5:32 p.m.
I was talking with Steve Pool last week about political parties. The Democrats and the Republicans are at such ends with each other, and because they are always debating or filibustering or doing something counterproductive, they never get anything accomplished. They contest when they should compromise. They quarrel when they should coalesce. Therefore, I proposed a three-party system: the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Reasonables. The Reasonables would, well, be reasonable, and our country would be so much better off.
Actually, what they should do is have a boxing match available on pay-per-view. That would be great, and it would resolve things much quicker. It's hard for somebody to filibuster when they've been knocked unconscious. But that doesn't look very convenient. At least not right now.. hehehe ;)
I was reading Scott Sistek's Partly to Mostly Bloggin' Blog and came across an interesting forecast discussion by the NWS guys up in Anchorage. You can read Scott's blog on the topic by clicking the link above, but I thought I'd just share it with you briefly. I got the below picture from Scott's latest post.
I think this is brilliant. Lots of NOAA sites have been down recently due to the shutdown, and the only ones that have been up are ones that are necessary to protect life and property. The NWS falls under this category... it would be pretty disastrous if they weren't allowed to issue a tornado warning when one was headed for downtown New York City. If you type in www.noaa.gov in your web browser, it automatically takes you to http://governmentshutdown.noaa.gov/, where you see the below message.
I don't know if the NWS forecasting dudes at Anchorage were referring to themselves or others affiliated with NOAA who are out of work, but this is probably the second-best forecast discussion, watch, advisory, warning, special weather statement, hazardous weather outlook, etc ever issued. The first best was a prank I pulled on my mom when I was in 6th grade and a snow advisory had been issued for our area. I changed a few key words to make the storm sound apocalyptic and replaced the advisory with a blizzard warning, and then I printed out and came sprinting to my mom with the 'exciting news.' She completely fell for the prank until I explained to her what I had done.
The "warning" remains, to this day, on the door into our kitchen. If I ever go into the field of writing forecast discussions for the NWS, I'll make them accurate, but I won't make them any less entertaining than the stuff you read on this blog.
Charlie
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