[00:00.000 --> 00:04.100]  I thought I'd have two people here with everybody in the Steve Rambam's talk, so.
[00:05.340 --> 00:08.580]  This is the... let's get the other PowerPoint going here.
[00:11.750 --> 00:13.090]  Great, it came out all right.
[00:13.670 --> 00:20.010]  So this is a talk about weather and weather technologies called Weather's Not Boring.
[00:20.370 --> 00:21.810]  My name is John Huntington.
[00:22.890 --> 00:28.570]  I am not a meteorologist, so if you ask me how you actually make a forecast, I can't tell you.
[00:28.970 --> 00:31.110]  I'm really kind of like just a weather geek.
[00:31.110 --> 00:32.670]  I've always been interested in weather.
[00:33.310 --> 00:34.910]  Sort of a power user of it.
[00:35.130 --> 00:39.470]  What my real job is, is I teach entertainment technology at City Tech out in Brooklyn.
[00:40.030 --> 00:44.150]  And I just have to plug my new edition of my book just came out on Monday.
[00:44.310 --> 00:44.630]  What's today?
[00:44.770 --> 00:44.970]  Saturday.
[00:45.790 --> 00:48.110]  And I'm running a free giveaway on my website.
[00:48.110 --> 00:51.270]  So you have to guess the number of times I use the word Ethernet in the book.
[00:51.450 --> 00:53.050]  And if you do, you can win a free copy.
[00:53.290 --> 00:55.290]  And then everybody who enters gets $5 off.
[00:55.450 --> 00:58.410]  So I'm self-publishing this one, so I have to plug that.
[00:59.030 --> 01:01.550]  I keep a blog at controlgeek.net.
[01:01.850 --> 01:05.870]  I write a lot about technology stuff I just put up a couple days ago.
[01:06.050 --> 01:10.270]  I assume everybody saw that fireworks problem in San Diego.
[01:10.470 --> 01:12.870]  I got the press release from them and posted that.
[01:13.410 --> 01:14.410]  And I read it.
[01:14.450 --> 01:19.130]  I'm still not clear on what happened there because you have to know that Fire One firing system.
[01:19.130 --> 01:19.690]  It's really good.
[01:20.810 --> 01:22.670]  No, it's just operator error.
[01:23.130 --> 01:24.630]  So they were merging files.
[01:25.630 --> 01:27.070]  Yeah, there's lots of things.
[01:27.210 --> 01:28.970]  Actually, I'll show you a good one in the media right now.
[01:29.090 --> 01:30.010]  It's my fifth hope.
[01:30.150 --> 01:31.970]  And it's the second time I've spoken.
[01:32.270 --> 01:34.170]  The last time I talked about show business stuff.
[01:34.570 --> 01:35.330]  I have a...
[01:35.330 --> 01:39.110]  Has anybody seen the weatherman doing the video with the Superstorm and stuff?
[01:39.390 --> 01:39.690]  Yeah.
[01:39.950 --> 01:41.750]  I'll show that at the end if we get time here.
[01:41.930 --> 01:43.850]  So that's what we're going to cover today.
[01:44.230 --> 01:45.310]  Forecasting, just a little bit.
[01:45.310 --> 01:53.530]  I thought, to me, I've always been interested in severe weather and anything that's sort of nature and, you know, power of nature kind of stuff.
[01:53.710 --> 01:54.570]  And then...
[01:54.570 --> 01:55.890]  So I've always been interested in this.
[01:55.970 --> 01:59.250]  And just in recent years, I've really been kind of digging into this just to learn more about it.
[01:59.830 --> 02:03.850]  So it's kind of fascinating how they actually get the data to make the forecast.
[02:03.990 --> 02:05.090]  So we're going to talk a little bit about that.
[02:05.230 --> 02:10.530]  And then the stuff that I'm more experienced in is following and then photographing.
[02:10.590 --> 02:14.930]  So I've done a bunch of storm chasing and we'll talk about all that stuff.
[02:14.930 --> 02:22.150]  One thing that just came up, this was just from last week, hackers may have targeted Lamont's tornado sirens.
[02:22.510 --> 02:24.470]  So, of course, hackers always get blamed for this.
[02:25.050 --> 02:26.670]  I was emailing with Bernie S.
[02:26.850 --> 02:35.290]  about this and he was saying that these things are pretty crude in their control, often just open over the air with DTMF tones and stuff like that.
[02:36.050 --> 02:37.150]  I just was...
[02:37.150 --> 02:38.870]  I just downloaded this this morning.
[02:38.990 --> 02:43.810]  I thought the Google ad that was embedded in the page was pretty...
[02:45.590 --> 02:47.050]  That just came up this morning.
[02:47.230 --> 02:51.090]  So the hacker may have done it, but you can download the software right there to do it.
[02:52.810 --> 02:54.230]  And they're talking a little bit about...
[02:54.230 --> 02:56.190]  It says NWS Polygons.
[02:56.270 --> 02:56.790]  We'll talk about that.
[02:56.910 --> 02:57.890]  That's National Weather Service.
[02:59.070 --> 03:04.650]  So, speaking of National Weather Service, this is the primary data gathering and modeling organization.
[03:04.850 --> 03:05.150]  I'm gonna...
[03:05.150 --> 03:05.870]  Some things...
[03:05.870 --> 03:09.910]  Some functions are housed within NOAA and some of the right aspects, but I'm mostly going to talk about...
[03:09.910 --> 03:11.690]  I just refer to it as National Weather Service.
[03:12.490 --> 03:13.730]  This division of NOAA.
[03:14.270 --> 03:15.990]  It's been around since 1870.
[03:16.310 --> 03:17.430]  And then each area of the U.S.
[03:17.470 --> 03:18.890]  is covered by a forecast office.
[03:19.010 --> 03:24.830]  So that's actually the forecast office out in Upton, Long Island on the campus of Brookhaven National Lab.
[03:25.010 --> 03:28.310]  They usually have an open house and apparently this year they're not having one.
[03:28.450 --> 03:30.910]  So I went last year and took that picture.
[03:31.030 --> 03:33.030]  So I don't know why they're not doing an open house because it's too bad.
[03:33.930 --> 03:36.770]  So ways that they get data about the atmosphere.
[03:37.670 --> 03:38.470]  Ground stations.
[03:39.150 --> 03:40.150]  People are pretty familiar with that.
[03:40.230 --> 03:40.810]  Doppler radar.
[03:41.610 --> 03:42.010]  Buoys.
[03:42.170 --> 03:43.290]  I actually didn't...
[03:43.290 --> 03:47.250]  I guess it makes sense, but I just never thought about it until a few years ago and I started digging this up.
[03:47.730 --> 03:48.270]  Weather balloons.
[03:48.430 --> 03:50.530]  They still launch those twice a day around the world.
[03:51.030 --> 03:57.870]  You know, I would have thought four or five years ago when I started really researching this stuff, I was like, oh, you figure they must be sensing all that from satellite.
[03:58.070 --> 04:03.530]  Well, they certainly use a satellite, but a lot of things you've got to just get the old school information.
[04:04.010 --> 04:06.090]  So that's the ground station out at Upton.
[04:06.730 --> 04:08.890]  There's some pictures from the Bergen Skymore people.
[04:09.110 --> 04:14.930]  Of course, that gets things like temperature, humidity, pressure, wind speed and direction, precipitation, sky cover.
[04:15.030 --> 04:17.150]  There's all kinds of instruments that can do this kind of stuff.
[04:17.330 --> 04:19.670]  And those are distributed all over the place.
[04:20.110 --> 04:26.630]  I'm pretty sure every National Weather Service office has them, but there's also quite a few others, like every airport and so on.
[04:26.710 --> 04:30.870]  Also, if you have your own station, through different methods, you can put it up.
[04:30.970 --> 04:36.210]  And I won't remember all the details of the acronym, but it's like CWAP, which is like Collaborative Weather Observers Program.
[04:36.850 --> 04:37.790]  So I'll show you.
[04:37.790 --> 04:39.930]  I was just running that GR-level software a minute ago.
[04:40.130 --> 04:43.110]  So if you have your own station, you can put it online and not just...
[04:43.110 --> 04:46.530]  It used to be you'd get a web page or something, but now it really will feed into these...
[04:46.870 --> 04:51.550]  I don't know how much the weather service uses, but it is used and they can use it in the models and stuff if they want to.
[04:52.270 --> 04:53.250]  So it's available.
[04:53.590 --> 04:57.510]  And obviously their instruments are likely a little more accurate than what you have at home.
[04:57.530 --> 05:00.890]  But if you have a decent one, it's going to be pretty good.
[05:02.790 --> 05:04.710]  Example station, anybody recognize that?
[05:05.650 --> 05:06.370]  Satellite photo.
[05:07.330 --> 05:09.910]  So that's Belvedere Castle in Central Park.
[05:10.130 --> 05:14.650]  And then this little area right there, that's the Central Park weather station.
[05:14.750 --> 05:18.090]  When you hear it's 89 degrees in Central Park, that's where it's 89 degrees.
[05:18.650 --> 05:20.230]  And there's a bunch of instruments in there.
[05:20.310 --> 05:21.710]  You can Google around and find pictures on it.
[05:21.770 --> 05:24.290]  You can walk right up to it, but it's fenced off for obvious reasons.
[05:24.530 --> 05:28.990]  They measure the snowfall right around there somewhere, but they won't tell you where, which is good.
[05:29.350 --> 05:32.630]  Out in Upton they have like a little concrete pad and they have a special thing.
[05:32.710 --> 05:37.950]  So the guy walks out the door with a basically expensive yardstick and measures it that way.
[05:38.370 --> 05:40.450]  Snow is complicated to measure and stuff.
[05:40.570 --> 05:43.990]  But so somewhere, I'm guessing it's in that field somewhere, but somewhere over there they go measure it.
[05:44.030 --> 05:46.270]  But they don't want people to go over and smash it all down and stuff.
[05:46.750 --> 05:51.770]  And the records, or maintaining the records is obviously a big deal because they want this to be consistent.
[05:51.890 --> 06:01.250]  If we have weather data back to 1870 or even farther back than that, you want to make sure that you have consistent data so you're not getting more and more data, which is actually one...
[06:01.690 --> 06:10.650]  There's been an increase in incidents of tornadoes on record, but there's also been a lot more observers out there like me, and people like that, that have been reporting them.
[06:10.790 --> 06:14.850]  So a storm might have torn up a cornfield that didn't affect any buildings and nobody looked at it.
[06:14.930 --> 06:19.970]  That may not have been recorded before, but now there's really not one that's missed anymore.
[06:19.970 --> 06:22.770]  So these kind of records gets pretty interesting.
[06:23.310 --> 06:27.070]  And actually for tornadoes, it's been a very, very below average year.
[06:27.270 --> 06:30.030]  I'll talk a little bit more about that when we get a little further.
[06:30.530 --> 06:33.550]  Doppler radar, that's the radar out at Upton.
[06:34.390 --> 06:39.590]  That one covers about... I think it's about 300 miles, depending on what mode it's in.
[06:40.970 --> 06:46.350]  It's... they tilt the... inside the... I'm drawing a blank what the name of that dome is.
[06:46.510 --> 06:48.290]  But inside... yeah, excellent.
[06:48.470 --> 06:48.790]  Radome.
[06:49.430 --> 06:52.470]  There is a spinning radar in there, and they control it from inside.
[06:52.690 --> 06:55.270]  And it's generally tilted just above the ground.
[06:56.550 --> 07:05.930]  They get as close as possible to the ground, but obviously the farther you get away from the station with the curvature of the earth and so on, by the time they get far away from the radar, it actually misses quite a bit in the bottom.
[07:05.930 --> 07:11.630]  So they really don't have a lot of information of like the bottom thousand meters or so of the storm, depending on where it is.
[07:12.530 --> 07:15.250]  They're just now upgrading all this to dual polarization.
[07:15.250 --> 07:20.790]  So there'll be two differently polarized radar signals going out.
[07:21.010 --> 07:27.050]  That's pretty interesting because now they can differentiate between hail and rain, and even debris from tornadoes and stuff like that.
[07:27.270 --> 07:30.850]  It's actually using some really kind of crazy fuzzy logic stuff.
[07:31.050 --> 07:38.750]  And you can get now the raw access to the data, but unless you're like a PhD meteorologist or somebody really, really good at math, it's just going to...
[07:39.250 --> 07:41.390]  With me, my eyes glaze over when I look at it.
