And the Tropical Storm threat has ended

On Friday night, local time, I posted about the next tropical storm that looked to be developing and coming closer to threatening us than any this year.  A few of us had a bit of discussion to follow that post but here on Sunday night local, the bottom line is that the forecast tonight is radically different from the prediction I posted two nights ago, and I expect no issues from what is now Tropical Storm Imelda.   

Here's tonight's look at the next five days worth of positions.

The date and time on this graphic (lower left, under "Tropical Storm Imelda") work out to be Monday morning, September 29th at midnight UTC.  You'll note nowhere in Florida has the yellow Tropical Storm watch or blue TS warning color. 

As mentioned in comments to Friday night's post, I talked about looking at some models that just weren't available until the storm was officially named as a Potential Tropical Storm and said, “Everything I saw concluded it was going to turn hard right out to sea. The models mostly varied in how far north the storm gets before it turns right.”  Sure enough, every plot between the one I posted Friday until this one - all from the National Hurricane Center - showed the right turn and every successive plot had it turn out to sea sooner and farther south.

Since the first time I looked at the more detailed forecasts of our local conditions, the winds forecast for Monday have stayed the highest, but nothing beyond a slightly blustery day: winds say 18-20 steady, gusting to 30 mph.  

Can it damage something?  I wouldn't bet a lot that it's impossible, but these are the kinds of winds we get several times a week in our summer afternoon thunderstorms.  Sometimes stuff just breaks.

But, hey, it's not even the end of September. Hurricane season isn't over until the end of November! We're not out of the woods, yet.

Good-Bye to A Most Abnormal Normal Hurricane Season

Wednesday, November 30th is the last day of the 2022 Atlantic Hurricane Center, and with no areas considered to be likely to develop, it seems safe to be saying, "it's over" and do a little post-action summary.  Good-bye and good riddance.  Prior to the start of the season, predictions called for the season to be more active than normal.  In retrospect it was about 75% of normal, based on the Accumulated Cyclone Energy or ACE, a product of strength of the storms and the amount of time they existed.  The real oddity of the season was the distribution of storms.  

After three weak, early-season storms, the Atlantic basin produced zero named storms between July 3 and August 31. This was the first time since 1941 that the Atlantic had no named storm activity during this period. Then, a light came on. Four hurricanes formed in September, along with three more in November. This brought seasonal activity to near-normal levels.  [Bold added - SiG]

2022 ACE - Colorado State University  The black curve is the climatological normal while the light blue is this year.  This year's ACE, 95, is three-quarters of the normal value of 126.

It gets odder.  This year has been a La Nina year in the El Nino/La Nina cycles (the El Nino Southern Oscillation or ENSO) and the overall picture for a La Nina year is to be more conducive to tropical system development.  El Nino years get high level winds - wind shear - that "blows the tops off" storms that go ahead and develop in La Nina  years.  In August, the wind shear was higher than normal in the parts of the Atlantic where storms develop.  The wind shear was accompanied by drier air from the mid-latitudes, from 30 to 60 degrees north, flowing into the more southerly latitudes.  

A current emphasis of the analysis of why this season was weaker than predicted is a phenomenon called "wave-breaking," which has nothing to do with ocean waves but rather low pressure waves in the air above those mid-latitudes.  Phil Klotzbach, one of the world's foremost seasonal hurricane forecasters, put it this way.

"Wave breaking is associated with upper-level low-pressure systems that have anomalous upper-level westerlies on their southern periphery. These upper-level westerlies increase vertical wind shear. Also, mid-latitude air is typically drier than tropical air, stifling thunderstorm development and effectively choking African easterly waves."

While there's evidence wave breaking was a factor in the odd season, it's apparently not the only factor.  Needless to say, the quiet August was broken soon, on September 1st by the formation of Tropical Storm Daniel.  

Five additional storms followed in the next three weeks, with Hurricane Ian being the strongest of them. With maximum sustained winds of 150 mph at landfall along the southwestern coast of Florida, Ian is tied with five other hurricanes for the fifth strongest continental US hurricane landfall on record.

Another surprise came in November when the late-season Hurricane Nicole formed. It eventually made landfall along the southeast coast of Florida as a Category 1 hurricane.

We were affected by both Ian and Nicole here on the Space Coast; both were tropical storm force while affecting us.  In my book, hurricane seasons weaker than climatological are a feature, not a bug, and I'll take all I can get that way.  It is an interesting season, though, when things like this year's La Nina, which were expected to increase activity don't do that.  

I've often said that hurricanes are good disasters for the lazy man, so I like them. There's no need to go get in line for plywood for your shutters, canned food or bottled water or any of that.  No need for the French Toast line we see in northern snowstorms (milk, eggs and bread).   All of it is stuff you can prepare for months or years in advance. Yeah, you have to go put up the shutters and do some stuff in advance of the storm, but you sure don't need to be in line at stores. Or in line at a FEMA tractor trailer for food and water handouts afterwards.

 

Just a Reminder - Nature Wants You Dead

We had a reminder of that today. 

Actually, Mrs. Graybeard was the target of the reminder today; she went for a walk while I was working on a little project in the radio room. 

She came back in covered in blood and still actively dabbing it away with a blood-soaked tissue.

She had been attacked by a hawk.  It's nesting season around here and the local papers talk about people being dive bombed pretty regularly.  Both of us have heard about this for as long as we can remember, but neither of us had ever been hit by hawk until today.  She says it felt like having a brick dropped on her head and she had no idea what hit her.  She looked around in an instinctive reaction and caught a glimpse of the departing bird.  There are very few coconut trees around here and it's not acorn season so having anything fall out of nowhere and hit your head leads to lots of confusion as you try to figure out what it was.

