Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Snowicanes Cometh

The year 2013 was the hurricane season that wasn't, despite dire predictions of expert climatologists.
What if you had a hurricane season and no hurricanes came? That's pretty close to what's happening this year, according to a report on climatecentral.org. The report points out that the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season has not produced a single land-falling hurricane in the United States. 
NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune reporter Mark Schleifstein pointed out in September that the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season was kicked off with dire warnings from the National Hurricane Center and Colorado State University climatologists Philip Klotzbach and William Gray that there would be an above average number of hurricanes and severe hurricanes. Those storms have failed to materialize. 
Instead, there have been just 11 named storms, two of which have been hurricanes, and none that have been major hurricanes.
After the Times-Picayune article, there was one more minor tropical storm, as the season ended as quietly as it had started, according to the Washington Post.
The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season was the least active in thirty years.  The season officially ends on Saturday, but in this lackluster year, it looks like we can wrap it up a little early. 
On average (1981-2010), 12 tropical storms form during an entire season, 6-7 of those go on to become hurricanes, and 2 of those reach major hurricane intensity (category 3+). In 2013, there were 13 tropical storms, 2 hurricanes, and no major hurricanes. Even the two hurricanes that formed were just briefly minimal category 1 storms. 
Tracks of all Atlantic tropical cyclones during the 2013 season.
Tracks of all Atlantic tropical cyclones during the 2013 season.  Along the right side, the wind speed and central pressure are listed at the storm’s peak intensity.

The last time a season ended up with only two hurricanes was 1982, and the last season to have zero major hurricanes was 1994. The most intense storms this year had maximum sustained winds only reach 75 knots (Humberto and Ingrid). Dr. Phil Klotzbach, a researcher at Colorado State University, noted that is the weakest maximum intensity for a hurricane during a season since 1968. And you may recall that the first hurricane (Humberto) formed just hours before the record latest first hurricane formation date on September 11.
In terms of Accumulated Cyclone Energy, or ACE, the seasonal total stands at 31.1 (the units are 10,000 knots squared if anyone is curious), the lowest seasonal total since 1983… and that’s just 30% of average.  Looking back to 1950, only four other years come in with lower ACE totals: 1983, 1982, 1977, and 1972.
Accumulated daily ACE for all seasons going back to 1950.  The average is the black line, 2013 is the red line, the four less active seasons are the green lines, and the rest of the years are the blue lines. (Data courtesy of Ryan Maue)
Accumulated daily ACE for all seasons going back to 1950. The average is the black line, 2013 is the red line, the four less active seasons are the green lines, and the rest of the years are the blue lines.

To put that in perspective, Hurricane Igor (2010) alone racked up about 140% of this season’s entire total.  Dr. Ryan Maue at WeatherBell keeps thorough statistics on ACE around the world, and this chart displays values of accumulated daily ACE for each season going back to 1950.Accumulated daily ACE for all seasons going back to 1950. The average is the black line, 2013 is the red line, the four less active seasons are the green lines, and the rest of the years are the blue lines. 
High expectations 
Heading into the season, all of the typical signals and precursors pointed forecasters to a fairly uniform conclusion: the season will be very active.  Forecast teams from CSU, NOAA, FSU, UK Met Office, Tropical Storm Risk, etc released their seasonal outlooks in late May to early June and every one of them was predicting about 7-9 hurricanes, and about 130-165% of an average season’s ACE.   Only ECMWF {European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasting) predicted a slightly below-active season at about 80% of average ACE, although they also predicted 6-7 hurricanes.  Recall that the season has ended with just 2 hurricanes and 30% of the average ACE.Even among the groups that issue periodic mid-season updates and forecasts, the success rate was not any higher. 
Here in the northern Rockies we have arctic high pressure air masses; it's not tropical systems that are blowing things about. Sunday, just up the road at Bridger Bowl, the ridge experienced hurricane force wind gusts (topping out at 83 mph) to go along with subfreezing temperatures.

Hourly wind readings Bridger crest.

And along Michigan's upper peninsula, Lake Superior spawned a Snowicane.

Well defined eye created by a spinning mesolow over Lake Superior, Sunday December 15, 2013.

Meanwhile, we look forward to falling back into the deep freeze later this week back in Bozeman.


