Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

The Monster Arrives

It's 10pm on Monday 29 October 2012, and we've been watching coverage of Hurricane Sandy -- or the post-tropical storm -- or the Frankenstorm -- or whatever you want to call it. As predicted, the storm surge along New York City shores is running 8-11 feet. And as I explained to my PHYS-1070 students the other day, while talking about Newton's Law of Universal Gravity and how it applies to tides, the worst case scenario is a storm surge hitting during high tide at a full moon. Check all that apply.

Meanwhile, parts of West Virginia are being buried under up to two feet of early snow. Baltimore is scheduled for 10½" of rain. And inland areas on the route past New York are gearing up for a couple of days of heavy weather.

West Michigan

Lest you think that this post is about vicarious living through others' suffering, I should point out that the storms reach is more than five hundred miles from its center. That's Lake Michigan right at the western edge of the Great White Storm.

Satellite photo from this morning.


Satellite photo from around 5pm. (Click on photo for larger.)

Here in West Michigan we have a high wind advisory scheduled through 8pm Tuesday -- 55 mph winds gusting to 60+ -- with chances of snow and more snow in the next two days. But the temps won't support any kind of staying power, so it'll merely be cold and sloppy.

The coastline is much more interesting. Benton Harbor MI is expected to get 33-foot waves. Take that, Chicago, which was going on about 22-foot waves on Lake Michigan. 20-footers north in Holland and Grand Haven on this side, all driven by 60-70 mph winds down the centerline of Lake Michigan.

They don't call them Great Lakes for nothing.

One comment I saw online pointed out that the Great Lakes can make big ocean sized waves, but they are spaced closer together so that the lake waves are more punishing. Couple that with waves coming from more than one direction and you get the gales of November in Lake Superior sinking the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Weather Channel, whose coverage is getting more and more vapid, apparently was showing surfers shooting the big waves off Chicago.

Stay safe, all ye in the paths of storms.

Dr. Phil

As In Weather...

Sunday night it rained. I mean it poured. I mean it drenched. I mean it roared. At 0230 hours EDT. With a hailstorm of hail.

One of the things that's funny about this is that we got a new roof last summer. And the remarkable thing about the architectural shingles and the new layer put beneath them is how quiet the roof is. Can't hear the rain, except when you're near a window -- or sleeping next to a wall which is being pounded.

Half an hour later and all is quiet, though the distant lightning continued on for a while. And the peepers are back out again. Must be spring. (grin)

We knew the storms were coming. Back on Friday the first front was going through in the afternoon and on my drive home I saw something I hadn't seen before. Twice. Coming north out of Kalamazoo on US-131, I saw a swirl of leaves come across the highway. This far from any trees. And then the Blazer got hit with a hard gust of wind and rocked violently from side-to-side at 70 mph. Huh. Then on the M-6 freeway heading west about 30 minutes later, I saw a flurry of leaves rushing over to the roadway and I anticipated the hard gust. The Blazer and the SUV passing me on my left both moved to the left a few inches. Very odd.

"Aye, A Storm Be Comin'. T'won't Be Pretty.

A year ago I noted that "they" were predicting that gas would soar above $4/gallon by Memorial Day 2010. And I was annoyed by the wag who suggested that gas would be $5/gallon for the 4th of July -- saying crap like that aloud is (a) tantamount to giving license to the bastards to do it and (b) really is only about the ego wanting to be the first one to say/predict a record new high U.S. price per gallon. Alas, at least for the greedy, graspy oil companies, BP had its little accident in the Gulf of Mexico and between a sudden reduction in industry and a terrible PR problem, the big hikes didn't happen.

Which given the fragile and slow recovery, was quite a blessing.

Storm Gouge

(sigh)

Sunday gas prices leaped by 30 cents a gallon. For over a month, gas has been ping-ponging on either side of about $3.50/gallon for regular. Now everyone is jumped up to $3.89.9/gal or more. Not only are "they" talking about over $4/gallon for the summer, you can tell that "they" can taste it. I bought some gas at the Shell in Wayland on Monday afternoon -- regular was $3.89.9 and mid-grade was $3.99.9/gal. But premium was $4.11.9/gal -- a 12¢ differential instead of their usual 10¢/gal. Yeah, we'll be celebrating Easter with four buck gas.

And Memorial Day? Ouch. All because the oil speculators are having their fun over Libya and Japan, etc. The only fly in the ointment I can see is that I also heard a report that gas consumption was down something like 10% in March -- and that was before the latest price jump. So there is a chance that $4.50/gal gas won't be sustainable for long.