I helped clean up her head and verified that the claw marks weren't deep enough to require stitches.  Scalp wounds can bleed a lot and she pretty much had blood on every piece of clothing.

I think there will be a visit someplace tomorrow for a tetanus booster. 

And by the most remote of remote coincidences, yesterday while taking the garbage out something made me glance down the side of the house.  Either one of our visitors from 2018 or a relative was on the same side of the house within 3 feet of where that last visitor was standing.  It's in the corner of the lot where trees from the four houses make a fairly dense cover.  As a rough guess, this guy is about 8" tall.

With those talons if he decided to to dive bomb you there would be blood as well.

Inside the Worst Maritime Disaster in Decades

Any recreational boaters here?  Anyone who has been out of sight of land, where you know that if things go squirrely you don't go home?  Known that the bottom was a mile or more below you and that was closest land you could get to?  Without your boat you're in a world of trouble.  If you're waiting for a search and rescue aircraft, you're a tiny target in a big ocean.  

I've always thought that the giant cargo container freighters, giant oil tankers, and other vessels in the size class near that of an aircraft carrier are capable of surviving anything the sea could hand out.  All of these are monstrous compared to sizes of boats I've been out on.  I've heard of guys on small sailboats surviving hurricanes.  Boats that people who work for a living and decide to get away for a few years, or retire onto, buy.  If a 40 or 50 foot, single-mast sailboat can take on a hurricane, why not a 790 foot long cargo ship capable of carrying 15,000 tons? 

Last month, Vanity Fair (of all places) ran an article on the wreck and sinking of the cargo ship "El Faro", a cargo ship that sailed right into the path of Hurricane Joaquin in 2015.  I remembered this because it was early October, and storms in that general area are always worth keeping an eye on.  I heard about this ship that had sailed and was heading for trouble, but assumed that with a professional captain on a ship that size, they shouldn't be at terrible risk.  So they get inconvenienced by changing course to stay in a lee or "heave-to", slow down, and point the bow into the wind, so what?  They should make it to their destination.

The article is long, but worth reading.  I don't think I'm giving away a major spoiler that the problem was a convergence of the storm intensifying more than expected, and the captain not willing to give it the respect it deserved, worrying too much about making his schedule.  Compounded with bad and conflicting information about the storm, because the forecasts were made by people.  Despite the elegant computer models and supercomputers to run them, no two models agree exactly: an experienced forecaster is still the best judge.  As the old saying goes, experience is gained by making mistakes and, most importantly, learning from them. 

It is unlikely that Davidson ever fully understood that he had sailed into the eye wall of Joaquin, but he must have realized by now that he had come much too close. As is usually the case, the catastrophe was unfolding because of a combination of factors that had aligned, which included: Davidson’s caution with the home office; his decision to take a straight-line course; the subtle pressures to stick to the schedule; the systematic failure of the forecasts; the persuasiveness of the B.V.S. graphics; the lack of a functioning anemometer; the failure by some to challenge Davidson’s thinking more vigorously; the initial attribution of the ship’s list entirely to the winds; and finally a certain mental inertia that had overcome all of them. This is the stuff of tragedy that can never be completely explained.

Davidson is Captain Michael Davidson; experienced, 53, and known as a stickler for safety.  He left behind a wife and two college-age daughters. Neither his remains nor those of his shipmates were ever recovered.  As best as can be reconstructed, El Faro went down around 7:40 AM on the morning of October 1st.  Search operations were actually started by Hurricane Hunters later that day, but not beginning in earnest until the next day due to the hurricane.  No survivors were ever found.  The ship was eventually found in 15,000 feet of water, and recovery operations attempting to find the onboard voice recorder lasted until April of 2016.  Coast Guard investigators placed virtually all of the blame on captain Michael Davidson.

GOES-13 Image (from Wikipedia) that's coincidentally captured as El Faro was sinking.

Hipster Goes Camping in $145,000 Tesla

This was originally going to be a story put together by linking to Bloomberg.com, the business news folks.  Then I found they didn't want play nice and let me copy any of their text, and that got me thinking.  I said, "eff it anyway, why the hell should I send even one pair of eyes to Michael Freaking Bloomberg's site"?  I mean the guy's the most reliable fascist prick in American politics, he hates my guts as a gun owner, so why should help him even if it's a billionth of penny? 

So I found other sources carrying the same story, and linking to Bloomberg.  You're an adult; if you feel like going to Bloomberg's site, go ahead, but I'll skip that. 

I'm not sure if said hipster hasn't gone camping before or just hasn't taken his big bucks Tesla, but there's an interesting aspect to this story.  The Tesla Model S has a mode that users informally call "camper mode".  It configures the car in a low current consumption mode, allowing you to sleep in the back with the air conditioner on (although it appears to leave the running lights on).  It seems it would be most comfortable if you're under 5'6"; if you're bigger you'll have to sleep on your side with your knees bent.  Assuming you're in a campground, you'll be the quietest air conditioned camper in the place. 

Because an electric car is silent when not moving, noise isn’t a problem and ventilation needn’t be an issue either. Assuming your battery won’t run down too far, you can set the climate control system temperature, fan, and filtration to your preferred levels. In Tom Randall’s test night, he found that the battery charge decreased from 40 percent to 33 percent. That still left him with a 90-mile driving range for the Model S configuration he was sleep testing.