Good luck to all.

HHS Looking for Help

HHS Seal which is forbidden for use on HHS employee
business cards. Please advise if this seal appears as is 

less than 5/8 of an inch on your device for that is violation
 of HHS's terms of use, requiring action by the hard working
 government bureaucracy.
There is so much bad news coming out so fast on the ObamaCare front that Kathleen Sebelius and company over at Health and Human Services (HHS) are looking for help. They've put out a solicitation trolling for vendors to provide media monitoring and analysis services. Here is how the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (ASPA) at HHS puts it.
A core responsibility of ASPA and its partner Agency public affairs offices acros (sic) HHS is to provide the Secretary, Department and Agency leadership, and staff with the latest analysis of what the media is reporting about Department-wide and Agency-specific priorities, initiatives, and programs.
HHS explains the need. They are looking for a news aggregation service.
Department and Agency leadership in particular, along with agency staff, need to have early in the morning complete situational awareness of what the media is reporting about the organization and its programs and initiatives.
I got a cost savings suggestion Kathleen. Forget about contracting for services. After teaching your public affairs troops how to use a spell checker, why don't you just tell them to go look it up on Drudge?

Drudge HHS headlines, December 17, 2013, 8:30 am MST



Monday, December 16, 2013

Use an Obamacare Navigator

Not so you can get accurate information and genuine assistance, of course.

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

The Obamacare navigator program is a fraudulent scheme to pay off Obama's ignorant and unqualified political allies.

One of the biggest risks with the program is prospective enrollees have no way of verifying they are dealing with a genuine (ill-trained and ill-informed as she might be) navigator. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reports,
In addition to the risks associated with an insufficient training program and the lack of background checks, there are already numerous reports of scam artists posing as Navigators and Assisters to take advantage of people’s confusion about ObamaCare. According to recent news reports, scam artists are calling individuals and asking for information to sign them up for their “ObamaCare card,” are asking seniors for their personal information to verify their Medicare and Social Security status and are going door-to-door threatening people with prison time if they do not sign up on the spot. The Administration is keenly aware of these reports and concerns, but has thus far failed to take appropriate measures. 
Kathleen's Sebelius' HHS has taken its normal posture of sitting on its hands and hoping for the best, lest she offend or require legitimacy of any of her political allies.
The Committee has also learned that senior HHS officials raised concerns about the government’s inability to authenticate individuals operating as Navigators and Assisters in May 2013. In response to this concern, HHS considered creating a list of certified Navigators and Assisters for consumers to use as a resource. However, HHS decided against the creation of such a list, and Ms. Gottlich testified that consumers will have no reliable way to learn the identity and association of individuals offering to assist them with enrolling in ObamaCare. The failure of the Administration to provide clarity about prohibited marketing and solicitation techniques and to provide consumers with a list of authenticated Navigators and Assisters substantially increases the number of Americans likely to fail prey to fraud and identity theft. 
More interesting tidbits,
In a transcribed interview, Gary Cohen, the Director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight within HHS, testified “that requiring background checks and fingerprinting could inhibit the availability of Navigators to provide consumer assistance and to do outreach for the marketplaces” and that there “will be Navigators to serve certain communities which may be unwilling to do that if they had to go through a background check and fingerprinting.”
 Wow!  Uneffing believable.  Look out for the scammers using scanners.
Top HHS officials testified that Navigators and Assisters will be allowed to type personally identifiable information into the online application system on behalf of enrollees. One CMS whistleblower warned that because it may not be possible to track every computer and hard drive used by Navigators to gather applicants’ personally identifiable information (PII), the sensitive information is vulnerable. The CMS whistleblower also warned that the devices used to scan supporting documents may store and save the images containing sensitive PII. 
Good luck to all.




Sunday, December 15, 2013

Saturday Pictures


Windworks has got to keep those subsidies, credits and tax breaks coming, so why not co-locate with a U.S. Senator?  Avant Courier Building, 1 E Main Street, Bozeman, MT. Nice and cozy.



The old Bozeman Hotel, opened in 1891, Main Street and Rouse, Bozeman, MT.












One of four Art Deco examples in Bozeman, Fred Willson’s design features a concrete facade and a chrome entryway. The apartment building was built in 1931 for Henry J. Hamill, a contractor.


