Sunday July 27, 2008 - Mother Nature keeps us on our toes....we get rain (Sat) and no wind and we get a branch (pine tree) that drops on our long wire antenna for the wefax. Now the long wire antenna is heavy duty copper wire not the ordinary thin stuff....snapped like a wire cutter. So currently the quality of the wefax pics is weak....we have a temporary repair in place but the height of the antenna is exceedingly low which affects recption. This should be remedied late Monday weather permitting.

For the past week you may have also noticed a degradation in the quality of the satellite photos via wxsat. We lost the mother board on our main file server computer here in Petal last weekend. This meant that all data storage had to be transfered to another machine in record time (4 hours off line). In some respects this was good - the machine we transfered to was just outfitted with new hard drives and the Ubuntu Linux operating system and was sitting online ready to function. Response is about 300% faster now. We also transfered the automated weather station to a smaller machine (from the main file server that went down). We are still fine tuning settings for distribution to Hamweather and two other sites. We also need to adjust the APRS location coordinates - we appear to be off by about 300 feet on the map.....still studying the problem. The satellite photos were also getting received on the main file server....and they are now running on a third computer. The audio level needs some adjusting for the clarity of the pictures to return. The goal is to try and get this properly adjusted this week. The main file server?....haven't had a chance to even look at it to see the exact issues...soon. The 4 hard drives should be fine and the data logs will be put back online as soon as repairs can be completed. Normally no machine here handles multiple jobs however we were in the process of making modifications to improve output to replace some aging machines.....so we just speeded up the process. Considering that the outbound data flow to our website server was only off for 4 hours the turn around was a good test response. BTW we did not loose any data with the main file server offline.....the data is stored locally for each application on its respective computer.

Bear with us as we make the modifications necessary to improve the quality. There will also be some additional computers that will take over some of the tasks that were transferred to the standby machines. And of course this all takes place as we study the weather 24 hours a day 7 days a week...

Sunday June 1, 2008 - Lots of improvements over the past 6 months in the operation just in time for hurricane season 2008. Newly improved facilities with improved climate control have been the primary focus as well as having two daughters graduate from college, both got married back to back in 3 weeks, and my wife has retired - all this in the past few months. Also we have a new server online and continue to speed the processing of data - the new server is a 64bit machine with the Linux Centos 5 operating system; connectivity to the internet is now on 5 level one backbone connections.

I now have completed installation of the HF TitanDx antenna coupled to the Yaesu FT-450AT 160-10 meter HF rig. This give capability now to communicate anywhere on the planet. This new system has gone online almost a year to the date of the previous VHF/UHF installation. Here is a picture of both of the systems for station KE5JJC:

Monday December 17, 2007 - Open letter to Sec- General of UN - Think Global Warming is a factually sound concept since Al Gore received the Nobel Prize? As you know I've said its not man-made and now the real experts of the world agree in an open letter to the Sec-General of the United Nations..........read the text of the open letter and the signatories here.

Monday September 4, 2007 - I have recently added two new storm chase vehicles to the operation - two brand new Kia Sorento's (one EX and one LX) are now fully functional for chasing. The gear layout is smaller and more efficient - call it the change in technology over the past three years. Our jeep is going to transfer to our west coast operation in Seattle.

Took a spike off a lightning bolt Sunday evening.....the main bolt went down the power pole by the street, which just happens to sit under a 120 foot pine tree....the spike hit the WIFI external antenna which is only 15 ft off the ground, but near another 100 foot pine tree by the lake. Grounding system worked as designed - however the wifi transmitter was toast and the 16 port hub failed. Also lost one on board NIC but was able to replace with a network card in a slot. So after a new transmitter and two 5 port hubs the system was back operational after only 45 minutes. (Thanks for a nearby late night Walmart). Some fine tuning on Monday Labor Day had everything again at optimum. Also did some lubrication work to the Lacrosse anemometer which was giving poor readings - so thats fixed now as well.

Wednesday August 29, 2007 - 2nd Anniversary of Katrina - No possibility of letting today go by without some comments on this second anniversary of Katrina......It has taken 2 years just to catch up on damage repairs around here and to begin to start moving ahead - and this 60 miles inland from the Mississippi Coast! There is still plenty of evidence of the constant fight between people and their respective insurance companies...still blue tarps up and lots of abandoned buildings.

Even U.S. Congressmen are not back in their own houses two years after the event due to insurance companies - it just astounds me that for decades people paid their premiums in good faith thinking they were covered - and the banks thinking they were covered too since everyone with a mortgage has to have insurance coverage. So would someone explain to me how a whole population and those people that finance them and those individuals who write and pass our laws, can all be on the wrong side of fence just because an insurance company doesn't want to pay? Signs still exist on the coast that state "Katrina an act of God, State Farm an act of the Devil". Take a drive along the coast and see the large number of homeless people living on the street - there were none before Katrina. Take a look at the rebuilding efforts along the coast - oh you don't see any? Probably because there is almost none. Sure a few casinos have been reopened and there is lots of talk about a booming economy in the future - HALT - take a real look. Casinos have employees and employees need reasonably priced housing - there is none and the coast of rebuilding is not going to allow that to happen. The only people that can rebuild are those that have tons of money and are not counting on insurance payments. With that type of money they aren't going to be working at the casinos. Don't think that's and issue? - will just because your house got blown away and you didn't get a replacement payment from the insurance companies, doesn't mean you have to stop paying your mortage!