It's not as easy as pulling into a campground and flipping a switch, but you can get there. There are online forums, tutorials, and an enthusiastic community.  There's even supposed to be an independent (that is, not Tesla-official) phone app that you can use to put your car in camper mode.

Growing up in Florida, I think of camping weather as November through March or April.  This time of year is too unpleasant, but I never had a camper with air conditioning.  I could see how having AC would extend my camping to other times of year.  Not that a Tesla is even remotely in my future! 

(From the Daily Mail - and a completely different, non-camping story.  Just so you see we're not talking luxury accommodations here.)

Info Bleg

I've been wearing electronic hearing protection for shooting for a few years, now.  These are over the ear protection and they can make it hard to get a good cheek weld. Or, like Mrs. Graybeard, recoil knocks her hearing protection out place on every shot. 

I'd like to get a pair of electronic in-the-ear-canal plugs, but I don't know who's good.  I've seen some at a couple of hundred$, and I'd prefer to keep it in the price range more like this ($50-ish) and less like this ($400-ish).  And for darned sure not like this.  (Yeah, I know.  It's Orvis; what do I expect?)

Anybody have any favorites?  In-the-ear, active electronic hearing protection. 

Today was a maintenance day around the house.  Had to install some upgrades to software in a couple of places, which always seems to take more time than it's supposed to.  Had to do some work around the house, but only about an hour outside.  Miscellaneous junk like that. 

(source)

The Lessons of Cecil the Lion

H/T to Michael Bane for posting a link to Captain Capitalism on the whole Cecil the Lion affair.

In a week where the undercover videos of the horrific things happening at Planned Parenthood kept getting more and more disturbing, the Networks went into panic mode about Cecil and ignored the sale of aborted baby parts.

According to the Media Research Center, in just one day, the various broadcast networks’ news programs have already given the death of Cecil the Lion more coverage than two weeks of videos that appear to show  Planned Parenthood senior officials ghoulishly trafficking illegally in dead baby parts...

In summation, in two weeks the networks have given the Planned Parenthood atrocity 11 minutes of coverage. In a single day, the death of an animal has earned 14 minutes of coverage..

Regular readers will know that I'm not a hunter, and that I have cats, so I'm especially unlikely to go hunting a cat.  Dropping about $60 or $70,000 to go shoot a lion is nowhere on my list of things I'd like to do.  On the other hand, I know enough about this stuff to know that you don't just fly to some place in Africa, grab your gun off the plane and "go shoot you a lion".  You pay big fees and have to be led by local guides; you can only hunt in managed areas for managed animals for a trophy.  When I heard that this dentist had killed this "celebrity lion", I immediately figured the guides must have done something really wrong and the first thing I heard about the incident (aside from that it happened at all) was that the guides were under investigation.  The dentist may well have shot the arrow, but the fault is the guides'. 

But the outrage against the dentist who bow hunted the lion has been nothing short of complete, unbridled rage, with death threats, horrible insults being thrown at him online, and more.  The guy basically has had to go into hiding, close his office, layoff his staff, and abandon his patients; the crowd rage has hurt a lot of other people.  We've seen glimmers of this before, some of which I wrote about here, for example.  But here's where Captain Capitalism did something more constructive than I did.

And so naturally like any agitating realistic and principled person I went online, made a YouTube video and told people to stop being sheeple and think about how the media is potentially ruining an innocent man's life all to boost ratings.

Teh interwebz were having none of it.

Now, Dr. Palmer wasn't the only one getting death threats, but so was I.  And this of course, bathed in an endless list of brilliant and cogent arguments presented by the YouTube community about me "being a dumbass" or "a stupid fucker" and other arguments of intelligence, thought, and ponderance proving the quality of education the Millennial generation is receiving in college.  But it wasn't the death threats or names that forced me to pull the video (that comes with the territory), it was when they started posting the private data of Dr. Palmer that I now had a legal risk.  And so unfortunately the video had to come down.

And there's a couple of big lessons here.

Still, we don't need the video to realize a very important and vital lesson about the mental faculties of your average American.  And that lesson is they are no longer capable of logic, reason, empiricism or sanity.  Worse, they're so selfish and narcissistic, they happily put their emotions over principles and the rights of others.  With no proof (at that point in time) that Dr. Palmer was guilty of violating any law people were already threatening to kill him, ruin his career, and ruin his life.  Some were so far gone they said they didn't care about the legality of his kill, they just thought he should be punished for hunting.  And it is this principleless, amoral, mindless mob who put their emotions over, not just an individual's rights, but reality, facts, and truth that not only makes it difficult for the legal system to mete out justice, but is undermining our respective societies today.

The real story is not that poor Cecil was tragically shot.  It's that western civilization, specifically the younger generations, have lost their collective minds and do not have the mental faculties to be adults, let alone adults in the free world.  They are effectively zombies.  And there is no reasoning with them.

Plan accordingly.

Consider that this is a group of people who would kill someone or just ruin their life because they were involved in a tragic mistake on another person's part (the guides in this case) but the group doesn't care at all about the killing and dismembering of humans for profit.  It's hard to argue they're fit to make the important decisions incumbent in a democratic republic. 

(Glen McCoy) 

As Captain Capitalism says, prepare for dealing with the zombie hordes.  For real.

