[ballcoach15]

I thought that name sounded familiar.

[flamehunter]

It is funny that you'd go that route. Because my generation thinks of this crazy Dominican ...

Yep, that's the first one I thought of when I heard it was named that.

[Purple Haize]

I figured that one was too easy

[01LUGrad]

That one time I ran to Walmart because of a pending hurricane and missed Jim Cantore taking pictures with shoppers by less than 5 minutes. Gripes!

[olldflame]

It is funny that you'd go that route. Because my generation thinks of this crazy Dominican ...

You call that crazy? I have 3 Dominicans living in my house who make him look like an introvert. On the ¨platano loco¨ scale, I would rate Andujar somewhere between ¨normal¨ and ¨tranqilo¨.

Wow, I just discovered Joaquin passed away just a few weeks ago at only 62 years of age. Complications of diabetes. He was just a month younger than me, and lived a half hour from here in San Pedro. I don´t know if this name was selected well in advance or not, but among the charitable efforts he was involved in was hurricane relief.

[Sly Fox]

When JA passed away, it received quite a bit of attention here in Houston. He remains a beloved character here.

For the record, a category 3 is nothing to dismiss. This storm has the potential to do massive damage to eastern seaboard whose infrastrurcure was exposed by a relatively less powerful Sandy three years ago. Of course there is plenty of time for the storm to weaken or turn direction.

[ATrain]

I believe the forecast is for it to make landfall as a category 2 in the Outter Banks right now. The Euro model is predicting it goes out to sea. Normally that would be dismissed as an anomaly, however the Euro is the only one that got it right on Sandy. Last night the Euro gained company from another model, but others are still predicting a hit to the Outter Banks.

[thepostman]

The hurricane center has updated their forcast as more models are beginning to kick this thing out to sea.

This will still have impact as we have been getting hammered with rain already from the frontal system. Should be interesting along the mid-atlantic to northeast coast the next few days.

[Humble_Opinion]

The ECMWF (Euro) has been consistent for days now. It's a higher resolution global model than the GFS and it also has a much better collection of initialization data. In most cases, it out-performs the GFS (slight exception to last winter) and all other models. From last Sunday to early in the day yesterday it was basically the EURO model vs the world. Because the high resolution hurricane models (HWRF), CMC, and GFS were all showing a convergance of Joaquin with the developing low located in the SE USA, all of the mets were starting to sound the alarm. The EURO continued to remain consistent that it wasn't going to happen. The last two rounds of model runs now show the GFS backing off and beginning to trend the direction of the EURO. It's not a complete exodus yet, but the Ensemble runs all verify that the GFS is now seeing what the EURO saw the whole time... that the strength of the storm relative to the L Pressure system was going to be too high for it to get sucked in and pulled onto the coast. Is it a certainty? No... but I think the chances of a catastrophe happening are decreasing by the hour.

[ATrain]

Amazing what a little investment in science and technology research, not to mention infrastructure, can do. Looks like the newer Euro model is being proven right again.

[thepostman]

The Euro model is good but it is far from perfect. It had it share of bad calls last winter.

[Humble_Opinion]

Amazing what a little investment in science and technology research, not to mention infrastructure, can do. Looks like the newer Euro model is being proven right again.

The difference between the two is that the EURO at least generates some revenue from its operations. They charge $250k for a subscription to the data and maintain copywrights for it. The US GFS model is maintained by the NOAA and a collection of colleges/universities and it is open for public consumption free of charge. They've done a lot of research on the model to pinpoint the shortfalls even going as far as to invite the ECMWF to investigate. They believe the issue relates to the pool of data that feeds into the model itself (initialization data). They took what the ECMWF initialized and the model performed much better compared to its own initialization. So, you are right partially - more investment needs to occur. But, if you're a college/university or a government entity, would you want to spend precious cash on a project you will get nothing out of? The answer, in my opinion, is to privatize the thing and leverage the resources of the colleges and universities to improve the model so that it can actually compete with the ECMWF. Then you start selling it.

[ballcoach15]

Looks like the weather man is like some football refs. He appears to have missed a call.

