McKinney Mounted Police...
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The New York Times ran a story of curious import this morning: "Mel Gibson Loses Support Abroad." Well, gosh, that's disappointing. And just when we needed him, too. Concern over this pressing matter probably reflects the general mood of the nation these dog days of summer - and these soggy days, indeed, are like living in a dog's mouth - so no wonder the USA has lost its mind, as evidenced by the fact that so many people who ought to know better, in the immortal words of Jim Cramer, don't know anything.
Case in point: I visited the Slate Political Gabfest podcast yesterday. These otherwise excellent, entertaining, highly educated folk (David Plotz, Emily Bazelon, and Daniel Gross, in for vacationing John Dickerson) were discussing the ramifications of the economic situation on the upcoming elections. They were quite clear about not being able to articulate the nature of this economic situation, "...this recession, or whatever you want to call it..." in Ms. Bazelon's words. What's the point of sending these people to Ivy League colleges if they can't make sense of their world.
Let's call this whatever-you-want-to-call-it a compressive deflationary contraction, because that's exactly what it is, an accelerating systemic collapse of activity due to over-investments in hyper-complexity (thank you Joseph Tainter). A number of things are going on in our society that can be described with precision. We've generated too many future claims on wealth that does not exist and has poor prospects of ever being generated. That's what unpayable debt is. We have such a mighty mountain of it that the Federal Reserve can "create" new digital dollars until the cows come home (and learn how to play chamber music), but they will never create enough new money to outpace the disappearance of existing notional money in the form of welshed-on loans. Hence, money will continue to disappear out of the economic system indefinitely, citizens will grow poorer steadily, companies will go out of business, and governments at all levels will not have money to do what they have been organized to do.
This compressive deflationary collapse is not the kind of cyclical "downturn" that we are familiar with during the two-hundred-year-long adventure with industrial expansion - that is, the kind of cyclical downturn caused by the usual exhalations of markets attempting to adjust the flows of supply and demand. This is a structural implosion of markets that have been functionally destroyed by pervasive fraud and swindling in the absence of real productive activity.
The loss of productive activity preceded the fraud and swindling beginning in the 1960s when other nations recovered from the traumas of the world wars and started to out-compete the USA in the production of goods. Personally, I doubt this was the result of any kind of conspiracy, but rather a comprehensible historical narrative that worked to America's disadvantage. Tough noogies for us. The fatal trouble began when we attempted to compensate for this loss of value-creation by ramping up the financial sector to a credit orgy so that every individual and every enterprise and every government could enjoy ever-increasing levels of wealth in a system that no longer really produced wealth.
This was accomplished in the financial sector by "innovating" new tradable securities based on getting something for nothing. That is what the aggregate mischief on Wall Street and its vassal operations was all about. The essence of the fraud was the "securitization" of debt, because the collateral was either inadequate or altogether missing. That's how you get something for nothing. The swindling came in when these worthless certificates were pawned off on credulous "marks" such as pension funds and other assorted investors.
Tragically, everybody in a position to object to these shenanigans failed to issue any warnings or ring the alarm bells - and this includes the entire matrix of adult authority in banking, government (including the law), academia, and a hapless news media. Everyone pretended that the orgy of mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt and loan obligations, structured investment vehicles, collateralized debt obligations, and other chimeras of capital amounted to things of real value.
Certainly the editors and pundits in the media simply didn't understand the rackets they undertook to report. You can bet that the players on Wall Street made every effort to mystify the media with arcane language, and they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. (Making multiple billions of dollars by trading worthless certificates based on getting something for nothing must be the ultimate definition of succeeding beyond one's wildest dreams.) It's harder to account for the dimness of the news media. I doubt they were in on the caper. More likely there is a correlation between their low pay and their low capacity. But I wouldn't discount the fog of assumptions and expectations about the way the world is supposed to work that can disable even people of intelligence.
I'm as certain as the day is long that the folks on Wall Street, from the myrmidons in the trading pits to the demigods like John Thain, with his thousand-dollar trash basket, knew that they were trafficking in tainted paper. Many of them deserve to be locked up in the federal penitentiary for years on end, and they probably never will because president Barack Obama lacked the courage to set the dogs of justice after them and now it is too late.
The most confused of any putative authorities are the academic economists, lost in the wilderness of their models and equations and their quaint expectations of the way things ought to go if you can tweak numbers. These are the people who believe with the faith of little children that if you can measure anything you can control it. They will go down in history as the greatest convocation of clowns ever assembled, surpassing all the collected alchemists, priests, and vizeers employed in the 1500 years following the fall of Rome.
