MonsoonMaiden

Ask a weather watcher what his/her favourite weather is, & the popular answers are usually thunderstorms/hurricanes/tornadoes. Either that or it would be sunny weather, or snow. But since the atmosphere produces a host of other phenomena as well, I always find it interesting to discover those that are less well-known. I first heard of the polar low from one of my lecturers in Reading, Dr George Craig. He was from Toronto, and had studied the convective processes in polar lows for his PhD. This was new to me because at the time I associated convection with warmer places like the tropics. There's a nice little writeup on polar lows from Wikipedia. MetEd also has a nice section on Polar Low Forecasting.

We have several SAREX (Search and Rescue Exercises) every year, organised by the RCC (Rescue Coordination Centre). The date of the SAREX is usually faxed to us a few months before & most of the forecasters can then be seen checking the roster to see who's going to be on duty that day. The rescue location is announced on the day itself, & our job consists of providing wind, weather & sea state conditions every 3 hours for that area. During the time I've worked here, I've encountered real-life SARs (Search & Rescues) twice : On 19 Dec 1997, Silkair flight 185 crashed into the Musi River near Palembang, enroute from Jakarta to Singapore. The crash was surrounded by much controversy amid speculation that the pilot deliberately crashed the aircraft in a mass suicide/homicide. All 104 people on board died. On 3 Jan 2003, a Singapore navy ship, the RSS Courageous, collided with a merchant vessel, the ANL Indonesia, near Horsburgh Lighthouse. ANL Indonesia didn't seem too severely damaged, but the navy ship looked bad. Four young Navy women officers who had been in the sleeping quarters at the aft of the ship were reported missing. I jotted this down at the time : "We didn't start the SAR here till yesterday morning, although the collision took place the previous night; and last night they stopped as well, and only started again this morning at dawn. The RCC has only requested data till 0200UTC tomorrow (10am local time). What does that mean? Do they think they will be able to find the women by 10am?" The RCC was supposed to call during my night shift to let me know when they were stopping for the night, but they didn't (later I discovered it was an oversight on their part). I remember being in the brightly-lit airconditioned office, & thinking that it was hard to imagine what it must be like to be out there in the dark, combing the sea for bodies. Of the four missing officers, only three bodies were recovered; the fourth woman was never found.

Pat has an 8-year old nephew living in Australia. One day in the office she grinned at me & said, "Want to read a letter from Julian?" She handed me a white envelope with the words : Ee's Boss Mad Office solemnly written in scrawly handwriting on it. It turned out that "Ee" referred to "Yi-Yi" which is "Auntie" in Chinese. The letter read : Dear Ee's Boss, can you please give my Ee time off as leave to visit me in Sydney for my Confirmation. My Ee is my God-ma. I long to see her in person. Please let her come to see me thank you God Bless you, Yours lovingly Julian the Boss PS. or else! * Pat giggled & said that Julian thought our boss wasn't willing to give her leave at the end of the month, so he'd written the letter & given it to her dad (who was visiting at the time). I asked if she was going to show the letter to our boss but she laughed & shook her head. I think she should have, though.

I thought I would mention that I'm currently on long leave. Here are the two reasons for that : I won't return to work till May next year. Things are quite busy now, looking after 2 children, so I only manage to get a few minutes online at intervals during the day. I decided that I would at least get my blog done (maybe I should rename it "Memoirs of a Meteorologist") before my leave is over, and also brush up a little on my met. knowledge. Incidentally, I was due to give birth to No. 2 on 31 March this year, but my colleagues kept joking that since the baby's parents are both meteorologists, she should arrive on 23 March instead (World Meteorological Day) ... and it actually came true. My mother in law, who lives in Malaysia, had sent us several Chinese names to choose for the baby, & I thought this one looked nice : I wanted to know what it meant, though. I couldn't find it in my Chinese dictionary, & because I'd left name choosing to the last minute, D only tried calling his mother to ask the meaning after I'd given birth, but couldn't get through. Finally, he dropped by the office; Mr S, the walking Chinese encyclopaedia, wasn't around, but C the Toothbrush Man was, & he had a more comprehensive dictionary. The word ("wen") was inside, and it meant something like "the dappled pattern of sunlight falling through clouds". I thought this was very pretty, & I guess it's appropriate that the baby have a name with a meteorological meaning since she was born on World Met. Day! Here are some other Chinese girls' names. "Xia" also has a lovely meaning, "clouds shining in the light of sunrise/sunset". Well, maybe we'll save it for No. 3