Fall view, Bridger Creek Golf Course, 5th hole.



More of the same, snowing on top.




Icicles all around from cross country skiing in zero degree temps, 6 weeks later at Bridger Creek.

Politidumb of the Week

Up first for nomination this week is Melissa Perry-Harris, political commentator and habitual race baiter on MSNBC, which means essentially none of you have seen her or know who she is. MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry opened her show last Sunday castigating those who labelled the Affordable Care Act by its colloquial moniker: “Obamacare.” She said that the word was originally created as a “derogatory term,” designed by white men as a way to delegitimize President Barack Obama and his achievement.
“I want to talk today about a controversial word. It’s a word that has been with us for years, and like it or not, it’s indelibly printed in the pages of American history,” Harris-Perry opened. “A word that was originally intended as a derogatory term, meant to shame and divide and demean.” 
“The word was conceived of by a group of wealthy white men who needed a way to put themselves above and apart from a black man; to render him inferior and unequal and to diminish his accomplishments,” she continued. 
“At first, he rose above it, hoping that if he could just make a cause for what he achieved, his opponents would fail in making their label stick,” Harris-Perry added. “But no matter how many successes that he had as president, he realized there were still many people for whom he’d never be anything more than that one disparaging word.”


Herman Cain says,
Melissa Perry Harris of MSNBC has weighed in again, which means I have my daily dose of entertainment. ObamaCare is now about race, you see. Not the law. The term. Did you know this? The term "ObamaCare" apparently has coded racial implications. Oh my goodness, this woman is hilarious. 
I couldn’t help but just laugh out loud at this. Is this woman serious? Since ObamaCare is having problems, they no longer want to call it ObamaCare and it's now the Affordable Care Act. The only problem with that this name is a lie - since the insurance they want to force you to buy on the ObamaCare . . . er, sorry, Affordable Care Act exchanges, is decidedly unaffordable.
About this: Here's a question I saw someone raise on Facebook. Why do Obama supporters get so upset when we talk about "ObamaCare," but conservatives proudly use the term "Reaganomics"?
I think the question answers itself.
When one of my looney liberal friends back in DC got on my case for using the term ObamaCare when the act first passed I replied, when you all come up with an accurate name for the not so Affordable Care Act, I'll be happy to use it instead. Three years later I'm still waiting.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Remembering the Sandy Hook Victims

Our prayers go out to the families of the Sandy Hook victims on this painful anniversary of the nihilistic massacre.

A year ago today we walked out of the morning holiday concert at Irving Elementary School to the news of the Newtown tragedy, after watching our own first grader and her classmates perform. We cried.


First-grade chorus, Irving Elementary December 14, 2012

Twenty bright eyed and innocent first graders and six brave adults were senselessly slaughtered. Here, thousands of miles distant, we can feel your pain and sense your loss. May peace be with you.