It's harder to tell whether the elected officials and their appointees in sensitive places like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the FBI had a clue as to the scale of misconduct in the financial sector, or if they were bought off plain and simple, or just too stupid to understand what was going on all around them. The term "regulatory capture" provides valuable insight. How could Christopher Cox at the SEC fail to notice the stupendous malfeasance in the mortgage-related securities rackets. Why isn't he working for fifty cents a day in the laundry of Allenwood Federal Correctional Facility? Why is the grifter of Countrywide mortgage favors, Christopher Dodd, still free to guzzle the fabled bean soup in the Senate lunch room? I could go on in this vein for two hundred pages, but you get the drift.
The collective failure of authority, whether of intention or oversight or mental deficiency boggles the mind. And it leaves us where we are: in a compressive deflationary contraction, a.k.a. the long emergency. This is not a cyclical recession. It's the end of one thing and the beginning of another thing, another phase of history in which people will have to learn to live differently or perish. I'm convinced that just about very elected official who can be swept out of office will be swept out of office - even if their replacements turn out to be a very unsavory gang of sadists and morons who will certainly make things worse.
But these dog days of summer nobody will be paying attention, even as the markets themselves roll over and puke, as I rather imagine they will between now and Halloween, if not next week.
P.S. I have not come to any conclusions about the fate of the Macondo blow-out and the claims of Matthew Simmons, though I have certainly got a lot of mail about it, some of it very intelligent. The BP oil spill has vanished from the news headlines again as the world waits for the final push at the relief wells. We do know that we are entering the heart of the hurricane season and that will make for some excitement.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Tropical Storm Bonnie looks like no more than a hiccup this morning as she crosses Florida coatline...will this hold???
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/tatl/flash-avn.html
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/tatl/flash-avn.html
Thursday, July 22, 2010
000
WTNT63 KNHC 222222
TCUAT3
TROPICAL STORM BONNIE TROPICAL CYCLONE UPDATE...CORRECTED
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL032010
615 PM EDT THU JUL 22 2010
CORRECTED HEADER TO TROPICAL STORM BONNIE
...DEPRESSION BECOMES TROPICAL STORM BONNIE...
DATA FROM AN AIR FORCE HURRICANE HUNTER RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT
DURING THE PAST HOUR INDICATE THAT SURFACE WINDS ASSOCIATED WITH
THE DEPRESSION HAVE INCREASED TO 40 MPH...65 KM/HR...AND THAT THE
DEPRESSION HAS BECOME A TROPICAL STORM.
SUMMARY OF 615 PM EDT...2215 UTC...INFORMATION
--------------------------------------------------
LOCATION...22.9N 75.4W
ABOUT 200 MI...320 KM SE OF NASSAU
ABOUT 415 MI...670 KM ESE OF KEY WEST FLORIDA
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...40 MPH...65 KM/HR
PRESENT MOVEMENT...NW OR 315 DEGREES AT 14 MPH...22 KM/HR
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...1005 MB...29.68 INCHES
$$
FORECASTER KIMBERLAIN/BEVEN
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
"Spoons" was featured week before last on CNN Money:
http://money.cnn.com/video/smallbusiness/2010/06/25/sbiz_spoons.cnnmoney/
http://money.cnn.com/video/smallbusiness/2010/06/25/sbiz_spoons.cnnmoney/
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Ron Paul on regime uncertainty and oil corporatism
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=1021
When There is No Rule of Law
By Ron Paul
Published 07/20/10
Last week ended with some promising news on finally stopping the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately, the administration still seems to believe that shutting down working oil wells is a higher priority than effectively dealing with the broken one. They are again issuing a moratorium on off-shore drilling, while maintaining a de facto ban on new permits even for shallow water drilling, which they previously stated would be unaffected. The courts have twice declared this unconstitutional, over 70 percent of the people see this as unreasonable, yet the administration seems determined to simply end off-shore drilling, at least for those producers that cannot afford to sit idle for an unknown period of time until the ban is lifted.
Whether or not this latest effort will hold up in court is yet to be seen. Sadly, many smaller oil producers in the Gulf see the writing on the wall, and instead of waiting around and risking their livelihoods on the whims of American politicians and judges, they are leaving for friendlier business climates. What is happening to this country when the Republic of Congo is better for business than the United States? One big factor is regime uncertainty.
Regime uncertainty is the opposite of the rule of law. It is the rule of the whims of the people in charge and what mood they are in on any particular day. It is usually associated with third world dictatorships and plays a major role in why some countries remain poor. When a business cannot predict whether a government will issue a permit, confiscate or nationalize their capital investments, tax them into bankruptcy, or arbitrarily stall their operations, they tend to do business elsewhere. This type of government hostility is not conducive to wealth creation and it is tragic to see it chasing away businesses here when we need the jobs and productivity more than ever.