One of our duties in the Met. Service is to answer phone calls. There are routine ones, like those from the Security Officers (S.O.'s) to various Ministers, who call in the morning to get the day's forecast. Sometimes the Ministry of Foreign Affairs might call because they are receiving some visiting Head of State or foreign dignitary at the airport & want to know the expected weather at the time. Once, D played an April Fool's joke on me by calling & pretending to be the S.O. to the Prime Minister. I was very polite - until I found out it was actually him. We get more calls just when we don't have the time to attend to them, which is during bad weather. Imagine having to answer the phone when you're issuing 15 different lightning risk warnings, monitoring the radar to see if you should extend/cancel any of them, trying to finish your routine work, & issuing trend statements. On a worse day, the pc might hang, so you have to waste time rebooting it, & when you do you discover someone has changed the password & no one seems to know what it is now, or the printer will get paper jam & you have to fix that. Sometimes an earthquake in Indonesia can trigger tremors here, mostly in highrise buildings. We also get a surge of calls then; the first time this happened, people vacated their apartments because they thought the building was going to collapse, & they were too afraid to go back in. The phone simply rang nonstop that night ... the minute the forecaster on duty put the phone down, it rang again. Finally he had to ignore it or he would never have gotten his routine work done. During another such incident, an American woman called & said, "Will you please talk to my husband. I told him I saw the walls moving and he doesn't believe me." We've also had several "Serial Callers". One was a retired lawyer who would call whenever it was raining heavily over his house. He would talk for ages, telling us how long it had been raining there, that his roof was leaking, ask what the outlook for this year was, what season it was, & so on. He had his "favourite" forecasters (i.e. those patient enough to accomodate him & answer all his questions), one of whom was Pat, & also C (our toothbrush man). Sometimes when attending to him, my mind would be elsewhere because he always called when the weather was bad meaning I was also doing several other things at the same time. This would displease him; he would ask my name, then tell me he'd spoken to my colleagues Pat and C before, they were very kind, etc etc. One day when things were busier than usual, one of the forecasters asked Mr Lawyer to call back later. This annoyed him, & he promptly faxed a complaint to our office. Since it's office policy to treat all complaints seriously, our boss had to waste yet more time responding to him. There was also a Caucasian man who would call in the morning for the day's forecast. After you'd given it to him, he would continue asking, "but will it rain in the morning? What about the afternoon?" "Will there be thunder?" "I'm afraid of thunder" "What about the evening?" "What about tomorrow?" After that he would call again several times during the day & repeat the entire sequence of questions. We never really found out who he was. One colleague claimed he was a chef who worked in Cockpit Hotel & that he was returning to Australia soon. Another said his accent wasn't real & that he was actually a Singaporean masquerading as an Australian. All I know is that his tel no had 666 in it & whenever I saw the 666 flash on the caller display, my heart would sink. He may have really returned to Australia in the end, because he eventually stopped calling. Then there was this elderly man whom we nicknamed "Basil's Brother" because his voice was similar to Basil, one of our technicians. He didn't want the forecast; he only wanted to talk, and only to the ladies. If a male answered the phone, he would hang up. One day one of our technicians answered the phone, and for some reason, Basil's Brother started cursing & swearing violently at him. We have a short, plump, feisty office attendant called R, & the following day when Basil's Brother called again, she grabbed the phone from me & said, "Who are you ah? Why you keep calling?" Basil's Brother promptly exploded & started screaming! I was standing a few feet from R & I could hear him shrieking, "You pig! Pig!!!" R is a devout muslim so I thought she'd get angry, but she didn't. Fortunately, he stopped calling soon after that. Then there are those calls that I remember fondly, like the night a woman called, excited, and said she had seen a UFO near Kheam Hock Rd. Shortly after a newspaper reporter also called & said people had sighted UFOs over the Botanic Gardens. Next, someone from Tanglin police station called & said the same thing. I don't know why people call us for such things. After all, this is a weather forecast office. I could only tell them that we don't have an observation station in that area so I didn't have any information for them. Some time later, there was another similar incident when the UFOs turned out to be spotlights from an outdoor concert shining onto the bases of some low cloud. Then there was a man who called one night because he could see a lot of lightning in the sky. I looked at the radar, but there were no echoes. Either the thunderstorm was very far away (at least several hundred km, possible because at night lightning can be seen from a great distance) or there was an electrical storm nearby with no precipitation. Anyway, he was really excited. He seemed to think I didn't really understand what he was seeing. He said urgently, "You've got to see it! Go out and take a look!" I really liked how enthusiastic he was, because Singaporeans generally aren't very passionate about the weather. There was also another man who called me at 2am in the morning because he'd seen a meteor falling. He, too, was terribly excited. "It was still burning when it hit the ground!!!" He said he'd been watching tv when he saw it, and had switched the tv off and just stood at his window for a while waiting to see if another would fall. He kept repeating, "It was still burning when it hit the ground!" He really wanted to see another one, & asked me if it was possible. I didn't want to disappoint him, so I said yes it was possible, there are times of the year when you get many of these, & reminded him about the Leonid meteors (there was a lot of fuss about these in Singapore at the time). After he'd hung up, I could imagine him standing at his window, peering out hopefully for another shooting star. I really hope he got his wish.

