May 26, 2006
NYC Will Test Hurricane Plans
In the heart of what is supposed to be a big hurricane season, the New York City is going to test its hurrivane evacuation plans in the Rockaways this July. Sadly, the public cannot sign up for the drill, which will instead involve "500-700 emergency workers and civilian workers," according to Newsday. The drill will take place at a school, so it's not like the Office of Emergency Management is testing gridlock or routing - just inflow to evacuation centers and how workers deal with angry/scared New Yorkers. (The Mayor said the city's hurricane plans were good, but the OEM has been looking them over.)
Remember, NYC is supposedly overdue for a hurricane. The Office of Emergency Management is updating their "hurricane evacuation center locator" but you can see where one is in your neighborhood by looking at these maps. And Gothamist has been very curious about the OEM's terror drills.
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what's a hurrivane? Is it like a weathervane?
Here's a question - statistically, how can you be "overdue" for anything?
You flip a coin - heads, heads, heads. On the next flip, the odds of tails are still only 50%, right? Your luck to date doesn't change the odds.
There is no such thing as "overdue" for a hurricane (or a tornado, or a blizzard, etc..). Just because NYC might get a bad hurricane, say, every 100 years, doesn't mean the probability increases if its been, say 150 years versus 10 years. Of course this misleading pseudoscience was propagated by the infamous Accuweather, well known for hype over reality.
One might be somewhat correct to say a location is "overdue" for an earthquake just because we know that stress builds up over time...however, prediction based on such a simple concept is not very reliable.
Believe Al Gore: We are all going to die! Hurricanes are actually caused by the Bush family.
Ah, the return of rob, aka "Mr. Science."
> We are all going to die! Hurricanes are actually caused by the >Bush family.
Yes, we ARE all going to die. Eventually.
...and hurricanes are caused by tropical disturnbances that grow via a feedback process similar to a Carnot heat engine. Bush's contribution to global warming apparently increases their intensity, but not their frequency (see Emanuel 2005).