When the rule of law is respected, it provides business with some measure of predictability so they can plan and operate smoothly. When it is not respected, there are just too many variables, too much risk of loss or waste.
Of course, disregard of the rule of law creates other problems too. For the larger and better-connected businesses, it creates the opportunity of regulatory capture. If the government becomes too unpredictable, one business survival strategy is to become so involved in government and regulatory bodies that they effectively gain control over the very entities that are supposed to keep them in line. In other words, if you can’t beat the government, become the government. A business that achieves regulatory capture is also able to write and implement laws and regulations that it can deal with, but its competitors cannot. The eventual outcome is that companies use regulation to drive everyone else out of business until a monopoly is achieved, putting consumers at its mercy.
Meanwhile, the people develop a false sense of security, assuming that the many regulatory bodies in place are protecting them. Without respect for the rule of law, however, those bodies and their regulations are more likely protecting and enabling big business at the expense of small business and the consumer.
We see this not only with big oil, but big banking, big defense contractors, you name it. This is why, especially in a crisis, we should uphold the Constitution. It is the ultimate consumer protection from crony corporatism.
When There is No Rule of Law
By Ron Paul
Published 07/20/10
Last week ended with some promising news on finally stopping the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately, the administration still seems to believe that shutting down working oil wells is a higher priority than effectively dealing with the broken one. They are again issuing a moratorium on off-shore drilling, while maintaining a de facto ban on new permits even for shallow water drilling, which they previously stated would be unaffected. The courts have twice declared this unconstitutional, over 70 percent of the people see this as unreasonable, yet the administration seems determined to simply end off-shore drilling, at least for those producers that cannot afford to sit idle for an unknown period of time until the ban is lifted.
Whether or not this latest effort will hold up in court is yet to be seen. Sadly, many smaller oil producers in the Gulf see the writing on the wall, and instead of waiting around and risking their livelihoods on the whims of American politicians and judges, they are leaving for friendlier business climates. What is happening to this country when the Republic of Congo is better for business than the United States? One big factor is regime uncertainty.
Regime uncertainty is the opposite of the rule of law. It is the rule of the whims of the people in charge and what mood they are in on any particular day. It is usually associated with third world dictatorships and plays a major role in why some countries remain poor. When a business cannot predict whether a government will issue a permit, confiscate or nationalize their capital investments, tax them into bankruptcy, or arbitrarily stall their operations, they tend to do business elsewhere. This type of government hostility is not conducive to wealth creation and it is tragic to see it chasing away businesses here when we need the jobs and productivity more than ever.
When the rule of law is respected, it provides business with some measure of predictability so they can plan and operate smoothly. When it is not respected, there are just too many variables, too much risk of loss or waste.
Of course, disregard of the rule of law creates other problems too. For the larger and better-connected businesses, it creates the opportunity of regulatory capture. If the government becomes too unpredictable, one business survival strategy is to become so involved in government and regulatory bodies that they effectively gain control over the very entities that are supposed to keep them in line. In other words, if you can’t beat the government, become the government. A business that achieves regulatory capture is also able to write and implement laws and regulations that it can deal with, but its competitors cannot. The eventual outcome is that companies use regulation to drive everyone else out of business until a monopoly is achieved, putting consumers at its mercy.
Meanwhile, the people develop a false sense of security, assuming that the many regulatory bodies in place are protecting them. Without respect for the rule of law, however, those bodies and their regulations are more likely protecting and enabling big business at the expense of small business and the consumer.
We see this not only with big oil, but big banking, big defense contractors, you name it. This is why, especially in a crisis, we should uphold the Constitution. It is the ultimate consumer protection from crony corporatism.
Monday, July 19, 2010
What If He's Right?
Just when America was celebrating the provisional end of BP's Macondo oil blowout, and getting back to important issues like Kim Kardashian's body-suit collection, along comes Matthew Simmons with a rather strange and alarming outcry on doings in the Gulf of Mexico that contradicts the mood of renewed festivity, as well as just about every shred of reportage from any media outlet, mainstream or otherwise.
Matt Simmons Houston-based company has been the leading investment bank to the US oil industry for a long time, financing exploration and drilling in places like the Gulf of Mexico. Simmons, 68, recently retired from day-to-day management of the company. For much of the decade he has been what may be described as a peak oil activist. His 2005 book, Twilight in the Desert, warned the public that Saudi Arabia's oil production had reached its limits and, more generally, that an oil-dependent world was entering a zone of serious trouble over its primary resource. He took this aggressive stance despite risking the ire of the people he did business with.
Matt Simmons is a sober individual and a very nice man (I've met him twice over the years), a button-downed corporate executive who's been around the oil business for forty years. His knowledge is deep and comprehensive. From the beginning of the BP Macondo blowout incident in April, he's taken the far out position that the well-bore is fatally compromised and that BP has been consistently lying about their operations to stop the flow of oil. Perhaps most radically, Simmons claims that an oil "gusher" is pouring into the Gulf some distance from the drilling site itself.