Hurricane Season 2014 Wrap Up

Folks who live away from the East or Gulf coasts may not care about this, but I keep track of the hurricane season activity.  Today is the last day of the season, and while I could have really written this at the end of October when Tropical Storm Hanna dissipated, it's best to get the whole season.  Although the predictions vary, NOAA's last prediction before the season (5/22) was eight to 13 tropical storms, including three to six hurricanes, only one or two of them major (with winds over 110 MPH).  There were eight tropical storms, six made it to hurricane status and two became major hurricanes.  One of those, Edouard, was Major for a few hours, while Gonzalo stayed a Major storm for days.  All things considered, their predictions were rather good. Those predictions have often tended to be good for a laugh after the season.

I've been a fan of Ryan Maue's Accumulated Cyclone Energy model since I ran across it a few years ago because I think by integrating both the intensity and the duration you get a better measure of a storm's impact, or potential impact.  Consider Edouard, which was a tropical storm for several days before becoming a hurricane and was a Major storm for one forecast period vs. Gonzalo which was a tropical storm for less time but a Major storm for a 3 1/2 days.  Both storms lasted about the same amount of time and both are counted as Major Hurricanes, but Edouard had an ACE of 15.35 while Gonzalo was the "worse" storm at an ACE of 25.365.  The ACE for the North Atlantic Basin for the year to date is 63% of climatological normal, another mild year.  (Last year was 30%).

One storm hit the US; Hurricane Arthur hit the outer banks of North Carolina on the July 4th weekend.  Florida has not had a hurricane since Wilma in 2005, a record for longest time since a hurricane made landfall in the state.

As I reported in October, it's beginning to look like the era of 'high spin cycle' tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic basin that started in 1995 has run its course.  If this is indeed the case, hurricanes in the North Atlantic will be less of a concern for next 20 years, allowing a lot more building along the coast, which will result in more damage in 30 years when the next Sandy hits and no one remembers what a hurricane was like. 

Hurricanes are good disasters for the lazy man, so I like them. There's no need to go get in line for plywood for your shutters, canned food or bottled water or any of that. All of it is stuff you can prepare for months or years in advance. Yeah, you have to go put up the shutters and do some stuff in advance of the storm, but you sure don't need to be in line at stores. Or in line at a FEMA tractor trailer afterwards.

Techy Tuesday - Remember the Biolite Kickstarter? Did You Buy In?

Back in Mid-June, I did a post about a Kickstarter campaign I found for a Biolite BaseCamp stove.  I took the bait and bought one, knowing I wouldn't get it until late September or early October.

Well, it's here, and so far I'm underwhelmed.

The attraction of the Biolite stove isn't that it's a nice little woodburning stove to cook on - I have at least two of those - the attraction is that it has a thermoelectric generator that will charge things you would charge with a USB charger: 5V at 1A.  The stove has a little panel on it with status LEDs that tell you the charge state on its internal 5V 2.2 AH battery, and the intensity of your fire.  This is the only picture of it I could find (and didn't think to take my own).  (Biolite photo you can see lots of other pictures of it at their place.)

The battery status is on the left (four LEDs) while the fire is a 2 LED fire.  My issue is that I've never been able to charge the internal battery and get it to go past the second LED.  We've run the thing more than three hours spread over two occasions and have yet to see the internal battery charge.   Most of that time, I've run it at fire levels I'd never want to grill on.  We've connected the charger to an iPhone and a Kindle and neither one charged.  The charger would only turn on briefly, when the battery was at the second LED, then turn back off. 

My impression is that it's defective and I've initiated contact with their Customer Support folks, who asked for some more details. 

Did any of you guys also get in on this kickstarter?  If so, is yours working better than mine?  If there's interest, I'll let you know what's up with it. 

 

10 Years Ago Today

We were in the cleanup and aftermath of Hurricane Jeanne, the second of the two hurricanes to hit us directly in 2004.  Charley, which was a small but intense Cat 5 storm when it came ashore in Charlotte Harbor, brushed us in late August but only at tropical storm strength.  The storm came ashore almost exactly where Hurricane Frances came ashore on September 5th, they came ashore within roughly 8 miles of each other, between the cities of Ft. Pierce and Stuart on the SE coast of Florida. 

Jeanne had one of those peculiar paths hurricanes sometimes get, going north of the Bahamas, well offshore from here, but then doing a loop and coming back to hit us.  From our standpoint it was convenient, if not a little spooky.  After the clean up from Frances and life getting back to normal (traffic lights actually working), we took off for a week's vacation in the upper peninsula of Michigan to look for samples of the native copper it's famous for up there.  As I recall, we flew back into town on Wednesday and the storm hit on Saturday night (it came ashore Sunday morning).  It's as if it waited for us to come back. 

Like Frances, our power stayed on until the eye was well past and the winds shifted from easterly to more southerly.  Unlike Frances, we'd bought a few battery backup power supplies for the critical stuff, so I could watch some goofy movie on the Sci-Fi channel and as the lights flickered, I could still watch the movie.  After Frances our power was out from just before daybreak until 9 that night - about 15 or 16 hours.  After Jeanne it stayed out about 36 hours.  Both of those times are exceptionally short, for reasons I've never understood.  Many friends were without power for weeks after Frances only to lose it again for weeks after Jeanne. 

More hurricanes would hit elsewhere in Florida that year, but Wilma late in the season of 2005, was the last before the current 9 year gap (and counting) without a hurricane making landfall in Florida.  Wilma removed the new roof my brother put on his south Palm Beach County home after Frances and Jeanne, but Wilma is only notable to me because it was late October and the cold front pushing it northeast and over the state actually got me cold while I was outside cleaning up.  It was the only time in my life I've gotten cold cleaning up after a hurricane or tropical storm! 