[07:41.490 --> 07:55.830]  But now people who can interpret that, they can actually use that to get pretty high confidence on things like there actually just been some discussion lately that this may be one of the best ways to really see if there's a tornado on the ground, because a lot of times they can't see that from the radar alone,
[07:55.950 --> 07:56.810]  the existing radar.
[07:56.810 --> 08:01.210]  And these have only been around since 1988, the Doppler radar and the wide rollout.
[08:01.370 --> 08:06.810]  So when I was a kid, you know, these thunderstorms are kind of unexpected to some extent.
[08:06.930 --> 08:12.350]  They certainly had radar, but they couldn't see the speed of the precipitation or rotation or anything like that.
[08:12.450 --> 08:14.490]  So it's relatively recent in the big picture.
[08:15.010 --> 08:18.210]  That's the controller out at Upton.
[08:18.430 --> 08:20.210]  You can see a little picture of radome and stuff.
[08:20.650 --> 08:24.850]  And this is all the really interesting thing that's happened in recent years is the Weather Service.
[08:25.050 --> 08:25.970]  I just heard this actually.
[08:26.070 --> 08:29.810]  I think the Weather Service was one of the first people, first government agencies to have a website.
[08:30.250 --> 08:32.410]  They've been very good about getting the information out.
[08:32.470 --> 08:37.430]  They just rolled out a new upgrade on their forecast pages that as long as the Internet keeps working, I'll be able to show you.
[08:38.430 --> 08:41.750]  I think it's very clean design and it's all up there for you to use.
[08:41.890 --> 08:43.390]  So I go straight to the source.
[08:43.530 --> 08:47.050]  A lot of people, you know, you might go to some web pages that will aggregate this stuff.
[08:47.330 --> 08:49.290]  Some of it, there's good reasons for that.
[08:49.290 --> 08:51.430]  But I generally just look straight to the source.
[08:51.630 --> 08:52.130]  So let's take a look.
[08:52.290 --> 08:56.170]  Actually, July is about the most boring, severe weather...
[08:56.170 --> 08:56.550]  Oh, great.
[08:56.770 --> 08:57.230]  I don't need that.
[08:59.110 --> 09:02.250]  July is about the most boring weather month in general across countries.
[09:02.390 --> 09:06.490]  So this is our live radar out of Upton, which is right out there in Brookhaven.
[09:06.610 --> 09:09.670]  That covers... this area covers Connecticut.
[09:10.110 --> 09:16.230]  I forgot how far up in New York, but a good chunk of New York, most of northern New Jersey, and then all of the city.
[09:16.450 --> 09:18.770]  So you'll see if there's a severe warning or something like that.
[09:18.770 --> 09:21.570]  It's the National Weather Service in Upton, New York issues these.
[09:22.130 --> 09:24.770]  Years ago, they used to have an office in Manhattan, but...
[09:24.770 --> 09:27.070]  I don't know when they moved to Upton, but it's been quite a while.
[09:27.310 --> 09:28.970]  So pretty boring radar right now.
[09:29.370 --> 09:35.830]  One thing that's kind of interesting, if you look at it certain times a day, and depending on the precipitation, you'll see a shadow in there.
[09:36.110 --> 09:40.270]  That's actually a water tower that's in the way of the radar out in Upton.
[09:40.270 --> 09:45.150]  So they can't tear the water tower down, but you'll see a big wide triangle of shadow coming out of there.
[09:46.510 --> 09:52.870]  So this just... all these links, this is just from the Upton page, which we'll look at a little bit more here.
[09:52.990 --> 09:57.330]  But it's all public, available to get... I use this software, it's called GR Level.
[09:57.930 --> 10:01.910]  It's about 60 bucks, and I'll talk more about this as we go further.
[10:02.070 --> 10:07.950]  But this one, you can put a huge amount of information up there, including the satellite photos and all that kind of stuff.
[10:08.050 --> 10:10.070]  But it's all... it's still coming from the same place.
[10:10.210 --> 10:12.770]  Right now, I'm looking at the Philadelphia radar, and if I do that...
[10:12.770 --> 10:14.390]  Now I'm looking at the Upton one.
[10:15.630 --> 10:17.130]  So I'll come back to that a little bit.
[10:21.650 --> 10:27.290]  Buoys, so the... these ground stations and stuff, they don't have them in the middle of the ocean, obviously.
[10:27.290 --> 10:29.730]  So they have buoys, they have quite a few of them.
[10:30.030 --> 10:36.530]  If you go on to the National Data Buoy Center, you can see the whole list of every one of these yellow and red dots here.
[10:36.710 --> 10:39.950]  And even out here in the middle of the ocean, these are all data buoys.
[10:40.050 --> 10:41.630]  And there are all different varieties of them.
[10:41.810 --> 10:42.970]  Some are really small.
[10:43.230 --> 10:46.250]  Some... this one, I don't know if you can see it back there, but that's a guy.
[10:46.990 --> 10:49.710]  So that thing has got to be like 25 feet tall.
[10:50.090 --> 10:51.130]  That's a pretty big one.
[10:51.950 --> 10:52.970]  All different things.
[10:53.110 --> 10:59.530]  They measure things like, you know, of course, temperature, barometric pressure, dew point, all that kind of stuff, but also wave height.
[11:00.130 --> 11:07.250]  So that's one of the ways they can get, you know, tell how strong a storm is out to sea, because the radars, you know, they reach out to a certain extent, but eventually they run out.
[11:07.610 --> 11:10.250]  You can only see so much on the satellite and so on.
[11:10.470 --> 11:13.390]  So this also is all available live online.
[11:13.510 --> 11:16.430]  So you never know if it's going to work, but let's try this one.
[11:16.650 --> 11:19.390]  This is the one at the New York Harbor entrance.
[11:21.310 --> 11:23.190]  It doesn't seem to want to play, try that again.
[11:23.510 --> 11:23.830]  There we go.
[11:26.190 --> 11:29.710]  Yeah, and you can... they say storm special view the latest operations near...
[11:29.710 --> 11:32.270]  There's a couple hurricanes now out in the way out in the Pacific.
[11:32.590 --> 11:37.210]  So you can actually look at the buoys out there and see, you know, 40-foot wave heights or anything.
[11:37.330 --> 11:38.150]  It gets pretty crazy.
[11:39.070 --> 11:40.210]  So there's a picture of it.
[11:40.370 --> 11:44.270]  That's where it is out there, the entrance to the harbor and so on.
[11:44.270 --> 11:46.950]  But again, what's really interesting about it is it's all online.
[11:46.950 --> 11:54.730]  You can get all this stuff and you can get it either just in a pretty easy to read web page or there are ways to get sort of the raw data if you want to do stuff with it.
[11:55.970 --> 11:57.370]  Oh, I should put that up too.
[12:00.930 --> 12:01.910]  Balloons, they still...
[12:01.910 --> 12:07.130]  I didn't know until a few years ago that they were still launching balloons, but they launched them... what is it?
[12:07.250 --> 12:08.690]  92 locations in the U.S.
[12:08.790 --> 12:11.550]  then all around the world at about the same time.
[12:11.550 --> 12:16.290]  Zero, I mean, midnight and noon Greenwich time or UTC time.
[12:17.270 --> 12:21.890]  And then as they go up, they're trailing a radio sonde, which is this guy.
[12:22.250 --> 12:26.490]  And that thing is transmitting... oops, hit the wrong page here.
[12:26.610 --> 12:33.510]  But that's transmitting the temperature and the dew point as it goes up and then they can figure out the altitude and the location from the ground.
[12:34.210 --> 12:36.370]  They're... it's a pretty crude system at the moment.
[12:36.550 --> 12:40.850]  It's kind of old, but they're apparently going to upgrade this with an all-GPS space system.
[12:40.850 --> 12:44.490]  But National Weather Service, they just always take some beatings in the cuts.
[12:44.630 --> 12:51.030]  And they actually even... one of the administrators just got in trouble because they were like diverting money just to pay salaries and stuff.
[12:51.130 --> 12:53.650]  I never... I didn't get all the details on that because they were...
[12:53.650 --> 12:55.410]  they choked off some other funding streams.
[12:55.490 --> 12:58.290]  It wasn't... it was like corruption to try to get people their paycheck.
[12:59.890 --> 13:04.630]  This guy... so they float up to about 80 or 120,000 feet and then they get so big...
[13:04.630 --> 13:08.510]  like they start relatively small, they'll blow up to 20, 30 feet in diameter and then they'll eventually pop.
[13:08.510 --> 13:10.170]  This is a pretty recent one.
[13:10.270 --> 13:14.130]  This guy just shot this with a telescope down in Florida.
[13:14.550 --> 13:15.150]  Let's see... oh, good.
[13:15.250 --> 13:15.650]  It's going to work.
[13:16.710 --> 13:17.290]  There you go.
[13:17.390 --> 13:18.030]  There's the balloon.
[13:18.210 --> 13:20.090]  And there's the radio sound swinging down there.
[13:20.190 --> 13:21.290]  And you can see it pop here in a minute.
[13:24.500 --> 13:25.860]  If you can imagine... there it goes.
[13:26.580 --> 13:28.600]  So you can imagine how small that thing is.
[13:28.700 --> 13:30.640]  And that was just the guy down in Tampa Bay.
[13:31.180 --> 13:34.500]  He has the details of the telescope in here, but it's, you know, kind of...
[13:34.500 --> 13:38.560]  you know, hobbyist grade telescope wasn't like super professional grade.
[13:38.680 --> 13:39.360]  And that's way up there.
[13:39.600 --> 13:41.800]  So there's radio sound now will fall back to Earth.
[13:42.340 --> 13:47.240]  The guys in Upton said most of the ones from here end up in the ocean because of course they're on Long Island, so they get blown out to sea.
[13:48.520 --> 13:52.340]  But they... if you find one, they have a postage page thing.
[13:52.480 --> 13:53.140]  You can return it.
[13:53.240 --> 13:54.840]  Or you can... or you can not return it.
[13:54.980 --> 13:55.480]  Up to you.
[13:56.780 --> 13:58.320]  That gives you a sounding.
[13:58.540 --> 14:02.960]  This is a chart that will really... only really... you know, this will make your head hurt.
[14:03.220 --> 14:05.780]  You really examine this in detail.
[14:05.980 --> 14:10.760]  But the basic principle here is the red line is the temperature and the green is the dew point.
[14:10.900 --> 14:15.920]  And a simple way of talking about dew point is just sort of measurement of how much moisture the atmosphere can carry.
[14:15.920 --> 14:17.940]  So it's... it has the temperature.
[14:18.220 --> 14:23.380]  If it's a 50 degree dew point, that means if the air cools to 50 degrees, you'll get 100% humidity, which would be fog.
[14:24.420 --> 14:28.140]  So as you go up, you get varying conditions.
[14:28.140 --> 14:30.020]  And this means a lot in terms of forecasting.
[14:30.040 --> 14:32.760]  That's actually the current sounding from Upton.
[14:32.980 --> 14:34.740]  So over here is the winds.
[14:35.600 --> 14:37.300]  So here's the temperature and the dew point.
[14:37.480 --> 14:38.920]  That's called a hodograph there.
[14:38.940 --> 14:43.800]  So it's showing that the winds are kind of... it's kind of a mess, but there's mostly blowing out to the east here.
[14:43.800 --> 14:54.840]  And you can see why is that as the... at the varying altitudes here, these little direction here... I'm sorry, the barb here, the direction of the barb tells you the direction of the wind.
[14:55.180 --> 14:59.220]  And then the little flag or whatever, these little barbs on the end, tell you the speed.
[14:59.440 --> 15:01.220]  So I think that's 50 knots.
[15:01.440 --> 15:04.000]  That one's 45 and so on.
[15:04.000 --> 15:13.280]  So up there in the atmosphere, pretty high up, that's like 50 knot winds blowing, which is... can relatively low depending on the... not low, but I mean, they can range very, very high up there.
[15:13.400 --> 15:14.460]  And it's also really cold.
[15:14.860 --> 15:18.300]  I think I can't see the... with the light in my eye, but you can take a look at this.
[15:18.880 --> 15:22.740]  But as you go up, this is a pretty consistent sounding.
[15:22.940 --> 15:28.880]  We're mostly just the westerly winds, winds out of the west, pretty consistently up through the atmosphere.
[15:28.880 --> 15:32.940]  So if you're looking for severe storms to develop, you're really looking for shear.
[15:33.120 --> 15:37.540]  You're looking for wind one direction at one altitude and another direction at another altitude.
[15:38.240 --> 15:42.200]  This actually seeds a bunch of computer models and they also can do forecast sounding.
[15:42.360 --> 15:45.300]  So you can say, what's it gonna be, you know, four hours from now?