Last week, Simmons came on Dylan Ratigan's MSNBC financial show, but he did a longer interview over at the King World News website. (click here for Eric King's interview with Simmons). Simmons's current warning about the situation focuses on the gigantic "lake" of crude oil that is pooling under great pressure 4000 to 5000 feet down in the "basement" of the Gulf's waters. More particularly, he is concerned that a tropical storm will bring this oil up - as tropical storms and hurricanes usually do with deeper cold water - and with it clouds of methane gas that will move toward the Gulf shore and kill a lot of people. (I really don't know the science on this and welcome any reader to correct me, but I suppose that the oil "lake" deep under the Gulf waters contains a lot of methane gas dissolved at pressure, and that as the oil rises toward the ocean's surface, and lower pressures, the gas will bubble out of solution.)
Simmons makes two additional points that are pretty radical: he says that several states along the Gulf ought to begin systematic evacuations in counties along the shore now. From his experience in Houston with Hurricane Rita (2005), he says a last-minute evacuation is bound to be a disaster -- the highways jammed hopelessly, drivers ran out of gas, and then the gas stations ran out of gas. Based on where the nation's collective state-of-mind is these days, I can't imagine that any Gulf state governor or mayor will heed this warning and begin preparing an evacuation now. (The practical problems are obvious for householders but what if it really is a matter of life and death?)
Secondly, Simmons maintains - as he has from near the beginning of the blowout - that the US military should take over operations from BP and ought to set off a "small" nuclear device down in the well-bore to fuse the rock into glass and seal the site permanently. Simmons says, based on his experience growing up in Utah near the government's underground nuclear testing sites in neighboring Nevada, where scores of very large atomic bombs were set off for years with no measurable consequences above ground, that a small nuclear explosion down in the Macondo well is unlikely to have any effect above the undersea rock surface. I have no idea, personally if this is true.
Matt Simmons is taking a position so "out there" that even the radical peak oil website TheOilDrum.com won't comment on his remarks (at least not as of early Monday morning July 19). I don't know how to evaluate Simmons's contentions myself, except to say that I don't believe Simmons is a nut, or that he's lost his marbles. We also must suppose that someone in his position is able to talk with an awful lot of the best people in the oil industry. Simmons has put his reputation on the line. A lot of bystanders and commentators are treating him as a fool. Simmons himself is painfully aware of his lonely stance and seems, in his public appearances, to be a very regretful messenger.
In the past twenty-four hours, BP has reported some possible leaks coming out of the seabed some distance from the well-bore. Nobody has been able to confirm yet exactly what is happening down there. One other thing Simmons said is that BP should be barred from the media airwaves since, he says, they have lied consistently in order to cover up their criminal negligence and culpability. The company itself cannot be saved because the claims against it are much greater than the value of its assets - but the people running the company could be sent to jail, so the incentive to keep lying remains high.
Jesse at the Jesse's Café Américain website makes an excellent point that if Matt Simmons is correct, and it turns out that the US government has been played by BP, then remaining public trust in the competence and legitimacy of government could evaporate. This is not a happy thing to contemplate at a time when the state of the nation and its economy are so fragile. What follows could make the current political situation seem like little more than, well, than a tea party, compared to the politics-to-come.
Readers here at Clusterfuck Nation are probably well aware of my past declarations of being allergic to conspiracy theories and crazy ideas generally. I'm not really equipped to evaluate Matt Simmons's warnings about the exact nature of the Macondo blowout and what might happen in the months ahead. But I am confident, having met the guy and corresponded with him and read his books, that he is a straight shooter. I'm sure that he is sincere in proclaiming his extreme discomfort with the position he's taken. Listen and decide for yourselves. (Simmons interview with Eric King)
Saturday, July 17, 2010
The Hunt-Winston School Solar Car Challenge is an educational program designed to help motivate students in Science, Engineering & Technology.
The 2010 Solar Challenge is a cross-country event leaving from the world famous Texas Motor Speedway in Dallas/Fort Worth on Sunday, July 18th and arriving in Boulder, Colorado on Sunday, July 25th. More than twenty teams from around the country will be driving their high school solar cars in an educational experience of a lifetime.
The Winston Solar Education Program was established in 1993. Since its inception, 18,000 students have taken part in this national event. There are presently 54 on-going high school solar car projects in the United States. The Hunt Oil Company is the title sponsor for this year’s competition.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Where Have We been? Where Are We Going?