It is beginning to look like the era of 'high spin cycle' tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic basin that started in 1995 has run its course with only five named storms recorded through today (and none expected through the end of September). There were hints of that demise last year with a below normal level of hurricane development, i.e., only two Cat I storms - the last time that the Atlantic only had two hurricanes in a season was 1982. The last time that a season had three or less named storms by August 31st was in 1994 - the last year of the previous 'quiet cycle' in the Atlantic.

Since the lack of activity cannot be blamed on an El Nino event (it has not yet started), it is increasingly likely that the period of Atlantic high tropical cyclone activity has ended. However, it is important to remember that the likelihood of a U.S. hurricane landfall is about the same (approximately 22%) during a 'quiet cycle' era as it is during an 'active cycle' era - and that is also true for a Florida hurricane landfall (about 5%).

Behold... The Salmon Cannon

If you're not in the Pacific Northwest salmon country, and I'm about as far from there as you can get and still be on the North American Continent, you might not realize that transporting salmon around hydroelectric dams is a big problem - and a small industry.  According to one source I read, the Fed.gov spent over $500 million transporting about 2 million salmon around dams on the Columbia river - or $250 per fish.  I would imagine you could buy them airfare and fly them inland for not much less.  (Imagine if you will an airport waiting area populated by ticket-holding salmon who are reading newspapers, fiddling with their smartphones and semi-patiently waiting for their plane to leave).  From The Verge, a story about a possible way to do it cheaper, better for the fish, and, well, funnier: 

Salmon are amazing fish. They’ll swim hundreds of miles against the current, hurl themselves up waterfalls, and risk being eaten by bears as they return to their birthplace to spawn. But some obstacles are too much, and that’s where Whooshh Innovations comes in. Behold, the salmon cannon. Seriously, watch this video of fish getting launched out of pneumatic tubes:

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Whooshh Innovations ("Whoosh" was already taken) first designed its tubes to transport fruit, but as Washington state debated what do about hydroelectric dams and the salmon whose migrations they blocked, the company saw its technology might have another purpose. If Whooshh tubes could send apples flying over long distances without damaging them, maybe, an employee thought, they could suck fish up and over the dams blocking the Columbia river.

So they put a tilapia into the fruit tube and let it fly, proving both fish and fruit are subject to Bernoulli's laws.  Whooshh is aware of the giggle factor here.  To quote Todd Deligan, Whooshh's vice president:

"At a talk at the National Hydropower Association, I hit play on the video and the first fish goes flying out, and the audience is dying. I had to say, 'It's okay to laugh, this is utterly ridiculous.' Then people start talking and they say, 'Holy cow, why hadn't we thought of something like this before?'"

The salmon cannon isn't fully operational, but they have tested it by destroying Alderan, a small planet on the edges of the empire ... no, sorry ... they've tested it a couple of times in the Columbia River system.

The test in June showed that fish will voluntarily enter the tube. When they swim into the entrance, the vacuum sucks them in and gives them initial boost; after that, elevated pressure behind the fish keeps them moving at about 15 to 22 miles per hour till they go flying out the other end. The speed, Deligan says, can be adjusted. Mist is applied to keep the fish wet as they zoom along. Currently the tubes are being hand-loaded, but Deligan says the test at the Roza site showed that "the fish just swim right in."

More tests are planned, but unless something bad shows up, it looks like someday you might see salmon flying to get around dams.  Without chartering airplanes.

Life in Florida - What They Don't Tell You

22 year old Jessica Vaughn was tubing in the intracoastal waterway close to downtown Ft. Lauderdale and was bitten by bull shark.  This screen cap of the area in Bing Maps shows just how densely populated the area is (the blue dot marks where she was pulled from the water and ambulance called):

One of her group claimed to know the shark to be a Bull shark by sight.  I wouldn't doubt it.  First, Bulls are known to go into water much fresher than that spot, which is around three miles from Port Everglades inlet and the ocean.  Second, Bulls are known to be aggressive biters and known to be behind many inshore shark attacks.  Third, that wound absolutely looks like the bite pattern of a Bull! A set of pictures on the Daily Mail show the underside of her calf where each and every tooth mark is visible.   Thankfully, surgeons were able to repair her wounds and she was discharged from the hospital. 

As a science nerd who spent a lot time in the water, I read all the research available on shark attacks as part of year long "open research" class I was allowed to take in my last year of high school.  Based on that I'd say this attack has the look of a "hit and run" type of attack.  The shark took a bite to decide if she tasted like food and then spit her out.  Possibly mistaken identity: the shark thought her leg was a fish or some other natural prey, took a bite and thought, "not food".  If that shark had really wanted to feed, I suspect it could have taken her lower leg off.  There's an old observation among shark researchers that if a large shark is successful in an attack, you get a missing person report, not a shark bite.  At an estimated four feet long, this one wasn't big enough to make her disappear, but she's still lucky. 

I live within about half mile of the Indian River lagoon and Bull sharks are regulars in the lagoon.  The water is much less tidal and salty than where this attack took place in Ft. Lauderdale, but that Wikipedia article shows Bull sharks go into completely fresh water.  You need to know that most shark attacks happen in relatively shallow water (because most people stay in shallow water) and in dim light.  Either at night, dawn or dusk, or in dark or murky water, like this incident.  Wading at daybreak casting the saltwater flats while trailing a stringer of fish is begging to be hit by a shark.  If you go wading, put the fish in a cooler or plastic tub or something that keeps them from making sounds or putting out a scent trail in the water. 

