Two Hurricanes in the Pacific

In the winter time I have one of the tabs in my browser set to the weather page at Alta Ski Area as it guides me on what to expect when I go skiing. That information is useless in the summer time and so instead I focus on hurricanes. While this may not seem to effect me as I reside in the landlocked state of Utah, it actually does. Furthermore hurricanes have a huge effect on vacation and travel plans. An Atlantic hurricane can really screw up flights throughout the entire country.

I have been watching NOAA's hurricane site for about 10 years and have seen something today I have never seen before. There is currently a hurricane south of Hawaii named Iona. Fortunately it is on a westward path and Hawaii is safe, for now. Behind it is the tropical storm Keli. I wouldn't expect there to be hurricanes so close together as the first one should be pulling energy from the ocean that would be required for the one behind it. That is probably why Keli is only a tropical storm and not expected to grow as it continues west and well south of Hawaii.

While I have seen multiple storms in either the Atlantic or Pacific oceans at the same time, I haven't seen two additional storms starting to form with a probability greater than 60% to become named storms. The furthest west storm is just east of Keli and has a 70% chance of turning into a tropical storm. A little bit closer to Mexico the conditions are a bit higher for storm formation as it has a 90% chance of forming into something of concern.

I am not worried about a hurricane making its way to Utah but I have seen storms like that send copious amounts of moisture my way. While it could be devastating for those near the coast, it could provide the Western United States with some badly needed precipitation. For some it will be bad, for others it will be good.

Fortunately I am not headed to Mexico, Hawaii, nor Florida in the near future and so I don't need to worry about changing vacation or travel plans. If I planned to go to Hawaii next week, I would keep those plans as none of the storms seem to be headed that way. If I planned to go to the west coast of Mexico, I might be watching the storm forming there but probably wouldn't change my plans either. The Atlantic has been relatively calm this year so far and continues to look that way now. With that being said, now is a good time to pay attention to hurricane forecasts as this is the time of year when it really gets interesting.  

Dead-End Technology

Growing up the world seemed full of endless possibilities. I remember reading a story about how one day we would travel on supersonic aircraft regularly. I also saw promises of personal jet packs and flying cars. Those ideas seemed wonderful to a young kid and the future looked bright. Unfortunately none of that has really materialized. Why not? There are physical limitations that create what I call dead-end technology.

While we did have supersonic passenger flights for several decades, the fuel costs made it prohibitively expensive for all but the super wealthy. Friction and gravity require a lot of energy to overcome and there are physical limits to what can be achieved. The same hold true with personal jet packs. When it comes to flying cars, there are numerous safety issues but technology may catch up to where that may be possible, just not soon.

My oldest daughter asked me if I am concerned about the increasing size of hurricanes and I told her there are physical limitations that will keep them from getting much bigger. What will increase is the number of large hurricanes and that is something to worry about. The highest sustained winds ever recorded came from the Pacific hurricane Patricia in 2015 with sustained wind speeds of 215 miles per hour (345 km/h). I doubt we will get above that number by more than one or two miles per hour. We'll just see more hurricanes getting close to that number.

So what about computers? How come they continue to get smaller, faster, and less expensive? The limitations placed on them have not been based on dead-end technology. The switch from vacuum tubes to transistors allowed them to shrink and require a lot less power. Advances in photo lithography have continued to allow them to get smaller. Unfortunately we are getting to a point where it will soon be physically impossible to continue the shrinking trend. Right now, the smallest traces on computer chips are only 3 atoms wide. That is tiny.

So have we reached the limit on computers? Nope. Currently computer chips are built in a very 2-dimensional way where they are mostly, but not completely, flat. Instead of computers being built on chips, we can build them into cubes. Let's see how far that gets us but I think there are plenty of advances that can be made.

About 20 years ago I helped my brother-in-law make some decisions about buying a new computer and told him to get the biggest and highest-resolution monitor he could afford. I told him it would last a long time because monitor technology seemed very stable and his monitor would last through multiple generations of computers. Then flat-screen monitors entered the market and proved me wrong. It took an unforeseen technology advancement to enhance the art of computer and television displays.

So what will it take to have supersonic air travel for the masses? Or those personal jet packs? We will have to throw away the dead-end technology like we did with cathode-ray tubes (CRT) and embrace new technologies like we did with LCD and LED screens. What that is for transportation, I don't know. It may be as simple as devising a low-energy method of defeating gravity or cheaper and denser forms of energy. All I know is I hope someone figures it out cause those personal jet packs look like a lot of fun.