On a hot Saturday in mid-July in my corner of the country, when everyone else is cavorting on Million Dollar Beach at Lake George, or plying the aisles of the home Depot, or riding their motorcycles in faux-outlaw hordes, I like to slip away to the neglected places where nobody goes. I seek out the places of industrial ruin - there are many around here in the upper Hudson Valley, and they are mostly right along the river itself, because there are many spots where the water tumbles and falls in a way that human beings could capture that power and direct it to useful work.
I always bring my French easel, a wooden contraption ingeniously designed to fold up into a box, to which I have bolted on backpack straps. To me, these ruins of America's industrial past are as compelling as the ruins of ancient Rome were to Thomas Cole and his painter-contemporaries, who took refuge in history at the exact moment that their own new nation began racing into its industrial future.
I've been haunting this particular site in Hudson Falls, New York, all summer so far. Originally called Bakers Falls, it evolved over a hundred-odd years into an extremely complex set of dams, spillways, intakes, revetments, channels, gangways, and hydroelectric bric-a-brac all worked into the crumbly shale that forms the original cliff. From a vantage on the west side of the river, you can clearly read the layered history of industry as though it was a section of sedimentary rock from the Mesozoic.
One thing above all amazes me about these American industrial ruins: they're not really very old. My grandfather was already reading law and drinking beer when some of this stuff was brand-new (or not even here yet!). Unlike Rome's long, dawdling descent from greatness, America's industrial fall seems to have happened in the space of a handclap. I suppose it was in the nature of the fossil fuel fiesta that these activities could only last as long as the basic energy resource was so cheap you hardly needed to figure it into the cost of doing business. Which is not to say that the human element didn't change, too, since obviously it did - as America went from a cheap labor nation of immigrants eager to join in the security of factory regimentation, to adversarial relations between unionized workers and business owners, and finally to game over, as off-shoring and out-sourcing savaged American manufacturing.
These factories at what was first called Bakers Falls began in 1858 as an iron machine works, intended to produce the frames for water wheels. Soon they quit that in favor of making replacement parts for the growing paper-making industry that made use of the pulpwood from the Adirondack Mountains. Activities related to this went on clear through the 1960s, about a century in all, until things fell apart in the upper Hudson Valley and business mysteriously went elsewhere.
I'm sure it was a mystery to many of the people around here who got a living from these factories, who felt strong, willing, and able to trade their labor for a decent paycheck. How could the world not need them anymore? American political leadership explained it rather poorly to them. This was a new economy, they said. From now on making a living in America would be all about being clever at cooking up "innovations" that the rest of the people in the world could use in order to churn things out for us at twenty cents an hour. America's young people, they said, should go to college, even if it meant taking on a lifetime of loan obligations. Or enroll at the local community college to learn "computer technology," the coming thing.
What really happened to places like Hudson Falls is now painfully visible on-the-ground, in the streets, and in the shopfront windows, which are either vacant or occupied by the most marginal businesses - martial arts studios (training for what? Gang war? Insurrection? Afghanistan?), second-hand shops, and the ubiquitous pizza joints for a cheese-hungry populace. The once dignified business blocks at the small center of town - itself perched on a bluff with a panoramic view west - are vacant and falling into gross disrepair. The owner class of citizen, still inveighed against in progressive radio circles, are so gone that their ghosts seem to have packed up and left, too. But then so is every other class of people above the nether-class - that is, people engaged in something other than subsidized idleness and crime, people who's only obligation in life is waking up in the morning. (No wonder the nation is obsessed with zombies these days.) I passed a wedding late in the afternoon on my way out of town. The bride had a tattoo the size of bumper-sticker on her décolletage. The groomsmen were dressed in black baby shorts and backwards hats. You want to weep for their offspring.
I only saw them on the way out. All the rest of the long day, I was blessedly alone under a fierce sun on the far side of the river, in close observation of the visual details of history and the quality of the day. It is hard to imagine the determination and ingenuity (not to mention strength and sweat) it took to pile up all these buildings right next to this raging river, or to fling a concrete dam across it. I don't see how we could do that now, since we seem collectively incapable of accomplishing anything anymore - except some phony new political disposition of foot-dragging, evasion of responsibility, or refusal to confront reality.
The reality I spend these days rambling the river with is the reality of a nation riding a great wave of entropy into the unknown. Only at this stage of the ride can we indulge in our Goth fantasies of the charming vampire nether-life. Believe me, when things really get dark we will all be wishing desperately for something more like lambs-in-the-meadow and the kindly touch of a loving hand and the dim memory of what it was like to care about anything or anyone.
