On vacations and business trips

Howdy,
Been a while since I posted here so I thought I'd take a minute to tell you where I've been. Lisa and I went on vacation to Carolina Beach for a week. We were a little worried about Jeanne but all she did was stir up the surf and give us a little wind to contend with, tight pressure gradients and all. That had the unexpected result of pushing in the warm water from the Gulf Stream, and that brought the flounder into the surf. I love surf fishing, especially in the fall. This trip did not disappoint. I caught blues, flounder, mullet and croakers. The north and south end of the island are open to 4 wheel drives and that is a lot of fun as well. We had to cut it a day short though because I had to hop a plane to Pittsburgh on Sunday. I was not looking forward to this trip. I had heard bad things about PGH but was pleasantly suprised. It was a lot more hilly than I imagined. I loved all the bridges, more than Venice according to the hotel literature. It had a small town feel with big city features and the people were as friendly as Chicagoans. Great sports town and some great restaurants. I'd go back. Too bad the Steelers, Pirates and Penguins weren't in town.

Bears Gone Wild

It seems I have an infatuation with bear stories:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/09/29/life.bear.reut/index.html

The Great Peanut Tour

I've been riding this bike tour since 1989. The Cattail Creek Campground in Skippers, VA is home to this event and has been since 1978. What started as a small gathering of Emporia VA area cyclists has turned into a "must do" for the entire East Coast cycling community. How did this come to be with virtually no promotion? Simple- good old fashioned southern hospitality. The rest stops on the ride are all provided by local farmers and churches. They pay for the drinks and food. Just for the chance to meet cyclists from all over (one guy from Australia a couple of years back) for a day and to spread fellowship. It is an odd mix. Spandexed cyclists from all walks of life co-mingle with hardy peanut, tobacco, and cotton farmers in John Deere hats and church ladies carrying trays full of cookies, pbj sandwiches, cucumbers and watermelon rind pickles. And peanuts, lots and lots of peanuts. The cyclists just eat it up and through word of mouth the event has grown to over 1000 riders. Everywhere that there is a ride, you will hear riders saying "Oh, you have to do the Peanut!" The ride is now a four day extravaganza, starting with a 25 miler on Thursday, the 81 mile Lake Gaston ride on Friday, and the NC Metric (65 mi) and VA Metric on both Saturday and Sunday. The weather is usually great but in 26 years there has been all kinds. Hurricane Fran tore through the campground one year, tornadoes closed several roads another but the rides went on. Which lead to the words on the bottom of the application: "No rain date, no tornado date, no hurricane date." I'll be there next year, eating watermelon rind pickles and soaking up the hospitality.

iPod ResQ

Got a call this evening from a tech at iPod resQ. Apparently they don't even try to repair the firewire port, they just yank out the logic board and replace it.(which contains the fw port- makes sense). Trouble is they don't have any of the Rev. 1 boards. So he asks me if I would consider upgrading to a Rev.2. That means no more scroll wheel, no moving parts. "How much?" I ask. "We will upgrade you to Rev.2 with a factory fresh battery for $159". SWEET! "How soon can I get it back?" "If you will PayPal me tonight, I'll ship it tonight". SUPER SWEET! 90 day waranty, and I will have it back for Labor Day. Gotta go download some shows. Probably go for the last Phish show at Hampton in FLAC. I'll probably need an iPod software update too. Busy,busy.


Indeed.

Gaston- the storm, not the lake.

Most folks around here get nervous when they hear the term "hurricane". Rightly so after Isabell. I think from now on they will get nervous when they hear the term "tropical". Being somewhat of an amateur student of meteorolgy, I offer my explanation of what happened. One of my favorite weather sites is the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, OK. They are the agency responsible for issuing hazardous weather outlooks and warnings. Their site is very educational. Anyway, one of the factors that they look at when determining T-storm or tornadic activity is "convective available potential energy" or CAPE. Their definition:

Surface-Based CAPE/CIN (J/kg)

SBCAPE (Surface-Based Convective Available Potential Energy) is a measure of instability in the troposphere. This value represents the total amount of potential energy available to a parcel of air originating at the surface and being lifted to its level of free convection (LFC). No parcel entrainment is considered. The CAPE calculation uses virtual temperatures, but the CIN value does not. SPC forecasters have noted that non-virtual CIN calculations tend to define areas of weak cap more accurately than if the virtual temperature was considered.

CIN (Convective INhibition) represents the "negative" area on a sounding that must be overcome before storm initiation can occur.

This is what the local tv weather man is talking about when they mention "lift" in the atmosphere. Back to what happened. The CAPE levels that day were very high due to a cold front moving in from the west. Colder air is heavier and rolls in under the warm air, thereby generating lift.The couple of hours of sunshine we had added to the lift since warm air rises. Now here comes Gaston, a tropical spinning low pressure area. Its spinning motion pushed it fairly quickly across Carolina since CAPE levels there were relatively low. Now all of a sudden it hits all of this lift. The warm moist air rises and as it does, precipitation is enhanced and its motion is stalled. Tornadoes break out. Rain becomes deluge. 10-14" across the Richmond Metro area. So that's my explanation. Who knows, maybe a real meterologist will read this blog and tell me I'm full of crap. If you haven't seen the pictures, Times Dispatch has a slide show. A very weird event, one that I hope doesn't happen again.