So that’s what those big a** planes are for.

June 25, 2010

The WC-130 air­craft looked fright­en­ingly huge as it ascended over the waters of the Mis­sis­sippi Sound. How could some­thing that large, fly­ing at what appeared to be such a grad­ual pace, make it off the Keesler Air Force Base run­way and over the beach high­way in Biloxi with­out falling out of the sky, I used to ask myself?

They seem too big and slow to fly but they do and those of us on the Gulf Coast are grate­ful that they do.

I never really thought that much about what the planes were doing or where they were going. Nor did the fact that I only saw these planes fly so lan­guidly when I hung out on a hot sum­mer day with my friends pro­vide a clue as to the air­crafts’ missions.

It was an Air Force-looking plane and it took off from Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi. I was a 19-year-old sailor sta­tioned with the Seabees some 10 miles away in Gulf­port. Since the planes were fly­ing from an Air Force base, I fig­ured they were up to Air Force things.

I knew, back then, that a lot of dif­fer­ent activ­ity went on at Keesler. I got my first pair of glasses — black, horn-rimmed ones which sev­eral later would look cool if you went for the Elvis Costello look – at Keesler because the dis­pen­sary at the Seabee base didn’t have an opthamol­o­gist or even an optometrist.

My home­boy, Jonathan, who lived with his first wife and then-baby girl over in Biloxi, attended air traf­fic con­trol school at Keesler dur­ing a hitch in the Air Force. After I got back from Sea duty, one of my office sub­or­di­nates on the ship trans­ferred to Keesler to attend Chaplain’s Assis­tant school even though he was in the Navy.

But only years later would I fig­ure out that those huge, slow planes that I saw at some time dur­ing sum­mers on the Mis­sis­sippi Gulf Coast beach were so impor­tant to my life when I decided to be a p’ert-near coast resident.

Those planes I saw, but didn’t know or par­tic­u­larly care what they were for back then, were Hur­ri­cane Hunters.

The 53rd Weather Recon­nais­sance Squadron at Keesler fly the WC-130s, or Lock­heed Mar­tin WC-130J Her­cules if you want to get tech­ni­cally anal about it, into trop­i­cal sys­tems to detect vital infor­ma­tion which helps hur­ri­cane fore­cast­ers deter­mine what a storm might do and where it might go. Often the Air Force Reserve crews man­ning the air­craft will fly right into the eye of a hur­ri­cane. You might think “calm” when talk­ing about the eye until you remem­ber you have the hur­ri­cane sur­round­ing you.

This is one of those days, today, you might see one of these big slow planes take off and ever so slowly climb up into the sky over the Mis­sis­sippi Sound and its bar­rier islands. A National Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter advi­sory around noon Cen­tral Day­light Time indi­cated an Air Force recon­nais­sance plane was approach­ing a low pres­sure cen­ter between Grand Cay­man and Hon­duras. The NHC has given the sys­tem an 80 per­cent chance for trop­i­cal cyclone development.

Of course, the cable news media is all over the pos­si­bil­ity of a storm like a gecko on an insur­ance com­mer­cial. That is because of the mas­sive BP oil spill that con­tin­ues to pour into the Gulf of Mex­ico and onto land from Louisiana to Florida.

My most not-favorite CNN anchor, Rick Sanchez, was mak­ing much ado about this not-even-tropical depres­sion and the hur­ri­cane “mod­els” which are already pre­dict­ing paths for what could become the first named storm of the sea­son. If it be comes a trop­i­cal storm it would be named Alex. The weather woman on CNN is at this moment as I write this say­ing which model would be “prefer­able” as for where the storm may go. She means what would be the best track for the storm, if there is a storm, as it might affect the oil spill and limit sub­se­quent dam­age, if there is dam­age and if there is a storm. That is truly putting the dog before the pony show. The rea­son is that the mod­els of where this storm might head cur­rently extend from Tampico, Mex­ico, to Apalachicola, Florida. That’s a lot of ground, uh, water to cover and it includes the area in which I live.

In just the last five years I have been through three hur­ri­canes, a trop­i­cal storm and four or five evac­u­a­tions, if you count all those folks who came to this area from Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina until being chased away by Hur­ri­cane Rita. If I left out a storm, I apologize.