Friday, December 13, 2013

Climate Change 1972 Style

Pull out all the stops. Panic. Yield power and control to centralized beneficent, all knowing governments and their aligned scientists, for climate change is at work.
In February of 1972 earth-orbiting artificial satellites revealed the existence of a greatly increased area of the snow and ice cover of the north polar cap as compared to all previous years of space age observations. Some scientists believe that this may have presaged the onset of the dramatic climate anomalies of 1972 that brought far-reaching adversities to the world's peoples. Moreover, there is mounting evidence that the bad climate of 1972 may be the forerunner of a long series of less favorable agricultural crop years that lie ahead for most world societies. Thus widespread food shortages threaten just at the same time that world populations are growing to new highs. Indeed, less favorable climate may be the new global norm. The Earth may have entered a new "little ice age". (emphasis added).
Starvation was the scare tactic back then, as coastal flooding is now. Too much rain and not enough, too hot weather and too cold, all were linked to climate change.
Hot, dry weather in July and August of 1972 devastated food crops in the Soviet Union in the Moscow region. This was preceded by unusually cold and severe growing conditions in the Ukraine for winter wheat. The Soviet Union, as a consequence, purchased over 25 million metric tons of grain abroad. In the same year, India's monsoon rains came one to two weeks late, and retreated early. This materially reduced India's cereal production. 
The South Sahara (Sahel) drought worsened. Inadequate rains damaged grain production in Argentina and Australia. Peru's anchovy catch, a major Latin American protein resource, dropped drasticallythough it is not certain that this was the result of a climate change. Abnormally wet weather, clearly a climate anomaly, in the fall of 1972 and into the spring of 1973 reduced U.S. production of corn and soybeans. 
Reflecting all this, world food prices skyrocketed as world grain reserves dwindled. By the start of 1974 corn and wheat prices had doubled or tripled, as compared to a mere two years before. Many countries of the world are now experiencing serious waves of inflation; most economists consider the food cost spiral to be a significant contributing cause. There are strong signs that these recent climate disasters were not random deviations from the usual weather, but instead signal of the emergence of a new normal for world climates. If so, it is a normal that will be far less favorable to global agriculture, and thus to world food supplies. (emphasis added).
I had never heard of climatologists back then, but they predicted that global cooling was leading to just about everything that's linked to global warming forty years later.
The arguments for this view were developed by several of the climatologists who attended an international workshop on climate and its effects on human life convened in May 1974 in Bonn, Germany.  At this meeting Profs. H. Flohn of Germany, H.H. Lamb of the United Kingdom and Reid Bryson of the United States developed a highly persuasive demonstration that there has been a steady cooling of northern hemisphere temperatures during the last 30 years, with the strongest cooling at the higher latitudes. The average cooling has been only about 0.3°C, but this appears to be sufficient to cut about one week from the mid-latitude growing season, a highly significant matter agriculturally. Even more important, however, such a cooling appears, these climatologists believe, to be accompanied by a more variable climate, with agriculturally adverse droughts, abnormally cold spells, heat waves, and other extremes becoming more common. (emphasis added).
In more recent news on this Friday the 13th, the year 2013, the Middle East is blanketed in snow, as not seen in more than a century.

CAIRO -- Snow coated domes and minarets Friday as a record Middle East storm compounded the suffering of Syrian refugees, sent the Israeli army scrambling to dig out stranded motorists and gave Egyptians a rare glimpse of snow in their capital.
Nearly three feet of snow closed roads in and out of Jerusalem, which is set in high hills, and thousands in and around the city were left without power. Israeli soldiers and police rescued  hundreds trapped in their cars by snow and ice. In the West Bank, the branches of olive trees groaned under the weight of snow. 
In Cairo, where local news reports said the last recorded snowfall was more than 100 years ago, children in outlying districts capered in white-covered streets, and adults marveled at the sight, tweeting pictures of snow-dusted parks and squares. In other parts of the city, rain and hail rocketed down.
http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-snow-israel-egypt-20131213,0,1691393.story#ixzz2nPCYVXOb


Hebron

( Hazem Bader / AFP/Getty Images / December 12, 2013 )
Israeli soldiers patrol in the snowy city center of the West Bank town of Hebron.


http://www.latimes.com/la-wn-snow-middle-east-pictures,0,4657856.photogallery#ixzz2nPFq5Xiu


Vehicles are see stranded in the snow in Jerusalem on December 13, 2013. AFP PHOTO/AHMAD GHARABLI



Some reports suggest it’s the first snow in Cairo in over 100 years – although they are not substantiated.

Meanwhile, here in Bozeman we've experienced an abnormally frigid December, including a 5 day stretch were highs failed to exceed zero degrees and lows into the negative 20's.  After four or five days of normal temperatures to come, the deep freeze is expected to return by Thursday next week.


Thursday, December 12, 2013

Obamacare Coverage Expands

The White House writes a note to nudge your mom to get you to sign up for Obamacare. Looks like they got maternal lobotomies covered now too.




Out With The Old

They were replacing the "Big Sky", "Biggest Skiing In America" banners along Main Street today.



It seems like "Period" doesn't have quite the impact any more. 

Leave it to the Brit

Bristish PM David Cameron, Danish PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt,
U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama
Spurred on by Michelle Obama's stern visage, the net abounds with extemporizing on the moral impropriety of the Obama, Cameron, Schmidt smiling "selfie" at Nelson's Mandela's memorial service. I am reminded of experiences growing up.