The fact of the matter is that after two years we have a coastline in Mississippi with little recovery - the city of New Orleans that must have close to a hundred square miles lying in ruins - and lots of promises of Federal help but payments few and far between (all talk and no action - must be talking about FEMA eh?). Where are all those billions promised? Not here. History will show that people will remember who helped and who were just talking; and insurance companies like State Farm?.......you should have made the payments because the number of people across the country that will not do business with you in the future will be a thousand times higher than what should have been paid out in the first place. People remember these things - if they have a need to change their insurance company in the future they will pick anyone other than the names they remember for NOT paying. Instead of costing millions its quite likely to run you out of business in the long run.

Think of any major city in this county and take out half of it with a storm and not pay those damage payments that people pay in good faith - thats what you have on the Gulf Coast - would Americans let this happen to their town (Tacoma, WA or LA or Chicago or Boston)??? well this is what you have here - so if it can happen here do you really think it will be different where you live? You need to do some deep soul searching about this and then ask your politicians why they allow insurance companies to operate with misrepresentation; ask your politicians how we can have people homeless two years after an event and all they can talk about is it takes time; ask your politicians how this has come to pass in America and why nothing is being done to correct the situation. It is truly a disgrace that is clearly visible to the rest of the world. It is hard to go around the world saying we care as a people about your plight when we don't take care of our own.

This blog entry is not meant to be speech but to make you think and take action now - because this can happen anywhere and probably will. Mother Nature just doesn't really ask us about what we want.

Saturday August 11, 2007 - Today marks 13 years on the internet with webpages for the operation and marks 4 years of being in Southern Mississippi. Hot today over 101F as this is being written. Lots of development attempting in the Gulf and Carribean with the most interesting area being rotation off the Florida coast. The 620am polar sat photo shows the circle off the east coast just as the sun was coming up.The weather system affecting the NE of the country is in the NE corner of the photo. The next area of concern is south of Jamaica but still remains pretty disorganized. Most likely we shall see interaction with the rotation off Florida. An area of similar rotation was off the NW side of the Yucatan yesterday but has moved up the coast towards Texas. Most of the circulation is over land. The fourth area of concern is a tropical wave that has moved off of Africa and is heading west. I expect this to be a named storm within 36 hours. As one might expect it would take a week to be in our general vicinity if it maintained direction - a pretty big if at this stage of the game but we shall see what happens. The biggest concern is the excessive heat - it is going to continue to heat the Gulf which is just a hair under 88F at the moment....an important factor because the next week is going to be the same - brutal. It is this type of heat that fuels the weather engine.

The important thing to remember is that while many areas of concern may get mentioned in discussions most of the areas will not develop further - energy can fail to materialize that takes development to the next level in hours. So be hurricane prepared but don't panic. Going nuts can be more dangerous than any storm. I know many of us are a little gun shy since Katrina but there are some things in this world than we can change and some we can't - think of everything as one giant learning experience. Also realize that in the two years since Katrina that we as a people have learned a whole lot about survival and implemented changes for the better. It was the spirit of the people that kept us going forward the last time and it will be the better prepared spirit this time that will get us through anything in the future.

For those of you that have a problem reading the ticker tape here is todays content:

Sat 120pm - temp 101.3F heat index 113.1F - HEAT ADVISORY IN EFFECT - HOT HOT HOT.....Expecting development...area just east of the Florida with rotation (see sat pic in blog)....Monitoring area in Atlantic just off coast of Africa which is most likely going to be storm within next 36 hours....Monitoring area just south of Jamaica...area with heavy rotation nw of the Yucatan is moving NW over land....heat will continue unabated with occasional popup thunderstorms for several days...Get the latest weather warnings on this website and your NOAA weather radio.......

Thurday August 9, 2007 - Heat wave continues across the south with temps near 100F and heat index at 116 as this is being written. A few clouds in the Carribean east of Jamaica but little else underway. I've been fine tuning the fan and airflow in the control room to keep gear stable - rather difficult task but will improve with the addition of insulation on the walls this fall. On evenings where the AC catches up I usually am keeping in touch with the various ARES Ham radio networks in southern Mississippi and Alabama. The ham station area is bearable with the fans and AC most of the time and the fine tuning has made a difference. For those that are interested in ham radio you might be interested in the antenna section for my station KE5JJC. The pics are located here.

Monday August 6, 2007 -

Six days later and our path of the 99I wave has been right on the money. Currently what is left is small and over land. The remains will probably drift northward over land as opposed to our initial plot over water.

Word on the street is the hurricane experts are now lowering the number of predicted storms for the season. Frankly not a whole lot looks different from last year as far as wind shear areas so I always thought the predictions were off from the getgo. What is of interest is that while its hot hot at the moment the overall feel of weather for the past month has been fallish as opposed to a long slow summer. Maybe its the change of the 11 year sun spot cycle to a fresh cycle. However it may be basic physics - extremes of highs and lows have existed these past few months over much of the world. Its those extremes that mother nature attempts to moderate but in order to moderate alot of energy must change hands and locations. So if things are heading to fall "early" then that would mean there is a lot of energy changing hands - or about to change. It's totally unscientific to use the terms feel - but something tells me while we may not have a lot of big storms we may have a lot of weather - and that may be what we need to be prepared for. Energy must change hands and it may do so in a variety of ways - heavy rains, lots of fronts, or temperature changes from one extreme to another. Its common practice to say that the seasons really start a month before the calendar date. This year we may even be ahead of the month period by several weeks. Only time will tell.

