Thursday, May 31, 2018

Weather It Is (Weird Weather)

Good Afternoon:

Sometimes the weather is weird, but not often is it weirder than now.

After a series of relatively hot days with unusually high humidity and some tropical showers, the weather maps are looking very much like winter.  A storm will drop down from the northwest and bring rain heavy showers to the north, possibly moderate showers to the center, and lighter showers over southern areas.  The circulation pattern associated with this storm is not a Sharav, but rather that associated with a Mediterranean cyclone (or Cyprus low) -- or wintertime low.

The storm will arrive in two parts, with the first part affecting our area Friday afternoon into Shabbat afternoon, and the next sometime Sunday into early Monday.

To be honest with you, I'm skeptical that it will rain very much.  After all, if we look back in history it will be hard to find many (or even a few) rainy days in very late May or even June. On the other hand, we don't get too many "winter" storms at this time of year, and the sea temperatures are warm enough to provide a good source of moisture for any convective storms that might develop as the storm moves through.

I am sure that you've all been following the news lately -- as the skies rained mortars and missiles, rather than raindrops along the southern coastal areas.

While the weather is strange, I found nothing quite as strange as the quotes from an article in the TOI (https://www.timesofisrael.com/three-soldiers-wounded-by-shrapnel-as-south-buffeted-by-gazan-fusillade/)

A Hamas spokesperson earlier declared that “Israel will fail in the attempt to change the rules of the conflict and set a new equation on the ground.”
and:
“The resistance in the Gaza Strip reserves its right to react or remain silent in accordance with the interest of our people,” he said.
Here's the equation:  Hamas is building an army.  An army requires resources, which we provide in the hopes that it will be used to ameliorate the hardships of the citizens of Gaza (Hamastan).  However, the resistance has defined the interests of its people to destroy Israel, which means that none of these materials reach them.
In the meantime, we hope to "manage" the situation until either we are forced to utterly destroy Hamas or the people do it themselves.  However, Hamas is very good at allocating just enough resources that (combined with military rule) prevents any action by the citizens of Gaza to overthrow its rulers.
And we go along with it.
I'd rather stick to talking and thinking about the weather.
Barry Lynn




Monday, May 28, 2018

Weather It Is (Severe Storms Threat Eilat)


Severe storms threaten Eilat.  While not shown on the IMS radar, our lightning network shows severe storms moving towards Eilat, expected to arrive during the morning hours.

Thursday, May 24, 2018

Weather It Is (New York Summer, Anyone?)

Good Evening:

One wouldn't be wrong if one starts to feel like we're living through a "New York Summer."  True, the last days of this week have been pleasantly warm during the day and cool at night, but this is going to change.

The reason is a broad area of low pressure that will build across the Mediterranean as the next week unfolds.  With the building low pressure will come moisture at the middle and upper levels of the atmosphere, with moderate humidity levels at lower levels -- as well as dust.  The combination could trigger some late spring thundershowers and or thunderstorms, which could include copious amounts of lightning and hail, as well as a quick accumulation of rain.

The unpleasantly hot weather, combined with unusual humidity levels for areas unaccustomed to summer humidity (like the central mountain areas) will remind at least some of a New York Summer.

Since the last large Gaza demonstration, the political heat has also been building up. It seems that those that should know don't know what's been really going on, but considering the plethora of news reporting one thinks that there are those that do know, but have cynically sought to exploit our troubles for their political gain.

Basically, if you don't know: the government of Gaza (run by the political party Hamas) has been paying its citizens to storm the border fence between Israeli and Gaza for the purposes of breaching the fence -- with the goal of slaughtering those (Israelis) on the other side.  And, if that didn't work, they figured that the media and those politicians mentioned above would take action to make it more difficult for Israel to defend its citizens from both political and military attacks.

There is one thing that struck me, though, concerning the idea of "proportionality," as noted by (not only  by himself) the "United Nations High Commissioner For Human Rights" Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein.
(https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-rights-chief-israels-gaza-response-wholly-disproportionate/)
Mr. Al Hussein complained that while 60 Gazan's were killed, only one Israeli soldier was injured.  Not withstanding the fact that Israel is not an "occupying" power (of Gaza -- as  heclaimed), I must say that Mr. Al Hussein really knows his math (-- or does he?).

Two numbers are said to be in proportion (https://www.mathsisfun.com/definitions/proportional.html) to each other when they have the same ratio.  For example, if a bucket holding 10 kilograms of oranges weighs 1 kilogram, then a bucket holding 20 kilograms must way 2 kilograms.

