How Would Netweather Cope ?

[Paul Sherman]

All the posts recently about Members missing out on storms and others getting a few borderline Severe Storms got me thinking and I posed this question to Paul on the Phone earlier, just how would Netweather cope if we got a Super Outbreak!

On looking back at the records we really have not seen anything that severe in this country for 28 years (Even the Birmingham and London Tornado pale into insignificance to the November 1981 Outbreak. So with 82 Pages on Monday in little over 10 hours would Netweather cope with the following Stats on Uk Tornadoes and Storms

Biggest Uk Outbreak would you believe is not uncomparable to the US - With a whopping 105 Tornadoes in a single day on the 23rd November 1981, these were brought about by a very strong Cold Front with 13 Tornadoes alone in Norfolk and every county bar 1 from Wales to Humberside to Essex seeing Tornadoes, most were fairly weak but there were a fair few F2's.

Strongest Uk Tornado was two seperate F4 Tornadoes, St Mary Le Bow (Central London) and Old Portsmouth to Southsea Common, would Netweather cope with an F4 Rampaging through the Countryside

Widest Tornado in the Uk would you believe was just under a 1 Mile Wide Wedge Tornado in Worcester and as recently as 1946 a 3/4 Mile Wide Tornado in Fairlight (E Sussex)

Longest Track Tornado was again fairly recently on May 21st 1950 with a 160km Track length but could have been more as the Tornado now Waterspout was last seen disappearing out over the North Sea. This Tornado at times was an F3.

I struggle to think just how Netweather would cope with those type of Storms occuring in the Internet age, even the Hailstorms we get nowadays are nothing compared to the 1958 Tennis Ball Sized Hailstones that fell in parts of Sussex.

So what do you think would the Storm Forum go into Meltdown

Paul S

[dave48]

I think it would be alright.

Yeah the convective discussion would be swamped and probably very difficult to read and keep up with for the day, but after than things would settle. The great thing about forums like net weather is their ability to change quickly, i'm sure that threads would appear to help quantify the events and split data and information into their relevant areas.

The great thing about net weather is that it has a great balance between serious talk but also light hearted chat between weather enthusiasts.

I am confident that in the event of a serious outbreak, despite some intial problems, everything would iron out quite nicely.

Although, if we all had power cuts, there might not be much activity at all!

[Noctilucid]

It would go into meltdown with the number of posts asking "will I get a killer F4 wedge here?" or complaining "people only care about the south boohoo"

Edited June 17, 2009 by jshaw

[Harry]

I dont think it would go into meltdown - quite the opposite in fact.

Most people would lose electricity, the rest would voluntarily shut down due to lightning danger, others would be outside filming/watching, while the unfortunate ones (probably SE residents, lol) would be in the NSC thread whinging about the desert conditions.

Monday was an extreme because a) the widespread number of storms and :o because 2009 has been IMO relatively quiet, especially in the SE. And I do not buy this 'selective memory' theory - I can remember year in year out, May into June would bring thunder events of some description, be it MCS or our average UK storm 'outbreaks' like on Monday. Waiting until mid June for the first direct hit storm is rare. Even last year, which was exceptionally quiet, we got a decent MCS in May!

I digress, sorry - I think the forum would cope due to the points above

Edited June 17, 2009 by Harry

[Thundery wintry showers]

The main problem I can see is that there'd be a risk of such extreme weather spawning posts like,

"For those of you getting excited about and wishing for a F4, just spare a thought for the people that lose their lives as a result of such vicious weather, the damage to property and the misery that results. Be careful what you wish for in the future and be a little less selfish. End of rant"

...which could generate some very awkward clashes of opinion to say the least! But with a bit of luck any of that stuff would soon be swept away in a cascade of posts saying "will I get a storm in X".

Other than that, we'd get the usual problem of too many posts per thread to be able to keep up, but the forum would still keep ticking along and there would always be havens for more "technical" discussion- I imagine the N-W alerts and forecaster blogs would really come into their own if it was a significant stormy spell.