Yes ... you are. M

You're right, Ian. In fact, I believe some companies even advocate short naps for employees in the afternoon. Those companies that take good care of employees usually have much higher productivity.

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, from the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid in their noon-day dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken, the sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, as she dances about the Sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, and whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, and laugh as I pass in thunder. I sift the snow on the mountains below, and their great pines groan aghast; And all the night 'tis my pillow white, while I sleep in the arms of the blast. Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers, lightning my pilot sits; In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, it struggles and howls at fits; Over Earth and Ocean, with gentle motion, this pilot is guiding me, Lured by the love of the genii that move in the depths of the purple sea; Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, over the lakes and the plains, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, the Spirit he loves remains; And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile, whilst he is dissolving in rains. The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes, and his burning plumes outspread, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, when the morning star shines dead; As on the jag of a mountain crag, which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit in the light of its golden wings. And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit Sea beneath, its ardours of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve may fall from the depth of Heaven above, With wings folded I rest, on mine äery nest, as still as a brooding dove. That orbed maiden with white fire laden whom mortals call the Moon, Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor by the midnight breezes strewn; And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, which only the angels hear, May have broken the woof, of my tent's thin roof, the stars peep behind her, and peer; And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, are each paved with the moon and these. I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone and the Moon's with a girdle of pearl; The volcanos are dim and the stars reel and swim when the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof -- the mountains its columns be! The triumphal arch, through which I march with hurricane, fire, and snow, When the Powers of the Air, are chained to my chair, is the million-coloured Bow; The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove while the moist Earth was laughing below. I am the daughter of Earth and Water, and the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores, of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain, when with never a stain the pavilion of Heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams, build up the blue dome of Air I silently laugh at my own cenotaph and out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, live a ghost from the tomb, I arise, and unbuild it again. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

I just hope I don't get sacked from my job for writing all this! I'd better emphasise now, once and for all, that our office folks are all extremely serious about their work, barring a few quirks.

When Pat & I returned to Singapore, we were each assigned to understudy a senior forecaster and started operational work. The shift considered of a 6-day cycle : 2 day shifts, then a night shift followed by 3 days off. The first day shift was devoted to aviation and shipping, while the second involved public weather forecasts, issuing TAFs & trend statements & sending out lightning risk warnings to various clients, mostly golf courses & construction companies. Night shift included all of these, but fortunately the golf courses & most construction firms closed at night so there were fewer warnings to issue. The forecasters have a locker room & I was given my own locker where I kept my met. books & sleeping bag. There was a table there where the kettle & toaster resided. It was also where the forecasters left edibles which were meant to be shared by everyone - usually chocolates or titbits bought during an overseas workshop, or pineapple tarts/various biscuits for Chinese New Year. It was understood that any edibles left on this table were for everyone's consumption. Therefore, leave your personal snacks there at your own peril, or else return & find them gone. One custom I found strange was the forecasters' habit of using the word "weather" to imply "bad weather" i.e. any form of precipitation. Eg they would say, "Any weather expected today?" "There was a lot of weather last night." "Shift was OK today, there wasn't any weather." I was mystified at first. How can there be no weather? There is always weather, whether good or bad, sunny or rainy. Then it was entertaining to discover the quirks of various colleagues. I was assigned to understudy W, a forecaster who used to be from Hong Kong. He was noisy & sociable; he would assign me some job to do, then while I applied myself to it, he would roam around the office, checking the radar & weather charts, & singing various songs in Cantonese. Then he took great relish in ordering me around, checking my work & picking out my mistakes with glee. No matter how carefully I checked my sigwx chart before showing it to him, there was always one little label I'd forgotten to delete or one cloud left unlabelled. I got my own back on him, though. One night a member of the public called & asked when the Southern Cross could be seen. Luckily I'd been noticing it above my neighbour's roof around 8pm during that time of the year. W had never heard of the Southern Cross. "What's that?" he asked, and then he looked rather sheepish. Another colleague was C. He was excellent at technical things & programming, but occasionally absent minded. He would brush his teeth in the gents' after lunch, put the toothbrush in his back pocket & then forget it was there, & walk around with it sticking out of his back trousers pocket for the rest of the day. Then there was S who was a walking encyclopaedia of Chinese culture, & who also had a huge library of books in both English & Chinese. What is remarkable too is that he really reads all his books. He is one of those people who manages to never stop learning & keeping up with things current, whether it be IT (always armed with his pda & mobile phone), developments in met., or current affairs. He is also a certified Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner. Then there was H from China, who was already an experienced meteorologist when he joined us. Because of his experience, he was pretty good at doing the routine work. On one occasion, though, I overheard him attending to an enquiry from someone going to Beijing for a holiday. "Yes, 7 degrees Celsius," H was saying earnestly, "that is the minimum temperature now." Pause. Then, "No, not cold. 7 is not cold, you wear one jacket should be OK." I almost choked on my drink. In Singapore the temperature is quite uniform, usually about 24 to 32 deg Celsius. I waited till he put the phone down, & then, trying not to laugh, told him, "H, to YOU, 7 degrees isn't cold. To a Singaporean, it is VERY cold!" Hopefully the poor caller didn't freeze during his holiday. Then there was G. When I first joined, he sported a moustache & everyone joked that he looked like the Hong Kong actor George Lam. In fact, whenever he went to Hong Kong for meetings, he was tickled because the people there also would comment that he looked like George Lam. One day, he shocked everyone by shaving the moustache off. It was quite peculiar seeing him without it. When asked about it, he just joked that he was protesting against Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian's antics of getting himself shot in the stomach. The following day, D decided to tease him by pretending not to recognise him. "Who are you?" he demanded fiercely, glaring at G when the latter arrived in the office, briefcase in hand. "Over there, over there, sign your name," waving him toward the counter where visitors are supposed to register. G just smiled.