Wedneday August 1, 2007 - 3:30pm -

Wed 3:30 - TRACKING 99I (Dean or Erin?) Pressure 1002mb Latest Position 12.1 58.4W Maximum Winds 30 mph Moving West at 20 mph....Now located over southern Windward Islands....this system will probably gain tropical depression status within 24 hours or less...Arrival in our general area (the Gulf) middle of next week based on current rate of travel...Suggest ensuring supplies are in house as early prep......Front hanging over LA and the Gulf and back up the Atlantic seaboard is still touching off numerous popup thunderstorms...A low pressure area continues to build in the Gulf off the Mississippi and Alabama shorelines (Dean or Erin?)....needs to be watched.....Get the
latest weather warnings on this website and your NOAA weather radio.......Our earliest projection:

Tuesday July 10, 2007 - 9:46pm - Latest analysis shows developing Tropical Storm off Cape Hatteras.....

Current airflow would bring storm south and back into the gulf. If storm development continues the storm will strengthen on the route probably developing hurricane status.

The latest updates to the center's computers were put into place over this past weekend. Cameras have been restored on a different server. The modifications continue to build our operation to one of the most advanced in the south.

Thursday June 21, 2007 - I've said for years there are only two seasons in the year - summer coming and summer going. So here we are at midpoint once again. For those of you following the man-made global warming debate here is a link to the opposite and more scientific analysis of reality on our planet: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/comment/story.html?id=597d0677-2a05-47b4-b34f-b84068db11f4&p=4 Here you will find a series of articles that should open up your eyes. The fact is mother nature doesn't really care about the economy or national boundaries and good science is still good science. We need more real scientists who deal with the facts rather than emotions.

Control room here in Petal has doubled in size. I've also added a 50ft tower with a 17foot vhf/uhf antenna for ham communications - the system currently ties in Jackson, Meridian, Mobile, and New Orleans plus a slew of other repeaters.

Hurricane season is here again - the UK group is predicting only 10 named storms....a figure that I would say is probably more accurate than the 17 predicted from other sources. So far there has been a lot of wind shear similar to last year. On the other hand mother nature doesn't talk to me and let me know whats up so things could be totally different.

High winds this week from a tstorm squall line caused numerous power outages (including our location for 6 hours)....a microburst is responsible for the damage. While a super cell embeded in the line was directly on course for our Petal location conditions did not develop for a tornado.

Currently monitoring the Gulf for development. Also we have added new Goes Sat pic links as well as local visible and IR sat pics. You will also find updated information in the master doc pages; and several new links for pda and cell phone internet conections.

Sunday April 6, 2007 - Counterclockwise circulation on a developing preseason tropical strom is interacting with the storm in the midwest....talk about a flow of moisture and energy......stay tuned....this may be most interesting. Here is the 7pm water vapor capture showing the interaction:

Saturday May 5, 2007 -

Radar and Velocity captures of the nearly mile wide tornado that destroyed Greensburg, Kansas last night. Its not often one sees a tornado of this size so clear on radar.....and of course very little defence in this case.

New gear going online by the end of the month....several new computers and systems will be functioning in time for the start of the June 1st hurricane season.....which in fact may be a little off the mark since there appears to be circulation off the Carolina coast that resembles a tropical storm in formation. So I don't think one can emphasize to much that this year is not going to be a repeat of 2006...there are no steering currents in place this year which kept storms at bay last year. In fact initial conditions on both the pacific side and the atlantic show lots of energy. How things develop will depend on the amount of energy from the sun but there does seem to be a strong move in a summer with lots of activity.

Also movement has been made for improved communication from the weather facility to the outside world and with a little luck packet radio transmission of weather data may be online by July. One more ham operator in the group now in Seattle - Dave Davis - KE7MYS...congrats Dave!

Thursday April 5, 2007 - COBWEBS - finally did some maintenance today....inaccurate wind speed readings (there were none) and improper rain gauge amounts a few days ago prompted the take the gear apart and examine routine. Cobwebs....its amazing how they can be so small yet stop devices completely - and that is exactly what I found. So I've cleaned out the gauges and they should be back working normally now. BTW if you see rain today its simply the cleaning of the device - no rain. The instrumentation is located on a pole at the end of the dock out in the lake - its hot in the daytime and near fish at night but that does not seem to slow spiders down....there are webs all over the place. I'm going to have to see what is environmentally sensitive but will solve the problem.

Latest news out of NASA and the US Geological folks is that Mars is experiencing global warming. Gee I didn't realize that man had already colonized the place and screwed it up. Geewhiz could Al Gore be wrong?

Work continues on the new ham radio 50 foot mast that will house the 17 foot multiband antenna - overall height at the top 67 feet. Since this locaiton is on a hill at 275 feet that should make the line of sight transmissions rather considerable. My purpose is to ensure good communications between Jackson and the coast well in time for the hurricane season. Coax is in place and the antenna has arrived so operations should be a go within two weeks weather permitting.