I saw a commercial that featured some folks surfing at night.  That's more dangerous than daytime surfing anywhere that I know of.  Swimming at night isn't any better.  Yeah, I know, people do it all the time. 

One of these days, I'll tell you some alligator stories.  All Floridians have some of those, too.

It's A Wrap

A diamond wrap to be precise. And the very last touches on the second of two rods I've recently built.

This is the plug rod that I started back in July, then put aside to work on Mrs. Graybeard's rod. 

This was taken while the rod is mounted in my finishing fixture, with a barbecue rotisserie motor spinning the rod to keep the epoxy from running and dripping, above my terribly messy workbench.  The old Penn Spinfisher 710 box contains rod making supplies. You can see spools of thread, a razor knife (orange/red handle), scissors, hemostat, and more miscellaneous tools than I feel like naming.  The rod uses metallic blue and red threads, as well as non-metallic red, blue and white thread.  You can see the metallic blue easily where I have the most of it, at the ends of the diamond - the red threads are in the wrap itself and hard to see here. 

It's dry now.  Might even be fishable in the morning, when we're planning to get out and play.

Pretty Durn Impressive

Watch what a modern crossbow can do to equally modern level IIIA body armor:



Granted this is $1450 "Tactical" crossbow, but cutting through soft body armor and then getting 14" penetration into ballistic gel is nothing to laugh at.  Even though it's only 150-ish ft. lbs, it's very effective when a single, well-placed shot will do. 

The only drawback to this bow is the long cycle time to reload, but you won't have too little penetration; the same guy shows the same crossbow putting arrows through a car door, too.   It's interesting that the first crossbows were used to cut through the first soft body armor (leather and chain mail) and today's crossbows can cut through modern Kevlar body armor. 

Years ago, an older guy I worked with told me that if you're ever shot with a crossbow, you were going to wish you were really shot with a gun.  He went on to tell a story, I have no idea if it's true, of a homeowner who heard the proverbial bump in the night of a burglar in his home, and armed with his crossbow, literally nailed the perp to the wall, like a bug in a science lab, and left him there until the police came. 

The Wrath of the "Tolerant" Left*

They're at it again; the "it" this time is attacking someone who posted pictures from a hunting trip online, with the same death threats and other evidence of tolerance we hear about all the time.

I think the first story I posted about this was about Olympic shotgunner Corey Cogdell and the death threats she got for daring to speak about hunting.  A few months ago, Michael Bane relayed the story of one of his friends, NBC Sports host Michael Baker, who had just returned from a trip to Africa and posted about taking an elephant on his trip.  The lefty-verse erupted in outrage, showering abuse on Baker, too.  I consider this a "PG13" blog, and I won't print much of it here, but a relatively polite comment was:

Worthless Cunt Kills Elephant In NRA-Sponsored TV Show

(also marking the first time I've seen the "c"-word applied to a guy)

The Blaze brings today's story that Melissa Bachman, who hosts "Winchester's Deadly Passion" posted a picture of herself with an African Lion she took recently.  She was proud she had tracked and stalked the big cat to within 60 yards.

“An incredible day hunting in South Africa! Stalked inside 60-yards on this beautiful male lion…what a hunt!” she tweeted from her now deleted account, attaching a picture of her kneeling over the dead adult lion.

The lefties went into their predictable outrage.

“I hope someone smiles like her, when someone kills slowly and painfully,” said a user going by “WolverHampton.”

What these folks know about African safari hunting or wildlife management wouldn't fill a thimble.  One just doesn't waltz into the bush in Africa and go shoot something.  The governments have set up programs to manage their resources and make a good chunk of income from tourists.  The population of predators and prey both need to be managed, and there are special considerations for animals that are potentially destructive to their environment, like elephants.  The utopian dream of never being involved and just letting nature be nature is just that: a dream.  African game competes with the people for food (and, in some cases, considers the people as food).  Wildlife needs to be managed, so why shouldn't the government make money from it, and why shouldn't those who pay big money get to go hunting?  

And it's not just an African problem.  I've read many times (here, for example) that mountain lions are moving into the suburbs in the US, and that there are more of them in the suburbs than in the more rural areas for the simple reason that there's more food in the suburbs.  Coyotes are being spotted in urban areas, like Long Island and New York City.  Know any missing dogs or cats, anyone? 

I've said before that I've never hunted, and while I say I'd like to try turkey hunting, the mere fact that something else always seems to take priority says it's not my top priority.  I would have a tough time killing any large cat, except in the case of self defense.  All that said, I don't have a single problem with what Bachman, Baker or Cogdell have been gutted in the media for doing. 


* - I know they're lefty anti-gun and not conservative for two reasons.  The first reason, to borrow a saying, is "If a conservative doesn't like hunting, she doesn't go hunting.  If a liberal doesn't like hunting, she tries to ban hunting worldwide".  Second, more pragmatically, I never met a conservative that objected to hunting.  There must be one or two out there, but they're not sending death threats: see point 1.   

 

Somehow, I Think This Might Not End Well

So PETA (no, not the People Eating Tasty Animals - the real PETA) has decided to introduce drones to:

...collect and publicize footage of hunters shooting animals and allowing them to escape, only to die slowly and in agony, among other common violations.

They also want them used to fly over factory farms and "...other areas that are hotbeds of abuse."

You know what?  I'm not going to focus on those lies.  Everyone who has read the first thing about hunting, let alone known actual hunters, knows that hunters are committed to ethical hunting, "one shot, one kill", and committed to not seeing animals suffer.  It's just that accidents happen and an animal gets away from time to time, not that hunters are being deliberately cruel.  Deliberately cruel is the description for PETA, who killed over 92 % of "adoptable pets" between 1998 and 2012 in Virginia. 