I have a number of met. books. Most are textbooks, but there are also some that I bought just to enjoy, like these : . . I bought Spacious Skies second hand from Foyles in London. I really like the book - it contains dozens of great photos accompanied by brief explanations. I think it necessary for a weather enthusiast to own a couple of such books. At the time I bought this, the use of the internet wasn't widespread, so the best way to see a variety of weather phenomena was through books like these. Textbooks don't contain a lot of photos, & you can hardly be a meteorologist if you only know the phenomena through equations on a piece of paper. I bought "Weather" from the old MPH bookshop in Stamford Rd. This bookstore used to be something of an institution in Singapore. It was near my old school, & I have many fond memories of dropping by once school was over to browse. Alas, it has since closed down. Anyway, I looked at "Weather" quite a number of times before deciding to buy it. There are hundreds of weather books out there, & I'd already studied met. so I didn't really need another basic weather book. But I liked its layout & design a lot : lovely pictures, little side stories, weather quotes & proverbs, virtually every facet of the weather was given a brief section - from climate change to cloud identification to different weather phenomena and forecasting methods. I thought, if I had to produce a weather book it would be one like this, basically a celebration of all things meteorological. I didn't understand the choice of cover, though; how can a painting of weather phenomena ever surpass photos of the real thing?

We had a fairly typical "Sumatra" on 15 Aug. "Sumatra" is a nickname for a squall line that often forms over the Indonesian land mass of Sumatra & then moves over the Malacca Straits to affect Singapore and Malaysia. This particular Sumatra seems to have started organising itself just before affecting Singapore. "Sumatras" often affect us during the night, between 3am and 6am; one can see a line of echoes on the radar steadily making its way eastward. If there's no bad weather around we can usually get a bit of rest during night shifts between 11pm and 3am, but if you're expecting a "Sumatra" then you can forget about getting any rest because you have to keep monitoring it. Sometimes the squall line weakens and dissipates upon moving over land, but the stronger ones will continue moving eastward out into the South China Sea. This one has reorganised into quite a distinct line but looks as if it's weakening as it moves out to the sea area. Sumatras are one of our more intense weather systems & usually occur during the Southwest Monsoon, but we can actually get them any time the steering level winds change to southwesterlies. They bring strong gusts & heavy rain, & spectacular lightning & thunder. They can move in during the day instead, & we usually refer to these as "late Sumatras". Once you know one is coming in, then forecasting is standard. You can usually estimate what time it'll arrive & get as much of your routine work done as possible plus get all the warnings ready. I remember nights at home hearing the onset of one. You can hear the wind picking up & the tinkle of flowerpots falling & doors slamming. One colleague joked that it sounded like a typhoon coming. It can often be seen approaching in the early morning too, a line of cumulonimbus moving in from the west, the cloud tops pink or gold in early morning sunlight. A schoolteacher called one morning, sounding worried because she & her students had seen one. She quavered, "Oh ... is it ... is it a front approaching?" She was probably a geography teacher & her students must have been asking her about it. Of course the squall line often just misses Singapore, passing to the north over Malaysia or to the south instead. Sometimes if the steering winds are northwesterlies, the radar will show a line of echoes moving down the Malacca Straits, only affecting the western or southern parts of the island. A colleague was once annoyed because his Sumatra seemed to be heading for Singapore dead on, but just before hitting the island, suddenly divided into two. One part went north, while the other passed south of us, & after skipping the island it actually merged back into one and moved out into the South China Sea! He couldn't believe his eyes; he had gotten all his warnings ready & been forecasting strong winds & rain for nothing. He was convinced the squall line had done it on purpose to spite him! Well, that's the nature of forecasting.

