So I have a whole bunch of y’all signed up to be weather people. That’s great. This is the list so far:
ericy |
The Wx Team (so far)
catte nappe |
walkshills
|
Labrat |
ninkasi23 |
Fishoutofwater |
sfbob |
skywrnchsr509 |
tapu dali |
chitown kev |
hey338too |
tampaedski |
magsview |
malapert |
johnatx |
duckpin236 |
spit |
evergreen2 |
terrypinder |
This group is open to everyone so if you’re interested, let me know. The Resources diary should help anyone get started.
PUBLISHING
This very helpful tip came in the comments of the resources diary:
To clarify something you said about DK5 at the end: if someone wants to publish through the group (or any group), they should not hit “publish” in their draft AT ALL. They should add their Publish Group, and then go directly to the group’s queue and publish or schedule from there, and just exit their draft after saving. (When you add a Publish Group, the group’s name that is added to the draft’s sidebar is a link to the group queue, so that’s one way of getting there.)
I agree that these publication tools are misleading. They are basically equivalent to the three radio button choices we had in DK4: Publish now, Schedule later, or Queue to a group. The problem is they’re pulled apart, instead of being a group of radio buttons, implying that they are not exclusive of one another. But they are!
SCHEDULING
People are already writing diaries and that’s great. Even though the official launch day is January 30, if you want to write a diary about the weather, please do so!
So this isn’t chaotic after the 30th though I’d like to know how you all want to do scheduling. Should I assign people at random? Ask who wants which day? I’m hoping we can do at least a once a day diary, posted around 6 PM Eastern. If there’s a major weather event such as a tornado outbreak, blizzard, major storm, flood, tsunami, or earthquake (or volcanic eruption), by all means, throw a severe weather emergency live blog up so the information can get out there and be shared quickly. There are other community diaries here so I’m wondering how all of you schedule writers who volunteer. Please let me know how everyone wants to handle this (I’d prefer not to use email, because of the sheer volume of email we all probably get). Thanks!
TOPICS
Whatever you want to write about, go ahead and write about it! As long as you try your hand at forecasting, we’re good. Suggested topics I’ve seen are wildfires, climate change, prepping for disasters, weather stations. International forecasts are quite welcome. But any topic is good. And to relate this to “electing more and better Democrats"—Primary Day forecasts are a thing we’re going to do. I also don’t care which candidate is supported—just be cool. I don’t think, with the group we’ve got here, we’re going to have any problems.
SOME THINGS TO READ
- The Resources Diary talked about the GFS and the Euro. This article’s a good indepth look at their differences. Take a look!
- Perhaps the giant eruption of Lake Toba (a volcano on Sumatra) 74,000 years ago didn’t freeze the planet after all. (There is a lot of evidence in either direction)
- The Army Corps of Engineers has opened Bonnet Carre, to alleviate pressure on downstream levees along the Mississippi River, particularly at New Orleans. The Mississippi River flood event is still ongoing, the crest of which is roughly near Helena, AR. For a fascinating narrative read about the 2011 Mississippi River Floods—floods that were almost the Project Design Flood modeled in the 1950s, check out this document from the Army Corps of Engineers. There are also lots of technical reports too. (In case anyone’s wondering---the Spillway is open to the public, and apparently it is a big public event when they open it). Spillways (there are 4 along the Lower Mississippi, 1 in Missouri and 3 in Louisiana) are the engineering answer to what the river once did naturally—spill out over its flood plain, a topic worth tackling if anyone wants.
- The American Meteorological Society is meeting this week in New Orleans. If you’re on twitter, the hashtag is #AMS2016
- No, Yellowstone is not going to erupt, there’s no such thing as “volcano season”, and so on. It’d be awesome if media could get things right for once, and I’d love to know why Yellowstone causes such anxiety in the United States to the point there are significant conspiracy theories about it that attempt to use the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory’s own seismic monitoring data against it (I've written about this in the past). Yellowstone will probably not have a significant eruption for the next 50,000 years---and people may not even exist 50,000 years from now. Large volcanoes elsewhere do not cause the level of anxiety we see in the US for their host countries, some of which, well, might just pop off. American exceptionalism at play? Worth exploring.