Florida Sea Base News

My Honda Civic, 4′ x 6′ utility trailer, and I arrived safety in Midlothian, Texas sometime around 15:00 (3pm) Sunday.  During the drive, I took a one hour nap at a rest area on I-10 near Tallahassee and a 20 minute nap at the Flying Jin Gulfport, Mississippi.  At least I think it was Gulfport.

I rolled out of bed at 05:30 Saturday with the intent of packing, loading and going to bed around dinner time.  Then get up at 02:00, hit the road 03:00, and make the 22 – 24 hour drive to Texas.  But I was packed and loaded by noon.  Kyle, Preston, Runowich, and Ian (also a D/FW resident) moved my loaded trailer by hand from the Scuba Chickee to the driveway so I could connect it to the car.  I was wring wet with sweat so I took a shower, threw a few final items in the car and headed for the Mother Country.  When I went to bed Sunday I had been up for 39 hours, minus the hour and twenty minutes of napping done in the driver’s set of the Civic.

Blah, blah blah.  What about the Florida Sea Base Captain Steve?

GALLEY

Saturday was the first day that the construction crew was NOT hard at work since they began over a week ago.  I’m not sure if they need a (much deserved) break, were at a point where permission to continue was required from a Village of Islamorada building inspector, or needed materials.  Regardless, they have been making phenomenal process.  I think the building inspector was out on Friday to check progress.  You never know if that is good or bad.

WEATHER

I was lead to believe this would be a quiet week or two regarding tropical weather development.  I checked this morning and Invest 92L is approaching the Lesser Antilles and expected to track south of Cuba and Invest 93L has formed in the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to track into northern Florida. That makes me think of the Jimmy Buffet song, “Fins”.  To paraphrase, storms to the north, storms to the south.

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I’m glad I didn’t wait to make the drive.  There is very heavy rain along most of my route today.  I drove in the rain from Shreveport, Louisiana to the house yesterday.

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WEATHER UNDERGROUND

Former staff member John Livres sent me a brief email to confirm my worry; Dr. Jeff Masters has sold Weather Underground to the parent company of The Weather Channel.  All of the above graphics are courtesy of Weather Underground.  I’m sure the sale was a huge financial success for Dr. Masters.  The impact on the rest of humanity  is inconsequential.  I am very disappointed.  The eventual loss of the Weather Underground radar graphics will have a negative impact on our weather monitoring options at the Florida Sea Base.  We will work around it.  http://wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2143  I guess I was busy that day and didn’t the the blog.  Shame on me.

DIVEMASTER ACADEMY

If you are contemplating submitting an application for the 2012 Divemaster Academy, please do so immediately.  If you cannot send in the application all me or send in an email to let me know of your interest.  If you have submitted an application you should have received an email from me recently; if not call or email me.  i will try to send an email to those who have already been selected for the program tomorrow with instructions on how to properly sign up for the PADI Divemaster and Dive Theory online training courses.

Capt. Steve Willis
Professional Scuba Bum™
PADI Course Director #39713
Aboard S/V Escape

SANBA

While Super Typhoon Sanba poses no threat to the Florida Sea Base or the continental US, our vulnerability to such systems makes it a topic of interest.  Being classified as a super typhoon is the equivalent to our category 5 hurricane status.  The eye of Sanba has been incredible on the satellite images for several hours.

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Okinawa, South Korea Japan and the surrounding area are going to feel the effects of Sanba.  I don’t want to be misinterpreted as wishing anything bad for anyone else, but I am very thankful that this storm is not in our part of the world.

TROPICAL ATLANTIC

Tropical Storm Nadine is starting to turn more north and should turn east and be “bugging out” as Maverick from “Top Gun” would say.  The Azores are a potential target for Nadine.  Despite the graphic, there is increasing evidence that Nadine will not attain hurricane status.

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There are no immediate threats to the Florida Sea Base from any tropical systems.  This graphic from The Weather Channel shows that we should be relatively safe from any storms originating in the Atlantic in the near future.  But any systems born in the Caribbean could be of significant concern.

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THE WEATHER CHANNEL and WEATHER UNDERGROUND

In general, I am a big proponent of The Weather Channel.  As soon as I get up I tune in, I check it as frequently as possible throughout the day and I generally watch it, at least briefly, in the evening.  I also enjoy some of their series from time to time.  With The Weather Channel on the TV, I also crank up Weather Underground on my MacBook Pro.  As a matter of fact, I frequently check Weather Underground on my iPad before I even get out of bed (unless I REALLY need to pee).