Where we are now, to me, is the real dark time, the proverbial moment before the dawn. The depravity of our culture, Disney merchandise, cool ranch Doritos, and all, is something that people of the future will marvel at for centuries to come. The purity of our surrender will fascinate them. They will conclude that we looked into the abyss... and decided that we liked what we saw in there.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL 800 PM EDT TUE JUL 6 2010 FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC...CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO... SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS CONTINUE IN ASSOCIATION WITH A BROAD LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM CENTERED OVER THE NORTHWESTERN YUCATAN PENINSULA OF MEXICO NEAR MERIDA. THE LOW IS BEING INVESTIGATED THIS EVENING BY TWO NOAA AIRCRAFT CONDUCTING A RESEARCH MISSION AROUND THE SYSTEM. DATA FROM THIS MISSION INDICATES ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS REMAIN CONDUCIVE FOR SOME DEVELOPMENT OF THIS DISTURBANCE DURING THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS AS IT MOVES WEST-NORTHWESTWARD AT 10 TO 15 MPH. THERE IS A MEDIUM CHANCE...40 PERCENT...OF THIS SYSTEM BECOMING A TROPICAL CYCLONE DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS. HEAVY RAINFALL AND GUSTY WINDS ARE POSSIBLE OVER PORTIONS OF THE YUCATAN PENINSULA DURING THE NEXT DAY OR SO. ELSEWHERE...TROPICAL CYCLONE FORMATION IS NOT EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS. $$ FORECASTER LANDSEA/STEWART
Sunday, July 04, 2010
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Good news for the Gulf region is hard t find these days! It seems that on top of the possible sytem in the GOM we have another lurking in the Caribbean...
DISCUSSION...
WIDESPREAD RAIN OVER THE SOUTHERN HALF OF THE AREA WITH MORE SHRA
MOVING IN FROM THE GULF. 6-11 INCHES OF RAIN OVER THE COASTAL
COUNTIES YESTERDAY STILL POSE A PROBLEM WITH THE THREAT OF HEAVY
RAINFALL CONTINUING TODAY. GPS IPWV SHOWING 2.4" TO 2.8" OF
MOISTURE TO WORK WITH FOR STORMS TODAY. VERY IMPRESSIVE TROPICAL
PLUME OVER TEXAS AS PART OF ALEX`S REMAINS. WEAK BOUNDARY EVIDENT
IN EARLIER SURFACE PLOTS LOOKS TO BE MOVING INLAND AND THIS IS
PROBABLY GOOD NEWS FOR THE HARD HIT AREAS YESTERDAY. PLAN TO KEEP
THE FLOOD WATCH AS IS MAINLY THE I-10 COUNTIES SOUTHWARD THROUGH
NOON. FASTER STORM MOTION TODAY SHOULD LOWER THE FLOODING THREAT
SOMEWHAT SO LONG AS IT DOESN`T START TRAINING OVER THE HEAVILY
POPULATED AREAS. EXTENSIVE CLOUD COVER AND PRECIP SHOULD HOLD DOWN
TEMPERATURES AND FAVORED THE COOLER GUIDANCE NUMBERS THROUGH
SUNDAY. THE BOUNDARY LIFTS NORTH SATURDAY WITH THE VERY MOIST
AIRMASS STILL AVAILABLE SO HAVE NUDGED UP POPS THROUGH SATURDAY.
MODELS DIVERGING WITH THE NAM BRINGING IN LOWER-MID LEVEL DRYING
FROM THE GULF SUNDAY WHEREAS THE GFS KEEPS IT TRACKING SW TOWARD
THE LOWER COAST SO AM EXPECTING LOWER RAIN CHANCES SUNDAY BUT THEN
IT GETS A BIT MORE INTERESTING AS MODELS CONTINUE TO BRING A LOW
WEST ALONG THE OLD FRONTAL BOUNDARY IN THE NE GULF. THE ECMWF
PLACES A VERY WEAK CIRCULATION IN THE UTCW...THE NAM SOUTH OF
HOUMA LA AND THE GFS NEAR THE MISSISSIPPI COAST. WEAK SHEAR IN THE
VICINITY OF THE SUSPECTED LOW WARRANTS CLOSE MONITORING OF THE
REGION BUT THE UPPER RIDGING ACROSS N TEXAS SHOULD FAVOR THE
SYSTEM NOT GETTING THIS FAR WEST...A DEFINITE STAY TUNED. AND THEN
AS IF THAT ISN`T BAD ENOUGH...THE NAM/GFS/ECMWF ARE ALL WORKING A
TROPICAL WAVE INTO A TIZZY IN THE WESTERN CARIBBEAN ON MONDAY
UNFORTUNATELY THE SAME UPPER RIDGING SHOULD BE FLATTENING AND
SHIFTING EAST OPENING UP THE WESTERN GULF TO THIS WAVE/TROPICAL
SYSTEM. INTERESTINGLY THE 00Z ECMWF LOOKS LIKE THE 18Z GFS WHICH
HAS IT NEARING THE TEXAS COAST FRIDAY THE 9TH. IT IS STILL TO
EARLY TO HANG A HAT ON THIS SOLUTION BUT SHOULD STILL POINT TO THE
POSSIBILITY OF SOMETHING OF INTEREST IN THE WESTERN GULF. RAIN
CHANCES SHOULD BE COMING DOWN MONDAY AND TUESDAY AS MOISTURE THINS
AND UPPER RIDGING CREEPS SOUTHWARD.
