A part of Sandy that nobody thought about until recently is the impact of 'disaster tourism' that parts of New York and New Jersey are not experiencing.
The article from fox new was (surprisingly) well written and depicts the story from the angle of the people who are currently trying to repair their broken lives.
As people start sorting through the rubble that Sandy left in places, SUVs filled with disaster tourists start driving through the streets. Residents of the ravaged area are quick to pick out 'those who do not belong' because they're wearing clean clothes, and driving spotless cars.
Some redidents find it annoying or offensive. One was quoted as feeling like she was a main attraction in a zoo. Others can understand why the visitors are pouring in. "Who wouldnt want to see boats picked up and left on the streets"
Overall the sentiment is that these disaster tourists are mostly welcome as long as they are not patronizing the unfortunate or getting in the way.
Unfortunately when streets are already clogged with debris and cars, adding unnecessary cars and people to them becomes a hassle in the clean-up period.
Hopefully these disaster tourists realize the limits to their welcome, and are not taking up any resources (hotel rooms, gas, food, etc etc) that would otherwise go to relief aid
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/11/12/disaster-tourists-seek-firsthand-look-at-ny-storm-ravaged-neighborhoods/
Monday, December 10, 2012
Sunday, December 9, 2012
First Winter Storm
Well, the season is finally upon us. After a relatively quiet November and early December we finally got our big snowfall in North Western Wisconsin. As of 4pm today, the National Weather service is forecasting 9-15 inches in central Minnesota and western Wisconsin. Here in Eau Claire we've been steadily getting it from the wee hours of the morning.
Travels plans definitely have been affected as drivng on I-94 you'll probably see more cars in the ditch than on the road. Took me a 40 minutes to get from campus area to the mall (Never shoulda left the house...)
Hopefully the snow clears up over night so the monday morning commute will be safer and less accident filled, nobody wants to start a week like that. Being in the Campus area is nice, and walking provides an awesome sight for those willing to find it.
Put on some Boots and get out there.
http://www.weau.com/home/headlines/Winter-storm-dumps-heavy-snow-across-the-Midwest--182747291.html
Travels plans definitely have been affected as drivng on I-94 you'll probably see more cars in the ditch than on the road. Took me a 40 minutes to get from campus area to the mall (Never shoulda left the house...)
Hopefully the snow clears up over night so the monday morning commute will be safer and less accident filled, nobody wants to start a week like that. Being in the Campus area is nice, and walking provides an awesome sight for those willing to find it.
Put on some Boots and get out there.
http://www.weau.com/home/headlines/Winter-storm-dumps-heavy-snow-across-the-Midwest--182747291.html
Friday, December 7, 2012
10 Round Bout: FEMA v Nadler
In a recent article from the USA Today, congressman Jerrold Nadler (D) said that Sandy should be a wake up call for FEMA (so what was Katrina...?)
He points to the fact that Sandy bring a new set of challenges to the table; How do we get relief supplies to people inside skyscrapers?
The article is mostly focused on FEMA reaction in large Urban areas. With large Urban areas, come lots of people. All of them needing the same thing. When a city like NYC is displaced it leaves a heck of a lot more people out there than when a Hurricane hits a less populated area.
What starts out as a good article where critisms of FEMA are presented without being over the top or too accusatory, turns into an article that reflects the true desire of the congressmen and the New England residents. Money
Crisizing FEMA, which is valid, seems to be a fassod for congress to approve more money to go to the efforts of rebuilding the area. Congress meets this week to decide if/how to propotion out money for those in need.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/04/congressman-says-fema-ill-equipped/1747213/
He points to the fact that Sandy bring a new set of challenges to the table; How do we get relief supplies to people inside skyscrapers?
The article is mostly focused on FEMA reaction in large Urban areas. With large Urban areas, come lots of people. All of them needing the same thing. When a city like NYC is displaced it leaves a heck of a lot more people out there than when a Hurricane hits a less populated area.
What starts out as a good article where critisms of FEMA are presented without being over the top or too accusatory, turns into an article that reflects the true desire of the congressmen and the New England residents. Money
Crisizing FEMA, which is valid, seems to be a fassod for congress to approve more money to go to the efforts of rebuilding the area. Congress meets this week to decide if/how to propotion out money for those in need.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/04/congressman-says-fema-ill-equipped/1747213/
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
NOAA Weather Communication
Found a pretty cool article about NOAA earler today. The article discusses how NOAA will be running a test in the coming months.
Many commonfolk do not understand the current NOAA weather warning system in place. People have a hard time deciphering what the difference between a Watch, Warning, or Advisory. NOAA hopes to combat this confusion by running a new set of criteria. They plan to test this new system starting now (December 12, 2012) and run it through March.