The lake cam server is currently down due to a recent nearby lightning hit.....I'll be looking at the situation over the next few days to see if a cure can be implemented. Note the cam server has been running on port 80 and the weather servers on port 85... I may make a switch on these ports as many locations have non 80 ports blocked and the main purpose of this operation is to ensure that data gets to the most people quickly and without issues.

This weekend is supposed to be rather cool with the possibility of frost in some locations....I hope not as my garden is doing rather well.

P.S. the Wefax messages which are received from the New Orleans transmitters appears to be doing the same process as last year at this time.........no transmissions being received here. This happened last year during this same time period....checking with their website shows no indication that the transmitter is off air....nor did it last year. And frankly I doubt very much that its a reception problem being its literally 100 miles or less to the antennas. You can access the messages on their website....check out the link on the master page.

Wednesday March 21, 2007 - Trees have popped out the last few days here as the weather has been warm and dry. The Glenda Project now holds Patent number 60/903,881 - Multi Dimensional Data Models for Tornado Prediction, which reflects our unique work in atmospheric research and goals. Our system has been used for predictions which have been 100% accurate of recent....a most unique accomplishment in the weather field.

Thursday March 1, 2007 - A day of numerous tornados across the south - we gave a weather forecast at 5 am on the website indicating severe thunderstorms with tornados would continue to develop across SE MS and AL - the ironic part was the NWS missed this entirely..... the end of the day has at least 13 dead from a school being destroyed in .....AL just over the line from SE MS. Several lines of storms came through the Petal area including one with a firm radar contact for a tornado. The tornado tracking east from Columbia through West Hattiesburg and then across Petal into Jones County......confirmed with visual in West Hattiesburg, radar confirmation at I59 and Hardy St....and with the path within range of our Weather Facility here in Petal the webcams were being monitored off location while talking on location. While monitoring the webcams luck of the draw caught the tornado actually up in the air coming over the lake..........A quick screen capture managed to grab the event:

This is the screen capture (click on pic for larger version) :

This is Video 1 Blown up 200% - not enhanced:

This is the legend for the pic so you know what you are looking at:

This is an enhanced color modified version:

Here is the log of baro, etc:

Thursday, February 22, 2007 - Finally got a chance to see the article about the Glenda Project which appeared in the Petal Profile for 2007 (Feb 8 publication date). This article gives a little insight into how we arrived in Mississippi with this project. This past week Feb 22nd saw our weather presentation to the Lamar Park Amateur Radio Club. The presentation is intended to open a few eyes to the viewpoint of not accepting the status quo and using hard science for learning - of course coupled with a little fun. As the presentor, you get my perspective in this presentation. A similar presentation will be given to the Magnolia DX Club meeting on March 10th in Gulfport.

May 19th, 2007 at the Pendleton Airport in Pendleton, Oregon will be a demonstration for NWS/NOAA, of the latest Thunderockets in use by the Glenda Project. This demonstration is open to the public. The Thunderocket demonstration launches will show the latest telemetry capsules and capture systems as well as the new Ranger Interceptor unit designed for full data capture, live telemetry, and live video from the heart of severe storms and tornados. Dave Davis and Tim Quigg will both be on hand for the demonstration and to answer any questions that you may have.

Sunday, February 11, 2007 - Today marks the completion of a year since the LaCrosse weather station was put on the internet. As you can tell from the past blog entries there was one section where we returned the unit to LaCrosse for repair, and if you examine the data you can see our biggest complaint - data readings that appear at random out of the blue. Basiclly support from LaCrosse was poor - they basically blamed the installation rather than their product. Sometime in the next few months we will replace the unit with another brand with better stability. Anyhow the weatherunderground.com collects the data we send and below is a chart of the past year:

The high temperature was 108F and the low as I recall around 21F. The chart shows the June period where the unit was in repairs.

The new routers have been installed on the network in Petal (giga speed now) - this allows for better flow of data and presents a stronger firewall to the outside world. As one might expect the constant barrage of viruses, worms, and attacks continues from different locations around the world....these people really need to get a life.

The 3D readings of the EMF are online; radiation readings should be online soon. Still implementing improvements on data access times to real time delivery for the web. Also a new 50 foot mast has arrived for the 2 meter ham installation to improve communications. The current timetable is for activation with a new antenna around mid-March. This should allow simplex communication from the Gulf Coast to Jackson.

Thursday, January 26, 2007 - The website continues to be modified to improve access to information. You will now find an expanded link section (separate from the local links section) which is part of the Glenda Project website. Word from the west coast is that the new Thunderocket model will be launched from the new Camano Island site sometime in March. Look for a Pacific Coast Weather section soon in the Chase area of the website.

A recent article in the Stone County (MS) Enterprise highlights the importance of ham radio in SKYWARN activities. You can read the article which mentions our center here.

Interference on the EMF reception system at night was isolated this week to a faulty starter on a private security light about 500 feet from the center. The problem had been becoming progressively worse over the past couple of weeks. Dixie Electric resolved the problem the same day once the issue had been identified.

As of January 21th the center is now equipped with a 2 meter amateur radio base station. In order to get on the air we have installed a small ground plane antenna supplied by Larry Morgan (AG5Z) (visit his great ham site at http://larrysstuff.com). The new system allows communication to the Gulf Coast and up to Jackson, MS over the ham repeater network. KE5JJC our my call letters when I man the station.