WIDESPREAD RAIN OVER THE SOUTHERN HALF OF THE AREA WITH MORE SHRA
MOVING IN FROM THE GULF. 6-11 INCHES OF RAIN OVER THE COASTAL
COUNTIES YESTERDAY STILL POSE A PROBLEM WITH THE THREAT OF HEAVY
RAINFALL CONTINUING TODAY. GPS IPWV SHOWING 2.4" TO 2.8" OF
MOISTURE TO WORK WITH FOR STORMS TODAY. VERY IMPRESSIVE TROPICAL
PLUME OVER TEXAS AS PART OF ALEX`S REMAINS. WEAK BOUNDARY EVIDENT
IN EARLIER SURFACE PLOTS LOOKS TO BE MOVING INLAND AND THIS IS
PROBABLY GOOD NEWS FOR THE HARD HIT AREAS YESTERDAY. PLAN TO KEEP
THE FLOOD WATCH AS IS MAINLY THE I-10 COUNTIES SOUTHWARD THROUGH
NOON. FASTER STORM MOTION TODAY SHOULD LOWER THE FLOODING THREAT
SOMEWHAT SO LONG AS IT DOESN`T START TRAINING OVER THE HEAVILY
POPULATED AREAS. EXTENSIVE CLOUD COVER AND PRECIP SHOULD HOLD DOWN
TEMPERATURES AND FAVORED THE COOLER GUIDANCE NUMBERS THROUGH
SUNDAY. THE BOUNDARY LIFTS NORTH SATURDAY WITH THE VERY MOIST
AIRMASS STILL AVAILABLE SO HAVE NUDGED UP POPS THROUGH SATURDAY.
MODELS DIVERGING WITH THE NAM BRINGING IN LOWER-MID LEVEL DRYING
FROM THE GULF SUNDAY WHEREAS THE GFS KEEPS IT TRACKING SW TOWARD
THE LOWER COAST SO AM EXPECTING LOWER RAIN CHANCES SUNDAY BUT THEN
IT GETS A BIT MORE INTERESTING AS MODELS CONTINUE TO BRING A LOW
WEST ALONG THE OLD FRONTAL BOUNDARY IN THE NE GULF. THE ECMWF
PLACES A VERY WEAK CIRCULATION IN THE UTCW...THE NAM SOUTH OF
HOUMA LA AND THE GFS NEAR THE MISSISSIPPI COAST. WEAK SHEAR IN THE
VICINITY OF THE SUSPECTED LOW WARRANTS CLOSE MONITORING OF THE
REGION BUT THE UPPER RIDGING ACROSS N TEXAS SHOULD FAVOR THE
SYSTEM NOT GETTING THIS FAR WEST...A DEFINITE STAY TUNED. AND THEN
AS IF THAT ISN`T BAD ENOUGH...THE NAM/GFS/ECMWF ARE ALL WORKING A
TROPICAL WAVE INTO A TIZZY IN THE WESTERN CARIBBEAN ON MONDAY
UNFORTUNATELY THE SAME UPPER RIDGING SHOULD BE FLATTENING AND
SHIFTING EAST OPENING UP THE WESTERN GULF TO THIS WAVE/TROPICAL
SYSTEM. INTERESTINGLY THE 00Z ECMWF LOOKS LIKE THE 18Z GFS WHICH
HAS IT NEARING THE TEXAS COAST FRIDAY THE 9TH. IT IS STILL TO
EARLY TO HANG A HAT ON THIS SOLUTION BUT SHOULD STILL POINT TO THE
POSSIBILITY OF SOMETHING OF INTEREST IN THE WESTERN GULF. RAIN
CHANCES SHOULD BE COMING DOWN MONDAY AND TUESDAY AS MOISTURE THINS
AND UPPER RIDGING CREEPS SOUTHWARD.
TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
200 PM EDT SAT JUL 3 2010
FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC...CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO...
CLOUDINESS AND THUNDERSTORMS ASSOCIATED WITH A NON-TROPICAL AREA OF
LOW PRESSURE HAVE INCREASED A LITTLE TODAY. THE LOW IS LOCATED
ABOUT 165 MILES SOUTHEAST OF THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER AND
IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE MOVING SLOWLY ON A GENERAL WESTWARD TRACK.