As For Me

The only good thing about high gas prices over the summer is that I only teach one 7½ session during the summer, and only drive in four days a week, not five. The last time gas surged above $4/gal, just before Memorial Day 2008, I adopted a rule of driving 65mph on the freeways, instead of 70mph, to eke out a better fuel mileage. And I noticed a lot of people doing the same.

Actually in 2008 I noticed the truckers slowing down first, and I've been noticing that trend the last few weeks this year, too.

You know, if higher gas prices actually did something for the future, it wouldn't be so bad. But Q2/Q3 2011 are going to see the oil company revenues actually outpace the bastard big bankers. Yeah, I'm really so-oooo happy about making oil companies richer.

Dr. Phil

7am Sunday to 7am Monday... Or Not

Big winter storm warning. North of us will likely get a foot or so. But West Michigan is looking at temps hovering right around freezing, so we're expecting snow, freezing rain, ice and sleet. By morning, we could have ¾" of ice.

We had no snow or precip at 7am, 8am, 10am or 11am. Sometime after noon heavy snow globe type snow began. And within ten minutes the ground was covered in white after being brown yesterday.

The worst part of this is not knowing what the commute will be like. Not that This Is Teh Worst Storm Evah.

The Warm And The Cold Of It

Our warm-up peaked last week at around 56°F. Yesterday was upper 30s but sunshine all day. Pretty much got rid of most of the snow. Interesting last weekend to look at the reports of the record lows from 1899. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, the lows that year were -33°F, -29°F and -22°F. What makes this somewhat remarkable is that the Weather Channel is currently giving us the stats from Grand Haven MI, which is on Lake Michigan. The lake usually moderates the temps, so I would imagine that this must've been an arctic blast coming down out of the north or northeast, instead of across the lake.

Of course, don't imagine that record -33°F lows in 1899 and +56°F highs in 2011 on the same few days are indicative of anything in particular about global warming. One set of cherry picked data points is about weather, not climate.

One does have remind people about this from time to time, in either direction. (grin)

Dr. Phil

As We Waited...

It occurred to me that John might not have the house phone number, that I'd pulled his cell number on my cellphone, and that I normally turn my cellphone off when I am not using it -- I'm sure that's a horror story right there for most people younger than us. (grin) So I turned my phone back on and an hour later, John called. He wasn't going to be able to come and do my driveway, after all, but he'd called Sikkema & Sons and they'd do the job with a backhoe for the same price. Understandable that he had to cancel, he'd been working at plowing out at the airport. But nice of him to arrange for a replacement!

Called Terry Sikkema and he said sure, but he was going to eat dinner first. Fine, no problem -- no one had to drive out until around 7:50am anyway. Gave him our landline number. A few minutes later, phone rang. Apparently Mrs. Sikkema figured he should do the job while the waning light was still there and said she'd slow down dinner. (double-grin)

And A Short Time Later...


Here comes the backhoe!


Don't worry about the snapping of those dry branches -- they're scrub trees anyway and we have to keep hacking the branches back from the driveway anyway. Used to having branches break from trucks and gear heavier than a Blazer or a Bravada. (triple-snap-grin)


There is nothing like having the right tool for the job, and an artist who can wield said tool with precision.


And as the sun sets...

... we are freed from our icy prison. If we so wish. Fifty dollars well spent.

Dr. Phil

Other Than These Piles Of Snow

Outside the southern windows of the kitty room, a basement room which is partly buried into the ground anyway, there is an impressive wall of snow from a drift three feet or more high. It makes it look like the snow is six feet deep out there. (grin)

The weather people are saying we got around 16" of snow -- about the same total as the Blizzard of 1978, actually, which is relatively impressive. We have clear blue skies and sun right now, 3:45pm EST, and there is still some wind. A neighbor is supposed to come by with a bulldozer to clear the long part of the driveway for us.


Peeking out of the garage to the west...


.... and to the east.

Of course, the cats don't really care. They will, just as they did in the photo from a couple of weeks ago, just sleep together in a heap, on a lovely warm afghan, in a brightly lit and centrally heated room this evening. Lucky stiffs. I'm writing two exams -- and Mrs. Dr. Phil has a handout assignment to write. Snow day? Puh-lease. It's homework for us.


Blue sleeping on top of Sam, who doesn't seem to mind.