[15:45.500 --> 15:49.460]  So that's... all this feeds into their system, which is... it's pretty amazing.
[15:49.780 --> 15:51.740]  It gets incredibly complicated very quickly.
[15:55.660 --> 15:56.440]  Lightning data.
[15:56.600 --> 15:57.860]  That's actually privately owned.
[15:58.660 --> 16:01.320]  The lightning detection network's not owned, by the way, the weather service.
[16:01.520 --> 16:03.580]  It's owned by this company called Visawa.
[16:03.860 --> 16:04.900]  I'm not sure how this is pronounced.
[16:06.040 --> 16:08.640]  Meaning, privately owned, meaning you have to pay for it to look at it.
[16:08.740 --> 16:14.040]  But they will give you this sort of composite diagram here.
[16:14.200 --> 16:17.080]  And the different colors mean how recent the lightning is.
[16:17.220 --> 16:19.460]  So down here, zero to 20 minutes is the white stuff.
[16:19.860 --> 16:21.360]  20 to 40 is a little bit longer.
[16:21.600 --> 16:23.260]  And then about two hours out, this blue stuff.
[16:23.380 --> 16:25.340]  So that can give you some indication of the way it's moving.
[16:25.820 --> 16:28.100]  I'll show you the GR level and some other software.
[16:28.420 --> 16:32.360]  We'll run that much more in detail and give you the location.
[16:37.790 --> 16:39.690]  That's a good question that I can't answer.
[16:39.930 --> 16:43.870]  So I think it's some triangulation of, like, the radio impulse.
[16:44.030 --> 16:44.790]  I'm not sure anybody knows.
[16:44.930 --> 16:46.810]  But it doesn't detect cloud-to-cloud lightning.
[16:47.150 --> 16:48.450]  It's only cloud-to-ground.
[16:49.170 --> 16:49.610]  So...
[16:49.610 --> 16:51.530]  Very specific frequency.
[16:51.830 --> 16:52.350]  Oh, okay.
[16:52.570 --> 16:53.630]  And then they triangulate on it.
[16:56.720 --> 16:57.420]  Let's see.
[16:58.500 --> 17:00.540]  Sorry, switching this thing to the tab here.
[17:00.620 --> 17:00.900]  There we go.
[17:02.400 --> 17:02.840]  Sorry.
[17:06.060 --> 17:06.740]  There we go.
[17:07.180 --> 17:07.620]  Satellites.
[17:07.780 --> 17:09.180]  So there's a bunch of these as well.
[17:10.360 --> 17:12.080]  There's these ones called GOES satellites.
[17:12.260 --> 17:13.280]  Those are pretty widely used.
[17:13.440 --> 17:14.500]  22,000 miles up.
[17:14.620 --> 17:16.140]  Those are geostationary.
[17:16.740 --> 17:18.080]  Update every 30 minutes.
[17:18.280 --> 17:20.640]  They have some polar orbiting ones that are much lower.
[17:21.200 --> 17:25.980]  They've just started some interesting work with this, actually, for severe storms and tornadoes.
[17:26.260 --> 17:35.220]  I think it's these satellites that are going to do really fast updates on them so they can really tell the development of the storm and try to determine whether it's going to be a tornado or not.
[17:35.320 --> 17:38.920]  But, of course, this year there's been hardly any, so they haven't been able to test that very much.
[17:39.800 --> 17:40.540]  Example of the satellite.
[17:40.700 --> 17:41.940]  Again, all this stuff is online.
[17:41.940 --> 17:42.540]  You can get it.
[17:42.640 --> 17:43.600]  Let me look at the current one.
[17:43.800 --> 17:45.460]  This should line up with that lightning thing.
[17:45.560 --> 17:48.240]  Yeah, you can see here's all this precipitation we were just looking at down there.
[17:48.840 --> 17:53.060]  Cloud cover and then all that lightning we just looked at and the other diagrams in this area.
[17:54.740 --> 17:56.380]  Again, all free online.
[17:56.580 --> 17:59.580]  I haven't showed you anything you have to pay for so far except for GRO.
[18:00.880 --> 18:05.140]  And then they take all this stuff and stuff it into these numerical weather prediction models.
[18:05.840 --> 18:08.440]  There's three main ones that you can get to for free.
[18:08.600 --> 18:10.380]  There's other ones around if you poke around the web.
[18:11.800 --> 18:16.940]  And the biggest difference, there's some real differences in the meteorology and the way that these work that I can't explain to you.
[18:17.100 --> 18:22.880]  But what's the most useful to the end user is sort of the range of how far out they go.
[18:23.060 --> 18:26.000]  So we have 18 hours, 84 hours, 192 hours.
[18:26.120 --> 18:34.320]  And those are all available for free in all different types of formats here on this thing from the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
[18:35.900 --> 18:39.020]  So here's the three types of models, RAP, NAM, and GFS.
[18:39.260 --> 18:41.580]  You can select the hours or loop it or whatever.
[18:41.820 --> 18:48.860]  And then you can get whatever you want, the forecast, temperature, dew point, pressure and winds, precipitation type and so on.
[18:49.180 --> 18:53.240]  Or one thing I usually look at just for quick stuff is they have this sort of current analysis.
[18:54.220 --> 18:55.800]  Aptop doesn't want to click on these things today.
[18:56.060 --> 19:02.240]  So this is showing you, I'm not sure how long this precipitation is, but it's for how much precipitation within a certain time period, like four hours.
[19:02.240 --> 19:05.040]  And then the frontal positions.
[19:05.360 --> 19:11.700]  It's funny, this is clearly automated because you'll come up sometime and there'll be like 400 high pressure systems over the United States and stuff.
[19:13.120 --> 19:15.220]  But then it's pretty, it cleans out as you go forward.
[19:15.360 --> 19:20.560]  So this is, so I can't really, yeah, 6 o'clock UTC tomorrow and so on.
[19:20.640 --> 19:23.440]  So this is exactly what we're looking at in the next couple of days.
[19:23.440 --> 19:28.680]  Here's a cold front coming and we're forecast for some thunderstorms for the next few days here.
[19:30.060 --> 19:33.140]  I was kind of hoping we'd have one during the talk, but it didn't work out that way.
[19:33.560 --> 19:38.180]  So they have, at the National Weather Service, they have human forecasters there 24-7.
[19:38.420 --> 19:41.660]  And they work at this station or this system called AWIPS.
[19:42.420 --> 19:50.420]  And their definition integrates all meteorological and hydrological data and all satellite and radar data that all goes into one system.
[19:50.620 --> 19:53.300]  There's a system you can run yourself called SimuWIPS.
[19:54.960 --> 19:56.480]  It's, I think it's free.
[19:56.820 --> 19:57.760]  They ask for donations.
[19:58.020 --> 19:59.880]  They're trying to get a new server right now and stuff.
[20:00.060 --> 20:05.700]  And that's basically sort of a, you know, a non-governmental sort of simulation of that that you can fool around with.
[20:06.420 --> 20:13.480]  And then they put all that into this, they love acronyms here, but into this, I won't even spell this out, but interactive forecast preparation system.
[20:14.260 --> 20:15.980]  And this is kind of handcrafted.
[20:16.140 --> 20:20.660]  So they either, they can do it at least, I think every three hours they update this.
[20:20.820 --> 20:23.700]  And what's interesting, this was when I was out in Upton last year.
[20:24.600 --> 20:32.520]  So you can see, whatever parameter this is, you can't read it on the screen, but it's pretty, it can vary around the region.
[20:32.520 --> 20:37.160]  So if you happen to pick a point inside here, you're going to get a different forecast than over here.
[20:37.160 --> 20:42.960]  And the system, which I'll show you in a minute, also will go into, if you click into the water, you'll get a marine forecast.
[20:42.960 --> 20:45.580]  So it's, it's a pretty clean system and it's really nice.
[20:45.740 --> 20:50.580]  But it is somebody sitting there in Upton actually sort of continuously updating these things.
[20:50.700 --> 20:57.140]  I mean, there's a lot of, they automate as much as they can, but in the end, there's still a lot of judgment calls to make on this stuff when they do it.
[20:57.180 --> 20:59.840]  And then I think they really do a pretty amazing job.
[20:59.840 --> 21:07.360]  If you really look at what they're saying and the, and the probabilities that they're putting out, it's, it's pretty accurate, you know, or the information is.
[21:08.820 --> 21:09.220]  Okay.
[21:09.240 --> 21:13.400]  So that's the part I probably know the least about is gathering and forecasting.
[21:13.560 --> 21:15.580]  I'm more interested on the kind of the consumption side.
[21:16.580 --> 21:18.900]  There's lots of information out there to find out stuff.
[21:19.000 --> 21:22.960]  And the fact that UCAR site has some really good tutorials about those models.
[21:23.100 --> 21:26.400]  If you want to read, read up on that and stuff like that, it's pretty interesting.
[21:27.240 --> 21:33.180]  But some getting that information out, some definitions about that that become important.
[21:33.400 --> 21:37.540]  So the three I'm going to talk about is severe weather, which is what's most interesting to me.
[21:38.500 --> 21:39.660]  Watch and warning.
[21:39.880 --> 21:47.100]  And these are two, it's just unfortunate they both start with W because they're very different things, but sometimes even I get confused when I hear it.
[21:47.300 --> 21:48.820]  You always have to think about it a little bit.
[21:49.220 --> 21:50.460]  So what is severe weather?
[21:51.100 --> 21:53.460]  Storm Prediction Center, which I'll show you their site in a second.
[21:53.460 --> 21:56.320]  Just weather that poses a threat to life and property.
[21:56.840 --> 22:02.220]  So, and that's also the most interesting, whether to take pictures of or go watch or do anything like that.
[22:02.400 --> 22:06.720]  So that's the... and that's what they're forecasting in here.
[22:06.940 --> 22:09.080]  And then they have a watch and a warning.
[22:09.800 --> 22:12.300]  So the difference is, just read this definition.
[22:12.460 --> 22:18.800]  A watch means severe weather is possible in the next few hours, while warning means that severe weather has been observed or is expected soon.
[22:18.800 --> 22:23.740]  So a watch, here's a typical watch from the other day when I was just prepping this thing.
[22:24.440 --> 22:28.900]  Here's a severe thunderstorm watch issued by Storm Prediction Center to talk about in a second.
[22:29.120 --> 22:35.980]  And then this blue outline here, which can sometimes take some strange shapes because of the county boundaries that I'll talk about in a minute.
[22:36.180 --> 22:41.960]  But what they're saying is, and they have a lot of details on there if you go look this up, but from 1:35 p.m.
[22:42.100 --> 22:54.280]  until 9 o'clock Eastern Daylight Time in this area, they're saying it's a pretty good probability that there's going to... that there will be severe weather and that weather that's in that area will become severe.
[22:54.460 --> 23:06.180]  So it doesn't mean the whole blue area is going to be covered with giant thunderstorms, but a thunderstorm that gets into that area, that means the conditions are right and there's a high likelihood that it will go severe.
[23:06.180 --> 23:15.340]  And the basic definitions... I should have typed in here, but off the top of my head, the severe thunderstorm means 60-mile-an-hour winds, golf ball-sized hail, and or a tornado.
[23:15.700 --> 23:20.560]  So that's something you've got to take seriously when you look at it.
[23:20.700 --> 23:29.380]  So then when you actually get a warning, this is from that GR-level software, they issue a polygon that's much smaller, and that's showing in this particular area here.
[23:29.660 --> 23:31.980]  That is now not a severe watch anymore.
[23:32.300 --> 23:34.020]  That means it's under a severe warning.
[23:34.020 --> 23:45.180]  So if you go read the details of this, it'll say, at 6:48 p.m., the National Weather Service in Upton, New York warned on a storm moving from so-and-so to so-and-so, and here's what to expect.
[23:45.480 --> 23:52.240]  And the main threats they're looking at is high winds, high hail, or a tornado, which is kind of a combination of both of those.
[23:52.960 --> 23:55.920]  It's interesting, you look at this enough, does anybody recognize what this...
[23:55.920 --> 23:57.920]  And I didn't even notice this until after I captured it.
[23:57.940 --> 24:00.540]  Anybody watch Radar enough to know what this is?
[24:02.180 --> 24:02.860]  Not quite.
[24:03.660 --> 24:04.680]  It's very similar.
[24:04.800 --> 24:05.900]  But yeah, this is an outflow.
[24:06.260 --> 24:12.360]  So that means this storm, all the cold air and rain came straight down, hits the ground, it has to spread out somewhere.
[24:12.620 --> 24:14.540]  That can go quite a distance.