The funniest guy I grew up with was Bill "Mel" Simkins.  His humor was dry and wry. He caddied at Glen View Club where he commonly had all of us at the caddie shack literally doubled over in laughter. Mel lived upstairs at Meyer (now Simkins) Funeral Home in Morton Grove, Illinois, where his dad was owner and undertaker. At the funeral home, Bill Sr. one time took my father aside into the next room when my dad showed up for a viewing. He pulled a tape measure out, and said "George, we need to measure you -- right now, you are not looking too well, very pale." Old man Simkins was looking to get a good fit. It took my dad several minutes to put on a straight face before he could enter the viewing parlor. Bill Jr. is proprietor now, and I bet he's got that tape measure handy.

Another time we were at the viewing of a distant relative, old guy who was pushing 90 when he died and my dad was smiling and joking with one of his pals. My Aunt Margaret rolled up the little memorial program and whacked him from behind. My dad looked back, smiled and kept it up, toning down the volume just a bit.

While Obama and Schmidt have yet to be heard on the topic, Conservative Party British PM David Cameron has spoken out.
David Cameron has joked about posing for a "selfie" photograph at Nelson Mandela's memorial service. 
The prime minister, US president Barack Obama and Danish leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt huddled together for the snap. 
Asked about it at PM's questions, he joked that Mr Mandela had "brought people" together in life. 
"So when a member of the Kinnock family (Denmark's PM is the former UK Labour leader's daughter-in-law) asked me... I thought it only polite to say yes."
Parliament broke out in laughter.

There are always two ways to look at a funeral, one as an opportunity to grieve and show respect (Aunt Margaret's view) or second as a chance to be joyful for a life well lived (my dad's view). Frankly, when I pass on, I hope people have a good laugh or two, and a joke at my expense. It would be a great way to fade into the sunset.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Air Travelers Should Pay for Air Travel: TSA Fee Increase is Justified

Part of the budget deal is to increase government revenues by about doubling the Passenger Security Fee that was established in 2001 to defray the cost of screening air passengers and to support the federal government's air transport security program. Screening requirements have increased, operational costs have risen and the total TSA aviation security appropriation has grown by 75 percent since the fee was instituted.  According to the GAO, in 2011 aviation fee collections covered only 28 percent of the TSA's aviation security costs.



GAO analysis of TSA air security appropriations and air security fees.
Here is the way it will work,
The proposed deal, expected to pass in the next several days, would more than double the $5 security fee on most round-trip tickets, to $11.20 per ticket. The higher fee begins on July 1. 
The old fee was $2.50 each way for a nonstop flight, capped at $5 each way if a traveler has a connection. The new fee would be $5.60 each way whether or not there's a connection. 
The CEO of Delta Air Lines said travelers will be the ones who pay it. 
"Airfares are going up for consumers. So that tax increase will not be absorbed by Delta," Richard Anderson said at a Delta Air Lines Inc. presentation for investors in New York on Wednesday.
So be it. We look in vain for other fee increases or spending cuts to align program revenues and costs. Going through the federal budget program by program, activity by activity and line by line, there would be a $100 to $200 billion per year in deficit reduction -- easy.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Coal in Our Offspring's Stocking

$17 trillion debt bomb
Looks like the Democrats and establishment Republicans are conniving around the Christmas Tree to gift the debt bomb down the road and to take joyous credit in keeping open an outsize, inefficient and incompetent government that they want, but are unwilling to pay for. It's so easy when they can pass the bill for the largess along to the children and grandchildren.
After more than two years of constant crisis, the emerging agreement amounts to little more than a cease-fire. Republicans and Democrats are abandoning their debt-reduction goals, laying down arms and, for the moment, trying to avoid another economy-damaging standoff.
The campaign to control the debt is ending “with a whimper, not a bang,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the bipartisan Concord Coalition, which advocates debt reduction. “That this can be declared a victory is an indicator of how low the process has sunk. They haven’t really done anything except avoid another crisis.”
Budget negotiators Paul Ryan and Patty Murray
And no doubt Dear President will sign the budget bill, offering encomiums to the, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, negotiators who avoided tough battles and difficult decisions.  

