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Hurricane Gloria


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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzxrRqEHoYM



Just recently found this clip on Youtube (trying to get myself excited for the hurricane season coming soon).

I had no idea there was THIS MUCH that was unknown about the path of Gloria less than 12 hours before she struck. Seems like hurricane forecasting has really improved somewhat since 1985.
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LOLz at the old coded radar summary graphic. He could just as well displayed something like....

100000011000

111000012100

122100023321

122100023433

etc

etc

(I hope those of us who actually composed and sent those things will get at least smile out of this!)

:lmao:

I was fifteen years old and living on Long Island at the time. If y'all knew what teenage wx nerds had to go through to get even basic info back then.... <sigh> :D

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzxrRqEHoYM

Just recently found this clip on Youtube (trying to get myself excited for the hurricane season coming soon).

I had no idea there was THIS MUCH that was unknown about the path of Gloria less than 12 hours before she struck. Seems like hurricane forecasting has really improved somewhat since 1985.

That was just channel 7 at the time.We were put under a hurricane watch at 3 pm on Thursday and a warning at 4:30 pm.

The track just east of NJ into Long island was known pretty well by the evening.Just fast forward to 8 minutes here and you

can see how Lloyd got the track and the weakening trend correct.Gloria did come in earlier on Friday than the forecast though.

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LOLz at the old coded radar summary graphic. He could just as well displayed something like....

100000011000

111000012100

122100023321

122100023433

etc

etc

(I hope those of us who actually composed and sent those things will get at least smile out of this!)

Can you explain this to me like I'm a 5 year old? I do see that the radar in the video looks very different from radars today, but why? What's the difference in technology?

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I had no idea there was THIS MUCH that was unknown about the path of Gloria less than 12 hours before she struck. Seems like hurricane forecasting has really improved somewhat since 1985.

P.S. I was surprised watching the video, because I don't remember there being that much uncertainty. It was barreling up the coast and it seemed like a direct hit on Long Island was imminent by the night before.

The rain did not actually start overnight. It started on the Island at around 8 or 9 am and became very heavy by 11, with the eyewall and max winds reaching us by 12 noon. There was a short lull and then some drizzle, but the cyclone completely cleared the area by maybe 2 or 3 pm, leaving a spectacular, sunny autumn afternoon in its wake. It was a very fast-moving system.

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I had thought they had a track into the Delaware Bay or something of the sort the night before?

By Thursday evening when the hurricane warnings were in effect,Gloria had begun to move just east of due north with the forecast track at the time right over Long Island.

Gloria did arrive faster than the forecast at the time since she was accelerating NNE.

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Horrible forecast...by Thursday night the track was set in stone for a Long Island landfall..that track inland made no sense because Gloria was already recurving to the North.Believe me, I was in York Pa at the time and there was no indication by any of the local Mets of anything more than rain and a little wind

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:lmao:

I was fifteen years old and living on Long Island at the time. If y'all knew what teenage wx nerds had to go through to get even basic info back then.... <sigh> :D

:lol:

The only updates I could get (besides TWC) was NOAA weather radio, which looped over and over and over. Local news was absolutely worthless.

When the "eye" passed over me, I remember warning my family that the back side could be worse. Of course, there... was no back side. I pretty much got the pre-internet equivalent of trolling, flaming, and a weenie tag for that. :(

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Can you explain this to me like I'm a 5 year old? I do see that the radar in the video looks very different from radars today, but why? What's the difference in technology?

Well, the 88D is much more than a radar - it's much more of a radar data/infomation processing system. The older radars were smaller, much less powerful and had a coarser resolution. They also didn't have the VCP's (Volume Coverage Patterns) that today's 88D does, since in suveillance mode it only scanned at a single (low) elevation angle, unlike the 88D which scans multiple elevation angles according to the VCP being implemented.

Their names (numbers) corrsponded to their (planned) dates of inception into operations: the network radars were WSR-57s (1957), local warning radars supplemental to the network were WSR-74C (1974). WSR is short for Weather Surveillance Radar.

We had grid overlays (cellophane tranparencies) that we placed over the B/W scope (display) of the WSR-57 and 74C. The radars displayed returns that could be separated into what were valled VIP (Video Integrated Processor) levels, which went from 1 to 6. VIP level 1 was the lowest returned power level, indicatging the weakest precip returns, and 6 was the highest (most intense precip/hail). We buttons that would turn on/off whichever VIP level we chose, so we had the ability to display any combination of VIP levels.

I would start with 6, and write 6's into any grid boxes that showed a return (that wasn't ground clutter, AP, etc), then do the same for VIP 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. A 0 was entered in boxes with no echoes. After finishing that we would type in the RCM (Radar Coded Message) product through AFOS. I forget the deadline for issuing it (it was so long ago) but you could put remarks such as HOOK, BWER, et. etc. NCEP would collect all the RCM's and create a rather coarse looking radar summary every hour. That's what the good doc was displaying,...of course he had it colorized (SO HI TECH...LOL).

On of the nice things about the older radars is that when you were working storms you could stop the automatic turning of the radar and manually adjust both the azimuth and elevation of the dish to sweep.interrogate individual storms.

I forget the resolution of the grid boxes for the old RCM's, but it was pretty coarse. The WSR-88D still generates the RCM's automatically.

Anyway, anyone else who took RCM's can add any info about them that I forgot...I'm sure there's some important stuff that I neglected to mention.

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