Look for more online data feeds in the next few weeks. With the Katrina cleanup finally out of the way and the Christmas holidays past, there is finally time to move forward on the various systems and pickup where we should have been a year and a half ago. All we need now is some warmer weather!

Friday, January 5, 2007 - Sometimes knowing what will happen is tough to take when you see the results of a prediction. Thursday night was one of those nights that all the precursors were in place for tornados. In fact our Pullman Point Research Facility equipment was registering the full energy potential. When the first tornado watch was posted by the NWS, I had already established that everything was in place for this to happen. With the official word on the books an email was sent out to members of the Stone County ARES group with whom work has been done to help establish emergency ham communications. As a member of that group I specifically contacted Tim Purvis in Wiggins (45 miles to the south) and we discussed the readings on the various displays of information. Wiggins is far enough south of Petal to get a different weather pattern but this was one night that everything looked the same. After an hour of discussion ending around 9pm it was decided that the next major phase of bad weather would drop in between 12 midnight and 1AM. While it is unusal at this time of year for really severe weather the expectation was we could have major problems. At 12:30AM a tornado dropped out of the sky over western Wiggins and hit the ground in the center of town and continued to move to the NE and then back up into the air. This was one of several tornados which dropped across southern Mississippi. SEE THE TORNADO TRACK HERE. The Wiggins tornado was of special importance this time round as it destroyed the very building that held the ARES group meetings...meetings held for emergency management communication development. It just goes to prove that one can never to be too ready too fast. To look at the damage of the Wiggins tornado click on here. You can read the related text news story and view the report on Mobile Channel 5 WKRG TV.includes my 10 seconds of fame.

Monday, November 06, 2006 - We have had our ups and downs with this major server transfer but we are back up and fully operational. We are now running on full unix (BSD) computers with Raid 5 backup capability - which means total reliability from now on out. Glendaproject.org will be back shortly. We decided after numerous issues to move our servers to a news network for better connectivity. This increased capacity and space from http://pullman.net will work better with our servers here in Petal, MS. You will note a few of our data links are not working...we are working to resolve these issues as we speak. Our prime goal is to put the data online in live time from our facilities rather than upload to the server with the website. So bear with us as we work out these issues.

Wednesday, August 9, 2006 - I one of the biggest pet peeves I have is Microsoft Windows updates....u tell them to download and not install....and it does that....it just freezes the machines other programs till u do the install....grrr! Not bright Bill! Most of the storm center gear runs on Linux so this is not an issue most of the time.

Looks like Debby is forming SE of Barbados.....still lots of wind shear and the jet streams seem to be moving already back towards the winter locations....this may mean a hard winter coming and an early one based on some of our associates. Saturday the 5th at 4pm we took a lightning hit....major static discharge that damaged ports on routers on either end of our 200 ft feed between buildings. We also have one computer that would appear to need a new power supply. For the most part the lightning protection system worked well. The problem with good radio reception is that it is also good for attracting lightning.....one of the joys of doing business with mother nature. Keep an eye on the paths of coming storms....its going to get very busy here shortly.....either that or we are going to rewrite the weather development books!

Saturday, August 5, 2006 - Summer continues in the deep south and its hot....97F at noon. Area #2 has moved west and as I predicted exploded when it got complete circulation in the Gulf:

24 hours of convection and it looks impressive on radar. I watched the building last evening as storms just to the south of here were exploding...several 1000 feet per minute in growth.Chris has faded as it travels north of Cuba but I suspect if it holds its rotation together it will build in the Gulf rather rapidly. Another area of interest with circulation appears to be forming just behind it...... it may be a very interesting week ahead.

Thursday August 3, 2006 - the one things about the tropics is that you never know what will happen. Models have been really off on Chris. The fact that there has been a NE flow of air ahead of the storm with a rotation area moving to the west, as well, makes for some most interesting predictions. The fact that Chris wound up to near hurricane strength and then rapidly dropped shows the potential for a major hurricane this season. Chris is still making its way towards the Gulf....and if the area holds together it will pickup strength very rapidly.....hard to predict....but thats why its call research...............

Tuesday August 1, 2006 - Storm Season - it's showtime! For the past month I've been monitoring the replaced gear and so far its been pretty stable. There have been a few anomalies in data but that seems to be disappearing. Emergency power backup units are in place and new additional communication gear will be onsite within 10 days. Should be just in time as the tropics are coming alive. TS Chris plus three other areas of concern are shown on the pic below. This does not show activity east to Africa which is also picking up steam. The emergency supplies and plans have been reviewed on this end and are in place ready to activate. Initial track of Chris would put it in the Gulf around the weekend. Of more concern to Florida would be area #2 which has picked up dramatically in the past 24 hours. All 4 areas have rotation. Area #3 is being pushed south by high pressure in New England ....super hot air in place there. At this stage of things anything is possible. I expect area #4 to pickup intensity - its been trying to build for several days. The next week should be interesting.....got your supplies in?