New definitions:
A Winter Storm WATCH is in effect for XXXXX counties.
BECOMES
POTENTIAL for a Winter storm is in effect for XXXXXX counties.
A Winter Storm Warning is in effect for XXXX counties
BECOMES
A Warning for a Dangerous Winter Storm is in effect for XXXX counties.
NOAA is going to change the language of the winter hazard warnings while also better defining the content in those warning, they hope to appeal more the layperson and to make sure people are accurately informed about potential hazardous weather in their area.
The system makes sense, although the fact that we now have different warning levels might also be confusing depending on the terminology they decide to use.
Good Terminology ranking:
Typical storm, Dangerous storm, Extremely Dangerous Storm, Go-out-and-buy-as-much-toilet-paper-and-canned-food-as-you-can Storm.
Bad Terminology ranking
Storm, Dangerous storm, hazardous storm, debilitating storm, Super Hazardous storm.
NOAA could be on to something here, as long as they can pick some people friendly terminology to use to accurately portray what they're trying to say.
national-weather-service-tests-new-simpler-winter-hazard-communications
Many commonfolk do not understand the current NOAA weather warning system in place. People have a hard time deciphering what the difference between a Watch, Warning, or Advisory. NOAA hopes to combat this confusion by running a new set of criteria. They plan to test this new system starting now (December 12, 2012) and run it through March.
New definitions:
A Winter Storm WATCH is in effect for XXXXX counties.
BECOMES
POTENTIAL for a Winter storm is in effect for XXXXXX counties.
A Winter Storm Warning is in effect for XXXX counties
BECOMES
A Warning for a Dangerous Winter Storm is in effect for XXXX counties.
NOAA is going to change the language of the winter hazard warnings while also better defining the content in those warning, they hope to appeal more the layperson and to make sure people are accurately informed about potential hazardous weather in their area.
The system makes sense, although the fact that we now have different warning levels might also be confusing depending on the terminology they decide to use.
Good Terminology ranking:
Typical storm, Dangerous storm, Extremely Dangerous Storm, Go-out-and-buy-as-much-toilet-paper-and-canned-food-as-you-can Storm.
Bad Terminology ranking
Storm, Dangerous storm, hazardous storm, debilitating storm, Super Hazardous storm.
NOAA could be on to something here, as long as they can pick some people friendly terminology to use to accurately portray what they're trying to say.
national-weather-service-tests-new-simpler-winter-hazard-communications
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Hurricane Season 2012
Is the Sandy horse dead yet? Or can I keep beating it....?
I believe I wrote earlier about Tornado frequency, now it's time to focus on Hurricane frequency.
NOAA declared that this Hurricane season was the third worst on record. Only 2005 and 1933 saw more hurricanes develop. 2012 tied for third worst with 2011 and 2010.
While there was a very high frequency, the strength was far weaker than in past years. We only had one major storm develop and only for a short amount of time. Hurricane Michael reached category 3 strength for just a few hours.
While the average strength was low, our losses were just the opposite. Hurricane/Super Storm Sandy taught us that we don't need to see massive storms to for us to be hurt, finacially and socially. A huge hurricane doesnt need to barrel down on the US, a super storm can do plenty of damage when it hits in the wrong place.
NOAA also tells that 70% of all hurricanes this year were Atlantic hurricanes, which continues a trend of higer than average Atlantic Hurricanes that has been going on since 1995.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-11-29/news/bal-wx-unusual-hurricane-season-among-busiest-but-lacked-strength-besides-sandy-20121128_1_tropical-meteorology-project-storm-forecaster-hurricane-season
I believe I wrote earlier about Tornado frequency, now it's time to focus on Hurricane frequency.
NOAA declared that this Hurricane season was the third worst on record. Only 2005 and 1933 saw more hurricanes develop. 2012 tied for third worst with 2011 and 2010.
While there was a very high frequency, the strength was far weaker than in past years. We only had one major storm develop and only for a short amount of time. Hurricane Michael reached category 3 strength for just a few hours.
While the average strength was low, our losses were just the opposite. Hurricane/Super Storm Sandy taught us that we don't need to see massive storms to for us to be hurt, finacially and socially. A huge hurricane doesnt need to barrel down on the US, a super storm can do plenty of damage when it hits in the wrong place.
NOAA also tells that 70% of all hurricanes this year were Atlantic hurricanes, which continues a trend of higer than average Atlantic Hurricanes that has been going on since 1995.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-11-29/news/bal-wx-unusual-hurricane-season-among-busiest-but-lacked-strength-besides-sandy-20121128_1_tropical-meteorology-project-storm-forecaster-hurricane-season
Thursday, November 29, 2012
But I thought Wales liked water?
