Tuesday, September 02, 2008

"Churn, Baby, Churn..."

Even though I'm now 'off', I will forever be looking at the weather...and with Hanna eyeing the Southeast Coast (literally and figuratively) sometime Friday, I'll be tossing in my hat to help out at the station. Gustav is dumping the rain, Hanna is cranking up to leave the Bahamas soon, Ike is steaming eastward toward the Bahamas (not looking good for Cuba and Haiti, yet again), and now Tropical Depression #10 that's a Josephine-Wannabe:



If it looks like a conveyor belt to you, it's for a good reason: it is. Late August opens up the Cape Verde season, which is the group of dots above the "TEN" in the graphic above. Hurricane activity peaks around this time, with a secondary peak around Oct. 8-10. Tropical systems can pretty much pop-up anywhere anytime, and with the warm waters can do so rapidly under favorable conditions...and Hanna is waiting for the all-you-can-eat buffet as it crosses into the warm Gulf Stream waters...


Thought you'd like a look back at some 3-D grabs I made as Gustav crossed into the LA bayous...

Of note in the above two images, just slightly different angles close in time to each other, note that the severe 'red' levels are absent on the surface portion of the area on the right side, especially notable in the top radar cut. With winds whipping counter-clockwise around that eyewall over 100mph, the storms aren't up and down like a nasty cell around here...they're leaning sharply to the right as the lower reaches are pushed left. For reference, Houma is the most notable city on the maps.

And just a gratuitous shot of a semi-transparent cloud deck that lets you see the nastier wall on the N/E side of Gustav's eye...

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You may be wondering how my body and self adapted to the new schedule? Still hasn't sunk in, solid sleep more than 4-5 hours eludes me, though I am staying off the Ambien that was needed to go to bed at 6p on the old clock. I do feel more rested, feel healthier already (though some of that surely is mental), and ready to run a couple of errands and start making sawdust. That's the Cliff Notes version, for now.

Remember, Saddle Pals - no more wearing white after Labor Day!
Stupid 'rule' #726...



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ambien.

I have taken for 30 days. I am 23 years old. First I took it to help me fall asleep. After a couple of days I noticed that it made me feel really good, so I would take it just to feel the high that it gave me. I would had no memory of what I did the night before. Every night I did really weird things like send out strange emails, take weird pictures, and I fear that I did things that I still don't know about. I would also hallucinate. I would just spend a lot of time staring at things watching them move, like the wall or notes on sheet music. I was way too distracted to go to bed. It made me tired, but I didn't want to go to bed. I stopped taking it because I don't want to get involved with something like that. I think about it all the time and I have cravings for it, but I just don't think I need anymore problems.

Side Effects :
Hallucinations, feeling of being high, and no memory of things I did the night before.

I hope this information will be useful to others,
Carrie James

Bob Child said...

Thanks for your input...similar stories have I!