The life cycle of a storm…

wsky-630.JPG
A storm approaches from the west. Maybe with the right kind of lenses and filters it can be done, but there are some things that I find almost impossible to photograph. Skies, for one. Impressive trees. And views inside the woods. It would be interesting to discuss these problems with photographers with more experience and better cameras than I have. In the case of views inside the woods, I think the problem is that a flat photograph does not capture the three-dimensional effect. Woods have a depth that is very hard to capture in a flat photograph. In any case, here’s a sky photograph. It’s the approach of a storm. Summer storms here in northwest North Carolina always approach from the west, with a bit of northward drift. I wish I understood the meteorology of this better, but I think it has to do with the way airflows over the Southeast (in the summer) circulate around the “Bermuda High.” The Bermuda High, which dominates the weather here during the summer, is a high pressure system that moves around in the Atlantic between Bermuda and the American coast. When the Bermuda High in the right position for rain, humid air flows in a kind of circulation motion off the Gulf of Mexico into the Southeast, creating conditions for afternoon and evening thunderstorms. This particular storm didn’t bring much rain, but I didn’t complain too much because yesterday’s storm dropped almost two inches. In the Southeast, most of the summer rain comes from thunderstorms. Long, leisurely rains almost never happen in the summer. That pattern starts to change in the fall after hurricane season is over. Then we get real rain fronts that can sometimes last for days. Sometimes we get flooding from the summer rains, but the real reservoir-fillers happen during the fall, winter, and spring.

After this storm passed this evening, it left…

weast-630.JPG
… this to the east, and …

wwest-630.JPG
… this to the west.

What's more localized than a thunderstorm?

wrain-rain-rain-626.jpg
Weather Underground

So what if the Dow is down 360 points today and oil is at a new high? As I was just saying to a friend in email, when you’ve relocalized, and having a decent supper depends on it, nothing is more thrilling than a good downpour of unforecast, unexpected rain. I’m joking. But it’s still thrilling. And actually there are beautiful showers all across the South right now. This probably means that neither the Bermuda High nor La Niña is exerting an evil influence on us right now.

us-wunderground-626.gif

Drought watch: La Niña is weakening

la-nina-noaa-1.gif
NOAA

You’ll recall that the drought in the southeastern United States since late last summer was caused, according to climate scientists, by La Niña. La Niña is a large patch of abnormally cold water in the equatorial Pacific which alters how rainfall moves up from the south toward the southeastern United States. NOAA says that these equatorial ocean currents are warming up, which means that La Niña is weakening. NOAA says, though, that La Niña will persist for another three months.

This latest update from NOAA on La Niña does not specifically mention the southeastern United States, but it does say that below average rainfall will continue in the southwest, from Texas to Nevada.

With luck, the good spring rains we’ve been having here in northwestern North Carolina will continue.

Finally, a cell phone a nerd can love

wm800-1.JPG

m800-2.JPG

Once upon a time, cell phones were great telephones. Back in the mid-1990s, when I worked for the San Francisco Examiner, the Examiner had a fantastic collection of analog cell phones that are now considered obsolete. Money was no object to the Examiner — reporters and photographers in the field had to be able to communicate with the mother ship no matter what the cost. My favorite phones were the old analog bag phones. These phones put out a three-watt signal and supported audio quality that was as good as a regular telephone.

Then the digital revolution completely changed cell phones. Digital is supposed to make everything better, right? In the case of cell phones, that is most decidedly not true. The old analog phones have now been almost completely phased out, and most cellular companies won’t let you use them anymore. The digital phones did bring prices down, by allowing the cell phone companies to push more calls through the same towers and radio bandwidth, but the toll on voice quality was tremendous.