[24:14.780 --> 24:19.860]  One of the things I wrote up on my blog was the tragedy at the Indiana State Fair last year.
[24:19.860 --> 24:24.640]  And you could see, it happened, I was having a barbecue on my roof, and somebody emailed me and said, did you see what happened?
[24:24.720 --> 24:26.400]  And I immediately just sat down and looked through the radar.
[24:26.800 --> 24:32.560]  I could see, and that's called an outflow boundary, coming, you know, right through the radar archive, went right through the site.
[24:32.760 --> 24:38.600]  So there wasn't even any rain there when the stage blew down, but that was the wind, the gust front from the winds came out.
[24:38.720 --> 24:41.420]  And that's the type of thing, if you stare at this stuff long enough, you can see it.
[24:41.580 --> 24:47.900]  And it's kind of fascinating, because you'll see, I just saw one the other day from a, it was a big thunderstorm out on Long Island, and that thing went like a hundred miles.
[24:47.900 --> 24:49.800]  So just, you kept going and going and going.
[24:50.560 --> 24:53.280]  And that can actually trigger off other storms as it goes.
[24:53.700 --> 24:55.460]  So these warnings are pretty serious.
[24:55.620 --> 25:05.480]  The thing is, what drives people crazy is if you're sitting right here in that red area, in the middle of the severe warning, or in front of this gust front, you're getting some severe weather.
[25:05.620 --> 25:07.100]  But if you're sitting over here, you've got nothing.
[25:07.860 --> 25:12.120]  So this is why it's always interesting to look at the polygon and where it is.
[25:12.220 --> 25:14.320]  And that causes some problems, which we're talking about right now.
[25:14.320 --> 25:25.580]  So the problem is that a lot of older alert systems, like no weather radio, which I'll show you in a minute, tornado sirens, like we saw, not so much an issue in the east, but it's a big deal out in the Midwest.
[25:26.060 --> 25:27.740]  They alert based on counties.
[25:27.980 --> 25:36.040]  So if this warning polygon touches the county, in fact, they draw this to not touch that county on purpose.
[25:36.060 --> 25:41.320]  But if this polygon just extended over into this county, then this entire county would be sent to work.
[25:41.540 --> 25:45.980]  So these people sitting here 100 miles from the storm are getting nothing.
[25:46.220 --> 25:49.220]  And the storm is never going to get there, but they know where the radio is going on.
[25:49.360 --> 25:54.440]  So there's some good solutions now to that with cell phones and GPS, stuff like that I'll talk about in a second here.
[25:56.560 --> 25:59.080]  So following the storms, how do you get this information out?
[25:59.080 --> 26:02.860]  Like I said, I mostly use these tax-funded resources.
[26:03.120 --> 26:04.760]  National Weather Service, we already pay for this.
[26:05.060 --> 26:06.240]  There's no ads on it.
[26:06.400 --> 26:09.820]  And I think they just... this is a brand new design they just rolled out in the last month.
[26:10.120 --> 26:12.000]  I find it very clean and easy to use.
[26:12.080 --> 26:13.400]  I think they did a good job on this.
[26:13.820 --> 26:19.660]  And so we can look at our current forecast here for... and the click where you click on the map does matter.
[26:19.660 --> 26:28.520]  If you saw in that system I showed you the screen capture from the weather service, the... if you're clicking here, you're going to get... if it's going to click... there we go.
[26:28.820 --> 26:38.840]  If you click here in Manhattan, you're going to get a different... you could get a different forecast than out in Brooklyn because there might be, you know, some of these... and again, there's always some uncertainty to this stuff.
[26:40.620 --> 26:45.120]  So here's a chance of showers, heavy rain tonight... sorry, during Sunday.
[26:45.120 --> 26:46.660]  And this is interesting.
[26:46.940 --> 26:48.540]  This is a hazardous weather outlook.
[26:48.700 --> 26:55.120]  If you see that red thing on top of the page, that means there is some chance for hazardous weather in the forecast area.
[26:55.260 --> 26:57.300]  I don't know why this won't take... there it goes.
[26:57.980 --> 27:04.120]  Then you can read this really dense stuff that they won't... these are all the counties that they're expecting the hazardous weather in.
[27:05.700 --> 27:06.220]  Here we go.
[27:06.520 --> 27:08.380]  Tonight, hazardous weather did not expect this time.
[27:08.380 --> 27:15.680]  But days two through seven, locally heavy rainfall, likely at times from Sunday to Sunday night, flooding, those type of things.
[27:16.480 --> 27:19.540]  Spotter activation, I'll talk about that, may be needed Sunday to Sunday night.
[27:20.560 --> 27:22.800]  So it's all in there, and you can read this stuff.
[27:22.920 --> 27:28.500]  It doesn't... if you want to read some of the more detailed things, like to actually have a forecast discussion if you really want to get into the meteorology.
[27:28.640 --> 27:33.620]  But if you're planning a picnic tomorrow, you might want to be ready for some really heavy rainfall.
[27:33.620 --> 27:38.200]  Or if you want to go camping in a ravine, you know, you might want to keep an eye on this.
[27:39.740 --> 27:41.300]  So all the information's there.
[27:41.300 --> 27:43.220]  It's just about being aware of it.
[27:43.820 --> 27:45.620]  And that's one of the... that's the real tragedy.
[27:45.840 --> 27:49.140]  You see a lot of people that get killed by these things are... just aren't paying attention.
[27:49.680 --> 27:53.380]  So I... this is my favorite product from them, is this hourly weather.
[27:56.960 --> 27:59.200]  That... I think it's a pretty clean chart here.
[27:59.200 --> 28:03.720]  So this is the red lines, the temperature, the yellowish lines, the heat index.
[28:03.920 --> 28:04.960]  And then down here is the dew point.
[28:05.220 --> 28:07.220]  I personally hate really high humidity.
[28:07.420 --> 28:09.580]  So this is just going to be miserable for the next few days.
[28:09.780 --> 28:12.140]  That's like 69 degree dew point.
[28:12.320 --> 28:15.100]  So that's really... and it's not changing, you know, it's just a flat line.
[28:15.100 --> 28:16.820]  So it's going to be hot and muggy for a while.
[28:17.660 --> 28:18.660]  Here's the wind speed.
[28:18.900 --> 28:21.020]  So if you're going... I do a lot of kayaking.
[28:21.180 --> 28:24.140]  So if you're going to look in kayaking, you're seeing big wind barbs in there.
[28:24.220 --> 28:25.860]  So you can either read that or just read the chart.
[28:25.860 --> 28:29.600]  This is very light winds from 3 up to 10, which is really nothing.
[28:30.840 --> 28:33.240]  And when I looked... oh, I'm two days out here.
[28:33.300 --> 28:35.120]  That's why I'm getting a weird reading here.
[28:35.260 --> 28:40.360]  But that means it could be hot and humid even through like next Wednesday.
[28:41.940 --> 28:44.080]  This guy down here is thunderstorm probability.
[28:44.360 --> 28:48.220]  So there's slight chance starting at about 1 a.m.
[28:48.340 --> 28:51.400]  tonight and then all through tomorrow and then ending around Monday.
[28:52.440 --> 28:57.440]  So, you know, I also work on a lot of outdoor shows and I do sound systems for those type of things.
[28:57.660 --> 28:58.960]  I wouldn't cancel the show.
[28:59.100 --> 29:00.180]  Not that I'm in charge of it anyway.
[29:00.320 --> 29:01.880]  But I wouldn't cancel the show based on that.
[29:01.980 --> 29:03.820]  But I'm like, hey, we might get a thunderstorm tomorrow.
[29:04.080 --> 29:08.400]  If you see that thing like maxed out all the way across the top, you might want to look at it.
[29:09.140 --> 29:10.980]  So here's the precipitation and so on.
[29:11.080 --> 29:13.480]  But again, this is free right off the National Weather Service site.
[29:13.480 --> 29:17.960]  I find this particular chart to be very useful as I look at this usually every morning.
[29:21.510 --> 29:32.650]  And then the other thing, if you get more into this stuff and you get a little more geeky about it, the Storm Prediction Center is the National Center down in Norman, Oklahoma, where they get lots of big storms down there.
[29:33.350 --> 29:36.090]  And there's a very well-known meteorology school there.
[29:36.610 --> 29:38.690]  They issue all the watches nationwide.
[29:39.610 --> 29:42.990]  And they're... let's see right now if there's any watches going on.
[29:43.270 --> 29:47.730]  Oh, yeah, there's some watches way out there in Idaho and eastern Oregon.
[29:48.470 --> 29:50.750]  They also issue this thing called a convective outlook.
[29:51.570 --> 29:54.390]  If you read the... and it's... I looked this morning.
[29:54.510 --> 29:59.810]  It was really boring looking for the next few days here because middle of July is just not a big time for severe weather.
[30:01.150 --> 30:03.170]  So what they're showing, let's look at tomorrow.
[30:03.650 --> 30:05.370]  They usually do this about three days out.
[30:05.370 --> 30:09.430]  And, you know, the more meteorology you know, the more helpful it is.
[30:09.530 --> 30:12.750]  But it's certainly... sorry, I clicked one too many times.
[30:12.990 --> 30:15.450]  It's certainly pretty straightforward.
[30:15.870 --> 30:19.870]  So here's categorical risk of severe weather for tomorrow.
[30:20.090 --> 30:27.010]  So if you're way up there is North Dakota, there's a slight risk of severe weather in the center of North Dakota.
[30:27.190 --> 30:29.550]  So the ratings generally go smite... smite.
[30:30.270 --> 30:31.970]  Slight, moderate, and high.
[30:32.190 --> 30:33.990]  If you see high, that's serious.
[30:33.990 --> 30:36.310]  They don't... they issue maybe two or three of those a year.
[30:36.790 --> 30:40.750]  Moderate means, you know, moderate risk, but it's a pretty decent chance of it.
[30:40.950 --> 30:43.010]  So that's a general categorical probability.
[30:43.850 --> 30:47.830]  And then they also have probabilistic probabilities here listed out.
[30:48.030 --> 30:50.670]  And then this is a day out, so they don't have any details.
[30:50.730 --> 30:59.250]  But if you look at the one for today, it'll have the tornado probability, the high wind probability, and then the hail probability, which you can see.
[30:59.450 --> 31:01.030]  It's going to be kind of boring to look at today.
[31:01.190 --> 31:03.410]  So yeah, this will probably say less than 2% of all areas.
[31:03.590 --> 31:07.690]  Yeah, so there's less than 2% chance of a tornado anywhere in the United States today.
[31:08.690 --> 31:11.890]  Wind, 15% chance of wind up there, 5%.
[31:11.890 --> 31:14.010]  I mean, this is meaning serious wind, severe wind.
[31:14.850 --> 31:18.930]  And hail, a pretty good chance of hail out there in Idaho.
[31:18.930 --> 31:23.090]  So this is... they forecast about eight days out.
[31:23.390 --> 31:26.110]  They get more and more specific and accurate as you get closer.
[31:26.230 --> 31:29.550]  So this is what every storm chaser looks at every day.
[31:30.110 --> 31:35.950]  And if you're looking like, hey, you're looking at a high risk three days out in Kansas, there's going to be... they call it chaser convergence.
[31:36.430 --> 31:38.910]  Everybody's going to head out there and go.
[31:39.030 --> 31:43.250]  But you usually have... these guys are amazing how accurate they are.
[31:43.390 --> 31:47.410]  But the only big outbreak we had this year, they forecast a week in advance.
[31:47.410 --> 31:51.350]  So that's pretty amazing to me for how complex the atmosphere is.
[31:51.550 --> 31:54.150]  They can't tell you if it's going to hit Kansas.
[31:54.170 --> 31:59.570]  They're not going to say what's going to miss, you know, Lawrence and move somewhere else 20 miles away.
[31:59.730 --> 32:02.410]  They're not that specific, but they get more and more specific as time goes on.
[32:02.590 --> 32:04.670]  But they're saying the conditions are right in that area.
[32:04.670 --> 32:07.310]  So it's like a soup and it's going to boil.
[32:07.430 --> 32:08.230]  They know it's going to boil.
[32:08.350 --> 32:10.430]  They can't predict where the first bubble is going to come up.
[32:10.950 --> 32:13.350]  That's, I think, their ultimate objective, but they're not there yet.
[32:13.770 --> 32:16.050]  And they're also... it's very difficult to predict.
[32:16.610 --> 32:20.430]  If you look at a bunch of severe storms, which one's going to have a tornado in it?
[32:20.550 --> 32:21.750]  They're not very good at that either.