Sunday June 25, 2006 - Magnetic readings are again functioning since Friday. Unit arrived at 4:30pm and was online at 4:33pm and functioned properly. Timing was good as we had a stationary thunderstorm for five hours. Friday also saw the Pullman Point automated weather data go back online at hamweather and the weatherunderground. Watching the Atlantic closely this week....possibility appears to exist of multiple tropical storms forming at the same time. Florida currently getting rain from storm that simply didn't wind up. BTW wefax data has been spotty this week...seems they are having problems again in NO. Also Mobile weather radar has been off line all week. Based on the messages appearing on their website it would appear that the system has failed miserably with massive parts failure. Better now than a few more weeks into the season. Pullman Point Weather Research Facility is fully ready for the hurricane season with standby generators in place and supplies - lets just hope we don't have another Katrina in the near future. Oh yah forgot to mention the weather server was upgraded over the past month to a state of the art unit and we have rapid-fire now available on the weatherundergound.com website for Petal. Also you will find expanded contact information for our operations - you can contact both the stormcenter and stormchasers via MSN when online. Also ham radio communication systems are in place to supplement the other com links.

Thursday June 22, 2006 - Back online with the replacement Lacrosse station today....came in yesterday and is now installed. Its hot close to 100...readings appear a little off at the moment so I will attempt to increase the shielding on the sensor unit this evening. While the unit has extra shielding in place, it apparently still needs some work since accuracy is the name of the game. The data logger from Dataq gave up the ghost this week for a second time......replacement unit should be in tomorrow so the magnetic readings should be back online on Saturday. Dataq indicates that failure of the units is unusual. Air conditioning in the master control room went online on June 16th - considering how hot things have been this will be a major improvement for gear stability. Also we have now added multi-band ham capability to the chase vehicles. This complements the other links on board.

Monday June 12, 2006 - Currently waiting for weather station return from Lacrosse Technology. The return has been sent to them so when they send a replacement unit we will be able to resume the Pullman Point automated weather data. Currently we have wefax, wesat, and magnetic readings being updated on regular intervals throughout the day. Spectrum analysis is in live time (ok 3 second delay). Big news is that the master control room operation and studio building are now air conditioned. Insulation and renovations for sound proofing will improve things but at least the temp is better for the computers. Audio is also available on the cams for those interested in hearing things really live. Analog temps, wind, etc gear is functioning so we have full operations here - just not automated updates. Data logging on magnetic is providing interesting recordings...still going to take some time to figure out. Lacrosse has indicated up to three weeks on the return. So for those of you wondering about we will return with the automated info as soon as possilbe.

Saturday May 20, 2006 - The Lacrosse 2310 serial port connetion has died - that means no data is going from the master unit to the server and out to the internet. The 2310 has been (frankly) pretty flakey since it was put online. I've contacted Lacrosse again to see if we can get the unit replaced under the warranty. In the meantime this means that there will not be automated information supplied on the internet from Pullman Point. A worst case scenario for the return of weather data (either with a replacement Lacrosse unit or I'll go buy an Oregon Scientific unit) will be a week and a half.

Satellite photos - we've got them - multiple catches per day and uploaded to the website. Also magnetic data is back - the Dataq logger replacement unit is online (original went south after one week)...so we are making progress in some areas. New batteries will be here shortly for the military weather station for the chase vehicles.

New Orleans fax data has been a little rough the last few days (that after weeks of good pics)...its as if their transmitter is on mini-power. That coupled with the fact we had a 3 hour power failure early last week makes me think the infrastructure in this area is hardly ready for another hurricane season....and for all intents and purposes that is here.

Webcams now have sound available as well as the video....tis a slow and very old server so be patience....no special software is necessary as its a java feed (get the latest from sun.com).

Tuesday April 25, 2006 - Making progress! Wefax data out of New Orleans is improving...I've finally got the frequency locked on hard and the signal strength tops out the meter. So you might ask why are some of the pics rough? Simple....I don't control the content and I suspect they are still having some issues on data transmission lines - also since this location is about 110 miles from NO at night that is sufficient for bounce of the signal - mother nature at its best. Also weather conditions can affect reception - unlike most modern transmission systems wefax is WWII technology. However it gets data through that is unique from the standard tv news.

I've locked down the communication network here for the server by switching out the Dlink router with a Linksys....this is the 3rd Dlink unit to give me problems in the last year. Since the transmission of data is dependent on connectivity you should see an improvement in reliability. I have as yet to switch the weather station sensor unit - to come.

Wednesday April 19, 2006 - WEFAX data has been online since Sunday however ironically the New Orleans transmission station is having phone line problems (http://www.nws.noaa.gov/os/marine/radiofax.htm - "Apr 14, 2006 - The New Orleans radifax broadcast is intermittant due to a problem in a telephone line. The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating. ") As a result reception of the information is coming in on a partial basis - in other words only part of the picture. It has been observed on this end that the transmission of data stops before the entire document has been transmitted. When you check this website for the wefax files you will currently find that files sizes are very small...once they have resolved the issued on their end full docs will be of much larger size files. Reception is excellent with the new 100 ft LW antenna which was put in place over the past weekend. Currently files are uploaded to the website in batches at 6AM and 6PM. You will have to scan the list for the latest docs.

The EMF reception has been stabilized - I found a broken wire in a plug which currently now has a temporary fix. Progress is taking place on the installation of the software and hardware to put the information online. I'm still attempting to determine the parameters to define the data collection aspects. Weather sat data is still pending - just a matter of locating the soldering iron :) The new sensor unit for the weather station has arrived....hopefully this weekend on installation. Still trying to stabilize a Dlink router....it wants to reboot on its own every so often - can't tell if its the comcast router to the Dlink or the Dlink.....this is affecting transmission of weather data every so often.