Western Michigan University of course updated its homepage:

"Classes resume, and WMU resumes normal operation Thursday, Feb. 3."

Dr. Phil

An Unexpected Wind Day

By now the news of this massive Midwest storm is national. But the weather forecasts Monday night were getting increasingly dire -- hurricane force wind gusts, etc. In particular, they were posting a dangerous driving advisory for open roads -- all starting at 8am Tuesday and continuing through 8pm Wednesday. Now most of my commute is open roads. In particular, the north-south US-131 run is past all sorts of farm fields. At this time of year, high winds pull up a lot of dust clouds and debris. And trucks getting hit with side gusts are trouble, too.

With extraordinary reluctance, I felt that though getting to Kalamazoo would be possible, that the chance of problems on the drive back made it prudent that I cancel Tuesday's 9am class. As my syllabus explains:

This is Fall in Michigan – Land of Driving Adventures. Dr. Phil has a long commute (154 miles/day) and Lake Michigan is a powerful force of nature. Dr. Phil will make gallant efforts to be here on time every day – but ultimately all of us have to be intelligent enough to make decisions between trying to get to class and oh, say… living. Physics is important, but if you or your vehicle can’t make it, then you can’t make it.

Previously I've canceled classes due to winter storms -- and half the time when I've canceled the university has ended up closing, too. When I called in after 8am to the department to confirm my requests to let the students know and get a take-home quiz handed out, they described it as black outside and getting darker. A lot of local schools up and down West Michigan closed. And they had a series of tornado warnings along US-131 as the front moved through.

Of Course

The front came through later than was expected in last night's forecast. So in fact I probably could have made the round-trip with reasonable safety -- but you have to call it sometime. It's after 2pm now and we're starting to get the first big gusts of wind here, as well as the first signs of sun for the day. Interesting that with our new roof, that just as you can't hear a lot of rain from the roof, you can't hear constant wind much, either.

I wrote a new update to post on my class web page, but it took me 40 minutes to do the actual post. First the FTP program went south -- the useless Not Responding message -- and yet End Process in Task Manager couldn't kill it. Finally I held down the power switch, forcing a sudden stop. Then during the next boot, it took a while for Windows to clean up after itself. Then when I finally got a desktop and started FTP, I didn't check and the firewall wasn't up yet, so in the middle of updating the files, ZoneAlarm kicked in and finally it updated. Except that the alert graphic hadn't updated.

Sometimes my old copy of Ulead PhotoImpact, when updating an existing graphic, leaves a zero length .gif or .jpg and the actual file is left in a temporary file with an extension of .#$# . So I wrote two DOS Batch files JPEGFIX and GIFFIX to fix the problem when it crops up. But since these are DOS Batch files, GIFFIX ended up saving the file as .GIF and not .gif . Not a problem for Windows, but the university's Linux server allows both .GIF and .gif , and the image URL in the webpages ended in .gif . So I had to manual redo the file extension and upload again. I love computers. Really. I do.

Dr. Phil

... Or Slipped and Fell (grin)

Our storm arrived slyly and subtly in the morning. Winter Weather Watch started at 7am and by 7am there was a very slight dusting of snow. Except what they hadn't counted on was the freezing rain and drizzle which preceded it, which meant that the snow froze into ice and slushy freezy stuff which the early commuters began to slither around on. We'd had so many days of clear weather, that the news last night assured everyone that the local highway crews had plenty of salt, chemicals, time and overtime available. And that they'd be on the early snow with chemicals to keep it from freezing.

Apparently not.

The drive in was slow, the roads quite slickery. Along the way I saw numerous vehicles sitting in odd places in the medians and off the sides of the road. Kept speeds to around 40-55mph. It took 2 hours 15 minutes to get in, roughly an hour longer than usual. One real mess somewhere around Martin MI, I guess. Traffic slowed, I could see the left hand lane was blocked by a police cruiser, so we all moved over to the right. Except for a few yahoos who had to rush to the front of the line. And one minivan who apparently was oblivious to all the stopped cars, because at one point I glanced in my mirror and realized there was a minivan spun out in the median -- braked too hard on slick roads, methinks. One of the tow trucks lined up to clear the aforementioned mess ahead backed up and pulled the idiots out of the median.


Fire and rescue and police lined up to assist.

On the left was a pickup truck with its front smashed in (inset) -- the other side was much worse, completely flattened. One suspects it was run over or against this truck.


