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rabidsamfanIs it time to go beyond Beaufort?
Mind you, I love the Beaufort scale. It has done tremendous good for weather prediction and for the understanding of the casual weather buff, but I'm beginning to think that we should find new ways to describe Hurricanes and Tropical Cyclones, which is more comprehensive than a definition by wind pressure.
As I understand it, these are the factors which need to be considered...
Wind Speed in the eyewall (present system)
Forward speed of the system
Central pressure
Wind Swaths (by hurricane level, then TS)
Rainfall potential/Inland flooding potential
height of storm surge (length and width? Do storm surges have swaths and can we predict them? Can we measure wave size like a tsunami if we have the buoys in place?)
So, descriptively, the six scales would be
1. as is (Windy, Bad, Worse, Horrible, Disastrous, Catastrophic)
2. Stationary, Meandering, Walking, Trotting, Running, Galloping
3. Pothole, Cellar, Death Valley, Coal Mine, Submarine, Marianas Trench
4. (These describe the zones of affect, ie., if you can expect at worst, tropical storm force winds you're in the "shutters" zone.) Shutters, Tape, Boards, Prayer, Last Will and Testament, Coffin
5. Damp, Wet, Soggy, Soaked, Immersed, Drowning
6. Sea Turtle, Dolphin, Orca, Humpback, Godzilla
No seriously, to show these factors to the public you would probably need a visual rather than a descriptive method. So, use hexagons divided into six triangles (like a Trivial Pursuit gamepiece) and distribute them like pixels across the weathermap with the same color scale for each kind of threat displayed for the location. I'd go from purple for no threat and via blue etc to red for high threat. A glance at the map would show that some areas have a lot more red, and a person could assess their risks by color. Because they're pixels, you can get fine detail as you go further in, so if most of a town is at yellow for flood risk, but the downtown area is at a lower elevation then a closer map would show that part with more orange and reds near the river or inlet which might flood.
Does this make sense to you at all? Because If I try really hard I might manage to draw a picture.
Thanks for all the hard work!
Mind you, I love the Beaufort scale. It has done tremendous good for weather prediction and for the understanding of the casual weather buff, but I'm beginning to think that we should find new ways to describe Hurricanes and Tropical Cyclones, which is more comprehensive than a definition by wind pressure.
As I understand it, these are the factors which need to be considered...
Wind Speed in the eyewall (present system)
Forward speed of the system
Central pressure
Wind Swaths (by hurricane level, then TS)
Rainfall potential/Inland flooding potential
height of storm surge (length and width? Do storm surges have swaths and can we predict them? Can we measure wave size like a tsunami if we have the buoys in place?)
So, descriptively, the six scales would be
1. as is (Windy, Bad, Worse, Horrible, Disastrous, Catastrophic)
2. Stationary, Meandering, Walking, Trotting, Running, Galloping
3. Pothole, Cellar, Death Valley, Coal Mine, Submarine, Marianas Trench
4. (These describe the zones of affect, ie., if you can expect at worst, tropical storm force winds you're in the "shutters" zone.) Shutters, Tape, Boards, Prayer, Last Will and Testament, Coffin
5. Damp, Wet, Soggy, Soaked, Immersed, Drowning
6. Sea Turtle, Dolphin, Orca, Humpback, Godzilla
No seriously, to show these factors to the public you would probably need a visual rather than a descriptive method. So, use hexagons divided into six triangles (like a Trivial Pursuit gamepiece) and distribute them like pixels across the weathermap with the same color scale for each kind of threat displayed for the location. I'd go from purple for no threat and via blue etc to red for high threat. A glance at the map would show that some areas have a lot more red, and a person could assess their risks by color. Because they're pixels, you can get fine detail as you go further in, so if most of a town is at yellow for flood risk, but the downtown area is at a lower elevation then a closer map would show that part with more orange and reds near the river or inlet which might flood.
Does this make sense to you at all? Because If I try really hard I might manage to draw a picture.
Thanks for all the hard work!