[32:21.850 --> 32:23.650]  That's why they're continuously researching that.
[32:24.390 --> 32:25.270]  Moving along here.
[32:26.310 --> 32:31.250]  I showed this already, but, again, lots of free information on there to look at this stuff.
[32:31.350 --> 32:32.110]  But this is really good.
[32:32.630 --> 32:34.850]  It's always good, just if you're interested, just poke around.
[32:34.850 --> 32:38.190]  If you see, oh, look, a moderate risk tomorrow and so-and-so, where I'm going to be.
[32:38.510 --> 32:39.290]  Look on here.
[32:39.410 --> 32:40.950]  There's some models information in there.
[32:41.350 --> 32:43.530]  Again, it gets pretty technical very quickly.
[32:43.690 --> 32:48.110]  But you can figure some things out if you learn a little bit about, like, shortwave troughs and things like that.
[32:48.230 --> 32:53.250]  You can get a pretty decent idea and read the same information the meteorologists are reading.
[32:53.250 --> 32:58.970]  So, I mean, there's really no, there's a little bit of information that you can't get just as a citizen.
[32:59.310 --> 33:02.490]  But you have, you know, they get it packaged in different ways.
[33:02.490 --> 33:07.650]  But you really have almost access to almost all the data that they have, especially if you pay, like, a little bit of money.
[33:08.270 --> 33:10.230]  Penn State has a big meteorology program.
[33:10.390 --> 33:11.590]  They have this thing called the E-Wall.
[33:12.130 --> 33:16.370]  You can click in here and see all kinds of model information if you want to do your own forecast.
[33:16.790 --> 33:22.010]  I took, when I got really interested in this a few years ago, I took an online meteorology class from them that was very good.
[33:22.010 --> 33:25.050]  And you go through there and make your own forecast for tomorrow.
[33:25.770 --> 33:28.010]  Me, I'm more interested in chasing than forecasting.
[33:28.170 --> 33:30.670]  But you have to, you kind of have to do both.
[33:32.230 --> 33:32.930]  NOAA Weather Radio.
[33:33.130 --> 33:34.830]  It's an archaic system, but it's still effective.
[33:34.870 --> 33:38.950]  I actually have that one in my, oops, in my bedroom.
[33:39.350 --> 33:42.530]  Because if there's a tornado going to hit Brooklyn, I want to take pictures.
[33:42.690 --> 33:44.250]  So, I'm going to be out there.
[33:44.350 --> 33:46.430]  I want to be woken up when it happens.
[33:46.770 --> 33:48.450]  That's the unit that puts it out.
[33:49.550 --> 33:50.970]  Pretty old system.
[33:50.970 --> 33:51.990]  They have main and backup.
[33:52.710 --> 33:54.750]  And then they're transmitted a bunch of places.
[33:54.970 --> 33:56.510]  So, this is kind of the old standby.
[33:57.030 --> 33:59.950]  The problem is with this, this is called a SAME Weather Radio.
[34:00.110 --> 34:00.710]  S-A-M-E.
[34:01.150 --> 34:03.250]  I forgot what the something alert mode.
[34:03.250 --> 34:04.670]  I forgot what the acronym stands for.
[34:04.770 --> 34:07.030]  But that, you can put in a county code in there.
[34:07.030 --> 34:13.290]  And then it will only alert when there's a severe event predicted for your area.
[34:13.530 --> 34:14.350]  Your county, sorry.
[34:14.710 --> 34:16.550]  So, in New York, that can be pretty specific.
[34:16.690 --> 34:21.090]  Kings County is relatively small compared to, you know, a county in Nebraska or something.
[34:21.230 --> 34:26.990]  So, I have it set up for just like Kings County and New York County, which is Manhattan.
[34:27.270 --> 34:28.530]  Because that's usually the pattern.
[34:28.530 --> 34:31.250]  I seem to live in a thunderstorm hole, which I'll show you in a minute.
[34:31.430 --> 34:34.170]  But you can get free text alerts.
[34:34.490 --> 34:35.750]  I get two different ones.
[34:35.830 --> 34:37.690]  I get one via email from AccuWeather.
[34:37.730 --> 34:38.550]  That one's pretty good.
[34:38.770 --> 34:41.070]  You just go on their website and sign up for this stuff.
[34:41.430 --> 34:46.190]  And they'll send you any time there's severe weather in a predefined zip code that you enter.
[34:46.190 --> 34:48.290]  So, this doesn't... is worthless if you're traveling.
[34:48.790 --> 34:51.490]  But if you're staying in one place, it's actually pretty good.
[34:51.710 --> 34:57.090]  And the reason I get that accurate one email is they'll tell you of storms coming that aren't...
[34:57.090 --> 34:59.670]  don't reach the severe criteria, but are still strong.
[34:59.970 --> 35:04.310]  So, severe means 60 mile an hour winds, but a 40 mile an hour wind thunderstorm is pretty...
[35:04.310 --> 35:05.030]  still pretty strong.
[35:05.990 --> 35:09.610]  And then weather.com, I get text messages from them.
[35:09.850 --> 35:10.390]  Same thing.
[35:10.550 --> 35:11.850]  I get severe alerts on that.
[35:12.370 --> 35:14.390]  So, let's see.
[35:14.690 --> 35:15.090]  Oh, yeah.
[35:15.090 --> 35:17.430]  And then the government... this is just... this is pretty new.
[35:17.890 --> 35:22.350]  The National Weather Service and FEMA are working together on a wireless emergency alert.
[35:22.610 --> 35:24.610]  This is just starting to get rolled out now.
[35:24.730 --> 35:28.570]  And it's something interesting I think people will want to watch because every...
[35:28.570 --> 35:46.710]  the idea is that it's a very wacky thing they did like requiring cell phone manufacturers to... carriers to implement this, but they're not... they did it in a way that they don't mandate that they do it, but if they don't implement it, then they have to let anybody who has a contract now out of the contract.
[35:46.970 --> 35:48.950]  So, that's a big disincentive to a cell phone carrier.
[35:49.070 --> 35:50.430]  That was pretty... pretty shrewd, I think.
[35:52.130 --> 35:53.030]  This is coming now.
[35:53.130 --> 36:00.150]  But what's interesting about this, this is some... and I didn't get the details of technology, but this would be something that'd be interesting to look up, especially for people interested in radio.
[36:00.490 --> 36:03.490]  It's going to be some sort of broadcasting based on a cell site.
[36:03.490 --> 36:13.250]  So, that means whatever cell site you're close enough to, if that's in the severe polygon or a terrorist activity or whatever, it's going to just alert every phone in that area.
[36:13.470 --> 36:15.830]  So, it's not... I think it'll come in a text message.
[36:16.090 --> 36:21.170]  This... my Verizon phone just updated its software, and the receiver for this is already in there.
[36:21.310 --> 36:27.810]  So, you can turn off the imminent threat alerts and the amber alerts, but you can't turn off the presidential alert, which has never been issued.
[36:28.550 --> 36:30.050]  But that's going to be kind of interesting.
[36:31.530 --> 36:33.450]  Also, wherever you live, you may have something like this.
[36:33.610 --> 36:35.030]  We have Notify NYC here.
[36:35.350 --> 36:36.810]  Mine just went off a few minutes ago.
[36:36.910 --> 36:39.310]  It told me there's a three alarm fire at South Street Seaport.
[36:39.930 --> 36:41.110]  So, that's kind of interesting.
[36:41.270 --> 36:45.050]  And though, but if there's a severe war and storm in the five boroughs, they'll also tell you about that.
[36:45.190 --> 36:46.750]  So, it's... that's pretty interesting.
[36:46.910 --> 36:47.450]  And that's just free.
[36:47.590 --> 36:48.070]  You can sign up.
[36:50.370 --> 36:56.150]  Now, with the smartphones and wireless Internet, this is really what's made chasing a lot easier.
[36:56.150 --> 36:58.870]  But this RadarScope is a great program.
[36:59.110 --> 36:59.970]  It's 10 bucks.
[37:00.290 --> 37:02.590]  You can get it for iOS or Android.
[37:03.230 --> 37:05.190]  I'm just firing it up here, which I'll explain why in a minute.
[37:06.290 --> 37:08.070]  The only thing is, it's kind of raw weather.
[37:08.270 --> 37:09.410]  It's raw radar data.
[37:09.550 --> 37:14.330]  So, you do have to study it a little bit to really make sure that you're getting the information correct.
[37:14.490 --> 37:16.030]  For example, my brother lives in Vermont.
[37:16.450 --> 37:19.030]  The radar, I'd see like a severe warning up there.
[37:19.150 --> 37:20.590]  And I'd look at there's nothing on the radar.
[37:20.730 --> 37:23.010]  That's because I'm looking at the radar on the other side of the mountains.
[37:23.010 --> 37:24.490]  And it's not making a cross.
[37:24.630 --> 37:27.330]  If you switch over and look at it from the Boston radar, then you can see it.
[37:27.690 --> 37:28.510]  So, this takes...
[37:28.510 --> 37:31.970]  You have to be a little careful with this and making judgments on that.
[37:32.190 --> 37:34.810]  But what it does, it actually gives you...
[37:34.810 --> 37:35.950]  It takes the GPS to the phone.
[37:36.030 --> 37:38.810]  I don't know if you can see this, but there's a little blue bullseye there.
[37:38.950 --> 37:39.610]  That's us.
[37:39.790 --> 37:42.290]  And then it tells you where everything is around it.
[37:42.490 --> 37:43.750]  So, that's very useful.
[37:44.010 --> 37:47.110]  And that one's actually now reporting my position, which I'll explain in a second.
[37:48.270 --> 37:51.910]  This is pretty interesting, iOS only, called IMF Weather Radio.
[37:52.170 --> 37:57.990]  This is great if you're on the road, because this thing will just tell you, are you an alert polygon right now?
[37:58.110 --> 38:09.610]  So, if you're driving across Kansas and there's a bunch of thunderstorms, but you're about to drive into a spot or indicated tornado, and it has a tornado warning on it, this will even wake up your phone and tell you that you're in there.
[38:09.690 --> 38:10.530]  I think it's about $10.
[38:10.910 --> 38:12.810]  I have Android, so I can't get that one.
[38:12.810 --> 38:15.390]  This one just came out, a very similar idea.
[38:15.510 --> 38:19.870]  You can select the alerts you want to activate on there.
[38:19.990 --> 38:22.390]  But it will only go off if you're in the warning polygon.
[38:22.590 --> 38:28.510]  So, that's much more specific than... and that solves that problem I was showing about county boundaries and stuff like this.
[38:29.890 --> 38:31.770]  GR level, this is the one I was running before.
[38:32.170 --> 38:34.570]  This is really kind of like what every storm chaser used.
[38:34.750 --> 38:35.090]  And it's...
[38:35.090 --> 38:43.070]  I have to say, it's not like the most beautiful, clean user interface, but it's really, really powerful, and there's just tremendous amount of information in here.
[38:43.310 --> 38:45.350]  So, if you notice, I'm now on there.
[38:46.130 --> 38:47.170]  The green dot.
[38:48.030 --> 38:50.310]  That's me, and that's pretty accurate.
[38:50.570 --> 39:00.530]  That's because this thing just uploaded my position as what's called a sky-worn spotter to spotter network, and then GR level is actually reading that down and showing it.
[39:00.630 --> 39:08.430]  So, this means the National Weather Service can email me or have my phone number if I was standing next to a tornado and I'm a trained spotter.
[39:08.590 --> 39:10.290]  They could say, what are the conditions down there?
[39:10.290 --> 39:11.670]  Because they can't see it from the radar.
[39:12.350 --> 39:12.790]  And this...
[39:12.790 --> 39:15.930]  And also, this is how you can tell when you're out chasing.
[39:15.930 --> 39:19.430]  You'll see all these green dots moving towards the same area.
[39:19.710 --> 39:20.150]  And that's...
[39:20.150 --> 39:20.350]  Yeah.
[39:20.610 --> 39:21.470]  That's chaser-converted.
[39:21.910 --> 39:24.890]  So, this is showing nationwide severe alerts.
[39:25.110 --> 39:28.590]  So, let's look at that out in Idaho there, because that was under the watch, I believe.
[39:29.450 --> 39:29.890]  Yeah.
[39:29.890 --> 39:31.350]  There's a severe storm right there.
[39:32.150 --> 39:32.590]  Sorry.
[39:32.630 --> 39:33.810]  It's a little hard with this touch pad.
[39:33.810 --> 39:33.890]  Yeah.
[39:35.270 --> 39:41.390]  This thing, I pay about 10 bucks a month just during the summertime to get real-time data on this.