For some unknown reason, Electronic Component News, a trade magazine for engineers of all types, is all over this story.  PETA claims they'll be flying a specially marked version of the AR.Drone 2.0 from Parrot.  The control is via WiFi, and Parrot has apps to run on your iPhone or Android to control these guys.

Hunting in some form or other, of course, is legal in all 50 states.  Some of them - even the Peoples' Republic of Massachusetts - have coded into law that it's illegal to harass hunters:

In Massachusetts, for example, it is illegal to “obstruct, interfere with or otherwise prevent the lawful taking of fish or wildlife by another at the locale where such activity is taking place.” If you fly a drone above a hunter, you not only present a tempting (and slow-moving) target, but you could go to jail or pay a hefty fine.

The first comment is indicative of where I think this is going:

Well... I could use a slow moving practice target. You fly that thing above my property and I have every right to bring it down... and no... I'm not giving you the wreckage back. I'm mounting that puppy.

It's a little nastier than that, though.  WiFi links in wooded areas, where you might be hunting deer, ducks, or whatever,  aren't going to be very long range. The chances of PETA kids meeting Elmer Fudd up close and personal might be a bit higher than they'd like. While I'm comfortable that the vast majority of hunters wouldn't fire on a PETA kid, accidental shootings happen in the woods, especially with people who don't know what they're doing out there.  There might even be some who would invoke the 3 S mantra.  Ya never know.

A Different Kind of Project

The projects I've written about here have tended to be kind of techy - whether it's my little solar panel plaything or my AR-15.  This is a different kind, rather low tech in comparison.  No electronics at all.  No soldering.  No machining (probably).   

I'm making a couple of fishing rods.  Took off Friday for a trip over to a great store that sells everything you need for rod making, Mud-Hole in Oviedo (between Orlando and Sanford).  (No financial affiliation, yada, yada.  I was just really pleased with the service and selection).

I'm not new at this, but like everything else in fishing, it has changed a lot in the 30+ years since I fished regularly.  When I was in my early 20s, and fishing from piers and jetties, I would look at the custom rods in the tackle shops and drool.  Surely all that fancy work had to make a better rod, right?  But on a part-time work/part-time student budget, over a hundred bucks for a custom rod was big money.  So I got a book and learned to do it myself.  Now, in those days, custom rods tended to have a "diamond wrap", a pattern formed by winding thread up and down the blank above the handle.  It was the sign of a custom rod because no factory would spend that much time and effort to do it. Today, some custom rod builders actually weave patterns in the thread

Joey's custom rods, just somedood I found online.  Not mine.  This is the kind of custom thread work guys are doing today.  

Rod making requires virtually no tools except the thread that holds the guides in place.  Add in some glue (usually epoxy), masking tape, a finish (again, usually a clear liquid epoxy), and an Exacto knife or scalpel.  There are some times and places where a little motorization helps, and many makers use a sewing machine motor.  The finishes we use tend to be runny and need to be slowly turned to keep them from looking bad.  I have an ancient barbecue rotisserie motor.  I wound several rods using nothing more than my lap, and wrapped the thread around the pages of the phone book to add tension.  This isn't rocket surgery. 

I still have and fish with the first rod I ever built from purchased parts - right around 1974 or '75, if I recall.  I re-did the diamond wrap around the bottom of the rod a couple of times, with the current build going back to about 1979 or 80.  Being just about 40 years old, the guides were starting to show signs it was time to rebuild the rod.  A spinning rod I built in the early '80s had two guides that actually came apart when I took it out a couple of years ago; the older rod apparently had better guides. 

And I'm building a custom for Mrs. Graybeard that will be beautiful.  Since it has been many years since I've done this, I'm doing mine first as a sort-of sacrificial project.  Better to make my mistakes on this one than the next.  I took the old rod apart today.  Sawed the reel seat in half with a cutoff wheel in a Dremel and pried it off.  Removed all the guides.  Started the process of rebuilding from a bare blank.  I'll update as I go along.  

New Florida Record Burmese Python

Jason Leon, a south Florida resident, was driving an ATV around the Florida City area with some friends when he noticed a snake's head sticking out of the brush.  He got off the bike, grabbed the snake behind its head and started pulling it out.  And pulling... and pulling.

“I’m actually really mad I had to kill it,” Leon, 23, said Monday. “But at one point it coiled around both of my legs and my waist, and I wasn’t going to take a chance on letting that thing get to my neck.”

So he killed with a knife.  The snake measured 18 feet 8 inches long and weighed 128 pounds, a new state record.  Here, three people at the University of Florida lab in South Florida pose with the snake to put that size into perspective:

(credit)

The Burmese python is an invasive species here in Florida, especially the Everglades.  There have been statewide hunts for them, organized hunts, and challenges to chefs to develop recipes for pythons and the other invasive species we have problems with.  The python permit is a year long permit that allows you take several different species of reptiles. 

Waiting for the inevitable "tastes like chicken" or "18 foot long hot dog" jokes to start...

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05

/20/3407473/palmetbay-man-wrestles-kills.html#storylink=cpy

The Eastern Sports & Outdoor Show

Sebastian and Bitter at "Shall Not Be Questioned" is really the go to guy for this story, but I just want to point out a couple of things to those of you who may not have noticed or cared about this story.