Or, if you like:  the weight of the basket equals 0.1 times the weight of the oranges, where the value of 0.1 is a constant (a value that is valid over an infinitely number of similar examples).

Getting back to Mr. Al Hussein's example above: some number (call it "y") must equal to a constant times the number of Palestinians killed.  The number y of course is the number of Israelis that should have been killed at the border fence.  Now, of course, any number of Israeli dead would mean that the number was proportional, so long as we could count up the number dead on each side during a variety of skirmishes, and we were to find that the "constant" was indeed constant from one violent exchange to another.

The problem for Mr. Al. Hussein is that no Israelis were killed.  Therefore, there is no proportionality at  all, and this really bothers him.  This bothers him because he'd like to see a lot of dead Israelis (the value of the constant should be much greater than one), otherwise he wouldn't lie about other aspects of the conflict.

Here's my suggestion.  I think that the Israeli army should decide to respond proportionally to these attacks.  They will count the number of kites flown over the border and send a proportionate number back (maybe the constant will be 10, so Israeli will send ten times as many burning kites back).  Israel will count the number of rocks and Molitov cocktails thrown, but in this case the constant will be 100 times the number sent by the Palestinians.  After all, why should Israelis suffer more than the Palestinians when the Palestinians are the attacking side. Finally, we'll fire only the number of bullets fired at us (the constant is 1) because it seems unfair to some that the Israel army should have more bullets than the Palestinians.

I am not sure how many tunnels we should build into Gaza or how many missiles we should fire, but we will be sure to do the math.

One last thing: the ratio of Palestinians killed to Israelis killed at the Gaza border is "Infinity."  This is a number larger than any known number -- it actually has no definable value. It is actually much larger than the number of stars in the sky (http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/how-many-stars-are-there/) divided by the number of people on earth.  While I wish that the Palestinians will use their rocks to build roads, their gasoline to drive cars, and their brass (bullets) to make industrial machines, I have no problem with the number of Israeli deaths being zero -- as it is impossible to define the infinite grief of a parent who loses a child to Palestinian hate.

Barry Lynn


Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Weather It Is (Bye, Bye Cold)


Good Afternoon:

A couple of days ago my daughter called down the stairs: "clothes of winter or summer?" To which my wife replied "Maetzben!"  This is a word in Hebrew that means a thing or person is both annoying and difficult at the same time.  I wasn't sure if she was referring to me or the weather.

In any case, we can say good-bye to the relative cold and welcome to summer.  An area of low pressure will build westward from the desert of Saudi Arabia over the next several days and with it will come intense heat.  In fact, before  the heat breaks temperatures will probably reach close to 37 C or 100 Fahrenheit.  

Will folks be able to finally put away their winter clothes?  If we look beyond the high heat, we see warm temperatures continuing until the end of next week.  After that, June is around the corner and winter will be even further behind.

I took a trip to Vienna a few weeks ago. It's a nice city, but it was my good fortune that my relatives left for the United States in the very late 1800s. If not, I would not have had the privilege of seeing my son and his class perform in his school's Shavuot presentation.  It was easy to locate the kids in the dark prior to the show -- each was lit up by the light of a cell phone.  If you watch people on the train no matter where you are, one has the impression that cell phones while bringing people far away make people who are close quite far away.  Just watch a "modern"couple at a restaurant, showing more interest in their phones than in each other. 

One person who always seemed to be interested in everyone was Marvin Goodman.  Mr. Goodman was the founder and owner of Pizzaria Efrat, which has now outlived him.  He came on Aliya with his wife and two of his children in the mid 1980s, and opened up his Pizzeria soon after.  The Pizzaria, besides serving good pizza, served as a meeting place for new residents of Gush Etzion.  Since then, the number of stores and restaurants, as well as residents has grown quite dramatically.  

But, this only served as a means for Mr. Goodman to expand the number of people he knew and took an interest in.  In fact, besides the accomplishment of raising a family in Israel, Mr. Goodman seems to have raised an extended family.  These are not only the people who came to his restaurant, but those who he simply stopped to chat with.  You see, he wasn't looking at his cell-phone, but looking for people he could say hello to and inquire about their well-being.  To him, "how are you?" wasn't a saying in passing, but a means to stop and chat, and to serve not just food, but good cheer.

Barry Lynn

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Weather It Is (Confusion)

Good Evening:

I really have to apologize to my wife.  On Monday morning she wore sandals, but by mid-day it was pouring rain.  Her wet feet (and by extension her) were not very happy.

