Weatherman which way the wind blows

love big al, and he's not as big as he used to be.

 

Y'know what they say, any single event... Yet that area of Maryland had a remarkable series of rain events.

Roker's gastric bypass was apparently very successful. One might expect a 'flood' of such surgeries in the future.

 

Related, an amazingly long record of extreme rainfalls:

Dusty rainfall records reveal new understanding of Earth's long-term climate -- ScienceDaily

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Loess soils are amazing in themselves. Topic for another day...

 

we could use some, it's getting a bit dusty around here as well.

 

feast or famine

 

A replay of the radar loop of that event that I saw suggested that the convection formed along a surface boundary and continued to train over that same area. I think that area got something like 7.5 inches of rain in about 3 hours. 2-3 inch/hour rainfall rates are not unusual for strong convective events, so the devastating flash flooding was more the result of the duration of the event.

 

Fascinating and as often happens here, sends my thinking in new directions.

I assume that 'Doppler loops' are available for many sites and in some cases, for decades.

Examine them for extreme events, defined as above or others.

Examine by computer (some sort of trained image recognition) or as a new citizen science project.

Write an article about results.

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Or has something like this already been done? Or, are such records not archived?

 

If radar images are routinely archived on the internet, I'm not aware of where they're stored.

There are several products available to NWS meteorologists on AWIPS that are not available at all on the internet as far as I know (e.g., "VIL" or "vertically integrated liquid" .which would be a useful product for that event).

If you or anyone else finds an archive for these radar products, please let me know.

 

There is a map of radar sites in the U.S. if you are able to get them where you are - National Weather Service Doppler Radar Images .

Note that 2-3 inch/hour rainfall rates roughly correlate to "red" image returns on radar.

 

A parallel development is paving (or other impermeable surfacing) on watersheds. This is mentioned many places. One example from Slate:

Ellicott City, Maryland, flooding: Climate change is coming as rain.

Not difficult to get past their spin (I suppose there is spin) to see underlying information.

 

Some .gov website are blocked here but that one is unhindered.

Was recently viewing Alberto's center of circulation bearing down on Huntsville of Alabama.

 

Would not be out of character for me to make a 'cold call' (email) to NWS and suggest that they examine archived data in this way. Might be more successful to rope in an author from one of the US Climate Assessments to portray the idea in not cracked-pottery terms.

 

Speaking of WSR-88D, are they every going to repair the blown-down PR radar? Anyway, it is worth looking for images after damage. That baby was reset!

 

Images of wind damage, plans to restore and current backups:

Federal collaboration yields radar coverage for Puerto Rico, USVI in wake of Hurricane Maria | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Puerto Rico Radar Obliterated After It Takes a Direct Hit From Hurricane Maria | The Weather Channel

Former link shows replacement on a guyed single-stick tower. Not resistant to very strong winds I'm thinkin'.

 

Saw that also. Most interesting thing was that rain bands stayed nicely circular into middle Alabama even though this was not a particularly coherent twirl. Youse guys need bigger mountains

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Stepping back, we can ask whether published National Climate Assessments have fully captured changing meteorological extremes. If not, can something better be done with data not yet squeezed? Besides rainfall, stream flow, winds and temperatures. Are there gaps that data already in hand can fill?

I do not accuse National Climate Assessment authors of short sheeting. Just thinking about ringing their bells. In some polite way.

 

Probability math of flood exceedance seems solid. Just look at those lovely formulas! Two issues nag, though. First, extrapolating beyond timescale of records. Second, supposing that contributing factors don't vary through time. It was Harvey in Houston that made that second look quite bad. Deep research has not yet been published about that and we only have media spins so far.

Thread-starter BobW will say if here these things do fit. Full treatment exceeds my ability but we might give it a shot.

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At personal levels, 'known' risks from water and wind might not be well constrained. A deal is made with well-tax-funded government: tell us what we need to know. One cannot expect that in this non-political forum, current shortcomings would be discussed. Yet there are things not known that ought to be known.

 

And topography.