I doubt if anyone from The Weather Channel or Weather Underground will ever read this but I do have some frustrations and worries. First, thank goodness for Weather Underground.  Their radar is up to the minute and very user friendly.  Meanwhile, whether it is my settings or some other issue, when I try to check the radar on my iPad app from The Weather Channel the radar images are frequently 30 to 90 minutes old.  [At 07:57 this morning the radar image on my TWC iPad app was from 07:15.]  The fact that it was raining 90 minutes ago does me no good at all.  Safety at the Florida Sea Base would be significantly negatively impacted if we had to rely on The Weather Channel radar for managing our programs.  The lives of over 10,000 children are managed by Florida Sea Base personnel each year based on timely weather data.  Spectacular graphics that are 90 minutes old are worthless to our operation.

Dr. Jeff Masters has made a few appearances on The Weather Channel recently.  Two of TWC meteorologists, Stu Ostro and Bryan Norcross, now have blogs on Wunderground.  In my humble opinion, it would be a very sad situation if Dr. Masters sold Weather Underground or in some other way merged with The Weather Channel; my worry being that TWC would bring Weather Underground down to their level.

I don’t mean to condemn The Weather Channel; I rely on their data, expertise and graphics on a daily basis.  But TWCs app is more glitz than practicality.  The radar, graphics and general user friendliness of Weather Underground is vastly superior (in my opinion) to TWC.

I am also confused by TWCs coverage of the melting polar caps and how horrible that is and then marketing of a TV show that celebrates persons who are destroying what’s left of the icebergs.  They even refer to the ice as “the biggest of game”.  Based on their weather reports it sounds like the icebergs are nearing extinction.  Glorifying the destruction of an “endangered specie” does not sound responsible.

Off the soap box.

Capt. Steve Willis
Professional Scuba Bum™
PADI Course Director #39713
Aboard S/V Escape

If you are not aware, a great weather resource is Weather Underground which you can access by clicking the sticker near the top left corner of this page.  Dr. Jeff Masters is one of the co-founders of Weather Underground.  We use his blog daily during the hurricane season in making program scheduling decisions.  Here is a paragraph from his post of 03 February 2010.  Be sure to read the last sentence.

The El Niño forecast
Though El Niño appears to have peaked, the decline in SSTs over the Equatorial Pacific may slow and possibly reverse in February, thanks to a burst of stronger-than-average surface westerly winds that has developed near the Date Line. This westerly wind burst is driving a new Kelvin wave of sub-surface warm water towards the coast of South America, which will act to reinforce El Niño over the next month or so. This new Kelvin wave is not as strong as the previous one that propagated eastward over the last few months of 2009, which pushed El Niño over the “strong” threshold. Once the new Kelvin wave subsides in March, it is possible that there will be more westerly wind bursts that will act to drive new Kelvin waves that will reinforce El Niño into the summer. However, El Niño events typically die out in the spring, and most of the El Niño computer forecast models (Figure 2) are predicting an end to El Niño by summer. Note that the last time we had a strong El Niño event–the record El Niño of 1997 – 1998–the event ended very abruptly in May, and a La Niña event developed by the 1998 hurricane season. This resulted in a very active 1998 hurricane season (14 named storms, 10 hurricanes, and 3 major hurricanes, including Category 5 Hurricane Mitch). The recent weakening of El Niño is a likely sign that there will not be El Niño conditions for the coming hurricane season. Only once since 1950 has an El Niño event lasted through two full hurricane seasons, and I don’t expect that will occur this time, either. Given that since 1995, the Atlantic has been in an active hurricane period, except for in El Niño years, a more active than normal hurricane season is likely in 2010.

El Niño or not, it is always recommended that you purchase trip interruption insurance for your Florida Sea Base adventure.

Hurricane Wilma versus Florida Sea Base

With all of the talk about global warming, why are we experiencing record cold?  Dr. Jeff Master’s (of Weather Underground) posted a good explanation on his blog at http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1409.  The good news is much of the country should start warming today or tomorrow.

Totally unrelated, I enjoyed watching the Dallas Cowboys win a post season game yesterday against the Philadelphia Eagles..  I do not consider myself a “fan” of any professional sport or team.  I am old enough to remember the old days – before free agency.  Back then a player was drafted or joined a team and that is where they usually spent their career.  Now, there seems to be little loyalty except to money.  I am happy for the players.  But it is not the same for me so I am now a casual viewer.  Anyway, what impressed me was that Dallas managed a third win over one team in the same year.  And not a crummy team.  The Eagles have played well this year.  That is phenomenal and I was surprised.  I think one of the announcers summed up the divisional season as Green Bay owned Dallas, Philadelphia owned Green Bay, Dallas owned Philadelphia and everyone owned the Redskins.

Stay warm, wherever you are.  The next big item on the Florida Sea Base calendar is 2011 registration.  The lottery opens on 15 January.  Details are available at the Florida Sea Base website.  As always, we are working to make the program better than ever.  We would be honored to have you visit us.