Thursday April 13, 2006 - WEFAX data is expected to be online this weekend. There is now 9 days of material successfully received. FTP uploads of the material will be on a regular schedule here shortly. Radiation monitoring went into place this past weekend....forgot to mention that. An online version will be forth coming. This weekend will see the installation of the weather satellite data collection system as well as the EMF data systems. I'm sure some refinement will be necessary on the data uploads but the main gear is expected to be fully functional shortly. Its also full moon today. I've also been making some refinements on the mobile chase vehicle...it now supports a fully functional data retrieval system in addition to its extensive instrumentation. A look at the calendar shows its roughly six weeks to hurricane season - frankly I expect storms to start within a few weeks and expand - and I suspect worse than last year. We'll have plenty of data to start doing the analysis here shortlly.

Monday April 10, 2006 - Friday came and went with very little notice...all the really exciting weather was much further north. By the time the front came through here 6AM on Saturday it was nothing more than a very clouds. The installation of the instrumentation on the dock has been fortified and should be rock solid. Just waiting on the sensor unit to arrive. In the meantime the control room of the center has been progressing well with some instrumentation going online over the weekend. The wifi omni external system is now fully operational. Data from the New Orleans WEFAX operation is being received daily and has been for the past 4 days. Its simply a matter of arranging for the data to be available on our website in automated format shortly. Progress is continuing on the weather satellite receive antenna installation as well as a modification of the EMF gear. EMF reception is operational - the tie in to the computer network will be shortly. Overall the weekend has been pretty good - didn't accomplish all goals but definitely have made progress.

Thursday April 6, 2006 - Progress moves forward and some things are coming together yet we have a few basic issues. The Lacrosse station has been giving me a fit for hard wire communication....while the line is verified to function between the dock and the office (via phone tests) the actual sensor won't talk to the master station at all. So I have been in contact with Lacrosse Technology to seek a remedy. I had expected to have the system operational over the past weekend however no luck on the setup so we were off line for two days. In order to get back online by Tues a cat5 line to the back building, which is being rennovated for studios, had to be hooked up and functioning. Further tests under Lacrosse instructions did not bear any results. However Lacrosse has a new sensor unit enroute which should remedy the problem. In the meantime the master unit is in the studio control room window doing a line of site with the dock instrumentation and supplying data over the WIFI connection. So for those wondering why the system has been up and down now you know why. One other thing when you are looking at yesterday's baro readings the evening shift up is actually from readjusting from raw to the area altitude actual reading...not a major weather event. As soon as the new sensor unit gets here things should be stable.

Got the wefax short wave system operational last evening....this will make weather data feeds from New Orleans Marine Weather available for viewing.......I still have to hook up a long wire antenna to the system to improve reception. Also the EMF system should be operational later tonite.....data from these will be online hopefully by the end of the weekend. Weather here Friday may be sporting!

For those wondering where Pullman Point is located here is a 1998 Sat photo modified with the location marked:

The circle is the location of the instrumentation and this is the view looking west:

This is the Pullman Point Weather Research Facility (looking from the north end of the point in the lake southwards) - the control room/studio building is on the left.

Also on Wednesday the west cam caught this approaching weather front:

Monday March 20, 2006 SUPERCELL with TORNADO - Spring arrived with a roar on Monday (the 20th)...major tstorms and multiple tornado reports. NWS reported one tornado tracking just 10 miles north from our Petal, MS location and 10 miles south of Ellisville. We were monitoring our online webcams while on the road and managed to catch photos of the supercell on both the west and east looking cams as well as a capture off the east live video feed. Twas an amazing site. Our weather gear also recorded the exact arrival of the system. Below are the screen captures and the data files:

Monday March 14, 2006 - finally decided to take the plunge and purchase the Ambient Weather VWS software package for internet....so as of today its the full version online; the deciding factor was that the last two bug fixes of the past week eliminated the reliance on the Heavy Weather package that works with the Lacrosse station. I was still unsure about the package as it had been crashing unexpectedly over the past week. I've taken two actions to attempt to cure the problem (the new full edition) and I've installed an extra fan in the Dell GX1 for a little added cooling. As an older computer there might just have been enough extra drain from the 250gig HD.....the unit would not reboot after a crash for about 15 minutes...a true sign of overheating. The unit appears to be a little happier. The system did go down over the weekend; the video feed on one of the cameras dropped when the plugs came apart (high winds)......now taped solid and functioning.

I've improved the signal between the computer and the network (WIFI); I've also strung the cat5 cable between the outside unit and the facility - cable still has to be buried and put into operation. Also the cat5 cable has been strung back to the shop control room - still to be buried and hooked up. One might be wondering why there is a lot of testing going on and some temporary setups...this is still due to many resources still being applied to Katrina cleanup and the associated manhours necessary to get things accomplished. However we are making progress. I expect to have the wefax data online later this week.

Tuesday February 21, 2006 - one month to spring officially - Still trying to stablize some of the rain guage readings - zero'd out the totals on the station and checked the actual instrument again. Found the actual case was on backwards so the situation rectified. Still no rain to check to verify operational. I've noticed some spikes in the wind speed around noon the past two days....single data readings around 60mph.....I believe these are anamolies of the transmission software or the actual station itself; though it is possible the readings are accurate. My question would be what is happening to kick the wind up to such a speed? Wings of a flapping bird or bug? Or some type of wind generation from the lake and the sun? Maybe gas leaking from the ground under the water? OK OK I know I'm stretching it but the readings are just plain strange.