All to avoid "another crisis"?  If anyone bothered to notice the economy didn't even hiccup in October despite the extended government shut down.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has released the coincident indexes for the 50 states for October 2013. In the past month, the indexes increased in 44 states, decreased in four states, and remained stable in two, for a one-month diffusion index of 80. Over the past three months, the indexes increased in 45 states and decreased in five, for a three-month diffusion index of 80. For comparison purposes, the Philadelphia Fed has also developed a similar coincident index for the entire United States. The Philadelphia Fed’s U.S. index rose 0.2 percent in October and 0.7 percent over the past three months.
Not to mention we told you so and so. We are living on false premises and borrowed time. Good luck to all.

Christmas Lights

Christmas lights are shining in the valley.  A joyous Noel to all!










Monday, December 9, 2013

Joy to the World!

One thing I really do miss about no longer being in DC is the option to hang out during lunch at places like this.




By the way, that's the Apollo 11 Capsule in the background, which brought Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin home from the first manned moon landing on July 20, 1969. Filmed at the National Air and Space Museum, National Mall, Washington, DC, December 3, 2013 at 12:00 noon. 

Let it Snow

Inside the million dollar bus stop, courtesy of the developer pushed, neighborhood destroying, transit oriented lifestyle fantasy.


Oh, to live inside the Beltway again.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Politidumb of the Week

So much material to work with and so little time. There's a resurgence in reader interest on this topic, and surplus material. So we relaunch our weekly feature, with a review of the leading nominees.

It's not only politicians whose commentary gets outrageously obtuse. First up for Politidumb of this week is Bob Dylan, for comments that caught the attention of the socialists in France.
Bob Dylan has been placed under judicial investigation in France after a Croatian community organisation alleged comments he made to Rolling Stone magazine last year amounted to an incitement of racial hatred.

***
"If you got a slave master or [Ku Klux] Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that," he was quoted as saying. "That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood."
Hey Bob dude, the answer isn't blood -- blood flows, it is not something you normally see blowing in the wind.

Uncle Omar Obama at DUI trial
The second nominee is President Barack Obama's White House staff. Whether or not Barack Obama had ever met his Kenyan uncle (who is involved in potential deportation hearings), and whether, if so, the President had kept in touch or lived with this uncle are questions that are irrelevant to Obama's piloting the ship of state. Yet, the President's crew believed it necessary to wrap questions concerning Uncle Omar with a web of fabrication and deceit. Notwithstanding the White House's claims that Barack had never met uncle Omar, the future President of the United States actually roomed with his father's brother when he was a student at Harvard Law.
The White House acknowledged Thursday that President Barack Obama lived briefly years ago with a Kenyan uncle previously targeted for deportation — after initially insisting there was no evidence they had ever met.
Why the stark turnaround? “Nobody spoke to the president” when the question first arose in 2011, press secretary Jay Carney told reporters at his daily briefing.
Instead, staff appear to have relied on one of the president’s autobiographical books.
“Back when this arose, folks looked at the record, including the president's book, and there was no evidence that they had met, there was — and that was what was conveyed,” Carney explained.
That appeared to be a reference to “Dreams From My Father,” which famously includes the warning that some people in the book are composites.
The unforced error surfaces at a time when the majority of the American public do not believe the President is honest and trustworthy. Geez, I wonder why?

Speaking of drones, Senator Jay Rockefeller qualified as the third Politidumb nominee.  He had an announcement to make.
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will hold a hearing next year on the commercial use of drones, including Amazon's plan to use drones to deliver products.
Jeff Bezos unveils Amazon drones on "60 Minutes"
"Amazon's plans for using drones to deliver packages is just one example of the potential this technology offers consumers, and a reflection of the ingenuity of American business," Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said in a statement Monday.
"As we move forward toward integrating drones into civilian life and capitalizing on the economic opportunities they offer, we must make certain that these aircraft meet rigorous safety and privacy standards. I plan to hold a hearing early next year to explore the potential economic benefits of unmanned vehicles in our airspace as well as the potential risks they may create."
Way to fall for the publicity stunt timed to align with the start of the Christmas buying season. Meanwhile, Amazon intentionally loses money in its campaign to dominate and destroy competition in the online marketplace. Hey, how about an Amazon antitrust hearing Senator Rockefeller dude, something you ought to know something about -- remember how predatory pricing worked out for Standard Oil and great grandpa John?

