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Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

theeyewall.com

61–70 of 133 posts

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#61
We did find clay tablets with inscriptions from earlier civilizations.

If all papers, books and newspaper gradually go digital, just electric charges or magnetic blips in racks - few thousand years down the road our civilization would be virtually traceless or at least those parts of it.

Nothing is forever. Just a random thought.

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#63
post #7

Cloudflare blocked me from accessing it. edit: wow, that was some unexpected downvotes

But great news, we're on HN, so maybe jgrahamc or eastdakota can show up and explain why it's totally normal and fine that their product prevents random people from reading about the causes of natural disasters.

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#64
post #51

This headline could really use the word "hurricane" in it. I had no idea what Otis or Acapulco were, and my initial guess was wildly off: some sort of space probe experienced a catastrophic failure on the way to an asteroid.

Otis is the name of one of the Fat Bear Week audience favorites so that was where my first thoughts went but I was very surprised to imagine an “Acapulco, Alaska” near where he lives.

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you mean Joules? A Watt is a joule of energy transferred over one second, i.e. they're a rate .

Feel free to take it up with the scientists who study and discuss radiative forcing in units of watts/m^2

I'm not familiar with the term, and I must have missed it the first time I read the comment.

Thank you for a new term to research :)

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#66
post #61

We did find clay tablets with inscriptions from earlier civilizations. If all papers, books and newspaper gradually go digital, just electric charges or magnetic blips in racks - few thousand years down the road our civilization would be virtually traceless or at least those parts of it. Nothing is forever. Just a random thought.

I think you posted on the wrong story but you eloquently described my feelings on ACM going all digital.

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is already a very good theory. see this interview with an expert from Yale: https://youtu.be/CSVFpval4Dw?si=oelutbqzOGcpI8gm tldr: garbage data into the model, garbage out. Detailed summary from interview: • only 1 hurricane hunter flight was done into this storm. • mexican hurricanes just don’t get as much reporting coverage (historically). For example for atlantic hurricanes, NOAA hurricane hunter airplanes h…

Does Acapulco airport not have radar because the ATC for that part of Mexico is at Mazatlán?

i’m not an expert in this area myself. your comment made me curious though. chat gpt (GPT 4) helped me understand better:

https://chat.openai.com/share/9448215d-2b65-4611-a634-f1a900...

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#68
post #11

> So how did every reliable model we use miss this? That’s for graduate students and researchers to answer in the coming years, because I have no formal idea. Would love to see followup on this. Wish there were some way to like bookmark or something and come back in a few years.

there is already a very good theory. see this interview with an expert from Yale: https://youtu.be/CSVFpval4Dw?si=oelutbqzOGcpI8gm tldr: garbage data into the model, garbage out. Detailed summary from interview: • only 1 hurricane hunter flight was done into this storm. • mexican hurricanes just don’t get as much reporting coverage (historically). For example for atlantic hurricanes, NOAA hurricane hunter airplanes h…

too late to edit my comment, but after more reading it seems like mexico does have land radar along the coast, but it’s a much smaller network compared to the US coast. So for this particular hurricane, there was lack of coverage.

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#69
post #64
post #51

This headline could really use the word "hurricane" in it. I had no idea what Otis or Acapulco were, and my initial guess was wildly off: some sort of space probe experienced a catastrophic failure on the way to an asteroid.

Otis is the name of one of the Fat Bear Week audience favorites so that was where my first thoughts went but I was very surprised to imagine an “Acapulco, Alaska” near where he lives.

In fairness, anyone who didn't immediately recognize 128 Grazer as the fattest bear is probably frequently confused :P

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#70
post #57
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of the researchers on a new disease forecasting project, and I'm bookmarking this because we often use hurricane forecasting as an example of a level of accuracy we aspire to, so this is a really interesting breakdown.

What forecasting models / techniques are prevalent in disease forecasting?

There's usually a mix of statistical models (some traditional time series methods, some neural network based) and mathematical models (i.e. SIR models). None of them fully capture all the dynamics we need to.
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