I was actually away on a personal visit to New York, so I wasn't yet awake to warn her that she was making a mistake by dressing for summer instead of late winter.  The warning would have been provided by the Israeli Total Lightning Network.  The map below shows relatively high intensity lightning values as a strong front moved southeastward to just off the coast (at 0900 Israel Daylight Savings Time). Such strong values indicate the near-possibility of severe storms.

 However, I am not sure that she would have even listened to me, as the sky in Efrat certainly did not look like there would be severe lightning. hail storms, and strong winds later that morning and afternoon. Okay, that's not exactly true: she generally does not believe my forecasts, and no matter how many times she gets wet (or not), I can't seem to change her mind about this.

Yet, there is one person who generally usually listens to me.  She sits, and comes when called.   She is also usually quite happy to see me -- and unlike my kids quite expressive about it.  In fact, she couldn't stop barking when I returned, jumping up and down, as well as going a around and around.

Well, now that I am back I will make a better effort to my readers and my wife -- to convince them that I am a trustworthy source of weather information.   Perhaps, I will even earn some respect.

This is especially important because we're in for some topsy turvy weather this week as a Sharav low moves across the southern Mediterranean.  Like our last Sharav in late April, it should bring some hot weather (on Thursday and Friday) and maybe some scattered Thundershowers.  It should then be followed by a storm dropping down from the north.  However, unlike last time, we don't see that the storms should merge, which would make the occurrence of flooding rains more likely.

Instead, there should be a series of weak storms that will bring showers to the northern Negev and center of the country from early to mid-next week, and heavier rain up north -- as well as cool temperatures.

People have been mentioning that they don't remember a previous May with so many storms. I think that they are correct.  However, the NAO has been in and is forecast to be in a strong positive phase, which "helps" to build a trough (colder, more stormy weather) in the eastern Mediterranean.  Also, the last several decades have seen changes in the circumpolar westerly jet (or polar vortex; see: https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0259.1), which allows colder (more artic like air) to move southward more often than in the past.  Together, these changes may explain our wet and stormy spring, especially combined with elevated values of desert dust.  Another interesting possibility is a late development of the beginnings of the Indian Monsoon, which causes middle and upper air temperatures to warm, suppressing cloud formation through the summer months.

It's all a bit of a mystery, and a topic worthy of further research.

Barry Lynn

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Weather It Is (Hot Day for Races)

Good Afternoon:

It looks like the next several days will be quite hot, with temperatures in the upper 20s to low 30s until about next Tuesday.  The hot weather is a result of complementary weather systems.  The first is a  high pressure located over northern Africa, which is nosing its way northwards along the coast.  The hot winds are blowing from southwest around this area of high pressure. The second is actually a series of weak low pressure areas moving along the southern Mediterranean coast.   The  winds   associated with the low pressure systems are called "Sharav" or "Chamsim" (Hot) Winds"

Yet, no matter what you call them, they are hot winds.  Moreover, for those participating in various races or other sporting events, the dry heat associated with them can be dangerous. So, it may interest you to know that I received a phone call asking about the intensity of the heat for the races in Gush Etzion this Friday.  While I would like to help, one has to be careful when providing an answer to such an important question.  One can look at global model forecasts, but the grid-spacing is too large and the time intervals too coarse to provide a meaningful (or useful) answer (this is done far too often) Yet, when I mentioned that I would need a bit of time to formulate an answer (meaning to run forecast simulations at the appropriate grid size-spacing and forecast output intervals), I was told that they had to decide and that they would make due with the information they have.


Of course, this approach is not an optimal use of forecasts.  For instance, our web site shows that the temperature range during the race (e.g., 0600 to 0900 in the morning) should be between 28 and 32 Celsius.  It also shows that the Sharav will be approaching the coast after the race, which implies that the peak temperatures will be during the race.

Considering the summary of heat stress effects at this U.S National Weather Service link,
 https://www.weather.gov/ama/heatindex, one might be concerned that temperatures would be approaching levels that could lead to heat cramps, and heat strokes. However, the forecast on our web site while providing a general idea of the weather (it will be hot) was not run a high enough grid-resolution to provide the details the race organizers need to make an informed decision. In addition, there is the issue of risk, which can only be determined by a probabilistic forecast (i.e., ensemble). The goal would be to calculate the chance that temperatures, for example, will exceed certain values during the race itself.

All of these approaches, i.e., using higher grid-resolution forecasts and making multiple (ensemble) forecasts can be done given some "heads-up" warning time, and the will to obtain the best information available.

Otherwise, we make-due" until we don't, and tragedies happen.

Stay cool,

Barry Lynn