KodiakWeather.com
Weather stations around Kodiak Island on December 30, 2012 showing strong winds.
In tonight's update on the investigation into the grounding of Shell's Kulluk oil rig, Rachel shared passages from a letter from Congressman Markey in which he questions Shell's explanation that the timing of the tow was to take advantage of a two-week forecast break in the weather. He cites several National Weather Service severe weather alerts from that period.
As I was gathering tonight's links and citations I thought those forecasts for the weather in Alaska between December 21, 2012 and New Year's Day, 2013 would be archived online somewhere and wouldn't it be interesting to find those links. But as rich in data and as generous in maps and charts as the National Weather Service site is, they don't seem to have thought it of value to archive past weather predictions.
Well, I shouldn't go quite that far. There is a forecast archive for the continental U.S. (which I learned they call CONUS) but Alaska doesn't quite fit on the map. And they have "discussions" of the extended forecast going back ten days. But that only means that tonight I can look at the forecast for last week as seen from December 30th. The pages aren't logged by date, just by number of days previous to now.
Even if it's hard to find the forecast for those two weeks, it's easy to find records of what the actual weather was. The image above from KodiakWeather.com is one of the more fun-to-play-with examples.
Follow me on this one, it has a fun ending...
For the sake of orientation, here's the area we're talking about. The Kulluk was being towed from Dutch Harbor (A) to Seattle (C) and ended up at Sitkalidak Island (B). (It is presently in Kiliuda Bay if you want to look that up.)
Sitkalidak Island is right up close to Kodiak Island, so I used that as a point of focus for some of my searching. Kodiak does have its own newspaper, but the archives require a subscription and I didn't see anything in the abstracts that made me think I'd find a discussion of the forecast between Christmas and New Year's. But the paper's Facebook account has open archives and from there I found out the U.S. National Weather Service Alaska also has a Facebook page. This is the image they show for December 29th, describing it as a "powerful cyclone":
US National Weather Service Alaska
I should say, this post isn't meant to prove anything one way or other about what Shell knew or didn't know before they tried to tow the rig across the Gulf of Alaska. Frankly, it seems like there's a blizzard warning somewhere in Alaska for any given day last December, (including just east of Kodiak in the days before Christmas) so the idea of a two-week gap of good weather seems ridiculous on its face. But I'm just on a data hunt for curiosity's sake, and I'm just making the observation that it would be pretty surprising if the storm in the picture above showed up with no notice or forecast warning. In fact, that picture is just one of the storms that hit in what the weather service warned on the 28th would be a series. You can see the storms lining up in this post from the 31st.
But let's say for whatever reason, the National Weather Service couldn't give the Kulluk proper notice on approaching bad weather. There's one guy who could have: Adam Wright.
Adam Wright writes a surf report for a site called SolSpot, and one of the things he does is look to the far reaches of the Pacific for developing storm systems that are likely to send good waves to the California coast. So when I searched for news about a powerful cyclone forecast for New Year's, what I found was an expression of disappointment that the storm wasn't worse.
As early as the 27th, Wright was giving his readers a heads up about a "crazy looking" storm developing to the northwest.
SolSpot.com
Boom, indeed. There's that series of storms lining up. Want a little more lead time in your storm warning/eagerness? How about December 24: THE NORTH PACIFIC GIVES THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING…IT’S A COMPLEX LOW-PRESSURE!
SolSpot.com
Here's what Wright was seeing in the 60-hour prediction, above, from the 24th:
The storms start to stack up by the middle/end of the week, with that complex-low-pressure slowly drifting toward the Gulf of Alaska. In the chart above, you can see the stronger storm pushing toward Alaska proper, the first storm moving over the West Coast, and a third system coming together NW of Hawaii…being fed both warm and cold-wet air mass from Kamchatka and from over by Japan.
Lastly, I see the credit on the Adam Wright maps is StormSurf. After poking around there I figured out that they come from the models menu, which includes some seriously cool animations. StormSurf also offers a tutorials section to help teach how to make heads or tales of all of these charts. That just went to the top of my "to read" list.
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As much as I commend Congressman Markey for trying to get an answer or two out of Shell I doubt anything will be done. Big oil has gotten away with clear criminal conduct numerous times. The oil industry is never held accountable for anything just like the banking industry.
They screw up, we(taxpayers) clean it up. The people get the short straw everytime. If the fact that these companies are submitting and operating with emergency/clean up equipment from decades ago even though those things didn't even work well then and they are legally obligated to have the most current reasonable tools to clean up their mess. Do we really think this will be any different?