Don’t get me wrong. I am con­cerned about the BP gusher as I have been for awhile and not just for the oil-covered pel­i­cans although I hate to see the envi­ron­ment f**ked up. But I am like­wise con­cerned for my neigh­bors here on the Upper Texas Coast. That is why I am glad those building-sized, puz­zling slow Air Force-looking planes I used to see when I was a young sailor are out there fly­ing with con­fi­dence in the Gulf of Mex­ico hunt­ing hur­ri­canes. The infor­ma­tion that those air­men out of Keesler gather is impor­tant to a lot of peo­ple and prob­a­bly more folks than usual — because of the BP spill in the Gulf — await what comes from the storms that the Hur­ri­cane Hunters risk their lives to investigate.

Here is another look from AccuWeather about pos­si­ble Alex paths.

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I am I said helps Hurricane Ike victims

December 16, 2009

Did you ever read about a frog who dreamed of being a king and then became one? Well, no. Not that I can recall.

Neil Dia­mond may have thrown out some eso­teric lines in songs he has writ­ten over the past how­ever many decades, as in the lines above from “I am I said.” This makes me won­der, in real­ity, I am, I said? No, I guess I am not I didn’t say. He was, he said. But he said he was. Oh well, you can’t always hit a home run.

I have pretty much liked Neil Diamond’s music since the 1960s. Some of his songs sound bet­ter sung by oth­ers such as “Soli­tary Man” ren­dered by Chris Issak. And, of course,  Diamond’s “I’m a Believer” just isn’t believ­able if it isn’t done by the Mon­kees. Nev­er­the­less, even though mil­lions of younger peo­ple may say “who?” when men­tion­ing Neil Dia­mond, he is, I say, a very durable entertainer.

What gives enter­tain­ers addi­tional, or per­haps some will say, I said, true worth, is what they do beyond writ­ing and singing songs, play­ing pro bas­ket­ball or host­ing a talk show. I’m just say­ing. I said. Diamond’s worth has prob­a­bly risen con­sid­er­ably by some of my neigh­bors lately. When I say neigh­bors, I said, I mean peo­ple who live in my neck of the woods, or Gulf Coast. The point is Dia­mond has used money from mer­chan­dise sold at his con­certs to build 12 homes for fam­i­lies who lost theirs’ dur­ing Hur­ri­cane Ike last year.

Tom­morow, a cou­ple who live on the Ike-ravaged Oak Island –north of the Boli­var Penin­sula — will move into the first home to be built thanks to Diamond’s largess. Dia­mond has a his­tory of help­ing oth­ers and decided to assist those whose homes had been oblit­er­ated last year when Ike struck.

So say what you will about Neil Dia­mond and his songs. I like a lot of his songs and have for years. But it’s nice to hear of some­one putting their tal­ents into some­thing really worthwhile.

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My teams sink into the mud yet the World continues to turn

December 7, 2009

 A  fast-moving snow came through our nor­mally snow-deprived area Fri­day and left about a 1/4 inch. Unfor­tu­nately, there was lit­tle left for a pho­to­graph as what was left on the ground was in the dark and by the time I got out of bed the next day the snow was long gone. Such are Gulf Coast snows. At least we got to share our snow with my friends up in the North­east. My friend Sally, in West­ern Mass­a­chu­setts told me she enjoyed the first snow of the year which was thanks to the same potent weather system.

 Oth­er­wise the week­end was one of mostly watch­ing all my foot­ball teams go down in flames save one. The Long­horns squeaked by Nebraska and thus will play in the National Cham­pi­onship against the Crim­son Tide. I have to be almost apolo­getic in say­ing that I root for Texas because, as most of my friends are Repub­li­cans while I am a proud Demo­c­rat, most of my friends and rel­a­tives are also Aggies. Many are such Texas A & M fans that they will root for any team but “TU” or what they call The Uni­ver­sity of Texas (at Austin). That I don’t under­stand. It seems like we are all Tex­ans and we would sup­port a fel­low Texas team fight­ing for the national title. But not so many Aggies.

 My high school fell in quar­ter­fi­nals. I wasn’t sur­prised because New­ton played No. 1 Dainger­field. My col­lege alma mater, Stephen F. Austin was destroyed in the Foot­ball Cham­pi­onship Sub­di­vi­sion play­offs — for­merly NCAA Div. I-A — by No. 1 Mon­tana. Uni­ver­sity of Hous­ton was beaten by East­ern Car­olina for the Con­fer­ence USA cham­pi­onships. Last but cer­tainly least in the NFL, my Tex­ans got whipped by Jack­sonville and slipped to 5–7.