Lovely photos, thanks for sharing them.

Keep trying ... it depends on luck, but you also have to be near the sea & there must be a thunderstorm (or at least some showers) nearby.

A water spout was spotted off Sentosa's Siloso Beach on 14 Aug, according to an article in the local newspaper, The Straits Times. In the article, "A Sentosa spokesman said such waterspouts are common but they never occur on the island. 'Usually, they are very far away but can be seen from Sentosa. They don't last long,' he added." Unfortunately I don't have access to that day's radar pictures (only the last two hours are available online) or we would be able to have a look at the weather system producing the water spout. The spokesman said waterspouts are common; how often does "common" mean? From past reports, we seem to get about 2-3 sightings per year. In over 10 years of working at the Met. Service, I have only seen "funnel cloud" (FC) reported once on our METAR while I was on duty. Pat encountered an FC once while on shift too, she said the control tower called the office because it looked as if it was approaching them & they were quite alarmed. On another occasion, D & I were driving over the flyover next to the airport when D suddenly spotted a funnel cloud forming in the distance just in front of us. We stopped the car a little further down, along East Coast Park, to watch. It was a very distinct funnel, snaking downward from the cloud but not reaching the sea surface. It looked quite menacing. It's one thing to watch these on tv or look at photos of them, but I can attest that it was quite eerie to be actually standing there with the water spout not too far away. What if it started moving toward us? It lasted about 5-10 minutes & then dissipated. Unfortunately we didn't have a camera. Well, maybe next time.

My cousin Ann is getting married at the end of the year & had her wedding photoshoot on 4 July. In Singapore, a lot of wedding couples opt to have a photo shoot consisting of both indoor shots in the studio & outdoor shots in various locations around the island. Ann informed me that she was bringing 7 BAGS of outfits (a mix of evening wear plus her wedding dress) to the shoot. (D was quite shocked when I told him, well at least I spared him having to endure that many changes during our wedding). Anyway, she was very anxious about whether she was going to get good weather on that day, & kept bugging me for a forecast months in advance. She was going to have photos taken in 4 locations : her old home in Malcolm Rd, the SJI chapel, her new apartment & at Sentosa. I told her July (which is during the Southwest monsoon) is usually quite a dry month, & gave her 3 possible scenarios. 1. Dry & fair day. 2. Some showers in the late morn/early afternoon, which would fizzle out in an hours' time or so or, if she was very unlucky, 3. "Sumatra". This is a nickname for a thunderstorm squall line that usually develops over Sumatra (in Indonesia) & then moves across the Malacca Straits to Singapore. It brings torrential rain, & can last for a couple of hours. What I didn't tell her was that things aren't always clear-cut when it comes to weather, & that frankly anything could happen. Also, we had a wetter than usual June this year. She kept SMSing me after that for updates, as the day loomed nearer & nearer. Since I'm on leave & couldn't check the data in the office for her, I had to ask D to do it. As 4 July approached, he said the 3rd looked wet, but the 4th looked ok so far. To allay her fears, I told her I'd check the radar online for her early in the morning. In the end, everything turned out fine ... radar images showed no echoes & it was a pretty hot day. She sent me some of the photos when it was over. I like this one the most :