It seemed to me that if the roads were this bad before the bulk of the snow fell and the wind picked up tonight, that the roads were going to be bad and worse on Wednesday. That and we haven't had many winter storms lately, so I imagined that many of the local drivers were going to forget how to drive on this stuff and make everything worse. So rather than keep my students in suspense, I pulled the trigger as soon as I got in and informed everyone that I was not tempting the roads tomorrow. Classes canceled.

The Drive Homeward

The snow on the Blazer when I got out at nearly 4:30pm was quite wet -- the temp had risen closer to the freezing/melting mark -- so it slid off the metal and glass quite easily. But it also made a thickening slurry on the ground that was hard to walk on and obviously difficult to drive on. Couldn't believe this one person being interviewed on the radio saying something along the lines of the snow storm being a bust, because the snow total wasn't all that large yet. This as the road reports were quoting the local counties as saying that the slide offs, rollovers and crashes were "too numerous to count".

Long line of traffic backed up for miles going the other way at the Kent/Allegan County border, due to a wreck which had smashed and spilled the contents of one of those fragile sheet metal snowmobile trailers across the lanes. It is nice that my commute goes against the grain of most Grand Rapids commuters. Note Rodney supervising the driving on the dashboard.

Taking the 270° loop from US-131 north to M-6 west at 25-30mph, I noticed a lot of tire tracks in the slush sliding off to either side or making spinning patterns. Except for one set which made a rather severe angle of departure to the inside curve. Sighting down the lines which went over the edge of the shoulder, I realized there was a minivan down in the bowl of the interchange, some 30-50 feet down. Huh. "I don't think you're supposed to be drivin' down there, y'hear?"

The Last Miles

Heading up the hill toward Mottman's on M-45, there was a bottleneck similar to one I had the other night due to a crash. But this time it was due to a ½-wheel drive vehicle barely moving in the left hand lane up the hill. As I passed it, I noticed a very visible line in the slush from the right side as the front wheel drive car had lost its traction and was spinning its right front wheel and its differential not giving any power to the left side. The driver was continuing to floor it and spin the wheel rather than stop, pull over to either side, or try to drive on the shoulder. Skinny so-called high gas mileage tires, probably with an inadequate or worn down tread pattern. Yeah, the weather and roads have been clear for too long the last couple of weeks.

By the time I got to 84th Avenue, the winds were beginning to pick up out of the east and the road was mostly one set of tire tracks in the middle of the two lanes, as drifting began to fill things in. Yeah, and I'm not putting out the garbage can at the road tonight either.

It took me 2:15 to get home, too.

Dr. Phil

Great Minds Think Alike, Again

Yesterday afternoon I decided to cancel my last class for today. It wasn't an easy decision, but I wanted to post it about 24 hours in advance so that students might check the webpage as I told them to on Tuesday and not hit the roads for no reason if I wasn't going to be there.

Ah, but at around 7:30 this morning I saw on Channel 3's scroll on the bottom of the screen that WMU was indeed closed today:


Good for them. Last night K-zoo was getting clobbered by the wind and snow, and with the plunge in temps -- it was 36° yesterday afternoon, 19°F this morning and 16°F now -- people were sliding off the highways and unable to slow down to get on exit ramps at 35mph! It's not the snow so much, but the combination of slick ice and whiteout conditions.

The funny thing is that storms come, WMU steadfastly maintains that they don't close very often, Dr. Phil reluctantly decides ahead of time to cancel a class due to treacherous roads -- and I swear that someone in the administration either looks at class webpage or my LJ and says, "OMG, Dr. Phil who drives through anything says it's too bad to come in today. We better shut down!". (huge-grin)

Oh, and look -- GVSU, who also never closes, is closing in half an hour, too:


I'd Show You A Picture...

... but what's the point? It's white outside. The snow is blowing at 35mph mostly horizontally. The picture would be a waste of disk and pixel space. (snowy-grin)

Oh, and update: Originally the Blizzard warning was to expire at 4pm today. That's been extended to 6am on Friday morning. Guess we'll see about those extra Friday office hours...

Dr. Phil

Thursday

Tuesday 1 December 2009 began with a really nice day. My drive to/fro Kalamazoo went from sunny skies, to overcast, and back again a couple of times. Though we had a light dusting on Thanksgiving, there'd really been no snow in our West Michigan forecast until now.