As I sit here and write, the temperature not having cracked zero for the last three days, the winning nominee is James Hansen, who runs the Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions program at the Columbia University Earth Institute. Hansen retired this year as director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies -- you know one of those highly competent, incredibly well informed, apolitical government employees. Hansen said,
Climate change is altering people's lives, right now, from the United States to Africa to the Arctic. It is as clear and present a danger as we've ever seen.

And the threat will only get worse if left unchecked. If we allow the planet's energy imbalance to increase and the ocean to continue to warm, we will pass a point of no return. Our children and grandchildren would inherit disintegrating ice sheets, rising seas that inundate all coastal cities, increasingly violent climate extremes and extermination of countless species. We would leave future generations a far more desolate planet than the one that we were blessed to inherit.
We are breaking records for temperature lows previously set in 1909, when my long departed father, who regaled us kids with stories about the extreme cold and blizzards of his youth, was but three months old.  I agree about the danger thing -- had to turn my daughter down today on her request to go skiing. Too much risk of frostbite.  Dude Hansen, come get your award. And don't forget the tire chains. You'll need them to get over the pass.




Saturday, December 7, 2013

Arctic Air Is Different

Under normal conditions the impact of elevation is to reduce temperature as elevation increases. Daytime temps in the summer, spring and fall usually decrease about 3 to 4 degrees for every thousand foot increase in elevation. In keeping with its mile depth, it is commonly 20 degrees warmer on the floor than at the rim of the Grand Canyon. It can snow like the dickens at the top while it rains at the bottom. Temperature differences are primarily why mountains are snow-capped when valleys are clear and mountain snows remain long after the seasonal snow melt finishes on valley floors.  

The explanation lies in air pressure.
You may already know about the relationship between temperature and pressure: When you pressurize air (or any gas), it gets hotter, and when you release the pressure on air it gets colder. So a bicycle pump gets hot when you pump up a tire, and a spray paint can or a C02 cartridge gets cold as you release the pressurized gas. A refrigerator puts both of these processes together, pressurizing gas on the outside of the refrigerator to release heat and decompressing it inside the refrigerator to absorb heat (see How Refrigerators Work for details). 
picture of mountain
John Foxx/Getty Images
Lower pressure at higher altitudes causes the temperature to be colder on top of a mountain than at sea level.

You may also know that air pressure decreases as altitude increases. This table shows the pressure (in pounds per square inch) at different altitudes:
Altitude
Air Pressure
Sea level
14.7 PSI
10,000 feet
10.2 PSI
20,000 feet
6.4 PSI
30,000 feet
4.3 PSI
40,000 feet
2.7 PSI
50,000 feet
1.6 PSI

As air rises, the pressure decreases. It is this lower pressure at higher altitudes that causes the temperature to be colder on top of a mountain than at sea level.

Lower elevations are subjected to greater pressure because more air is stacked on top; higher elevations have less and thinner air above.

But arctic air masses are different. Locally, the Bridger Bowl ski area rises 2,700 feet from the parking area to the ridge on top of the Bridger Range. Normally temperatures drop 10 to 12 degrees going from the base to the top. Not so today.

Earlier this afternoon the ridge temperature was 11 degrees higher than the base. The base temperature was -13 F while the ridge topped out at at -2 F. 

Convection has taken over. As anyone can attest by waving a hand over flame or a boiling pot, hot air rises. Cold air falls because it is heavier and less active than hot air. These reversals are typically localized and most extreme in canyons, stream bottoms and off of steep ridges, areas that are low and protected from wind. High wind speeds have a mixing effect and counteract the tendency of different temperature layers to maintain separation. An important contributing factor is the presence of an Arctic high pressure system, where winds from the outside whirl in to compound air pressure (and the weight of air) in the center.  

Such is the situation we have at Bridger Bowl today.  The winds are light.  The topography is severe. And a strong Arctic high pressure system has settle in on this side of the Divide.  Skiers at the top can bask in the relative comfort of near zero temperatures, such as it is.

Below, is a web cam view of life on the ridge, Saturday, December 7, 2013 with temperatures hovering around 0 degrees. I hope the fellow standing on top was dressed warm, very warm.