparedness and safety advice is invaluable and I encourage all readers to not skip it. Some of the meteorological discussion at the beginning of the book is painful (particularly “the jet stream is typically 300 millibars strong”), but this is not a story about meteorology. Heiner does an excellent job of capturing the humanity of the Joplin tornado, so I can forgive meteorological errors.

The net proceeds from Tornado Warning are being donated to Joplin recovery charities.

IT as an insurance center

Not all companies view IT in the same way. Some see it as an expense to be tolerated (a.k.a. a cost center). Others view it as a way of making (more) money (a.k.a. a profit center). A company’s industry, age, and management demographic are significant influencers of how a company treats its IT organization. A while back, a post on Reddit described a third view: IT as an “insurance center”.

It’s an interesting idea. The thought of IT being a mitigator of loss instead of simply a money hole certainly helps sell expenditures to executives. On the other hand, it seems that a lot of the risks mitigated with IT services are a direct result of the services themselves. An email system may be more efficient than typewritten memoranda, but does the email system really prevent or mitigate loss? If anything, it’s more likely to introduce loss when the system that everyone depends on goes down.

The more I thought about it, the more I’m convinced that it’s folly to treat IT as a monolithic organization, at least when it comes to characterizing the kind of center. Characterizations should be made at the service level. Basic infrastructure, no matter how necessary, will almost always be a cost center. Services that enable the business to do more of whatever business it does, to expand into new areas, or to otherwise bring in more money are profit centers. Services that protect the company against loss are insurance centers. A healthy company will have all three, but they can’t be managed the same.

New entry in the Forecast Discussion Hall of Fame

You have probably already seen an early-morning AFD from Juneau making the rounds on the Internet. The forecaster compares selecting a model to speed dating. Although the bulk of the humor is in the first paragraph, the theme persists through the rest. Certainly this is a cultural touchstone worthy of enshrining in the Forecast Discussion Hall of Fame.

Reflectivity tags

Sometimes you don’t notice something until it is pointed out to you, then you see it everywhere. That was the case for me when the near-ubiquity of clear slots near tornadoes was pointed out a few years ago. Suddenly, I began to (legitimately) see them everywhere. The feature was there, just completely overlooked. I expect a similar effect after learning about reflectivity tags at the Central Indiana Severe Weather Symposium in March.

Reflectivity tags are hardly new. The concept appears to have been introduced in a 2006 paper by Llyle Barker. The basic idea is that a small blob of reflectivity overtaking an area of rotation is often an indicator of tornado formation or intensification. Ed Shimon’s presentation at the Symposium pointed out how the Washington, IL tornado of November 17 grew from a small tornado into a neighborhood-leveling monster when the reflectivity tag passed.

There’s a danger in over-relying on the new shiny you’ve just picked up of course. The vast majority of storms still don’t produce tornadoes. I suspect that the majority of storms that feature reflectivity tags also don’t produce tornadoes. The presence of a fast-moving tag shouldn’t mean immediate panic. At the same time, it’s another piece of information to consider when watching storms.

Hands-on with the Roku Streaming Stick

Two years ago, my wife and I decided that we didn’t really watch enough TV to justify a cable subscription. With a baby in the house, we tended to have the music channels on more than anything else. A Pandora subscription (that I already had) was more than a suitable replacement and Netflix could provide enough video to keep us entertained. So I bought a Boxee Box and we cut the cord. The Boxee Box was more expensive than other options, but it had the ability to stream from local media, which I thought would be a critical feature. As it turns out, we never used that.

It wasn’t too long after we bought the Boxee Box that Boxee decided to go in a different direction. The Boxee continued to work, but no more updates were coming. This meant not getting Netflix profiles. It meant that some streaming websites (particularly ESPN) no longer worked in the browser. And as I discovered at the beginning of baseball season, it meant no more MLB.tv.

That was the last straw. Since Roku had recently released their streaming stick, I decided to order one. At $50, it was far less than I had paid for the Boxee Box, and it supported everything we used on Boxee, plus additional content. I was pretty excited when I set it up. The excitement didn’t last long. I apparently got a lemon. Fortunately, the Roku technical support folks were helpful, and I had a replacement unit sent. The replacement has worked well for the last two weeks.

There was no particular reason I went for the streaming stick over other form factors. My TV can’t provide power directly, so I still have to plug it in to the wall. But it was cheap and relatively novel, so I figured “why not?” The streaming stick is a little under-powered; it takes considerably longer for Netflix to load than the Boxee Box did. It also lacks the QWERTY keyboard that was an excellent (albeit un-lit) feature of the Boxee Box’s remote. However, that’s the sum of my dislikes.

Roku has a large variety of apps, but unlike the Boxee, they aren’t all pre-installed. That means you only have to wade through the apps you want to use. Unlike Boxee’s apps, there are more than two that we use on the Roku. PBS and PBS Kids were immediate additions, as was NASA TV (my daughter is really into space right now). Weather Underground’s app is nice, when we bother to use it. The Pandora and Netflix apps work quite well. And, of course, MLB.tv allows me to get my fix of Orioles baseball. Since we got the Roku, the Boxee Box has remained off. This means no more loud fan noises, no more sudden jumps in Netflix volume, and no more having to manually shut it off when the shutdown menu doesn’t work. Clearly the Roku streaming stick was the right decision.