What was that last wreck that BP had — 11 or 12 Men Killed and never heard much about those Americans , other than that ceo wanted to get back to his yacht and his life and had absolutely No regard for the deaths of the workers on that rig or the environmental effects or the Orders that were commanded down to ignore Proper procedure , these new type of ceo's just Will-Not accept their responsibilities All that they care about and want are those Ridiculously Massive salaries that they get for sitting on their lame and useless a$$es ! They could care less about the working men and women , WE are just expendable and replaceable assets to them ! The Only thing that these money-mongers give a Damn about is their Bottom line ! American Union Workers Just Don't Mean A Thing to these selfish arrogant self centered Greedy Idiots !
operation Tango: BP has been ordered to pay $4.5 Billion in criminal fines. They have pled guilty to (11) involuntary manslaughter charges, while (2) engineers have been indicted on (11) involuntary manslaughter charges. BP was charged & pled guilty to Congressional Obstruction of Justice (1-lying about the flow rate of oil from the well) charge. Another employee has been indicted for a Congressional Obstruction of Justice (deleting BP emails). Although, I think $4.5 billion in fines, to be paid over (5) years, is a pittance, it is the largest in U.S. History (Pfizer was fined $1 billion in 2009). BP also has to pay fines to The Academy of Science, SEC & National Fish & Wildlife in addition to the $4.5B. BP is on probation for (5)years & may not contract w/ the federal government for that period of time.
Will, I hope you have forwarded this to Shell- along with your resume.
They obviously need to have you on retainer; the "go-to guy" before they do anything!
It doesn't make any sense that the "too big to prosecute" corporations are too big...We issue leases don't we?...I know oversight has been decimated by the GOP...it looks to me like Shell, BP, Koch Industries have purchased enough politicians to be immune to regulations and oversight....Wall Street has the same protections... the list is a long one...I always wondered how a poor farmer in the Mid west could afford to build and race the "super tractors" that they use in pulling contests....Loop holes for corporate farmers as well....I give up...
Each drilling and refinery site should have a multi-billion dollar security bond or insurance policy in force for the life of the project. They could use their advertising money to pay the premiums or even more novel, pay their income taxes.
One of their fines should be the welfare they get from the government should be cut off. They also should stop the BS ads about finding new ways to drill safely and find new ways to clean up their messes. New ways that work.
What about physical newspaper archives for a record of forecasts?
As a former surfer here in Australia, I can say with confidence that surfers are often amazing forecasters. Because the sport tends to involve a lot of staring at projections and trying to work out how to be at the right place at the right time for the perfect break, a lot of surfers seem to develop a sort of sixth sense born of experience what the surfs going to be doing tomorrow that often seems to defy the predictions of the forecasters. I'm not surprised it was a surfer who got this right at all.
Way cool charts & colorful weather maps! Definitely like that super surfer's forecast info. Definitely "a fun ending..."!
Where are Senators Mike Lee and Jason Chaffetz on this investigation? Oh wait, they knew it happened because the Oil Companies paid them to shut up about it.
Will-- if StormSurf is the top of your reading list, you need to get out more.
Interesting that it takes a Congressman from Massachusetts to ask these questions. Are the Congresspeople from Alaska are too deep in the pockets of Shell Oil to see what's going on?
Cliff Mass had a discussion of this here: http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2013/01/gulf-of-alaska-storms-versus-shell-oil.html
Was the "BOOM" added for effect?
Since the Kulluk was still in Alaskan waters on Jan. 1 2013, Shell still owes the $6 million dollar tax bill. Are they going to pay it? Is Alaska going to remember to charge them for it, in addition to the clean up and rescue costs? How much did it cost Shell, trying to avoid paying $6 million dollars? Stupid cheapskates.
Here's one from Dec 26, 2012:
"A hurricane force storm low over the central North Pacific is moving northeastward into the Gulf of Alaska with winds forces 10-12 (50-65 knots) and seas up to 38 feet between 120 and 360 NM southwest of the center."
http://oceanweatherservices.com/blog1/2012/12/26/intense-storm-moving-into-gulf-of-alaska/
as cited here:
http://gcaptain.com/forum/marine-weather/10690-intense-storm-moving-gulf-alaska.html
Of course, "seas up to 38 ft" could make for 'swell weather'. :-/
The Anchorage Daily News had a really good article on this disaster, including reporting of experts saying it it impossible to predict the weather more than a few days out in the Gulf of Alaska.
http://www.adn.com/2013/01/12/2750698/questions-swirl-about-whether.html