Do you know what is written on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty?

Do you know what is engraved on a tablet on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty? No, I'm not asking that you know it's Emma Lazurus's poem "The New Colossus"... that's a response to a Jeopardy! question. I'm asking if you know what it *says*. Her words. And for those who do have an idea, do you believe them? Do they speak to a deeply-felt heart emotion of yours?

For me, I love reading them. I've taken some slack from family, even friends for some of my pro-foreign, anti-home stances (example: not putting the US soccer team first last year on my list of teams for the world cup). But this is an area where I glow American: for me, her poem embodies that which is good, which deserves to be celebrated, about my country.

Here are her words. Read them aloud. See if you don't get goosebumps.

The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

It is from this amazing spirit of unity, of openness, of hospitality, that arises my incredible disdain for the current actions of my government toward immigration - and specifically immigrants. Just this week yet another xenophobic, bigoted state legislature trashed the ideals embodied in her poem, declaring instead the door to be shut. Thank you, sweet home Alabama, where the skies are evidently only for those with blue eyes. You join the ranks of your neighbor Georgia, as well as Kansas, Utah, and Arizona, in your selfishness.

Perhaps some enterprising crowd - maybe North Dakota, whose population peaked in the 1910s and has declined since? - will realize the opportunity and start welcoming again the tempest-tossed. A sorely needed gesture to start blotting out the stain...

Really sweltering here

This afternoon the heat indices area-wide have been impressive. Stafford, VA was 93/81, Frederickburg 95/79, Martin 88/82, Quantico 88/79, and even Annapolis at 90/75. Those temp/dew point temp combinations result in heat indices of 114F, 113F, 108F, 103F, and 100F, respectively. That means we have August discomfort in late May / early June. Ugh. Fortunately a front is on the move (toward us)- there's a tornado watch to our north and 4500 j/kg of CAPE in the vicinity -and tomorrow looks to be cooler. Bring it!

Start of the season

Today (01 June) marks the beginning of the Atlantic hurricane season. Interestingly, there's already an area of interest off the Carolina coast - which is fitting since we've been sweltering here in the mid-Atlantic with August-like temperatures the past 4 days. NOAA, CSU, and the Cubans are all calling for an above-active year, so we'll see what pans out and where- if any -the landfalls occur.

Out of the plains and into the sauna

After a highly successful SWIFT 2011, I'm back in Annapolis. Just in time for 75F dew point temperatures and heat indicies > 100F. Ugh! July and August will be bad enough once the Chesapeake surface temperatures exceed 80F; can we not escape late May / early June without the humidity?!

Almost 6 years, and now 500 posts!!

This is post 500! What a wild ride it's been. It's amazing to think that I started this blog *before* I was on Facebook (and now I cross-post the entries to my FB wall), before I knew more than 10 words of Spanish, and before living in Barbados, Austria, and Chile and visiting dozens of other countries. While my posting frequency has declinded as other ways to communicate my thoughts have cropped up (and I admit I censor a little more now than before considering how broad my audience is), I look forward to seeing the next 6 years of posts! Thanks for reading and following as I've chronicled the past 20% of my life.

Looking rather blocky...

So with SWIFT departing in 8 days, the students are starting to ask questions about the likelihood of severe storms. Thus I turn to the long-range GFS and ECMWF for answers. While we know the specifics of such 8-, 9-, and 10-day forecasts are likely to be poor, perhaps a pattern can be deduced, especially if there exists inter- and intra-model continuity. In this case, there does exist such continuity: both the ECMWF and GFS have been advertising a very blocky pattern in their long-range forecasts. The blocking pattern predicted, an omega block (named for the resemblance to an upside-down capital Greek letter omega in the mid/upper-troposphere height field), would be highly unfavorable for repeated convective storms. Fortunately we have several tours lined up in the first days (Kentucky Day 2, Norman Day 4); hopefully the blocky pattern (which is predicted to start next weekend, 13-14 May) will either not verify or break down quickly. We'll only wait and see.

Besides the long-range, in the medium-range, the models are unanimous in bringing a really good (and slow-moving) trough through the southern plains early next week, with attendant threat of a prolonged severe event.

Attached are long-range GFS and ECMWF 500-hPa predictions.

The new Super Outbreak?

There has already been a lot written on the 27 April 2011 tornado outbreak. My objective here is to catalogue images that are available on many websites' short-term archives (but will disappear in the next few days). The numbers are very impressive: at least 340 killed, making it the 2nd deadliest US tornado outbreak ever behind only the 18 March 1925 Tri-state tornado outbreak with at least 747 fatalities, several violent tornadoes (EF4+, including a preliminary rating of EF5 in Smithville, MS), probably over 100 tornadoes total, and thousands of structures damaged or destroyed. The numbers will be updated as NWS continues its storm surveys and local emergency management continue their recovery operations. Some are speculating that the death toll might approach the Tri-state toll (although with 400 more fatalities needed, let's hope that's just speculation). Here are a selection of imagery:

Another few counties

This is more to hyperlink the website (in case I forget it, it's saved here) than to update my map- although I did visit several more counties in central Pennsylvania! You can make your own map at http://counties.visitedmap.com. Congrats, Mike & Jen; I'll put up some pictures soon.

And what a gorgeous day it was!

Today looks to be one of those days: full sunshine, temperatures in the mid-60s F, and severe weather to follow out in the plains! Spring is here, and life is good :)

26 years ago today - the Super Outbreak

The tornado outbreak that inspired the Fujita Scale, millions of dollars in research, and lots of improvements in emergency management and public weather information dispersion.

A satellite loop, courtesy of Christopher Kaiser:



A summary of the outbreak, courtesy of Wikipedia.