FLORIDA WEATHER lDSTORY INTERACTIVE RESOURCE LIBRARY (WlDRL) Bartlett C. Hagemeyer* JoAnn C. Carney National Weather Service 421 Croton Road Melbourne, Florida 32935 1. INTRODUCTION The use ofthe WWW and hypertext documents as An extensive search ofweather records and training and reference tools is not new [See Straw and publications was undertaken to document the Walters (1995) and Wilhelmson et al (1995)]. What is occurrence of hazardous weather elements in Florida. new, and perhaps revolutionary, is the power and ease These hazardous weather events were then organized of use ofthese types of applications. It is now quite by day of the year with the goal ofhaving at least one simple to produce hypertext documents with linked significant event for every day ofthe year. This graphics and WWW "Home Pages." However, resulted in a IOO-page document that is essentially a meaoingful content and organization have textual Florida hazardous weather calendar. The understandably lagged these technological innovations. authors felt this was a good method to provide training In the rush to get on the ''NET'' there is much and a hazardous weather information database for a duplication and empty documents out there. This will variety ofusers with interests in Florida. Typically, improve with time. work such as this, completed at an NWS field office, is published in limited quantities by the NWS Regional In our case we have converted the Florida hazardous Office that oversees the office. The publications weather history into l-ITML documents with hypertext generally get limited internal distribution and are rarely linked graphics into an interactive "living document" distributed outside the NWS. There are also limitations via a WWW browser. This complete meteorological to the use ofthis type of reference document. knowledge database forms a solid foundation that can support all present and future links to relevant graphics In the past year there has been a virtual explosion of and references. Such a HTML document can be easily use ofthe World-Wide Web (WWW) on the Internet. linked to graphics such as radar and satellite imagery Software applications such as WWW browsers and and case studies and research papers relating to the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) editors now forecasting and understanding of the hazardous make the conversion oftraditionally prepared phenomena. Additionally, hazardous events can be documents into electronic publications incredibly easy. extensively referenced and cross-referenced with All major on-line services now offer WWWbrowser hypertext links, making such a large database very easy capability to literally millions of subscribers at to use as needed by the "reader." affordable prices. Most WWW browsers can also be used as stand-alone reference/ information systems on 2. APPLICATION OF "WHIRL" individual PCs without the need for an Internet connection. This is most useful for large files systems Forecasters are flooded with real-time used repeatedly, thus making access speed very fast and meteorological data and models, but historical eliminating the need for download time and use of perspective is often lacking. The station reference bandwidth resources. library with case studies about a particular hazardous phenomena is often hard to keep organized and not * Corresponding author address: Bartlett C. convenient to operations. WHIRL was designed to be Hagemeyer, National Weather Service, 421 Croton the historical "expert" and to reside on workstations Road, Melbourne, FL 32935. convenient to forecast operations and for general office reference use. REFERENCES /'" Figures 1 through 8 illustrate a stand-alone WHIRL Straw, S. A., and K. R. Walters, 1995: The use of session (calling files from the local directory). The hypertext ctimatologies to train weather forecasters. forecaster launches the WHIRL icon and is presented Preprinu 11 th International Conference on with the general index that has temporal (by month), Interactive Information and Processing Systems topical (hurricane, tornado, hail, flood, lightning, etc.), for Meteorology, Oceanograpby, and Hydrology. or spatial (county, region) choices. In this case it is 18 Dallas, TX, Amer. Meteor. Soc., (J6)34·35. June, and a "click" on June leads to Figure 2 that points to the daily highlight or a comprehensive list of all Wilhelmson, R. and M. K. Ramamurthy, D. Wojtowicz, significant June events. The selection of "I g" on .Fig. 2 J. Kemp, S. Hall, and M. Sridhar, 1995: The Daily points to fig. 3, a description ofthe effects of Planet 1M: An Internet-based infonnation server for Hurricane Agnes on Florida. A hypertext link at the end the atmospheric sciences community and the public. of the Agnes discussion points to Fig. 4, which lists aU Prepriots 11 th International Conference on the office reference~ relating to Hurricane Agnes and Interactive Information and Processing Systems where they can be found. The second reference on Fig. for Meteorology, Oceanography, and Hydrology. 