[Cider Jim]

Not much rain, but windy--I almost took flight with my Ole Miss umbrella walking across the LU bridge over 460.

[alabama24]

This sure is "historic" rain. lol

[ballcoach15]

The only thing historic about it is how badly they missed it.

[thepostman]

I would much rather them oversell than be way off and then have people not prepared.

[Humble_Opinion]

Who said it was going to be historic?

[Cider Jim]

Darrell Laurant in the Lynchburg newspaper, comparing the flood of 1985 to what Lynchburg should be preparing for this weekend:

http://www.newsadvance.com/news/local/r ... c4aa8.html

[olldflame]

Darrell Laurant in the Lynchburg newspaper, comparing the flood of 1985 to what Lynchburg should be preparing for this weekend:

http://www.newsadvance.com/news/local/r ... c4aa8.html

The original bearded scribe of the News and Advance comes out of retirement! Glad to hear Darrell is still alive and kicking. He is a talented writer, although it seemed to me that when he was covering LU athletics back in the day he was less than enthusiastic about that part of his job. Actually, the same could pretty much be said for every reporter there who had that assignment til Lang came along. I really don´t know if Chris was all that excited about it either to begin with, but he was always thorough and professional, and I think ultimately we ¨grew on him¨.

[flamehunter]

I would much rather them oversell than be way off and then have people not prepared.

Agreed. I have about 3" in the rain gauge since Friday. While not historic, that is still significant, especially given the nearly 7" we had in the previous 10 days. I think they did a pretty good job, at least the local guy I follow the most.

[Humble_Opinion]

Darrell Laurant in the Lynchburg newspaper, comparing the flood of 1985 to what Lynchburg should be preparing for this weekend:

http://www.newsadvance.com/news/local/r ... c4aa8.html

Darrell Laurant is not a meterologist. He also issued a caveat in his article that the historic rainfall amounts depended on whether Jaoquin would make landfall and that the weather models were split as to whether or not that would happen. I consider myself an enthusiast for this sort of thing and I can tell you that most of the weather models that truly matter had Jaoquin staying well offshore. From abut late Wednesday onward, almost every precipitation map I saw had Lynchburg in the 2 - 4" range.

[Chris Lang]

Darrell Laurant in the Lynchburg newspaper, comparing the flood of 1985 to what Lynchburg should be preparing for this weekend:

http://www.newsadvance.com/news/local/r ... c4aa8.html

The original bearded scribe of the News and Advance comes out of retirement! Glad to hear Darrell is still alive and kicking. He is a talented writer, although it seemed to me that when he was covering LU athletics back in the day he was less than enthusiastic about that part of his job. Actually, the same could pretty much be said for every reporter there who had that assignment til Lang came along. I really don´t know if Chris was all that excited about it either to begin with, but he was always thorough and professional, and I think ultimately we ¨grew on him¨.

Little known fact: The job I applied for in 2005 was the Virginia Tech beat opening that Nathan Warters got. They were thinking of making a change on the LU beat anyway, so they got rid of my predecessor and hired me for a job covering LU and auto racing. But that job wasn't even open when I was looking. Nathan had more experience covering autos, so we ultimately chose to have him do VT/auto and me do LU and golf. I didn't view it as a consolation prize, mostly because I had covered lower-level DI sports for eight years in Flagstaff and was well versed in FCS football and low-major hoops. The fact that the N&A actually had a travel budget excited me. Also, I was coming from a smaller paper where I was sports editor and had to do hands-on layout and design work three or four days a week, along with writing. So being able to be a) closer to home and b) simply a writer really made the gig appealing. It was my beat and I was going to do everything to own it, so it ended up being a beneficial thing for both me and LU fans who read my stuff. The scope of the beat grew tremendously over the decade that I covered it, and I tried to grow along with it. Anyway, figured I'd respond since I was mentioned here.

[alabama24]

Thanks Lang. Good luck with the new job!

[thepostman]

Models are starting to come to agreement that there will be a,pretty decent storm that could effect you all in Lynchburg. Better get your milk and bread!

Get the wipers up!