 So yes that one-second nail-biter between the Corn­huskers and the Long­horns was my lit­tle bright light. Well, the Saints won in over­time but I didn’t get to see that because Fox cut com­pletely the Saints’ excit­ing OT fin­ish off for the Cow­boys mis­er­able loss to the Giants. I mean, I like Wade Phillips and all but give me a break.

 Need­less to say it was a dis­ap­point­ing week­end. Not much snow. My favorite teams were mostly left tram­pled in the mud. My feet con­tinue to hurt includ­ing my non-broken toe that feels now like a bro­ken foot. Yet, the world con­tin­ues to turn. One can­not watch cable TV news with­out every­thing being laid down in the con­text of pol­i­tics. With every breath that Obama takes a new poll is released. Will his exhales excite the inde­pen­dent white Chris­t­ian women or will his inhal­ing raise his num­bers with the black male Mus­lim upper class cross dressers? Stay tuned. I’m sure we will find out eventually.

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Did you know it’s raining? No but if you could hum a few bars …

September 11, 2009

 The rain con­tin­ues, on and off, here in the upper cor­ner of the Texas Gulf Coast. It’s been like this for a cou­ple of days. The weather peo­ple say we’ve got our­selves a:

COMPLEX WEATHER SITUATION WITH A COASTAL SURFACE TROUGH/WARM FRONT LOCATED OFF THE SOUTHEAST TEXAS AND SOUTHERN LOUISIANA COAST.

 I’m sure that it’s a heck of a lot more com­pli­cated than that, but it’s good enough for me. The local weather folks out of the NWS Lake Charles office say that any trop­i­cal for­ma­tion “seems unlikely at this time” and the National Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter gives this sys­tem less than a 30 per­cent chance for any type of cyclonic activ­ity. But hav­ing slept through Hur­ri­cane Hum­berto, which formed two years ago tomor­row, I can tell you that these pesky lit­tle sys­tems which stick around in the Gulf and build can jump up quicker than a jackrab­bit with a fire­cracker up its wazoo and com­mence to giv­ing objects ashore a sense­less thrashing.

 So hope­fully this — sys­tem — will just be a rain event. And in such event, one needs a lit­tle back­ground music. For that, I found this Web page com­piled by a per­son with even more time on his hands than I have. He has put together a list of rain-related songs. I will show some he listed a few of mine too, in no par­tic­u­lar order, and then you can look at his page and go wild. Stay dry.

A few rain songs: From the “Rain Songs” blog and a few off he top of my head.

  1. Rainy Night in Geor­gia — Brook Benton
  2. Let it Rain — Derek and the Domi­noes (Eric Clapton)
  3. Rainy Night House — Joni Mitchell
  4. It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’ — Folk song
  5. I Can See Clearly Now (the rain is gone) — Johnny Nash
  6. Blue Eyes Cryin’ In the Rain — Willie Nelson
  7. Fire and Rain — James Taylor
  8. Can­dles in the Rain (Lay Down) — Melanie (Safka)
  9. Rain­ing in My Heart — Slim Harpo
  10. Thun­der Island (about being caught in the rain while … ) — Jay Ferguson
  11. Have You Ever Seen the Rain? — Cree­dence Clear­wa­ter Revival
  12. A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall — Bob Dylan (not the kind of rain you’d want)
  13. Here Comes the Rain Again — The Eurythmics
  14. Rainy Day Woman — Way­lon Jennings
  15. Who’ll Stop the Rain? — Cree­dence Clear­wa­ter Revival
  16. Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35 — Bob Dylan
  17. Texas Flood — Ste­vie Ray Vaughn
  18. Louisiana 1927 — Randy Newman
  19. When the Levee  Breaks — Led Zepplin
  20. It Never Rains in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia — Albert Hammond

Of course, there are tons and tons of rain songs. It would seem peo­ple write almost as many songs about rain as they write about love. And of course there are those songs which have to do about lov­ing in the rain (“Thun­der Island”) and lov­ing the rain (“I Love a Rainy Night” by Eddie Rab­bit, which is not listed above because I don’t par­tic­u­larly like the song.) I am not a big fan of No. 20, about it never rain­ing in So. Cal. either. I listed it because I was sit­ting some­where to avoid a August 1977 rain­storm in San Diego where I heard on the TV play­ing there that Elvis had died. I thought about the irony of the Albert Ham­mond song and it rain­ing like hell as I found out the King was dead. Oh, and there’s Elvis’s “Ken­tucky Rain.” It was an okay song, but I liked his much older stuff better.

 Oh well. Here is music to drown by. Just don’t drown.

 

 

 

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