[39:41.530 --> 39:52.310]  I mean, you can get the data for free from the National Weather Service just through the default settings in the program, but if you want a little higher resolution and you want the storm tracks and the whitening data, then you have to pay for it.
[39:52.490 --> 39:54.170]  So, this is showing severe storm.
[39:54.170 --> 39:55.170]  If I go in here...
[39:55.890 --> 39:56.810]  Let's click on that.
[39:59.870 --> 40:00.630]  I need to...
[40:00.630 --> 40:05.370]  Severe thunderstorm warning remains in effect to 315 Pacific Daylight Time for central Idaho County.
[40:06.130 --> 40:06.670]  2.30...
[40:06.670 --> 40:07.290]  This is always...
[40:07.290 --> 40:07.830]  This is important.
[40:07.930 --> 40:09.270]  They choose their language very carefully.
[40:09.570 --> 40:11.470]  2:36 PM PDT.
[40:11.670 --> 40:12.730]  A train weather spotter.
[40:12.830 --> 40:18.090]  That means somebody who's been through the Weather Service's SkyWarn program, which I'll tell you about in a second.
[40:18.570 --> 40:22.770]  Reported a severe thunderstorm with a history of producing very heavy rainfall in a short period of time.
[40:23.270 --> 40:27.290]  Damaging winds in excess of 60 miles per hour and hail up to one inch diameter also possible.
[40:27.550 --> 40:28.350]  So, that...
[40:28.350 --> 40:28.690]  So, there...
[40:28.690 --> 40:30.470]  You can see how they parse the information out.
[40:31.110 --> 40:34.450]  The train weather spotter reported very, very heavy rain very fast.
[40:34.630 --> 40:35.650]  So, that could cause flash flooding.
[40:36.670 --> 40:44.150]  The rest of the information they have from the radar and the soundings and the other stuff is telling them that hail is possible up to one inch diameter.
[40:44.330 --> 40:45.190]  And that's pretty serious.
[40:45.470 --> 40:48.570]  So, I've been hit by like three-quarter inch diameter and that hurts.
[40:48.930 --> 40:49.330]  And...
[40:49.910 --> 40:50.490]  So, yeah.
[40:50.570 --> 40:51.690]  You have to take this stuff seriously.
[40:52.630 --> 40:54.410]  So, this is a PC-only program.
[40:54.850 --> 40:56.250]  I think it's about $50, $60.
[40:56.910 --> 40:57.690]  And then the...
[40:58.250 --> 40:58.850]  But it's...
[40:58.850 --> 40:59.650]  You see...
[40:59.650 --> 41:00.510]  If you go out...
[41:00.510 --> 41:02.750]  Storm Chaser, you see like every chaser has this running.
[41:03.070 --> 41:03.610]  Or this.
[41:03.770 --> 41:04.850]  But I find this is great.
[41:04.950 --> 41:06.110]  I carry it around the phone all the time.
[41:06.270 --> 41:07.170]  But this is...
[41:07.170 --> 41:08.330]  It's just much easier to read.
[41:08.470 --> 41:09.310]  And I'll show you some of that.
[41:09.510 --> 41:13.470]  Oh, and you can also get a little GPS USB puck and plug it in here.
[41:13.590 --> 41:16.170]  And that'll give you your GPS position as well.
[41:16.710 --> 41:19.270]  So, there's the core of the storm here.
[41:19.490 --> 41:20.290]  The other thing...
[41:20.290 --> 41:21.650]  I won't go through a lot of detail on this.
[41:21.730 --> 41:23.170]  But we're looking at the reflectivity now.
[41:23.450 --> 41:25.030]  You can also look at the velocity.
[41:26.550 --> 41:27.530]  Oh, that's interesting.
[41:27.530 --> 41:29.850]  So, if you're...
[41:29.850 --> 41:30.690]  Green is...
[41:31.330 --> 41:33.230]  I always get this wrong, but...
[41:33.230 --> 41:34.690]  Let me just look at the bottom here.
[41:34.790 --> 41:35.650]  Yeah, green is...
[41:35.650 --> 41:39.010]  That particular position, negative 25 knots.
[41:39.210 --> 41:41.850]  So, that means it's 25 knots away from the radar.
[41:42.410 --> 41:44.070]  Red means it's towards the radar.
[41:44.810 --> 41:45.770]  Pretty slow, though.
[41:45.910 --> 41:47.190]  Five knots towards the radar.
[41:47.270 --> 41:48.070]  But if you see a red...
[41:48.070 --> 41:49.390]  That's called a red-green couplet.
[41:49.590 --> 41:51.110]  That means that storm's rotating.
[41:51.510 --> 41:52.690]  That one's rotating very...
[41:52.690 --> 41:55.630]  It's a very weak rotation, which is why it doesn't have a tornado warning on it.
[41:55.630 --> 41:58.550]  But if you saw 50 knots, 50 knots...
[41:58.550 --> 42:01.690]  Or, sorry, 50 knots, 50 knots this way, that's likely a tornado.
[42:02.390 --> 42:03.390]  And that's what they call...
[42:03.390 --> 42:05.250]  It'll be a Doppler Radar Indicated Tornado.
[42:05.330 --> 42:08.030]  It means they don't have a spotter that saw a funnel come down to the ground.
[42:08.190 --> 42:09.850]  But it means that they're seeing it on radar.
[42:10.030 --> 42:10.510]  And the whole...
[42:10.510 --> 42:13.970]  You know, the precipitation is rotating, which is a key part of that.
[42:16.250 --> 42:18.110]  So, they have two versions of this.
[42:18.310 --> 42:20.070]  There's GR Level 3, which is what this is.
[42:20.150 --> 42:21.970]  GR Level 2 is actually higher res.
[42:22.110 --> 42:24.030]  It's a little confusing that Level 2 is higher res.
[42:24.470 --> 42:25.670]  You really don't need that.
[42:25.870 --> 42:26.610]  It costs more.
[42:26.790 --> 42:29.470]  I had it for a while, and it doesn't really give you any information.
[42:29.750 --> 42:32.570]  For me, anyway, that's more useful than this, and this is cheaper.
[42:32.850 --> 42:33.030]  So...
[42:34.590 --> 42:35.230]  And then...
[42:35.230 --> 42:38.070]  So, we also have in here flash flood in Idaho.
[42:38.570 --> 42:40.270]  A lot of flash flood warnings right now.
[42:40.610 --> 42:42.990]  And then Special Marine Warning down here in Tampa Bay.
[42:43.790 --> 42:44.710]  And so, you can...
[42:44.710 --> 42:47.670]  With this program, you just click on any one, and it'll take you to the nearest radar.
[42:47.670 --> 42:50.610]  Oh, and this is showing you here, that yellow box.
[42:50.750 --> 42:52.010]  It says SLGT.
[42:52.150 --> 42:53.610]  That's the slight risk for today.
[42:53.990 --> 42:59.470]  So, if you see a storm inside here, inside the box, that's a reasonable probability it's going to be severe in there.
[43:01.550 --> 43:02.850]  I don't want to run out of time.
[43:03.510 --> 43:04.250]  GR Level.
[43:04.630 --> 43:05.270]  It's a guy named...
[43:05.270 --> 43:08.370]  I think it's David Gibson, or Gibson is his name, and it's Gibson Ridge.
[43:09.630 --> 43:12.850]  And if you just search GR Level, there's GR Level 2, 3.
[43:12.850 --> 43:16.610]  You can get a free trial of it for like a month, I think, and you can run on the free data.
[43:17.350 --> 43:18.270]  And I'll put a...
[43:18.270 --> 43:21.310]  As soon as I get the audio from the talk, I'll put this whole thing up on my website.
[43:24.290 --> 43:24.650]  So...
[43:24.650 --> 43:25.230]  I'm just going to...
[43:25.230 --> 43:26.510]  I'm going to go through here.
[43:27.110 --> 43:28.410]  Allison House, that's...
[43:28.410 --> 43:31.230]  I think they're on Kansas City, but they're basically the...
[43:31.230 --> 43:33.390]  one of the more widely used data providers.
[43:33.390 --> 43:36.630]  So, I buy the $10 a month thing just during the summer months.
[43:37.110 --> 43:39.910]  Then the winter, I just use the cheaper stuff.
[43:40.370 --> 43:44.270]  That gives you the lightning data, and then the...
[43:44.270 --> 43:48.970]  Also, there's this thing called Terminal Doppler Radars, the ones at the airport, and a bunch of other information.
[43:49.190 --> 43:51.610]  So, $10 a month during the summer is definitely worth it for me.
[43:52.590 --> 43:58.990]  WeatherTap's another inexpensive option that'll give you radar, lightning, and all the storm warnings.
[43:59.150 --> 44:02.850]  And they have like a Java-based system that works pretty well.
[44:02.990 --> 44:04.250]  And it's like $8 a month.
[44:04.350 --> 44:05.730]  And again, you can buy it by the month.
[44:05.770 --> 44:06.450]  You can do it annually.
[44:07.050 --> 44:11.430]  But that gives you into the second level, like more detailed level if you really want to watch this stuff.
[44:11.430 --> 44:17.990]  I mean, there's really nothing you can't do on the National Weather Service site, but the detail and the radar and stuff in here is better.
[44:18.210 --> 44:19.030]  I just don't...
[44:19.030 --> 44:20.810]  I don't buy this anymore because I already...
[44:20.810 --> 44:21.590]  I have the other one.
[44:21.810 --> 44:22.410]  But otherwise...
[44:22.410 --> 44:26.190]  And this, they give you text alerts and all that as part of the $8 a month.
[44:27.930 --> 44:28.810]  So, chasing...
[44:29.250 --> 44:31.730]  Spotter Network, that I talked about before.
[44:32.050 --> 44:38.630]  This is the all-volunteer system written by the Gibson Ridge and Allison House guys.
[44:38.630 --> 44:41.470]  If anybody's a good coder and you want to go, they're always...
[44:41.470 --> 44:43.250]  I think they'll always be looking for help.
[44:43.390 --> 44:44.430]  It's kind of interesting stuff.
[44:45.470 --> 44:50.630]  In order to be registered as a spotter, you have to pass a multiple-choice test on there, which is pretty hard.
[44:50.810 --> 44:52.770]  I actually failed it the first time because I wasn't paying attention.
[44:53.630 --> 44:58.890]  But it's about difference between a wall cloud and some things like that because they want to make sure it's just not anybody going, oh, look at...
[44:58.890 --> 45:01.130]  You know, they see one cloud and they report a tornado.
[45:01.270 --> 45:01.790]  They don't want...
[45:01.790 --> 45:03.310]  They want bad data.
[45:03.390 --> 45:04.830]  They really want good data.
[45:04.830 --> 45:10.910]  And then this thing, depending on the software you use, like RadarScope, if you just enter your spotter ID in, this will now...
[45:10.910 --> 45:14.570]  Is reporting my position wherever I go and it'll show up on there.
[45:15.410 --> 45:17.730]  So you can either just go to their website and look at it.
[45:17.810 --> 45:20.770]  You don't need to have any fancy software for that.
[45:20.870 --> 45:22.050]  So here's the current activity.
[45:22.350 --> 45:23.550]  And then if you look...
[45:23.550 --> 45:26.250]  I'll show you this in a second, but you can see the little green camera icon.
[45:26.250 --> 45:30.210]  That's somebody with a streaming camera, which can get interesting.
[45:30.390 --> 45:31.590]  We'll get to that in a second here.
[45:32.550 --> 45:33.690]  Gonna run out of time.
[45:34.610 --> 45:35.050]  Skywarn.
[45:35.110 --> 45:39.090]  This is the one provided by National Weather Service training.
[45:39.330 --> 45:43.210]  The one here in Upton, they run typically in the spring, like four or five times.
[45:43.430 --> 45:44.430]  Anybody can go.
[45:44.630 --> 45:46.730]  You get a Skywarn ID number afterwards.
[45:46.850 --> 45:57.550]  It doesn't really mean anything, but you do get a phone number to call them because now they have people that at least have some training to be able to report things like hail and we don't get a lot of tornado stuff around here.
[45:58.070 --> 45:59.990]  This is my setup when I'm chasing.
[45:59.990 --> 46:00.990]  This was out in Minnesota.
[46:00.990 --> 46:05.770]  I'm on sabbatical this year, so I picked the spring so I could get out and chase.
[46:06.010 --> 46:08.710]  And this is the least number of tornadoes since 1970.
[46:09.430 --> 46:09.830]  So...
[46:09.830 --> 46:10.710]  But I did...
