Bad day in Oklahoma

I was scheduled to fly today; my CFI said I need some work on landings before
he'd sign me off. I checked ADDS before I left the house, and the TAF said there
should have a 14 knot crosswind component, which would be OK. In Oklahoma if you
can't do crosswind T/O's, you can't fly. When I got the field, the flags in
front of the FBO were furling perpendicular to 17/35. I watch a Hawker takeoff
on 17L and went in the flight school and rescheduled. Bummer, I could fly again
today.

When I got home the news said we had two wild fires in Oklahoma. One in the
south. At one time the fire front was eight miles across. The land to the south
is flat rangeland, and the fire spread fast and wide. The other was in Lincoln
County, which is hilly with lots of trees and undergrowth. The fire trucks could
get in to the fires. They had too wait at the roads for the fire to come to
them.

Because of the winds the tankers could not takeoff form Ardmore (KADM). One of
the single pilot tankers did run off of the runway. The pilot is OK and walked
away. The plane did not catch fire. They were worried that a fire might get to
the other tankers. I'm not clear on the story about tankers.

A fire chief said that not all of the fires out to the south, but they had it
contained. As the news helicopter shows someone's house total involved. Hadn't
heard anything about the fire in Lincoln County.

Me not able to fly today, seem a little trivial.

GeorgeC

A fire chief said that not all of the fires out to the south, but they had
it
contained. As the news helicopter shows someone's house total involved.
Hadn't
heard anything about the fire in Lincoln County.

Me not able to fly today, seem a little trivial.

Funny how everything is relative. Sounds like you made the right decision.

I did too. We were supposed to fly to Wisconsin yesterday, to visit
friends. The weather was forecast to be perfect, but things started heading
downhill with the outlook briefing two days ago. Then, yesterday's
prediction was changed to be marginal, but today was supposed to still be
good.

Today absolutely sucks, with freezing rain and snow along the route of
flight. 72 hours ago, it was predicted to be sunny and warm. Had we
departed yesterday, we'd be stuck in Wisconsin for sure.

Weather forecasting computer models are so incredibly flawed that they can't
reliably predict the weather 12 hours in advance -- yet, for some unknown
reason, many people trust computer models that purport to show what the
climate will be like in the year 2100.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Weather forecasting computer models are so incredibly flawed that they can't
reliably predict the weather 12 hours in advance -- yet, for some
unknown
reason, many people trust computer models that purport to show what the

climate will be like in the year 2100.

Jay, you hit on one of my favorite rants here : )

Vagaries of weather forecasting aside, and I'm certainly no expert -
but you'd think with the bazillion dollar constellation of wx
satellites in orbit the weather-guessers would have it down by now, or
at least better than the .500(?) avg it seems they're struggling
with...

On 2006-03-02, Jay Honeck wrote:
Weather forecasting computer models are so incredibly flawed that they can't
reliably predict the weather 12 hours in advance -- yet, for some unknown
reason, many people trust computer models that purport to show what the
climate will be like in the year 2100.

Weather is not equal to climate.

Here's an analogy - take a large pan of water, switch on the gas stove
at a medium setting.

The equivalent of weather forecasting is predicting where exactly each
convection will appear in the next X minutes, and how the water will
flow with the gas heating it (probably unevenly, no burners are
perfect), and what temperatures will be found at different points inside
that volume of water.

The equivalent of climatology in this pan analogy is predicting the rate
of temperature change in the entire pan if, say, I turn the burner from
medium to full power.

The person predicting where all the eddies and temperature variances
within the pan will be pretty accurate for what will happen in the next
few seconds, but fairly inaccurate if you ask him to predict where the
eddies, temperature variances and convections will be in five minutes
time.
However, the person predicting what happens when you go from half burner
to full burner can give you a much more accurate general prediction of
what the heat will be in 30 minutes.

It's the same with climatology versus meterology. If you add a certain
chemical to the atmosphere which has a known effect, you can say with a
reasonable degree of confidence what it will do to the total energy
state of the atmosphere as a whole over a period of decades.
However, you can't say what it will do to an individual eddy current
in the atmosphere from one day to the next.

Dismissing climate change because the NWS 5-day forecasts isn't always
accurate is a complete and utter misunderstanding of the difference
between climatology and meterology (in fact it's so wrong it's not even
wrong).

--
Dylan Smith, Port St Mary, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net

Dismissing climate change because the NWS 5-day forecasts isn't always
accurate is a complete and utter misunderstanding of the difference
between climatology and meterology (in fact it's so wrong it's not even
wrong).

It's merely an example of how far off weather computer models are at
predicting ANYTHING over time -- nothing more. Your over-simplified example
of how climate works casts some heat -- but little light -- on the subject.

See http://www.crichton-official.com/spe...s_quote05.html for
Michael Crichton's excellent discourse on where the "science" of
environmentalism has led us.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On 2006-03-04, Jay Honeck wrote:
See http://www.crichton-official.com/spe...s_quote05.html for
Michael Crichton's excellent discourse on where the "science" of
environmentalism has led us.

Crichton is a fiction writer. I would accept the arguments of one
climatologist over the arguments of ten thousand Crichtons.

--
Dylan Smith, Port St Mary, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net

Michael Crichton's excellent discourse on where the "science" of
environmentalism has led us.

Crichton is a fiction writer. I would accept the arguments of one
climatologist over the arguments of ten thousand Crichtons.

Crichton is a medical doctor, a very successful author (of both fiction and
non-fiction work), and one helluva a smart guy.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

PS

My CFI called to today and he has sinusitis and will be grounded for three days.
Things just keep getting better and better.

On a good note, the "Director of Flight Instruction" was looking at the Prog
charts, and said, "It actually looks like if might rain." I just checked the
patio and it was sprinkling.

GeorgeC

"GeorgeC" wrote in message ...
snip

When I got home the news said we had two wild fires in Oklahoma. One in the
south. At one time the fire front was eight miles across. The land to the south
is flat rangeland, and the fire spread fast and wide. The other was in Lincoln
County, which is hilly with lots of trees and undergrowth. The fire trucks could
get in to the fires. They had too wait at the roads for the fire to come to
them.
Because of the winds the tankers could not takeoff form Ardmore (KADM). One of
the single pilot tankers did run off of the runway. The pilot is OK and walked
away. The plane did not catch fire. They were worried that a fire might get to
the other tankers. I'm not clear on the story about tankers.

A fire chief said that not all of the fires out to the south, but they had it
contained. As the news helicopter shows someone's house total involved. Hadn't
heard anything about the fire in Lincoln County.

Me not able to fly today, seem a little trivial.

GeorgeC

I guess they forgot the fire just down the road from me! We had fire trucks waiting in line at the hydrant in front
of the house for hours. Monday we had one fire 6 miles North of town that came within a mile of a chemical plant.
The worst part of all of this is the volunteer firemen who were injured. I used to get annoyed at all the news
reports of forest fires during fire season in the mountain states. I'm a little more sympathetic now that we have
fire bombers dropping on prairie fires. I never thought I'd see the day.

Joe Schneider
N8437R



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