Prepare Early For Natural Disasters

A few weeks ago I spent some time in Orlando, Florida at Disney World. Naturally I have an interest in the area as hurricane Milton heads towards it and is expected to do some serious damage. It is no secret that I enjoy keeping up on hurricanes every summer and keep the National Hurricane Center's website up on my computer throughout the summer months. I watched from a safe distance as hurricane Helene came up the west-coast of Florida and slammed into the panhandle of the state. Now only a short time later I am watching what is happening with Milton.

I am safe in my home in Utah nowhere near the devastating storm and so it is fairly easy to lob suggestions at those in Florida. While it is easy to tell everyone to get to safety and evacuate, that is much more difficult for some to do. I don't have to worry about finding a place to go. I don't have to worry about lost wages from missing work. I don't have to worry about going on a long drive where I probably won't be able to find gasoline for my car along the way. About the only thing I have going for me is that my advice isn't tainted with emotion, only logic.

Hurricane Milton isn't expected to make landfall until Wednesday evening or early Thursday morning. To me that seems like a lot of time to evacuate from those areas most likely to be dangerous. The reality is that leaving is so much easier said than done. That is why my advice to everyone really is to prepare early. I imagine a last-minute flight out of Orlando is not going to be cheap. Local authorities plan to close the airport Wednesday ahead of the storm's arrival. Looking at Delta's website this evening, a round-trip flight from Orlando to Salt Lake leaving tomorrow and returning a week later is over $2000. Furthermore there is only one seat left on a single available flight. No you don't have to go all the way to Salt Lake to escape the storm but the options to Atlanta are not much better and still cost almost $700.

So how can you prepare for such events? Take some time and sit down with your family to think about all of the possible natural disasters that can happen in your area. Think about earthquakes, major storms, wildfires,  or other things you have heard about that have hit close to home. Then think about possible options on where you could evacuate, should the need arise. If you have nowhere to go, do you have the supplies you need to shelter in place?

One of my biggest concerns is a lengthy power outage during the dead of winter. While I heat my home with natural gas I still require electricity to run the blower motor to circulate that heat throughout my house. I have a generator that I can use but it would take a lot of work to disconnect the furnace blower from my home electrical system and connect it to the generator. I would also have to be very careful to run the generator outside and nowhere near any air vents into the house. I don't want to kill my family with carbon monoxide poisoning.

Once you create your plan of attack for a natural disaster, it is important to have your plan written down and kept in a safe place. Trying to remember all of the great ideas you had will be tough as you try to avoid panicking. It is also a good idea to review those ideas periodically as things change and you may have better solutions. There are also a lot of resources on the Internet that may help with your planning.

My heart goes out to all of those in harm's way right now. I hope the storm lessens in severity and it is a regular-old-thunderstorm by the time it makes landfall. Unfortunately mother nature doesn't care what I want and so I don't put any stock into that happening. Instead let's hope most are prepared and there is little to no loss of life.

Hurricane Season 2023

Sailors are very aware of hurricane season as none of us want to be caught out in the ocean during one. I've personally been caught in two, both in the Pacific. They are not fun. Unfortunately I have a morbid fascination with hurricanes now and want to know how they are developing out in our oceans.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or US weather service has a great site to watch as storms form and strengthen. There are 3 tabs on the page that show the Central Pacific, Eastern Pacific, and Atlantic. When a storm first begins to form it is marked with a yellow "X". Hovering your mouse over the X gives you important information about the storm such as intensity and probability of becoming more severe. As it grows in strength, the X goes from yellow to orange to red. Then it progresses through depression, storm, and hurricane icons.

The beginning of hurricane season is in June but is actually very boring and so I didn't start watching the site until July. Even then there is not much going on. The real action begins in August and so I have the site up all day. I watched as Dora went from a probable storm up through a hurricane. I took particular interest because it started where the sailor Donald Lawson got into trouble. The Mexican Coast Guard kept talking about how weather contributed to hampering the search for the missing sailor. Being able to watch the storms build really underscored the difficulty experienced.

Hurricane Katrina happened towards the end of August. Then hurricanes Fiona and Ian that happened last year formed in the middle and end of September. I hope we have a very boring hurricane season this year but now is the time to start watching.