An equally interesting question would be whether the forum could cope with a repeat of February 1991 (yes February 2009 had a similarly snowy first half in some areas, but not on as wide a scale) where only limited areas of the country fail to see major snowstorms. I still think it probably would.

[Tim B]

What is the server and connection spec we have here?

Given what I have seen in the past and notably the recent storm event I think it would be fine if a bit hard to follow due to threads filling up so fast as it isn't like we are hosting huge videos and the likes that everyone and their dog will be downloading all at once.

[Thundery wintry showers]

Aye, most people put their videos up on the likes of Youtube these days. Come to think of it, maybe I should do that with some of my Norwich storm videos from last year!

The more I think about it the more convinced I am that N-W could cope fine.

[maidstone weather]

weren't there problems with the forum back in February? I thought NW went offline temporarily for about an hour on quite a few evenings?

[03jtrickey]

Slightly off-topic, but do you have any more details of the 1981 tornado outbreak?

I'm intrigued to know which county missed out!

[A.J]

hmm....not so sure on this one......obviously I dont know NW's infrstructure, amount of servers, bandwith etc....but lets face it over 1000 users active on the forum back in feb, the forums snowed under (no pun intended...lol) and for what exactly?...not exactly 'worst snow-storm of all time' was it?....some areas had a few inches, some had nothing!!...With a tornadic super-outbreak, he biggest problem, as posted earlier, would be the usual suspects posting inane clap-trap like 'will it storm in?' and 'its just not fair we're not getting anything '....without some kind of vetting process, I reckon the forum might get swamped....I reckon the best place would be 'out there in the field' armed with, camera, flask, nictotine, portable BBQ and 72oz steak.....

[Paul]

weren't there problems with the forum back in February? I thought NW went offline temporarily for about an hour on quite a few evenings? <_<

We had a database issue for a couple of days, but it was unrelated to traffic. We also have contingencies in place to quickly scale things up should there be a massive traffic spike.

[MAF]

We had a database issue for a couple of days, but it was unrelated to traffic. We also have contingencies in place to quickly scale things up should there be a massive traffic spike.

well Paul, i would expect nothing less from you <_< after all, a good business continuity plan probably saves a lot of money

[Coast]

I imagine technically things would be OK, Paul seems to have a stable system with preventative measures in place.

Unfortunately with so many posts being uploaded over such a short time, you can't keep up with them and enjoy any local storm - so much of it is waisted. Unless you have 5 or 6 hours after the event to trawl back through the thread and re-live the moments!

[VillagePlank]

... besides you can set the posting frequency allowance to be 2 minutes, instead of 20 seconds, given that it is likely that the system is optimised for many reads, and few writes (standard OLTP system) RAID 5, perhaps RAID 10, that would keep IO to a minimum from a technical standpoint.

[Samsta]

Hmm, if there was an outbreak I wouldn't be at the computer, I would probably be filling 8gb worth of SD cards with pictures ^_^

[UkStormChaser]

well i think there are a few scenarios as to what would happen.

1. If a tornado outbreak of that magnitude was to occur in the UK again i think it would be shear chaos across the country as most people in this country don't have a real understanding of how dangerous tornadoes are unless they have watched programs like Storm Chasers or have the knowledge of weather like most of us here on the forum. So the phone networks would be jammed with calls, the emergency services would be maxed out, and roads would come to a stand still. So in this scenario i think many of us wouldn't even be able to get online, let alone have power supply to do it. (Id be out tracking the storms).

2. The UK government is prepared for such an event (HIGHLY unlikely) and would have back up power resources and communications so the UK could continue as normal and the Forum would go nuts (though id be out chasing) .

and finally 3. It happens in like 10 years time when the communications networks are much more advanced, the Met Office have much more advanced systems and American style Doppler radars across the UK, and the British public are much more informed to the hazards of tornadoes. In this case there wouldn't be much of a problem and we would all be in the Forum chatting away or out chasing. That's my take on it.

