Tag Archives: cliff mass

Coastal Radar On Time For September Start, Says Cantwell

Check out The Oregonian's coverage for more details.

Noting the extreme weather recently in tornado country, Sen. Maria Cantwell updated media on progress at Washington State’s new coastal Doppler radar installation in Grays Harbor County.

“I’m pleased that after several years of fighting for our state’s first coastal Doppler radar, we’re getting to the point where the foundation has been laid and the system is being implemented for an on-time opening this September,” Cantwell said. “The Pacific Northwest will be safer because of this technology which will help close the weather coverage gap.”

As you know from your TV, Western Washington has one other other Doppler radar installation, on Camano Island, but the Olympic Mountains make a better door than a window, and are constantly getting in the way. The precision of Doppler allows forecasters to tell if you’re going to be rained, snowed, or hailed on.

UW meteorologist Cliff Mass adds that another reason “we need the radar is that the offshore buoys are rapidly destroyed by winter storms,” providing a map with red Xs marking the spot of dead buoys. Anticipating the amount of work out at the Langley Hill Radar site between now and September, Mass has created a new site to track the installation’s progress.

People have been agitating for a coastal radar system since the late ’90s, but “the radar bureaucracy in Oklahoma was cool to the idea because we don’t get many thunderstorms,” Mass told The Oregonian.

As it turned out, we waited long enough to skip a radar generation, and this new installation will be one of the few weather radars in the country to use dual polarization, allowing meteorologists to “see” vertically as well as horizontally. Getting a full picture of air masses means it’s easier to tell how much precipitation they’re carrying.

 

 

 

Cold Spring Blooms with New Sites: Eater, Curbed, Urbandipity, GeekWire

Brrr! The cold spring hasn’t done much for plants–our asparagus is just coming in from the fields, finally–and it hasn’t improved moods either. UW Meteorologist Cliff Mass says he’s been hearing two questions over and over:

Are springs getting worse? Is this the worst spring on record? Looking at the data one might argue that the answer to both of these is yes.

But online, things are springing up all over. Eater Seattle, part of a national network, has launched and formerly-of-Seattlest editor Allecia Vermillion writes to say:

At Eater Seattle, we’ll dig deep for original reporting; offer user-generated tips, rants and raves; and curate a daily roundup of what the rest of the restaurant and food media around town—and on the national level—are talking about. No, you won’t find recipes, reviews, or food porn herein, but Eater Seattle promises a daily dose of restaurant news fresher than a basket of foraged fiddlehead ferns.

Which is weird because I just had to ask someone what a fiddlehead was last night. A companion online property–you can tell from the design–is the real-estate and lifestyle site, Curbed Seattle.

From the ins and outs of the real estate scene, to adventures in urban planning and architecture, to local oddities, for Curbed Seattle, it all comes back to real estate, rent, and the neighborhoods we inhabit.

Curbed Seattle joins the growing Curbed Network of sites including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and DC, not to mention our National Mothership.

That one’s helmed by Federal Way native Kelly Skahan.

I found out about Urbandipity by reading Queen Anne View’s post on the Queen Anne start-up. Urbandipity’s premise is that you post about something you’d like to do (heading to Discovery Park, a wine tasting, catching a Mariners–ha ha! No, I couldn’t get through that last one) and then Seattle’s famously stand-offish population looks over your e-shoulder and decides if they want to join you. Presumably they can monetize the site with offers to go do things that cost money.

Lastly, you’ve probably heard about GeekWire (the new indie offshoot of the PSBJ’s TechFlash, starring John Cook and Todd Bishop). If you’re interested in Seattle tech and its fleece-vest lifestyle, this is what you need to read. Coming soon will be an interview with Cook, as soon as I can find the time to pester him about it.

Bow Down to the University of Washington’s Budget Woes

The Seattle “Shocked, we’re shocked!” Times has been running stories about the failure of the University of Washington to admit in-state students ahead of out-of-state students this year: “Why straight-A’s may not get you into UW this year,” with the AP’s more pointed “Budget cuts means fewer Wash. students get into UW.”

Why, those out-of-staters are coming here and taking our UW degrees!

A letter to the editor calmly points out the reality:

Accepting higher-paying out-of-state students allows it to accept more in-state students. The university is required to charge Washington residents less than its cost.

When the state reduced the subsidy that fills this gap, it effectively put a cap on the number of local students that could be accepted. If not for the out-of-state students, the university would operate this year below its physical capacity. Accepting profit-generating out-of-state students to fill some of this unused capacity allow the university to fill the rest with more local students.

On his blog, Cliff Mass repeats this economic truth bomb: “The State is cutting funding so substantially that economizing (getting rid of TA, bigger classes, less profs) is not enough to maintain the current in-state student body. So by increasing the number of out-of-state students in-state student support can be partially stabilized.”