I like this book. It contains 32 interviews with well-known meteorologists. Each interview was originally published in the WMO Bulletin. In the book, the author Hessam Taba recalls where the idea of the interviews came from : "...when I came back from my summer holiday in Sept 1980, I heard that Professor Jacques Van Mieghem had died. His sudden disappearance affected me deeply; we had worked together for many years and I had conceived a profound respect for him. I wished very much that I had kept something - his thoughts expressed in a letter or his recorded voice ... It was then that it occurred to me that, even if I had missed my chance with Van Mieghem, I could still document the reminiscences and reflections of other eminent scientists." What I like is that each interview touches on the personal side of the meteorologist, as well as the professional ... how they came to be interested in meteorology, why they'd chosen it as their profession. There is also a hilarious account of the author's student-teacher relationship with Professor Carl-Gustaf Rossby (which for some reason I keep reading over again because it's so funny, I didn't know Rossby was such a character), and a delightful description of one of the meteorologists' houses (J. Bessemoulin) in the Pyrenees which was converted from an old water mill so that the river flowed under the living room. This captured my imagination but I wonder what happens when there's a flood and the river rises. Although in a remote spot the house had modern amenities and even a fax to receive met. analyses and forecast maps. At the end of the interview, Mr Taba would usually ask the interviewee if he had any advice to give to a young person who was aspiring to be a meteorologist. I agree with a lot of the answers they gave : "...it is a happy profession...The subject is intrinsically attractive, it is related to nature and the environment, it has no unpleasant overtones and is entirely beneficial to the human race..." - Professor R.C. Sutcliffe "...Personally, I am very glad that I chose meteorology. It enabled me to get to know many interesting people ... and not only meteorologists, since meteorology interacts with many other fields of human activity. It was wonderful for me to be able to meet so many eminent people from different countries at WMO meetings ..." - Mr J. Bessemoulin "...one thing that I would advocate is that the young person spend as much time as possible out of doors; climb mountains, go to the seashore, get a feel for the atmosphere and the environment. I cannot help feeling that a great many of our modern meteorologists do not know how the atmosphere operates; they are rarely outside, most have never made regular weather observations ... They see satellite pictures, synoptic analyses, but I have the impression that they are not acquainted with Nature as she actually runs. Since the atmospheric sciences deal with natural phenomena, you should live with them for a while ..." - Professor H.E. Landsburg

LENTICULAR CLOUDS These are stationary lens-shaped clouds that are sometimes mistaken for UFOs because of their smooth saucer-like shape. Where stable moist air flows over a mountain or a range of mountains, a series of large-scale standing waves may form on the downwind side. Lenticular clouds sometimes form at the crests of these waves. Unfortunately we don't see these in Singapore because there are no high mountains nearby. I once did see some lens-shaped clouds while driving home from Tengah Airbase, though. I was driving at the time & didn't have a camera with me, but I just couldn't take my eyes off them. We do have some hills here & it is possible that the airflow over the hills may have produced those clouds. I saw some lovely cloud formations when I was in NZ South Island. I think they are a truly unique & spectacular phenomenon. It's a pity I can't see them in real life more often. PILEUS, OR CAP CLOUDS A layer of cloud sometimes seen capping a cumulus cloud. The pileus layer forms when the cumulus cloud pushes a moist layer of air above it upwards, causing condensation in this layer. Eventually, the cumulus will grow into and penetrate the pileus cloud, after which the pileus may remain as a cloud skirt around the cumulus. I have often seen these in Singapore. I get a kick out of spotting them, because they are transient & elusive. They are usually observed over towering cumulus clouds.

One of my Reading classmates emailed me the other day, which was a pleasant surprise. He's with the UK Met Office, & said that UKMO is currently centralising its operations. He was writing during his shift, and ended off with : "It's a quiet night because pressure is high. Just had some excitement because there is some noctilucent cloud outside - the first time I have ever seen any. It's very high cloud (mesospheric I think) which catches the sunlight long after the sun has gone down - right through the night even." Well, wish I could see that. He sent me one of his papers too. Title : NWP Grid Editing at the Met. Office My mood : Pleased

Super Typhoon "Saomai" about to make landfall on mainland China yesterday : It really is an awesome system, one of the more powerful typhoons to hit China this year. I like the distinct "eye". B) A news article on Saomai's impact. "Saomai" is the Vietnamese name for Venus, or the Morning Star. It was a good move several years ago to start giving local names to this region's tropical cyclones. The Hong Kong Observatory has a nice section on them, including their meaning, country of origin & even audio clips to listen to the pronunciation. Most have lovely meanings, such as flowers/wildlife native to a particular country, or folk heros, or are appropriate for a weather system eg the name of the god of lightning/thunder. There was one year when I noticed a typhoon named "Durian", though. I thought it pretty odd naming a typhoon after a pungent fruit, much as you might think it queer to have a hurricane named "Banana" or "Coconut".