The Eastern Sports & Outdoor Show claims to be "the largest consumer event of its kind in North America" and from everything I can determine, it probably is.  They estimate that SHOT show hosts about 60,000 people while the ESOS hosts over 200,000, more than three times the SHOT crowd.  ESOS is being held in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the week of February 2-10.

Given how large an "Outdoor Show" it is, it came as a surprise to lots of good folks that Reed Exhibitions, the folks who run ESOS, decided to not allow any of those icky, Evil Black Rifles or, really, anything black and scary looking at the show this year.  Their statement, currently on their web page, says:

As a hunting-focused event, we welcome exhibitors who wish to showcase products and firearms that serve the traditional needs of the sport. Clearly, we strongly support the 2nd Amendment. However, this year we have made the decision not to include certain products that in the current climate may attract negative attention that would distract from the strong focus on hunting and fishing at this family-oriented event and possibly disrupt the broader positive experience of our guests.

The ban goes so far as to prevent the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs from holding a raffle they intended to sell tickets for at the show.  They not only couldn't show the AR they were raffling, they weren't allowed to show a photograph of it.

This went over about as well as a turd in the punchbowl, and the exodus of exhibitors and even sponsors started immediately.  Cabela's was an actual sponsor of the show and they withdrew immediately - the first one I heard of.  Ruger followed.  S&W followed.  Ruger and S&W are major companies (duh!) and one show isn't going to make or break their year.  That's not the case with smaller companies, like GUTNTAG, a company that specializes in "sauces and seasonings" for cooking your kill - or catch.  Their statement reads (in part):

We have made the costly decision to withdraw because it is the right thing to do.  We are a young company that relies on this one venue to create our operating capital for the year; however we cannot support uninformed businesses caving to political pressures caused by broadly politicized events.   We proudly support the 2^nd Amendment in the capacity for which it was intended; the right of citizens to keep and bear arms.  Our freedom to do so was not for hunting or competition shooting, but protection for law abiding citizens.

Integrity spreads.  The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation dropped out.  The NRA dropped out.  The Outdoor Channel withdrew.  The National Shooting Sports Foundation is conspicuous in not withdrawing.  Yet.  And on and on it goes: Sportsmans Liquidations - a major exhibitor, Keystone Country Store - a small company, and even companies with no direct firearms business, Keene Marine, a boat company that was going to be displaying 30 boats, withdrew in solidarity.

I really feel for the small companies, like GUTNTAG and Mike Olien's Texas-based MN Outdoors

He has already spent $7,000 to secure his booth at the show, money the show's promoters will not refund, Olien said. If he joins the boycott, that money is lost. It's not chump change for a five-year-old small business. He also risks alienating Reed Exhibitions, the show promoter, that also runs shows he needs to attend closer to home in Texas and Colorado later this year.

Of course, if he doesn't join the boycott, he could be in trouble, too. And if the show attendance is too small or people aren't buying, he could lose.  It's a lose-lose for small businesses like this.

With two weeks left before the show, people on the fence are going to have make the call on whether they go to the show or not.  I don't say that thinking it's easy for the little businesses.  While fisherman and boaters may not have a dog in this fight, it's heartening to see Keene Marine stand in solidarity with strong R2KBA supporters.

To paraphrase Ben Franklin, when it comes to the second amendment, the time has come for us to hang together...or we shall surely hang separately. 

(source)

Edit 2122 EST:  Ammoland publishes a List of Exhibitors Boycotting the Show  I'm not going to try to count a list that big.  Will anyone be left? 

Abusing an Olympic Athlete

Michael Bane's blog on Saturday covered an awful story about the hate being heaped on Olympic trap shooter Corey Cogdell.  It seems that, in addition to being an Olympic trap shooter, Corey's a hunter.  The ever-so-tolerant left* has showered Corey with an astonishing number of death threats, apparently for being a hunter.

Michael opens:

I received a lovely email this morning, one that I would class as a thinly veiled threat to me and mine. It was, of course, obscene and unsigned (and neither the first I've received, nor, I imagine, the last), but I can share a bit of the joy with you:

F$%@ off, asshole! You are the s&%# that ruins America!

Yet for all that venom, it is nothing compared to the deluge of sludge, including multiple death threats, that has fallen on Olympic trapshooter (and bronze medalist in 2008) Corey Cogdell, a fine athlete, an outstanding person...and a hunter.

Michael then links to Bitter at Shall Not Be Questioned:  article 1, and article 2.  Honestly, I won't print it here.  It dignifies these scum bags more than they deserve.

At least one of the national organizations, Safari Club International, is getting behind Corey, and they all should (Hint: NSSF - this is where you should shine).  Michael has an optimistic note to end on:

I have noted the increasing calls to violence among not just anti-hunting zealots, but anti-shooting (more correctly, anti-rights) zealots as well. I believe these increasing calls to violence are because we not only are winning, but have in fact won. Americans don't want more gun control, and Americans think hunting is a perfectly fine sport. The antis have thrown everything they had against us for the last 30 years, and the American people have responded by tuning them out.

In the egalitarian world of the Internet, it's possible that Corey, Michael, and others who have been targeted by the Anti-Hunting bozos will see this.  I stand with you in every way I can.

Addition:  Michele Malkin carried this story on her site Twitchy.

* - I know they're commie anti-gun and not conservative for two reasons.  First is extending the axiom "If a conservative doesn't like hunting, she doesn't go hunting.  If a liberal doesn't like hunting, she tries to ban hunting worldwide".  Second, more pragmatically, I never met a conservative that objected to hunting.  There must be one or two out there, but they're not sending death threats: see point 1.