By Bill Korbel

This fall’s mega movie hit is the apocolyptic film 2012.  In case you have not been near a television for the last week or so and therefore have not seen any of the commericals for the film,  here’s the plot summary (and I promise not to give anything away that might spoil it for you).

A scientist discovers that certain astronomical events will shortly destroy the planet and everyone and everything on it.  Governments get together and while skeptical, join efforts to save as many people as possible.  They do this while keeping it secret from the general population.  Through the film, we follow an eclectic  group citizens as they try to save themselves from the inevitable as the planet crumbles around them.                                                                             

Oh … wait a minute.  That’s not the plot line of 2012.  Well it is, sort of, but it is also the plot of the 1951 blockbuster ” When Worlds Collide.”  I’m not saying the producer of 2012 ripped off the older version of planetary destruction, but there sure are a lot of similarities.  By the way, the 1951 film won the Oscar for special effects and I can guarantee 2012 will do the same.

Sure it’s full of implausible moments, but it is well acted with a fine cast and the special effects are mind boggling.  I have never seen destruction on a global scale so realistically depicted.  I’m talking about “2012,” not “When Worlds Collide,” although that’s exactly what movie reviewers wrote about that film nearly 60 years ago.  It just proves the adage: what’s old is new again.    One more bit of advice.  It runs 2 hours and 45 minutes.  Add in 15 minutes of coming attractions and you are going to be sitting in the theater for 3 hours, so don’t make my mistake and drink a soda before the film starts.

By Bill Korbel

Now that it’s November and the hours of daylight are rapidly shrinking, it’s probably time to start thinking about winter.  There … I’ve said it.  We hardly had a spring or summer this year and now we head for winter.   Viewers are already asking me what is it going to be like?  Will it be cold?  Lots of snow?  Well, I must confess that I am not a long range forecaster.  I started my weather career  in the Air Force where mission forecasts rarely went beyond 24 hours.  At News12 we stretch that to 7 days.  But that’s still relatively short.  Long range forecasting uses a different set of skills and if anything is even more problematic than what I do but, for what it’s worth, here is what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration long range gurus are saying.

Their forecasts deal in probabilities.   Long Island  is expected to have equal chances of colder or warmer temperatures and above or below average precipitation.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t tell us a whole lot, does it?  Might as well flip a coin.   It’s probably best to think of the forecast as indicating near normal conditions.  They think the Pacific NW and the midwest will be drier than normal, while the southwest, south and southeast will be wetter.  Most of the nation will be warmer than normal, except for the gulf Coast, the southeast, and mid Atlantic states.

If you want to see the entire forecast and larger images, here is link.

Last winter turned out to be about normal in terms of temperature with above normal snowfall.  At Brookhaven National Lab the average seasonal snow is 31″.  Last year the lab measured 43″ although that number varied quite a bit around the island.  We had no blockbuster storms but seemingly endless 1,2 and 3″ snowfalls.  The two previous winters brought very little snow our way with 10″ in 2006-07 and 12″ in 2007-08.

In case you are curious, the least amount of snow was 5.5″ in the winter of 2002-03.  The following winter dumped 60″ ( 5 feet) of snow on us.  The most ever recorded was 91″ in 1995-96.

Bill Korbel

By Bill Korbel

Have you ever walked into a room and forgot why you went there in the first place?   How about misplacing your keys or wallet or a child?  (Well, maybe not a child)  If you answered no, you are fibbing.  We all do it.  Some more then others.  I blame it on a brain too full of stuff.  It’s like a computer hard drive.  Fill it up and before you can add another file you have to delete something.  I think my hard drive is full and I either need a new and larger one (unlikely) or I have to forget some old stuff. I know that’s not how it works but I like the analogy anyway.

In an effort to limit the inevitable memory lapses, I have starting using a few tricks.

I try to put keys, wallet, sunglasses and other sundries in the same place.   Memory experts say it helps to verbalize things.  If I must place an item in a different place I say to myself: “I am putting the keys on the kitchen table.”  I do this when I fly.  I tend to read the aircraft checklists outloud.  It sinks in better and as a side effect, makes anyone flying with me more comfortable thinking I know what I am doing.