He also says that roughly one-quarter of UW students aren’t UW material, and notes that out-of-state students have “math SAT scores that were 76 points higher.” But this is all part of the greater transition, he argues, of the UW becoming a private school. If the state is unwilling to fund the UW in the manner in which it has become accustomed, then so be it:

But after roughly five years we will be on our own…no longer dependent on the vagaries of the State legislature and state coffers..and no longer worried about the next ill-advised initiative. Tuition will rise to perhaps 12,000-15,000 a year…a bargain for such a excellent education (thankfully we starting with very low tuition compared to comparable schools).

Wait, the UW a private school? Danny Westneat gives the outraged the written equivalent of a long, measured stare:

Twenty-five years ago, students paid only $1,500 a year to go there — the state’s share was more than $8,000. That’s why it was called a public school — we picked up 85 percent of the tab.

Today it’s only 45 percent taxpayer-subsidized. The student pays $9,000, the taxpayers $7,000. In two years, it’s projected to be student $11,500, state $4,500. None of these figures is corrected for inflation, meaning the erosion in public support for the UW is even more dramatic than these numbers imply.

Well, parts of the UW are more profit-driven. I feel compelled to include this aside about the hiring of a new women’s basketball coach for $475,000 per year, also from the Times:

“We wanted to pay market, but not pay crazy,” Woodward said. “We have expectations and hopefully with fans coming back, it’ll ameliorate that difference in what we have to invest.

“The fiscal considerations were not paramount. They were a factor. But it was getting this program back and being successful and winning at the highest level. That was the most important thing. Fiscal considerations were part of that whole mix.”

The coach’s salary isn’t coming out of the UW’s budget, I just am thrilled to see someone talking about the need for investment over immediate returns when it comes to anything connected with the UW. Who would have guessed it would have to do with sports, though? Oh, right.

Cliff Mass says he’s “optimistic” about the UW’s transition, and it’s hard to argue that this moment hasn’t been long in coming. Somehow, our state legislature reads this in the state constitution: “It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race, color, caste, or sex,” and decides consistently to defund higher education.

I am less optimistic about the long-term prospects of higher education, whether public or private, as the cost of college education looks very much like a bubble funded by easy, government-backed loans written to people who have not shown the ability to repay.

(Peter Thiel on TechCrunch: Instead, for Thiel, the bubble that has taken the place of housing is the higher education bubble. “A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he says. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”)

The bubble would likely have popped by now, except for the dubious legal classification of student loans as non-dischargeable through bankruptcy (unless you can prove you’ll never be able to pay the sum back). The distinction between this arrangement and indentured servitude is narrow. It’s hard to understand why government-backed mortgages can be discharged while government-backed student loans can’t. (I know that you can’t repossess an education, but to the extent that people have one, it’s a public good; to the extent that it is a fungible asset, if you graduate and can’t get a job, it’s worth exactly nothing, market rate.)

The economic fact is that almost nothing except for CEO salaries is roughly commensurate with the cost of higher education over the past two decades. As with healthcare, unless we can gain control of costs, in the longer run it matters little whether we debate endlessly the merits of public vs. private financing. No one has pockets that deep.

Is Our Cold Snap “Hot” Enough For You?

The Oatmeal has lampooned the Seattle resident’s reaction to normal Northwest weather, but considering that it was snowing in Everett and northward this morning, it’s safe to say our current cold snap isn’t normal and is worthy of some salty talk, as in the above video.

Factor in the paranoia that your cheeks aren’t glowing because of the cold, but because of radioactivity from Japan, and it’s definitely weird around these parts.

Granite Falls got a half to three-quarters of an inch of snow this morning, while other areas saw hail showers. Here in Seattle, around 8:30 a.m., the “real feel” was supposed to be 29 degrees.

UW meteorologist Cliff Mass confirms that it’s not all in your head: “The recent two weeks has been much cooler than normal with few days reaching the normal highs and precipitation several inches above normal.”

Iodine-131 spike as measured by the University of Washington

He also points you to a UW site that’s been tracking radioactivity released by the nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan, carried in the air to Washington. Not only is the measurable amount tiny (“at least thousands of times below EPA limits”), but the most noticeable spike was some 7-10 days after the earthquake. Any measurable radioactivity has tailed off significantly since then.

Mass adds that, “Regarding milk, screening samples taken March 25 at Spokane, WA detected 0.8 pCi/L of iodine-131, which is more than 5,000 times lower than the intervention level set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.”

Again, even the spikes are more of an indication of the sensitivity of the instruments than spikes practically speaking. We won’t even see cumulative build-up of radiation from what’s occurred so far, given that these were one-time spikes.