Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Congratulations, Dean!

Dean is now a Tropical Storm.

I should point out that the LX in the Gulf of Mexico in that graphic is now called Tropical Depression Five (Dean was previously Tropical Depression Four). Five appears to be heading for the Texas/Mexico border. I know that there has been a high pressure system on top of us the last few days (and I'm led to believe that's part of what's been driving the temperature here to record highs, and the heat index to 120). My understanding is that that high pressure system is helping to drive Five away from New Orleans, though I'm not sure how much of a difference it actually makes.

I really like the National Hurricane Center's Graphical Tropical Weather Outooks. They circle the storm systems on the map before they organize even into Tropcal Lows. They also offer basin-wide news feeds for the Atlantic and the eastern Pacific basins, as well as individual feeds for each storm.

I just got off the phone with Nora in California, and she wonders if the Baby Name Voyager (which Dean has called "...the only good use of Java I've ever seen.") has anything interesting to tell us about Hurricane names and their popularity as baby names. So far, I've only tried Katrina and Andrew. The name peaked in 80s as the 101st most popular girls' name, then started falling. It bottomed out in 2003 at 277, and was starting to come back. It got back up to 246 in 2005. In 2006, Katrina was the 382nd most popular girls' name. There doesn't seem to be any such effect for Andrew. Andrew peaked in frequency in the 1990s, and has been dropping since. But it hasn't lost any ranking in that time; it's been between 5 and 8 since hurricane Andrew.

4 Comments:

Blogger Dean W. Armstrong said...

Yeah, thanks. The six-year fun is back. I can only hope it doesn't do anything, especially to New Orleans. I'm already getting harangued at work about it.

August 15, 2007 at 7:44 PM  
Blogger Nora said...

But dean, we still love you! I think its awesome that you are now a tropical storm...

August 16, 2007 at 12:05 PM  
Blogger colin said...

Further update: Dean is now a Hurricane.

August 16, 2007 at 12:36 PM  
Blogger Dean W. Armstrong said...

Yep. And it's first hit: St. Lucia, where I spent a week on geology field course. I saw there the results of a simple tropical storm on the mountainous island; I can't imagine a hurricane hit for them.

August 17, 2007 at 9:17 PM  

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