Two more buttons have been added to the menu selections - one for the EMF Spectrum analysis, and the second for gamma radiation recording (yes there is equipment in house to do this measuring; you might ask why? Well Mississippi does have a nuke plant but that is not the main reason - the nuke bomb tests in Mississippi were carried out in salt domes just 21 miles SW of Hattiesburg (which is 6 miles west of our location....so about 30 miles SW of the research facilities' location). You can find a link to the Salmon and Sterling Nuclear Tests in the local links section of this website.

Sunday February 19, 2006 - First Blog Entry - Welcome to the Pullman Point Weather Research Facility Blog. The purpose of this blog is to keep visitors to this website up to date on activities. So who is writing this blog? Just call me Bob. This weather research facility is located on Pullman Point which sticks out from the south side of Twin Lakes on the east side of Petal, Mississippi, USA. This is a new facility which has developed from the growth of an original prototype storm center which was located on the west side of Hattiesburg, MS during 2005 - a transition to the Petal location was officially supposed to take place on September 1, 2005 - or as locals call it day 2 after Hurricane Katrina. Since Katrina recovery has been a slow and laborious path to setup operations to a fully functional facility - In the past few weeks a lot of the intial goals have been accomplished. As well as the weather research facility of Pullman Geosciences, which is expanding weekly with the addition of instrumentation, the control room for Bluegrass Music Television (http://pullman.tv), and the recording studio(under construction) for Big Bob's Window Cleaning and Recording Co.is also located in this complex.

On the walls of the Wood Hudson Cancer Research Laboratory (http://woodhudson.org) in Newport, Kentucky there hangs a sign which says "bad data is no data". So with this golden rule for research I have been endeavoring to ensure that our data collection methodology is sound. As of 5pm of todays date I feel that our instrumentaiton is now setup to supply the data channels functioning accurately.

Current data online comes from a LaCrosse 2310 weather station. The wind speed and direction instrumentation is located on a pole attached to the end of the dock on the north end of the grounds (see the live cams - click the green triangle for streaming - note this unit is on a wifi connection and will be eventually cat 5 to improve connectivity) - this is a good location to obtain data which is not affected by the large number of surrounding pine trees which cover the grounds. The rain gauge is located at the south end of the dock. Both instruments send data by line cord to a sensor unit located at 69ft from the wind unit and 44ft from the rain gauge and placed about 12 feet above the ground. This permits a clear wireless shot from the sensor unit to the actual weather station receive unit located about 100 feet to the south. The dock is about 10 feet below the main level of the grounds and previous wireless transmissions from the end of the dock to the station were not reliable during heavy rains. So hence the sensor unit move. It was also found that a previous line cord length of 69ft with the rain gauge exceeded reliable data transmission - the manufacture recommends a max line length of 64 feet or faulty data transmissions may result and tests have shown that this is accurate. The rain guage was moved from the far north end of the doc to the south end eliminating 25ft of line cord. Note rain gauge readings earlier today are actual tests by pouring water through the instrument to verify data transmission. Also note that the wind speed data at the same period of time is firm...this due to the reworking of the data lines. The sensor unit houses temp and humidity instruments as well as the wireless data feed. So I think its safe to say that readings from this point forward should be accurate.

The actual weather station is hooked to an old 333mhz Dell GX1 computer (320meg memory with a 250gig HD) and currently utilizes a Dlink wireless card to connect across the complex to the computer network - this connection will eventually be supplemented with a cat 5 cable ensuring improved preformance (this will be done prior to the attic heat of the summer). You will note that there are several buttons on the website which are currently not showing data. Equipment is in house - however due to the slow recovery process from Katrina the gear hasn't been placed back into service...this is taking place daily and the facility should be fully operational soon. Data which will be available will be WXFAX (short wave weather transmission information sent on regular schedule), WXSAT.(pictures from satellites in polar orbit which come over daily), EMF BURST (data from ground based instruments located here which monitor the atmosphere and specifically electrical discharges in Thunderstorms), and EMF MAGNETIC (data from instrumentation (Trifield Natural Meter also known as a ghost detection meter) located here monitoring the earths magnetic field and related areas). Couple this information with a super computing cluster and telecommunication gear and you have one of the most advanced atmostpheric research facilites in the deep south - all operational one again just in time for this years tornado and hurricane seasons. Oh yes, for on the road data collection check out the chase team vehicle which has full on the road laboratory instrumentation and cell data communication systems.

This blog is your direct route to whats happening at the Pullman Point Weather Research Facility and on the road chase team activity. Feel free to drop an email with comments or suggestions or any general question to: msstormchaster at hotmail.com Note: You will need to convert this email address to the correct format by changing at to the at sign - this is necessary to slow down spam. If you have MSN Messenger this is also our on the road direct link for messages to the chase vehcile (and sometimes direct video transmissions). Now the disclaimer.....any information found on this website should not be used for planning or any activity where life and limb is at stake....use official weather channels for that...read the website usage page for further info.

Updates to this blog will be made as situations warrant and not necessarily on a regular basis. Enjoy.

Bob Pullman