[46:10.710 --> 46:13.050]  I got on, I don't know, 15 or 20 severe storms.
[46:13.190 --> 46:14.650]  So this is GR level here.
[46:15.590 --> 46:19.350]  That's the reflectivity and the velocity.
[46:19.650 --> 46:21.630]  This is just the tablet I have running.
[46:21.750 --> 46:23.070]  In this case, it was running Google Maps.
[46:23.190 --> 46:24.510]  I kind of switched them back and forth.
[46:24.650 --> 46:27.150]  I have a navigation program on the laptop too.
[46:28.230 --> 46:28.550]  Camera.
[46:29.290 --> 46:31.050]  And then I was just running Radar Scope over here.
[46:31.170 --> 46:33.350]  It's kind of interesting to look at the radar in two different ways.
[46:35.310 --> 46:37.030]  To, you know, because it gives you different information.
[46:37.150 --> 46:38.210]  And then, of course, Radar Detector.
[46:38.350 --> 46:38.770]  That's important.
[46:39.750 --> 46:40.070]  But...
[46:41.150 --> 46:41.790]  Live streaming.
[46:41.950 --> 46:43.010]  Anybody can do this now.
[46:43.290 --> 46:45.190]  There's a couple places that will do it for free.
[46:45.790 --> 46:48.590]  This is a crapshoot because there's not much going on out there right now.
[46:48.590 --> 46:50.470]  But we'll see if they got anything up.
[46:50.570 --> 46:52.070]  They say the stuff's live right now.
[46:53.590 --> 46:56.690]  And they just rolled out a new...
[46:56.690 --> 46:58.490]  It's going to take a minute to load up.
[46:59.010 --> 46:59.730]  Sad thing here.
[46:59.890 --> 47:01.430]  This is the Andy Gabrielson Memorial Fund.
[47:01.510 --> 47:02.490]  This guy was a chaser.
[47:04.030 --> 47:04.910]  Got unbelievable.
[47:05.210 --> 47:08.150]  Was in like within inches of tornado after tornado after tornado.
[47:08.430 --> 47:10.230]  Killed by a drunk driver on the way home.
[47:10.610 --> 47:11.730]  So just horrible.
[47:11.990 --> 47:14.790]  But he was very active in severe studios.
[47:14.790 --> 47:15.930]  So this is a...
[47:15.930 --> 47:17.370]  They make money selling...
[47:17.370 --> 47:18.730]  We don't see it much in the east.
[47:18.890 --> 47:22.250]  But if you're out in Nebraska or places, they'll buy...
[47:22.250 --> 47:27.570]  The TV stations will buy the live feed or the video to let people know there's actually tornado on the ground.
[47:28.010 --> 47:29.170]  So not much going on today.
[47:29.310 --> 47:30.290]  But when it's active...
[47:30.290 --> 47:31.170]  Yeah, he's not streaming.
[47:31.770 --> 47:32.930]  There's a bunch of people on here.
[47:32.990 --> 47:34.290]  But there's just nothing going on today.
[47:35.170 --> 47:36.610]  It's just some little cells.
[47:36.770 --> 47:38.050]  And you notice there's no...
[47:38.050 --> 47:41.290]  There wasn't any real high probability of severe storms out there.
[47:41.430 --> 47:42.910]  Just a couple different ones of those.
[47:44.170 --> 47:45.470]  Chaser TV is another one.
[47:46.290 --> 47:47.770]  Sometimes you'll see the guy...
[47:47.770 --> 47:51.330]  You'll get a live picture of a gas station in Nebraska for 30 minutes.
[47:52.390 --> 47:53.290]  It's kind of interesting.
[47:53.450 --> 47:53.970]  But when there's...
[47:53.970 --> 47:55.390]  I've seen tornadoes on there before.
[47:55.390 --> 47:56.970]  It's kind of interesting to watch them.
[47:59.150 --> 47:59.550]  Lightning.
[47:59.870 --> 48:00.770]  Let's see if this is going to work.
[48:00.970 --> 48:01.870]  This is one of the...
[48:01.870 --> 48:03.250]  I wish I had shot this.
[48:03.330 --> 48:07.370]  But this is a guy named Tom Warner out in Rapid City, I believe.
[48:07.570 --> 48:11.390]  Who has a super high speed camera and has shot tons of lightning.
[48:11.390 --> 48:13.090]  This is really beautiful to watch this stuff.
[48:14.750 --> 48:16.150]  That stuttering was in the Internet.
[48:16.370 --> 48:17.050]  It wasn't in this video.
[48:17.290 --> 48:18.950]  So those are step leaders coming down.
[48:19.070 --> 48:21.770]  Then you see when it establishes one big path, it'll...
[48:21.770 --> 48:22.810]  It actually...
[48:22.810 --> 48:25.390]  Well, then it's like pulsing and pulsing and pulsing.
[48:25.550 --> 48:26.470]  So look him up.
[48:26.550 --> 48:27.430]  Tom Warner on the web.
[48:27.530 --> 48:28.630]  He has some just beautiful stuff.
[48:28.630 --> 48:31.330]  And he shot lots of upward lightning because it goes both directions.
[48:31.330 --> 48:32.930]  How much does that slow down?
[48:33.770 --> 48:34.970]  That one is...
[48:35.630 --> 48:36.410]  What's he say?
[48:37.310 --> 48:39.330]  I think it's 7,000 frames a second.
[48:40.930 --> 48:41.370]  Yeah.
[48:41.570 --> 48:43.270]  Exposure 135 microseconds.
[48:44.210 --> 48:45.090]  So he...
[48:45.090 --> 48:46.530]  I'm going to run out of time.
[48:46.630 --> 48:48.230]  But he's got some just beautiful stuff up there.
[48:50.210 --> 48:53.030]  And I do also what I call urban storm waiting.
[48:53.590 --> 48:56.350]  You can't really chase in the city because there's just too many people.
[48:56.930 --> 48:57.670]  And you're going to...
[48:57.670 --> 48:59.510]  And just traffic, you're going to get...
[48:59.510 --> 48:59.870]  I got...
[48:59.870 --> 49:02.970]  I missed a tornado in Iowa this year because I was stuck in traffic in the town.
[49:03.090 --> 49:03.930]  It's like so aggravating.
[49:04.130 --> 49:05.530]  Because like Friday at 430.
[49:06.370 --> 49:08.290]  But I actually own my roof.
[49:08.430 --> 49:12.490]  So every thunderstorm up there shooting pictures, I also have...
[49:12.890 --> 49:15.230]  I think the best pictures I've shot have been just manually.
[49:15.290 --> 49:16.450]  But I do have a lightning trigger.
[49:16.670 --> 49:17.870]  So you can kind of leave it on.
[49:17.930 --> 49:18.790]  It'll just shoot...
[49:18.790 --> 49:20.690]  If you just Google lightning trigger, you can find that.
[49:21.030 --> 49:22.210]  So I'll show you some...
[49:22.210 --> 49:23.310]  How much time do I have?
[49:23.750 --> 49:24.570]  Get out of this guy.
[49:24.570 --> 49:25.890]  I got like six minutes.
[49:26.050 --> 49:30.470]  But I'll show you very quickly here just some examples of stuff that I shot.
[49:32.210 --> 49:33.850]  Oh, tornado warning in Oregon.
[49:34.910 --> 49:35.870]  Wow, look at that.
[49:36.250 --> 49:37.670]  Sorry, I'm being distracted by that.
[49:39.410 --> 49:40.330]  So there it is.
[49:41.130 --> 49:42.010]  Not much data.
[49:42.550 --> 49:45.950]  So that means probably if you look at it, this is live right now.
[49:45.950 --> 49:47.950]  If we read it, it'll tell you...
[49:50.690 --> 49:52.410]  This is called a Doppler-nado.
[49:53.170 --> 49:59.250]  So it's Doppler radar indicated severe thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado five miles northwest of Ironside.
[49:59.570 --> 50:02.730]  So that's probably a pretty weak spin-up, pretty quick.
[50:02.870 --> 50:03.810]  But they don't know.
[50:03.930 --> 50:07.810]  They can't really tell you for sure it's a tornado because they can't see the bottom of the storm or the radar.
[50:07.810 --> 50:20.690]  If you've seen some of the big scientific studies they've done to go out and chase these things with a mobile radar, that's to get up close and see the bottom of the storm because this radar is too far away.
[50:21.450 --> 50:22.550]  Let's do it this way.
[50:29.560 --> 50:31.800]  So just a bunch of pictures I've shot over the years.
[50:31.820 --> 50:35.480]  This was actually in the 80s when I lived out in the Hamptons.
[50:35.600 --> 50:36.660]  This is a hurricane arriving.
[50:36.860 --> 50:41.720]  I was thinking today, I have no idea how I timed this to get down there because it was like 87.
[50:41.720 --> 50:43.180]  That was before we had Doppler radar.
[50:43.420 --> 50:45.520]  So you certainly couldn't get in your car or anything.
[50:45.700 --> 50:51.860]  But it took me about 15 minutes to drive down the ocean, about two or three hours to get home because of this.
[50:52.380 --> 50:53.640]  That was the next day.
[50:53.860 --> 50:55.140]  This kind of stuff, though.
[50:55.700 --> 50:57.260]  So this is serious stuff.
[50:57.360 --> 50:58.440]  You've got to really take it seriously.
[50:58.520 --> 51:01.340]  You've really got to learn about meteorology before you go do this stuff.
[51:01.500 --> 51:03.720]  Not the meteorology, but at least the way the storms work.
[51:04.140 --> 51:06.040]  This was out in South Dakota.
[51:06.040 --> 51:08.580]  This is an interesting example because this is anti-cyclonic.
[51:08.580 --> 51:11.960]  This storm is going the wrong way for the northern hemisphere.
[51:12.180 --> 51:17.240]  So the vast majority turn counterclockwise, but occasionally one will go the opposite direction.
[51:18.200 --> 51:19.260]  Stuck it in there for that.
[51:19.840 --> 51:20.200]  Come on.
[51:23.260 --> 51:24.160]  It's not loading.
[51:24.260 --> 51:24.580]  There we go.
[51:25.000 --> 51:25.760]  Mammatis clouds.
[51:25.980 --> 51:27.460]  Actually, you can see these right in Manhattan.
[51:27.700 --> 51:28.660]  I'm just going to blast through here.
[51:28.660 --> 51:33.120]  So that's a big hail storm out in South Dakota.
[51:33.380 --> 51:34.680]  That white area is...
[51:35.200 --> 51:36.860]  Oh, it's getting squished on the projector, I think.
[51:36.940 --> 51:40.280]  But that white area is just... is like tennis ball-sized hail coming down.
[51:41.740 --> 51:45.200]  So... and it... and here you can see some horizontal banding in the storm.
[51:45.340 --> 51:46.200]  That means it's rotating.
[51:46.500 --> 51:47.720]  This is from a few years ago.
[51:48.300 --> 51:49.120]  This is... we're chasing.
[51:49.240 --> 51:50.560]  And here's the updraft of the storm.
[51:50.680 --> 51:52.520]  That's where the tornado should be if there was one.
[51:53.580 --> 51:55.240]  That's the same storm later on.
[51:55.360 --> 51:55.980]  There's some hail.
[51:56.660 --> 51:58.760]  So... this went right through Sturgis.
[51:58.940 --> 52:01.780]  Right at the... when the motorcycle rally was going on.
[52:02.060 --> 52:04.640]  I don't know how any of those guys with no helmets didn't get killed.
[52:04.900 --> 52:05.940]  Because, I mean, it's unbelievable.
[52:06.040 --> 52:07.080]  You get hit in the head with that.
[52:07.200 --> 52:07.840]  You're just done.
[52:09.320 --> 52:10.960]  There's car windows blown out.
[52:11.160 --> 52:11.760]  All that kind of stuff.
[52:12.780 --> 52:14.140]  Just so... this is from a plane.
[52:14.300 --> 52:15.800]  That's a pretty big storm out there.
[52:15.880 --> 52:17.160]  That's called an overshooting top.
[52:17.420 --> 52:20.780]  That means the updraft of the storm is so powerful that it's sort of...
[52:20.780 --> 52:23.100]  going past equilibrium and sort of overshooting.
[52:24.760 --> 52:25.740]  And then flooding.
[52:26.080 --> 52:28.760]  This is just... I do a lot of sort of like convenience chasing.
[52:28.800 --> 52:31.920]  I was in Kansas for a conference and they had a lot of flooding out there.
[52:31.960 --> 52:33.360]  So I just went and took some pictures of that.