Today is Singapore's Independence Day. We were a British colony until 1965. There will be a parade this evening, called the National Day Parade (NDP). It is one of the major events of the year, with several thousand spectators & displays from the military as well as government & private groups, & dance performances by schoolchildren. The president, prime minister & all members of parliament will be present. Part of the celebrations includes a military flypast of F16s from our Air Force, & also a spectacular fireworks display. Because of this, the organisers are often quite anxious about the weather. The parade organisers come from a different unit of the army every year. This year it is the Guards unit. My office gets different amounts of stress depending on who the organiser is. Some are not too concerned about the weather, & are content to have us fax them a forecast a week or so before. Others are very concerned, & require regular forecasts & updates weeks before the event; they also want a forecaster to be on site at the Parade grounds so that they can grill you in person. Besides the actual day on 9 Aug, a preview of the Parade is also given to schoolchildren (called the National Education Show, or N.E. Show) & to the public (called the Preview). This year's NE Show & Preview already took place several weeks ago. I was on duty on-site a couple of years ago, during the NE Show. I was on my toes, because several thousand schoolchildren were going to be watching, & if they caught pneumonia by sitting in the rain I would have felt responsible. Fortunately the weather wasn't bad that day, & the showers cleared up before the parade started. The organisers that year were from the Armour unit, & in my opinion they were rather paranoid about the weather. In particular, I had this chubby officer, Major L, fussing about the forecast all the time. He had worked out a very complicated flowchart to present to his boss incorporating the weather (i.e. if it rains, then one action is carried out, if fair weather, then carry on etc etc.) He had even arranged for a Fokker to fly around at intervals, collecting wind data. Although the parade didn't start till 6pm, I had to be on-site by 10am because there were a lot of preparations being carried out. Major L was all in a dither when echoes started popping up on the radar in the afternoon. By 4pm I could see that they were dissipating, though, so I gave him the all-clear. His eyes were bulging, because he could still see the echoes on the radar. "But how do you KNOW?" Later he kept calling the office to find out how the forecasts were done. My boss joked that he had taught Major L so much about forecasting that should he decide to leave the army, he could always come & work for us. I found it interesting being in the control room, anyway, & seeing how things were being done. The colonel who was in charge of everything was quite a nice chap; after I'd explained the radar animation to him, he gave a slow, pleased smile & said, "I learned something new today." Another officer was checking on the schoolchildren. "How many have arrived? Have any gotten lost so far?" "No, but there's a big queue at the toilets." At the end there was a mix-up in the no of schoolbuses arriving to pick the children up, & the officer was very angry; he said he couldn't have a few hundred children stranded there. I had fun chatting to the doctors there, too. They kept surveying the performers out on the field with a pair of binoculars to see if anyone had fainted in the heat. One was half Japanese & had studied as a child in Japan; he knew a lot more about the weather than most Singaporeans do. I enjoyed talking to one of the Warrant Officers, Gordon, who was attending the same religious instruction class as D at that time. But the best part of the parade was the fireworks - not the fireworks themselves, but the reaction of the schoolchildren to them. Imagine several thousand little children crying out "Ooooh!!!" in amazement at each burst of colour; it was really funny & moving. B) Well, it's 10.30am and D is on duty at the Parade grounds now. Our latest radar plot shows a little thunderstorm nearby. It should clear up soon and the weather this evening looks like it will be OK. Happy Birthday, Singapore.

A tsunami hit Java in Indonesia on 17 July. (See article). I am on leave so I wasn't in the office that day, but I knew there had been a large earthquake because my mobile phone received at least 20 SMSes, including 2 tsunami alerts. (D is involved in running our seismic system, & since he doesn't have a mobile phone he uses mine to test the system). Since the 26 Dec 2004 tsunami, attempts are being made to set up a warning system for our region. Singapore itself isn't in an earthquake zone, but we are part of the warning network because we have several seismic sensors set up around the island. D called from the office the following day, so I asked if there was a lot of concern about the tsunami, but he said no, now it's haze that they're worried about ... visibility in Penang & Sitiawan had fallen to 2km. The Southwest monsoon is dry season for Indonesia because the ITCZ lies far to the north. Indonesia consists of huge tracts of rainforest, & a lot of illegal burning is carried out to clear the jungle for farming/logging. Smoke from the fires often drifts over to neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore, enveloping them in choking haze. Sometimes visibility is only a few hundred metres & one can't really see the sun. Because of that, our office is always monitoring the rainfall in the region as well as satellite pictures for signs of forest fires in Indonesia. A recent satellite picture : Wheeee ... look at all that smoke. Some of those smoke patches look bigger than Singapore. Right now winds are blowing it to the northwest, but once the winds change to southwesterlies, all that smoke is going to drift over to Singapore. There's very little that we can do about it; it's up to the Indonesian govt to crack down on the big plantation owners who are responsible for most of the burning. * On another note, while surfing the net, I found this silly spoof at this site. It just cracked me up. HAZE IN THE WIND (Sing to the tune of CANDLE IN THE WIND by Elton John) BY THE ASTHMATICS Goodbye clear blue sky Though we never see you anymore We hope you've not forgotten to come back to Singapore* The fires won't stop burning And no matter how hard we try It seems we're edging closer towards one thousand PSI And it seems to me you lived your life like a candle in the wind Never staying a moment longer when the haze set in And your memory will always haunt us when the CD sirens wail Your candles burned out long before our lungs completely fail .... * Choose your country Mood : Tickled