Why cell phone calls make us tired

This is because the sound of the human voice on cell phones is now digitally “compressed” to the thinnest possible data stream. This is a “lossy” compression. As much voice information is thrown away as the cell phone companies think they can get away with. Cell phone signals are way more compressed than what you get in, say, MP3 music compression. One of the reasons talking on a cell phone requires so much concentration (making cell phones even more distracting for drivers) is that, whether you realize it or not, your brain must work very hard during a cell phone call to try to fill in the missing information as best it can to parse the words. This is why many of us find cell phone calls very tiring. Another digital artifact that makes cell phone calls annoying is that there is delay. Your voice no longer travels at the speed of light as it did during analog days. Instead your voice travels at the speed of the cell phone companies’ equipment — computers, basically, and we know how fast computers sometimes are. That delay distorts conversational cues. It’s easy for both people to start talking at once, and it takes a fraction of a second to realize that you’re both talking at once. Thus cell phone calls are filled with little verbal dosados.

Motorola rules!

Motorola still makes a bag phone, and yes it’s digital. Only Motorola engineers (how I admire them!) could make such a nerdy telephone. It weighs 10 pounds. Cell phone companies don’t want devices firing three watts into their systems anymore, but you can add a three-watt amplifier to this phone if you need it. Otherwise its transmitter is rated at .6 watt, or 600 milliwatts.

Just how much power any digital cell phone puts out at any given time is a complicated matter. Not only that, but there are many good reasons for keeping the power down. It extends battery life, it reduces interference on congested cellular bands, and it reduces RF exposure from that tiny internal antenna that’s just inches from your eyes. But transmitter output power isn’t all that matters. Receiver sensitivity also is a big factor. Before a cell phone can be a good phone, it must first be a good radio transmitter and receiver. Those Motorola engineers excel at that. The antenna on the Motorola M800 bag phone has a sticker near the antenna warning you, in both English and French, to keep 20 centimeters (8 inches) away from the antenna. And, as every ham radio operator knows, the quality of the antenna is at least as important as the quality of the receiver and transmitter. Most cell phones have extremely sorry antennas. Using a coaxial cable, you can attach any kind of antenna you want to this phone, for example a directional Yagi antenna like the one I use for my EVDO Internet setup.

In any case, those people who’ve been annoyed that I’ve been hard to reach while I’ve been working on my communications systems out here in the sticks may be happy to know that I now have powerful cell phone with outstanding audio quality. But if you’d like to chat, please call on weekends, because, even though I splurged on a heavy-duty phone, I’m not spending a bundle on the Alltel service plan I signed up for.

What's blooming in Mama's yard

Spring in Yadkin County, where my Mama’s house is, is running about a week ahead of spring in Stokes County. Stokes has a slightly higher elevation and is closer to the mountains.

yard6w.jpg
Lilacs

yard5w.jpg
Dogwood

yard4w.jpg
Top of frame: tulip poplar bulb not yet open. Lower frame: a dried blossom from last year

yard3w.jpg
Young maple leaves and maple seed tassles

yard2w.jpg
Bonnie, what is this? Response: euphorbia

yard1w.jpg
Bonnie, what is this behind the violets? Response: day lilies

More Edna…

conrad-road-w.jpg
Conrad Road, Forsyth County, April 1, 2008

roses-w.jpg
Mama’s roses, Yadkin County, April 1, 2008

Edna is funny when she’s in a snarly mood. Everyone has an April like that every now and then, I guess. I hope your April is going better than Edna’s was when she wrote this. I believe it would have been 1920…

Spring

TO what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

Road trip!

road-trip.jpg

Later this afternoon I will shut down my computers in San Francisco, and I’ll pretty much be out of the loop until I get to North Carolina. I will start the drive across the country on Sunday, Jan. 27, with a one-day stop in Sacramento.

While I’m in the Jeep, I’ll be using my ham radio GPS locator. A GPS device in the Jeep is attached to a 50-watt transceiver on the 145Mhz amateur band. Every five minutes it will transmit my location, altitude, speed, and heading. If I am in range of the right kind of amateur radio relay station, then the data will be gated to an Internet database and can be found here:

Where’s David?

The link should start working when I start the trip on Jan. 27. It may not work at all times. If I’m out of radio range, I may appear to stay in the same spot for a while, then I’ll suddenly reappear several hundred miles farther on. That’s normal.

I’ll resume blogging around Feb. 7.