Here's my slides from my #AGU24 talk earlier today. Lots of folks in the session already took care of the meteorological and climatological side of #Helene, so I spent a good time talking about the emotional side. Buckle in folks, here comes a thread. drive.google.com/file/d/1nhzL... - ThreadSky

jjrennie.bsky.social • 111 days ago

Here's my slides from my #AGU24 talk earlier today.

Lots of folks in the session already took care of the meteorological and climatological side of #Helene, so I spent a good time talking about the emotional side.

Buckle in folks, here comes a thread.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nhzLz5U2FCR0Sknp0DcskbqbM1JYYYvD/view?usp=sharing

Comments

sasstronaut.bsky.social•111 days ago

How did it go over? It looks like a good talk. I'm from NC, working for NASA and NESDIS now in MD, so I've continued to sustain an emotional response from Helene. I was in Asheville for a wedding the day the election results were announced. Still feeling very grim as I'm sure you understand.

sasstronaut.bsky.social•111 days ago

I'm with LEO and will be bouncing between the NOAA and NASA booths tomorrow. Maybe I'll bump into you! I'll be a redhead in a pink dress with an n95 mask on.

sasstronaut.bsky.social•111 days ago

Oops. Green dress tomorrow.

jjrennie.bsky.social•111 days ago

I’m giving a poster tomorrow and i might stop by the noaa/nasa booths

jjrennie.bsky.social•111 days ago

Three things you need to know about #Helene.

1) It rained a lot.

According to data collected at NCEI, about 2500 square miles of Western North Carolina experienced a 1in1000 year flooding event. Unprecedented for sure in a lot of Southern Appalachia. #NCwx

jjrennie.bsky.social•111 days ago

2) NCEI was (and still is) affected by the storm.

As most folks know, we are a data center with over 70 petabytes of data. While the building was fine structurally, it didn't have power and water for some time.

And when a data center doesn't have water and power.... not good.

jjrennie.bsky.social•111 days ago

Luckily folks in our IT department, alongside city and county EMs, worked tirelessly around the clock to get the website (and our products and services) online.

Also, NCEI was fortunate enough to have all of it's employees accounted for after the storm.

BUT...

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/update-hurricane-helenes-impacts-ncei

jjrennie.bsky.social•111 days ago

Just because we were all accounted for, does NOT mean we have fully recovered from Helene. Lots of us are either dealing with (or know someone dealing with) trauma, including damaged/displaced homes, and the lost of loved ones.

We are all recovering in our own ways, and it's going to take time.

jjrennie.bsky.social•111 days ago

3) We still suck at communicating science

Sure we can go to our conferences and write our papers alongside similar minded folk, but if we can't communicate our work to the public, then I'd argue the work is lost and meaningless

And over the last few weeks I saw a examples where comms was lost

natejohnson.org•111 days ago

Thanks @jjrennie.bsky.social for this talk and for sharing it with us here who couldn’t be there.

I’m glad you and the rest of the NCEI staff are ok, even if you’re not fully ok and still dealing with $stuff.

I am curious about two points you made…

1/

jjrennie.bsky.social•111 days ago

First, a lot of folks in Asheville assumed that the threat was decreasing because Helene was going from a category 4 to a category 1 / Tropical Storm.

As we know, these categories are based on the Saffir Simpson scale. While it's useful, it's terrible for communications.

Focus on the impacts!

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