Am taking a break from reminiscing to post something more current. I was checking out the forum at the Hong Kong Weather Underground for the first time a couple of days ago. This thread caught my attention. I was amused because the members were all lamenting the fact that no tropical cyclone had hit Hong Kong lately, & they were monitoring a tropical depression (07W) currently over the Philippines (see satellite picture below) & debating about whether it would affect Hong Kong or not. One thing struck me : In most of the weather forums I've looked at, newcomers are usually welcomed & the senior members are more than happy to explain weather facts to the less learned. In the HK Weather Underground, however, I noticed a member who obviously didn't seem to know as much as the others. He was asking questions about the Tropical Cyclone naming system. Shortly after, the Forum Administrator posted this : For simple questions try searching the web for answers first. This helps training your research skills. Thank you. This is a curious facet of Hong Kong culture that I have sometimes noticed : rather unsympathetic & unsentimental. An acquaintance of mine, L, once went travelling in Europe with a friend from Hong Kong. At one of the borders, there was some discrepancy in L's passport, so the customs would not allow her to pass. L's friend got through with no trouble, & instead of waiting for L, got back on the coach & went off without her. L, not being the adventurous sort & finding herself alone in a foreign country, promptly broke down & cried. While I was in Reading, I got to know A, this cute little girl from Hong Kong. We used to meet each Sunday & attend church together, & once took a day trip to Cambridge together with a few other people. When the time came for me to return to Singapore, I asked A for her address so that I could keep in touch. She gave it to me, but told me, frankly & cheerfully, that she wasn't going to write letters or keep in touch. She said it without embarrassment, as if it were quite natural. Later I spoke to her British friend Peter who had gone to Cambridge with us, & he said that A had told him exactly the same thing. I have a colleague who was originally from Hong Kong, & when asked about this, he just shrugged & said, yup, Hong Kong folks are like that. Having said that, however, I must admit that all the meteorologists I've met from the Hong Kong Observatory have been very nice people. Anyway, a few days later, I checked the satellite pictures & saw that "07W" (now "Prapiroon", see above) had indeed made landfall on China. (Incidentally, "Prapiroon" is Thai for the god of rain). Here is an image of the storm track : When I logged on to the HK Weather Underground, the posts were flying fast & furious. Well I am happy for the members - they finally got their much sought-after typhoon! I noticed, though, that they were now also attacking the Hong Kong Observatory with great gusto, criticizing its typhoon forecasts. Heh. And I thought that in Singapore, the Met. Service sometimes has it bad.

Yep ... I think meteorology is something most Singaporeans don't know anything about. Hope you enjoy reading the blog.

My first post. I have been wanting to keep a weather blog for some time, because after working for a no. of years in this field, I find that there are quite a lot of memorable events I'd like to record down. I didn't plan to be a meteorologist initially. I did physics at uni & wasn't sure what I wanted to do after that. Most of my classmates planned to teach, or join something related to the electronics sector. In my 2nd yr, one of my lecturers, Dr Lim Hock, gave a lecture on meteorology. I found it interesting; Lim Hock had worked for 8 yrs in the Singapore Met Service & when I met him later to ask him about the job, he wasn't encouraging. However Dr Mark Hogan, who was in the Atomic Lab with me, laughed when I mentioned this & said that it wasn't surprising, considering Dr Lim had chosen to leave the Met. Service. I applied after graduating and when I received the phone call telling me I'd got the job, the EO asked me when I wanted to start work. I was surprised, because I thought one is normally told when you are required to start work. I decided to take a holiday before embarking on working life, so I said, June 16. I went to Tioman with Beetle Bailey, whom I'd known since Pri 1. We flew there by Pelangi Air, which owned a fleet of decrepit propeller planes. On the day we were to leave for home, we discovered at the airport that all the Pelangi planes had broken down. This put us in a spot; I had to get back by the next day to start work. Some of the passengers were cabin crew from KLM, and needed urgently to get back to Singapore as well. In the end we took a motor boat to Mersing and from there a cab down to Singapore. I remember the boat ride well - it's exciting being in a small boat speeding out in the open sea. I kept thinking that if I fell off the side into the water, no one would ever find me again. There was a thunderstorm nearby as well and bolts of lightning kept bisecting the sky. Quite spectacular. On my first day of work, I got lost in the airport trying to find the Met. Office. It's tucked away on the top floor of terminal 2, and you go thru this winding set of passageways to get there. I remember Masturah (from the admin section) coming out to look for me. The first few months were uneventful. I couldn't start operational work until I'd been trained, and the training consisted of a 1-yr MSc in Weather, Climate & Modelling at the University of Reading in UK. The term started in Oct, so I spent most of my time before that lurking in the office library.