4 points to another HTML docwnent from a recent staff Dallas, TX., Amer. Meteor. Soc., (16)19-22. research paper shown on Fig. 5. Note that there is also a pointer to this paper in Fig. 3. Figures 6, 7, and 8 are hyperlinked illustrations pointed to through the text of Fig. 5. The other traditional references listed on Fig. 4 contain detailed infonnation on Agnes, including radar and satellite imagery, upper air and surface data and soundings. The NWS Melbourne staff has completed many publications in the past. These are too labor-intensive to CODvert to HTML documents. All new operational research papers and case studies are produced so that they can be simultaneously completed traditionally and easily converted to HTML hypertinked documents. This avoids duplication of effort and promotes efficient use ofresources while moving toward an interactive, visual electronic publication environment. All OOD­ HTML references on station are indexed several ways so that WHIRL also is the station library information system. 3. CONCLUSION WHIRL illustrates that WWWbrowsers can be powerful tools to organize meteorological knowledge resources on station. This approach can be readily adapted to other offices. The hard part is the initial search, collation, and typing involved in setting up the database. After initial completion, upkeep ofthe system is quite simple and additional applications ofthe system will becotne evident. 15 r-'" .•.................•.•.-- . .... " . ~ .... _.. , .~. " I,;s: I~~~ .TnlPical~ -I tI Ii:-· ~, ~ r- _.. -. -- .- -. -- . o I I Feb MIr ~ ~ .!II JJ Pi.a Se9 c:u ~ c.c Jirl ~ ~ FLORIDA HAZARDOUS WEATHER BY DAY (to 1994) Bartlett C. Hagemeyer JoAnn S. Carney National Weather Service Office Melbourne, Florida 32935 1. Introduction An extensive search of weather records and publications was undertaken to document the occurrence of hazardous weather elements in Florida. The hazardous weather events were then organized with the goal of having at least one event for every day of the year - in other words - a Florida hazardous weather calendar. The authors felt this was a method for a variety of users to better understand, and put into perspective, all the hazardous weather elements Florida is subject to. Initially, brief descriptions of every event that caused a weather-related fatality were included, and any other hazardous weather events that caused significant injuries or property damage, or that was of an unusual nature. Most days of the year were covered in this fashion. To have an event for each day, events that did not cause injury or serious property damage were included on some days. Many days had several major events and several days had only one minor event. In the interest of brevity not all non-fatal events could be included on days with multiple occurrences. There are literally hundreds of minor events that are not included in this document. The authors attempted to include the most significant events. This document concerns short-term hazardous weather events ranging in time from several minutes to several days. Long-term events that cover large areas and unfold over weeks or months such as dry periods (droughts), wet periods, and hot or cold periods are not included (see Henry et al. 1994). Rip Currents have been documented by Lushine (1991) to be a leading cause of weather related deaths in Florida. Except for a few high profile events during hurricanes, rip current deaths are not documented in the literature and are largely missing from this paper before 1992. Information on weather events was collected from a variety of sources including U.S. Meteorological Yearbooks (1933-1949), National Summaries (1950-1959), and Storm Data (1959-1994) published by the U.S. Government. Daily Weather Maps and tropical cyclone tracks from Dept. of Commerce (1993) were interpreted to add synoptic detail to some events. Other publications such as Grazulis (1993) and Dept. of Commerce (1960) documented early tornadoes. The Melbourne Hydrological Service Area database for Florida was the source of record flood documentation. Hagemeyer and Matney (1993 and 1994) and Hagemeyer and Hodanish (1995) were used to add details about tornadoes and tornado outbreaks. Dates of early freezes were obtained from Hebert (1993). Additional details regarding hurricanes were obtained from Hebert et al (1995) and Williams (1994). Times of events are in Eastern Standard Time (EST). Estimates of damages for events are not included, except for a few extreme cases. When included, estimates are given in dollars as of the year in which the event occurred and not corrected for inflation. JANUARY 1 1942 - noon - Washington Co. - A tornado moved from Ebro to Greenhead and destroyed six buildings injuring five people. 1 1996 - 1225 - Brevard Co., Melbourne - A small F0 tornado touched down in the Eau Gallie area of Melbourne near U.S. Highway 1. It moved east northeast about one half mile and lifted as it approached the Indian River Lagoon. The tornado blew down trees on top of houses and garages and overturned a large travel trailer with estimated damage at 40 thousand dollars.