[52:34.360 --> 52:37.940]  This was the... in Ohio, I think it's called Touchdown Jesus.
[52:38.340 --> 52:41.320]  And he got hit by lightning and the entire thing burned down.
[52:41.440 --> 52:42.440]  I have to be driving by.
[52:42.820 --> 52:44.260]  There's video of it on fire.
[52:44.580 --> 52:45.580]  It's worth looking up.
[52:46.900 --> 52:47.860]  This is in Brooklyn.
[52:48.020 --> 52:50.040]  That's the place where I kayaked.
[52:50.040 --> 52:51.120]  The whole thing flooded out.
[52:51.440 --> 52:52.080]  This is in Brooklyn.
[52:52.420 --> 52:54.160]  Just a winter storm in March.
[52:54.960 --> 52:56.340]  So this is a lot of lightning stuff.
[52:56.440 --> 52:58.160]  I did mostly just shot this off my roof.
[52:58.740 --> 53:00.320]  Some of the best shots ever got.
[53:00.320 --> 53:01.860]  That's actually hitting the Empire State Building.
[53:02.100 --> 53:04.460]  That was with my old camera just manually.
[53:05.040 --> 53:06.800]  Now I have all kinds of better cameras.
[53:06.940 --> 53:10.180]  And I think it's the thunderstorm repeller.
[53:11.120 --> 53:12.400]  It doesn't come near me.
[53:12.820 --> 53:14.140]  But you can shoot this stuff.
[53:14.360 --> 53:15.620]  You obviously have to be careful.
[53:15.620 --> 53:16.780]  You're taking a little bit of a risk.
[53:18.120 --> 53:20.020]  Or a pretty serious risk if you're not careful.
[53:20.560 --> 53:25.160]  But all you do is just get a tripod and put it in bulb exposure.
[53:25.300 --> 53:26.820]  So you can control the exposure.
[53:27.100 --> 53:27.920]  Stop it down.
[53:28.080 --> 53:30.400]  And then hold the shutter down while it's dark.
[53:30.560 --> 53:31.940]  And then once you get the lightning, release it.
[53:32.020 --> 53:35.060]  And that's the best way to get the step leaders and everything that makes it look really cool.
[53:35.220 --> 53:35.960]  Like that one.
[53:37.080 --> 53:38.580]  This one looks like Alfred Hitchcock.
[53:38.760 --> 53:39.440]  Put it in there.
[53:42.220 --> 53:45.200]  This is actually the tornado that hit Brooklyn.
[53:45.200 --> 53:45.920]  That was...
[53:45.920 --> 53:48.380]  I was at school and my phone went off.
[53:48.520 --> 53:50.200]  But I knew there was a thunderstorm that day.
[53:50.220 --> 53:50.840]  So I was shooting.
[53:50.940 --> 53:51.860]  I had the lightning trigger running.
[53:52.080 --> 53:52.960]  And that was it.
[53:53.140 --> 53:54.140]  That wasn't the actual tornado.
[53:54.260 --> 53:55.020]  It was a little bit east of there.
[53:55.100 --> 53:56.460]  But that was a nasty looking storm.
[53:56.700 --> 54:00.280]  I have some really horrible camera phone video of a rainbow.
[54:00.500 --> 54:01.000]  Double rainbow.
[54:01.520 --> 54:02.040]  Yeah, exactly.
[54:04.940 --> 54:06.120]  Just interesting clouds.
[54:06.280 --> 54:06.900]  That's a pretty...
[54:06.900 --> 54:09.140]  You can see the clouds moving there.
[54:09.340 --> 54:10.760]  This is a shelf cloud coming in.
[54:10.780 --> 54:12.860]  This is a severe worn storm off my roof.
[54:12.860 --> 54:15.000]  So they usually avoid my neighborhood.
[54:15.200 --> 54:16.380]  But that one came right at us.
[54:16.940 --> 54:17.440]  More lightning.
[54:17.740 --> 54:18.200]  Same thing there.
[54:18.420 --> 54:19.860]  I just put these in here because I've been...
[54:19.860 --> 54:22.140]  There's a radio tower right there across.
[54:22.280 --> 54:23.340]  I can see it from my window.
[54:24.340 --> 54:25.860]  I've never seen lightning hit that.
[54:25.960 --> 54:27.500]  It's got to be the highest thing in Brooklyn.
[54:27.720 --> 54:29.520]  And you just see lightning like avoiding it.
[54:29.700 --> 54:30.480]  Shooting all around it.
[54:30.560 --> 54:31.700]  It just never actually hits it.
[54:32.300 --> 54:32.920]  I don't know why.
[54:33.040 --> 54:33.800]  Maybe it's not grounded.
[54:38.100 --> 54:40.000]  It wasn't actually a hurricane in my house.
[54:40.080 --> 54:40.860]  It was a tropical storm.
[54:41.020 --> 54:43.100]  But it uprooted a lot of trees.
[54:43.880 --> 54:46.960]  Of course, I went right to the ocean right when it happened.
[54:47.020 --> 54:48.460]  There was really not much going on.
[54:48.720 --> 54:49.880]  This guy in the Rockaways.
[54:49.980 --> 54:51.820]  I don't know why he's sitting in that nasty water.
[54:51.980 --> 54:56.960]  But this is my friend Lori getting a 40-mile-hour wind gust on the bridge out there at Jamaica Bay.
[54:57.300 --> 54:58.300]  Some fog and stuff.
[54:58.300 --> 54:59.780]  And so I shot...
[54:59.780 --> 55:00.480]  I'll show you...
[55:00.480 --> 55:01.640]  I'm just going to run out of time.
[55:01.720 --> 55:03.140]  But I'll show you a couple of time lapses here.
[55:03.260 --> 55:06.080]  I made a little rig to put my camera out in the snow.
[55:06.260 --> 55:07.140]  That was version one.
[55:07.380 --> 55:08.340]  Didn't work very well.
[55:08.400 --> 55:09.400]  So I made version two.
[55:09.840 --> 55:12.400]  And I'll show you the video here in a second of the thing getting drifted over.
[55:12.820 --> 55:14.260]  It's just like a pelican case.
[55:14.340 --> 55:15.600]  And I cut a big hole in the side.
[55:15.900 --> 55:24.200]  And then this year, I upgraded the whole thing so that I actually could get all the frames through an Ethernet connection down into my computer and make time lapse as I go.
[55:24.320 --> 55:25.980]  That's all on my website if you want to see how to do it.
[55:25.980 --> 55:27.840]  And how much snow do we have this year?
[55:28.960 --> 55:29.120]  None.
[55:29.820 --> 55:31.480]  So I hope this year we'll have it.
[55:32.920 --> 55:38.560]  Oh, this is an interesting kind of hacking idea that the snow kept covering up my lens.
[55:38.580 --> 55:40.380]  So I found a marine fan.
[55:40.780 --> 55:42.540]  It's like a 12-volt waterproof fan.
[55:42.600 --> 55:43.740]  They're like, you can put this in the ocean.
[55:43.780 --> 55:44.740]  So I stuck it out there.
[55:44.860 --> 55:45.900]  And it actually worked pretty well.
[55:46.100 --> 55:47.780]  It blew the snow off the lens here.
[55:47.860 --> 55:49.160]  You can see the drift all around it.
[55:49.360 --> 55:51.460]  And I sent that to the manufacturer of the fan.
[55:51.520 --> 55:52.700]  They were pretty happy about it.
[55:52.700 --> 55:53.420]  And I'm like, yeah, that's cool.
[55:55.160 --> 55:55.920]  I'll skip these.
[55:56.020 --> 55:56.660]  These are all on my website.
[55:56.760 --> 55:58.680]  I just want to show you that one snow time lapse before we go.
[55:58.800 --> 56:00.020]  But I was out chasing this year.
[56:00.140 --> 56:00.960]  That's in Orlando.
[56:03.000 --> 56:03.820]  Wasn't chasing there.
[56:04.340 --> 56:08.680]  I just want to show you this one time lapse, and then we can take some questions while it's going.
[56:11.180 --> 56:13.260]  This is a very rough edit I did.
[56:13.260 --> 56:15.880]  Oh, this is that storm out in South Dakota.
[56:16.420 --> 56:19.180]  Those are tennis ball-sized hailstones coming down.
[56:19.760 --> 56:24.900]  The guy who was with the chaser already had broken his windshield, so he was like, out of the hell with it.
[56:24.900 --> 56:25.960]  We're going to finish this thing off.
[56:26.140 --> 56:29.600]  And we sat there as long as we could until it basically just destroyed the whole windshield.
[56:29.900 --> 56:32.580]  And then we got out, but we were a little slow getting out.
[56:32.700 --> 56:36.340]  And it actually ripped his side view mirror off, broke everything.
[56:36.340 --> 56:37.400]  So this is just...
[56:37.400 --> 56:38.760]  I shot this just out my window.
[56:39.140 --> 56:42.260]  A little snow time lapse to show you the stuff you can do in the city.
[56:43.580 --> 56:45.040]  And this one I let run long enough.
[56:45.040 --> 56:46.860]  I think I got it melting on the other side, too.
[56:47.500 --> 56:48.100]  Yeah, here it'll go.
[56:48.220 --> 56:48.940]  It'll start melting down.
[56:49.220 --> 56:51.480]  While this is running, I'm right at time.
[56:51.540 --> 56:53.340]  But if there's any very quick questions, I could probably...
[56:54.160 --> 56:54.980]  Sure, I think you want to...
[56:54.980 --> 56:56.720]  Is anyone going to recommend a home weather station?
[56:56.860 --> 56:58.680]  Is there a particular brand that you prefer over another one?
[56:59.140 --> 56:59.760]  The one...
[56:59.760 --> 57:03.360]  I can say the one I have is a Davis Vantage View, which is about 300 bucks.
[57:03.580 --> 57:04.280]  It's wireless.
[57:04.280 --> 57:07.500]  And I put the data part up on the roof.
[57:07.660 --> 57:08.260]  And then it seems...
[57:08.260 --> 57:08.720]  It works great.
[57:08.880 --> 57:09.360]  And you can...
[57:09.360 --> 57:12.980]  About a couple hundred bucks, you can just get a plug-in thing that I'll put on the Internet.
[57:13.420 --> 57:13.820]  So...
[57:13.820 --> 57:14.880]  I think somebody back there is next.
[57:15.300 --> 57:17.180]  What's your opinion on weather on the ground?
[57:17.420 --> 57:19.100]  So there's sites like that or...
[57:19.100 --> 57:21.000]  Well, they just got bought by the Weather Channel.
[57:21.240 --> 57:21.480]  So...
[57:21.480 --> 57:21.540]  Yeah.
[57:23.060 --> 57:24.320]  That's my opinion on that.
[57:25.400 --> 57:32.480]  But the guy, Jeff Masters, I think his name is, has a great blog, especially in tropical season.
[57:32.480 --> 57:33.740]  I read that blog a lot.
[57:33.880 --> 57:34.820]  But I don't look at it very much.
[57:35.140 --> 57:36.800]  I mean, National Weather Service is everything that I want.
[57:37.200 --> 57:37.520]  There's...
[57:37.520 --> 57:39.000]  That was the camera getting drifted over.
[57:39.580 --> 57:39.900]  So...
[57:39.900 --> 57:41.680]  Weather.com has these types
[57:48.870 --> 57:49.310]  of...
[57:49.310 --> 57:50.010]  Well, yeah.
[57:50.130 --> 57:51.370]  It's as good as their model is.
[57:51.490 --> 57:52.950]  So it's whatever their model...
[57:52.950 --> 57:54.210]  They're feeding the same information.
[57:54.350 --> 57:55.170]  And I should wrap up here.
[57:55.290 --> 57:57.530]  But they're feeding the same information in from the models.
[57:57.570 --> 57:58.750]  And some of them will run their own.
[57:59.550 --> 57:59.870]  So...
[57:59.870 --> 58:00.650]  One more question.
[58:01.110 --> 58:01.910]  Are there any
[58:07.590 --> 58:08.090]  data?
[58:08.510 --> 58:11.270]  I would check with the Simuips guy, because I think...
[58:11.270 --> 58:14.090]  I don't know if that's open-source, but it's a very open kind of project.
[58:14.410 --> 58:16.150]  So he would be the guy to ask.
[58:16.390 --> 58:16.770]  So...
[58:16.770 --> 58:17.610]  Well, thanks very much.
[58:25.140 --> 58:28.900]  And like I said, I'll put all this stuff online as soon as I get the audio all edited.
[58:28.900 --> 58:29.260]  So...
[58:29.260 --> 58:29.480]  So...