Flooding across the pond in Wales is making news today as residents watched defenses fail.
Rain in the UK has led to flooding in Northern Wales when the floods manged to avoid all the flood defenses in place within the Glasdir estate.
What's funny about this article is it outlines what seem to be very good Hazard mitigation techniques for avoiding such floods. Later on in the article it talks about all the regulations put in place, and that it is not normally a severly flooded area.
Another funny thing about the article and flooding is that the residents and property developers dont know how the flood got past their defense systems. Some hypothesize that the flood waters went around the defenes, other thing it was groundwater rising up, and yet other suggest that the defenses were simply not enough and the flood waters toppled over them.
No matter what the cause, the developers are interested in figuring out where they went wrong and fixing the system they have in place to keep instances liek this from happening again.
Normally we can critisize people for living in low areas and blame that on their property damages, but if this article is true, a lot of the property was supoosed to be well suited for flooding possibilities yet sustained damaged this past week.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-east-wales-20533926
Rain in the UK has led to flooding in Northern Wales when the floods manged to avoid all the flood defenses in place within the Glasdir estate.
What's funny about this article is it outlines what seem to be very good Hazard mitigation techniques for avoiding such floods. Later on in the article it talks about all the regulations put in place, and that it is not normally a severly flooded area.
Another funny thing about the article and flooding is that the residents and property developers dont know how the flood got past their defense systems. Some hypothesize that the flood waters went around the defenes, other thing it was groundwater rising up, and yet other suggest that the defenses were simply not enough and the flood waters toppled over them.
No matter what the cause, the developers are interested in figuring out where they went wrong and fixing the system they have in place to keep instances liek this from happening again.
Normally we can critisize people for living in low areas and blame that on their property damages, but if this article is true, a lot of the property was supoosed to be well suited for flooding possibilities yet sustained damaged this past week.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-east-wales-20533926
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Aliens, Dusty Aliens.
Environmental Hazards is the name of the class, however this title does not specify that we simply are interested in looking at Earth's environment so for my latest blog post I'm going to take us to Mars.
As we explore other planets and eventually send manned spacecraft there it's important to gain a better knowledge base of these potential planets, especially about their environments.
A mars rover landed early in August and has since been collecting data and exploring the planet. Recently it came under the influence of a major environmental hazard, a massive dust storm on the planets surface.
The dust storm was first noticed by NASA on November tenth and they have been following it ever since. Both Martian (the other one was landed in 2004) rovers have built in weather stations and they saw drops in air pressure as the storm moved across the region, they also experienced and increase in nighttime temperatures because the dust storm absorbs more sunlight than Martian typical planet surface. The warming effect can be felt 16 around the dust storm and that's what the rovers are experiencing currently.
We last saw dust storms this big in 2007 and prior to that in 2001. Dust storms like this pop up on Mars seasonally, and the Martian year is 2X as long as earth's year.
Scientists view this as a great opportunity to learn more about Martian Dust Storms. They see this as a time to examine the processes behind the Dust Storms and why some get so big-global scale, while others pop up and die off right away.
As we already know a lot (and yet not enough) about the environment that we currently live in, there is a new set of rules and circumstances we must think about as humans travel to new planets.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/24/mars-dust-storm-nasa-rovers-opportunity-curiosity_n_2184423.html#slide=more238062
As we explore other planets and eventually send manned spacecraft there it's important to gain a better knowledge base of these potential planets, especially about their environments.
A mars rover landed early in August and has since been collecting data and exploring the planet. Recently it came under the influence of a major environmental hazard, a massive dust storm on the planets surface.
The dust storm was first noticed by NASA on November tenth and they have been following it ever since. Both Martian (the other one was landed in 2004) rovers have built in weather stations and they saw drops in air pressure as the storm moved across the region, they also experienced and increase in nighttime temperatures because the dust storm absorbs more sunlight than Martian typical planet surface. The warming effect can be felt 16 around the dust storm and that's what the rovers are experiencing currently.
We last saw dust storms this big in 2007 and prior to that in 2001. Dust storms like this pop up on Mars seasonally, and the Martian year is 2X as long as earth's year.
Scientists view this as a great opportunity to learn more about Martian Dust Storms. They see this as a time to examine the processes behind the Dust Storms and why some get so big-global scale, while others pop up and die off right away.
As we already know a lot (and yet not enough) about the environment that we currently live in, there is a new set of rules and circumstances we must think about as humans travel to new planets.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/24/mars-dust-storm-nasa-rovers-opportunity-curiosity_n_2184423.html#slide=more238062
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