Perhaps because of aviation, I am big on checklists.  One of my favorites is a trip checklist.  It includes everything that I need or needs to be accomplished before leaving the house on a trip.  This includes the obvious, such as clothing, tickets and identification, to the not so obvious, like cell phone chargers, medicine and contact numbers.  Yes, it also has a line to check that the stove and other appliances are turned off.  All told there are about 15 items.   It’s the last thing I look at before locking the door.

Names still befuddle me and is a recurring cause of embarrassment, as it is to many people.  The experts tell me that when meeting someone new we should repeat the name several times in our mind and then use it in a sentence as soon as possible.  It can also help to make a physical connection to the name such as Bill and beard.  I don’t find this useful but maybe you do.

Some people dutifully enter things in cell phones or other electronic devices.  I’m old fashioned.  I find a small sheet of paper tucked in a shirt pocket can hold most of what I need to know for an entire day.

Finally, it’s a smart thing to enlist some other unsuspecting person such as a spouse to shoulder the burden of remembering something.  “Honey … remind me that I have a dental appointment tomorrow at 10.”   The chances are they will remember.  And if they don’t, at least you have an excuse.  It was their fault, not yours.  But, somehow, it seems to remove all the pressure, and as a result you probably will remember all by yourself.

If you have any memory tricks or tips, let me know.  I can use all the help I can get.

Bill

By Bill Korbel

It’s been eight years since the mind numbing horror of seeing airplanes crash into the World Trade Center buildings.  Eight years and the memories and emotions are just as clear and sharp as if it had happened last week.   The billowing black smoke against a clear blue sky is an image I can not get out of my head.   It was such a beautiful morning.  I remember clearly thinking when I heard a plane had hit the Trade Center that it could not have been an accident.  There were no clouds.  Visibility was unlimitted.  It was a perfect morning for flying.  No pilot could conceivably make such a mistake.

But, if you remember, the weather the day before was not good.  It was overcast and breezy with occasional rain.  Clouds hung low over the city, barely clearing the tops of the tall buildings.  Why am I mentioning this?   It’s because I wonder how history might have been changed if only the weather on September 11th had been the way it was on the 10th.   Instead of being able to see the Trade Center from 100 miles or more away,  clouds would have obscured the target.   The task of even finding New York City would have been much more difficult.  Anyone with just a bit of training can steer an airliner through the sky when the weather is good.  Put that plane in clouds and it becomes much more difficult.  I would guess none of the planes would have hit their intended targets.  They’d have hit something for sure, but things would have been very different.  It’s even likely that the flights would have been delayed which would have thrown off the terrorists timing and produced a considerably different result.

All this of course means absulutley nothing.  Perhaps it’s even foolish to think about “what if’s” but it does show how something as simple as a sunny morning can impact so very many people and ultimately change the course of history.

By Bill Korbel

The way I look at it, Hurricane Bill was a warning shot across the bow.    I think mother nature did us a favor by sending a powerful storm near us but not over us.  Sure, it passed almost 300 miles east of LI, but in meteorological terms, 300 miles is a near miss.  Still, the flooding along the ocean beaches  in many places was the worst since Hurricane Gloria in 1985. At Jones Beach, water reached the boardwalk.  (As an aside,  perhaps Donald Trump should reconsider the idea of a putting a basement under his new restaurant.)   Compare the tracks of Bill and Gloria.  They are almost identical except Bill developed a few hundred miles north of Gloria’s birth pace and made the turn a few hundred miles sooner.

HURRICANE BILL

HURRICANE GLORIA

The National Hurricane Center did a fantastic job forecasting this storm, but I couldn’t help thinking: “What if all the hurricane experts and computer models were off just a little bit?”   Were you ready if Bill had shifted a bit west and smacked in Long Island as a 100 mph hurricane?  Have you even thought about what you would do if you had only 24 hours to get ready for a storm? If you live in an evacuation area do you know where you would go?  Do you have a “go kit” ready to grab should you have to evacuate?  Are you ready to stay in your home for one week without electricity and running water?   If you think I’m exaggerating, please talk to someone in New Orleans or Galveston.

There are many sources on the internet to get the information you need.  A good one that covers everything from forecasts to preparation is the National Hurricane Center:  http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/.