Got on campus around 11am. The faculty part of Lot 61 has been packed all semester, but usually I don't have to orbit around looking for a spot more than two or three times. Thursday it took fifteen minutes before anyone left. Very slight misting rain at the time. Fast forward to 6pm EST as I was leaving and there was a good inch or so of somewhat wet snow I had to brush off. No attempt at plowing anywhere, so I was 4WD all the way.

Driving sucked. Speeds varied from about 35 to 65 mph on the 70 mph highways, but mostly people weren't being idiots. The temp was near freezing, actually read 32°F on the sign by 84th Street in Grand Rapids. At times the flakes were huge and coming down at a hard rate, so that headlights just turned it all into white glare. There was a trailerless truck cab, a bobtail, mostly keeping pace with me that kept passing me, and without a trailer, it's tires were throwing up a completely blinding spray of water that I kept on wanting to get away from. The downside of water channeling tire technology. All told it was just under two hours to get home.

This Morning

At 2:30 am I marveled at the amount of snow which had built up on our back deck or had formed a cap on our heat pump in the front -- both had 8-12" of snow, but that was more a factor of wind patterns than how much we'd gotten. At 7:55am, the view out of the garage was this:


Mrs. Dr. Phil went to drive off to work, though she considered taking a "snow day" as by 7:40am Grand Rapids, Grand Haven, Allendale, Coopersville, etc. schools were all closed. The AWD Bravada got her slowly to the road, but between the rise up to the road, a thick ridge of heavy stuff that a plow had left at the end and the fact that the couple of cars she saw pass were sliding around our road, after not getting through the plow shit on the first or second try, she backed down the driveway and declared a snow day.

I think a call to John Miller to open up our driveway is in order. (grin)

But it's very white and very pretty. (wintry-grin)

Dr. Phil

Friday's Adventures

Storms were forecast for Friday morning, but as one TV station said the rains would come later than expected, another said earlier. Earlier was right. About 3am there was a BRILLIANT flash of lightning just as I looked out the window. Lights flickered a couple of times but we didn't lose power. Such wasn't the case in Kalamazoo, where the traffic lights were dark at Drake and West Main -- major intersection, no cops. Yet everyone behaved themselves. Such was not the story in the next two lights, where most of the drivers seemed to forget that a dead traffic light is to be legally treated as a four-way stop. Geesh.

Odd that apartment complexes without power look dead in daylight. Can't explain it. Campus had power.

Those traffic lights were still out after 5pm, though people followed the rules at the smaller dead lights and they had two cops directing rush hour traffic at Drake and West Main. Evening rains mostly held off until I pulled into the garage at home.

Into The Night

Friday night we watched WOOD-TV8 go into "Storm Team 8" mode as a series of heavy volume thunderstorms trained across a swath of West Michigan just south of us, from Holland and east. 5-8 inches of rain, 60-70mph gusts, and the storms hitting the same places over and over again. It was described as a once-in-a-century storm, but of course June 2008 hit Holland MI hard, too, and in a very similar way. Yeah, it was the second year in a row that kayaks paddled in downtown Holland.

Leading Into Saturday

Of course we had to make a run from West Michigan to Chicago and back again on Saturday. Blue skies don't fool me. Given the flooding and reported road closures last night, I figured there was no point in taking US-31 through Holland to I-196. Holland is just too low and too prone to flooding -- who knew the settlers took their namesake so seriously? Likewise I didn't want to take 68th Avenue to 72nd to Chicago Drive to Byron Road, because it meant driving through the low-lying black dirt onion fields. Figured the roads would be closed.

So we drove all the way east into Standale and took Wilson down to I-196. From the freeway we saw numerous farmer's fields flooded with brown water. US-31 northbound into Holland was closed off by the police, vindicating my decisions. And Holy Crap! Batman, taking I-196 over the Kalamazoo River was one giant high brown lake. Never seen the water that high there before.

Coming home? No problems on US-31 back through Holland and home at 2am.

A Bashed Bash

Over at the Ionia Fairgrounds, the 17th annual B93 Bash had to break up on Saturday as the Grand River came flooding up. They tried pouring gravel on the access road, but they lost the South Parking lot and hundreds of cars had to be abandoned to the flooding. They won't get in there until Wednesday to see the damage level. Red Cross housed a bunch of people in a local school. Not a good weekend to be a country music fan.

Wonder About The Morning

Sunday night the weather people were explaining that three tornadoes hit West Michigan during the storm, one in Allegan County and two in Kalamazoo County. We'll see how messy the driving is tomorrow -- and whether they've got those lights running again. (grin)

But it's all only once in a century.

Dr. Phil