ALTHOUGH STRONG UPPER-LEVEL WINDS ARE CURRENTLY INHIBITING
DEVELOPMENT...A SMALL RELAXATION OF THESE WINDS COULD RESULT IN
BETTER ORGANIZATION OF THE SYSTEM. THERE IS A LOW CHANCE...20
PERCENT...OF THIS SYSTEM BECOMING A TROPICAL OR SUBTROPICAL CYCLONE
DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS.
ELSEWHERE...TROPICAL CYCLONE FORMATION IS NOT EXPECTED DURING THE
NEXT 48 HOURS.
$$
FORECASTER AVILA/LANDSEA
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
200 PM EDT SAT JUL 3 2010
FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC...CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO...
CLOUDINESS AND THUNDERSTORMS ASSOCIATED WITH A NON-TROPICAL AREA OF
LOW PRESSURE HAVE INCREASED A LITTLE TODAY. THE LOW IS LOCATED
ABOUT 165 MILES SOUTHEAST OF THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER AND
IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE MOVING SLOWLY ON A GENERAL WESTWARD TRACK.
ALTHOUGH STRONG UPPER-LEVEL WINDS ARE CURRENTLY INHIBITING
DEVELOPMENT...A SMALL RELAXATION OF THESE WINDS COULD RESULT IN
BETTER ORGANIZATION OF THE SYSTEM. THERE IS A LOW CHANCE...20
PERCENT...OF THIS SYSTEM BECOMING A TROPICAL OR SUBTROPICAL CYCLONE
DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS.
ELSEWHERE...TROPICAL CYCLONE FORMATION IS NOT EXPECTED DURING THE
NEXT 48 HOURS.
$$
FORECASTER AVILA/LANDSEA
Friday, July 02, 2010
>
ETA: Now that Alex has dissipated over inland Mexico, we need to quickly shift our attention to the northern and northeastern Gulf of Mexico where development is possible this weekend. The reason behind this potential development is a stalled frontal system that is positioned across the northern Gulf of Mexico. Even though low pressure is developing in the extreme northeast Gulf of Mexico just south of the Florida Panhandle, wind shear values of 30+knots will prevent tropical development for the time being.
With that said, pretty much all of the forecast guidance are forecasting some intensification of this low pressure system throughout Saturday and through Sunday. This low pressure system is ultimately forecast to come ashore in southeastern Louisiana during Monday. Looking at the overall forecast environmental conditions this weekend, it looks only marginally favorable, at best, for development, however, with sea surface temperatures being so hot in this area, this system will have to be closely watched for tropical cyclone development as it drifts westward close to the northern Gulf coast this weekend.
So, bottom line is that while I think tropical development is very possible in the northern and northeastern Gulf of Mexico this weekend, any system should remain fairly weak (Tropical Depreesion or a low end Tropical Storm) due to a combination of it being close to land and only marginally favorable environmental conditions.
INVEST 95L FORMS in Gulf of Mexico: By THE DEEP HORIZON AREA!
ETA: Now that Alex has dissipated over inland Mexico, we need to quickly shift our attention to the northern and northeastern Gulf of Mexico where development is possible this weekend. The reason behind this potential development is a stalled frontal system that is positioned across the northern Gulf of Mexico. Even though low pressure is developing in the extreme northeast Gulf of Mexico just south of the Florida Panhandle, wind shear values of 30+knots will prevent tropical development for the time being.
With that said, pretty much all of the forecast guidance are forecasting some intensification of this low pressure system throughout Saturday and through Sunday. This low pressure system is ultimately forecast to come ashore in southeastern Louisiana during Monday. Looking at the overall forecast environmental conditions this weekend, it looks only marginally favorable, at best, for development, however, with sea surface temperatures being so hot in this area, this system will have to be closely watched for tropical cyclone development as it drifts westward close to the northern Gulf coast this weekend.
So, bottom line is that while I think tropical development is very possible in the northern and northeastern Gulf of Mexico this weekend, any system should remain fairly weak (Tropical Depreesion or a low end Tropical Storm) due to a combination of it being close to land and only marginally favorable environmental conditions.
The exhibit "Earth, Wind, Sky" featuring artist Virgil Lampton, Professor Emeritus of the University of Tulsa, presents on opening night, Saturday, July 10th 7-10pm at Laura Moore Fine Art Studios, 107 S Tennessee in historic downtown McKinney, Texas. Lampton's paintings jump off the canvas with a high energy of strong yet graceful brush strokes capturing the essence of the light-drenched Southwestern landscape. Hours: Mon-Sat 1-5pm or by appointment. Through August 11th. Free admission. 214.914.3630. www.lauramooreart.com.
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