Hmm, if there was an outbreak I wouldn't be at the computer, I would probably be filling 8gb worth of SD cards with pictures ^_^

DITTO! and may i add probably doing about 120mph down the M1 haha

Edited June 19, 2009 by UkStormChaser

[Cookie]

when people get talking about weather people can talk and talk and talk.

we have seen it before and I think its great, and im sure netweather would cope fine!

[Andy P]

when people get talking about weather people can talk and talk and talk.

we have seen it before and I think its great, and im sure netweather would cope fine!

Yeah I totally agree with you there cookie and I'm sure if they was a major outbreak of Tornando's the netweather website would cope.

I thought on Monday night when I was following all the storm reports being added by our fellow forum members that the coverage was really good even though occasionally diffcult to keep track of (I guess that's the nature of forum's when an event like that happens) but wished I could have got involved and reported some storms of my own.

"IF" a major Tornando outbreak in the UK was to happen I think the majority of people with an interest in major storms would be out there taking a few pics and gettting some video footage to share with everyone on here. The busy time would be after the event when everyone's sharing there experiences.

I'm looking forward to seeing some major storms in the USA next year though on Tour 1!! And hoping for a few touchdowns as well!! (excuse the pun) Can't wait!! :lol:

[sammie]

1. The forum would die.

2. Everyone would go outside to take pictures etc

3. The forum goes back on line and everyone comes on to freak out and starts posting all their pics

4. It kills the forum and the admins have a stress related panic attack as angry forum users discover their home locations and decend upon them with torches and pitchforks.

[Cookie]

I like option 4!

[Tom D]

I don't think it would - the February snow event led to thousands of people being online at once, without any major problems.

I think it would just be annoying with so many posts on one thread (like on Monday), where pages are filled in minutes. In February the idea was to split the discussion into regions, which worked much better as people could talk about their vicinity. Of course then you could dip into other regions and discuss when necessary.

More to the point, I WANT this super outbreak this summer!

[Paul Sherman]

Tommy

We had discussed this idea in the Moderators Smoking Room and the only thing that possibly held it back this time was the Weather was not severe or widespread enough to split this time around. But if we did get a Country wide event of a much higher magnitude then the Split Threads will be used to ease keeping up with the topics.

Paul S

[Lynxus]

I think as long as your DB servers and Webservers ( if you have multiple ? ) can handle the connection count and your network connection is fast enought then i cants ee why you would have problems?

I suppose your worst problem would be around moderation.

Keeping the posts flowing and on topic also the creation of new threads when needed etc.

Whats your latest max connection count? how did your servers cope?

i assume you have some form of monitoring place ( try cacti ) to watch your server loads etc.

At least with that you can see just how much they can take.

once again, i think your worst problem will be around moderation.

One performace suggestion while busy...

- maybe you can run the forum through some form of cache in busy times?

IE: everyone sees a pre cached copy of the threads rather than everyone making hundreds of sql querys at the same time. Then maybe run a cache update

every 30 seconds.

Run the cache on your webservers in ram and you would improve capacity by a lot! and only needing to do a small amount of sql every 30 secs compared to everyone doing it.

Peace out.

G

[Greyowl]

I would think with massive power outages and communications damage as well, not many people would be able to get online anyway.

[Phil UK]

I think Paul/Karl et al do have some contingency plans in place.

As an example. During the week 1st/7th February 2009. This forum guests and members must have went up fivefold, especially on the Sunday night when the SE blizzards began to kick in. The stats alone on the main page prove that.

I originally joined NW on 25th June 2003. (Member no 159) But took a sabbatical for about two years-ish! So that's why I'm now member 8,000 and something. It was then a small but thriving forum. And 6 years later... The rest is history basically.

Had the above happened snow back then, then yes, his server(s) would have probably gone into meltdown. A saying I use is "Forewarned is forearmed". "Expect the unexpected", which is true of UK weather.

Phil.