Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog

There was a TVS associated with the F0
marking
also saw it from another site, just didn't post the other site
That TVS associated with the F0 marking has disappated abit
Mike

444 the wind shear over that part of the Atlantic is still way too high for anything to form that comes off thr African coast right now

Sure wish the Mexicans would put up some radar sites in that area to watch for the big boomers that form down that way

dont look

Morning Taz, isn't that the infamous eddie that spawned something that creamed FLA not too long ago?

Let's hope they've all got weather radios.

Amazing amounts of Lightning for this time of night

Link

might be seeing the first Pacific storm soon.

these troughs are barely phasing the High, definitely not going to have a repeat of last year.

Come see my blog

U.S. didn't use most foreign Katrina aid
Posted by Washington bureau April 29, 2007 4:38PM

Unable to deal with an unexpected outpouring of post-Katrina assistance, Washington did not accept most donations from other governments. ...

By Bruce Alpert û
Washington bureau û

WASHINGTON -- Only a small fraction of the more than $800 million in Hurricane Katrina assistance offered by foreign governments was used by federal agencies, according to documents released Sunday by a private watchdog group.

Rejected were the offers of foreign governments to send medical teams, search-and-rescue units, body bags, bottled water, food, fuel and even offers of specially trained rescue dogs from Poland, according to documents obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Also turned down or stalled by bureaucratic delays were offers of two cruise ships by the Greek government for use as medical facilities and to house workers and displaced residents.

The United States didn't have a system to process so many simultaneous offers of assistance, and if another disaster of the scale of Katrina occurred, it still would be unable to accept most aid, said Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director.

"I'm afraid the same thing would happen again," Sloan said in an interview Sunday in which she called for congressional investigations. "It's been nearly two years since Katrina, and still the government doesn't have a mechanism in place to deal with offers of foreign assistance."

The foreign aid snafu was first reported Sunday in The Washington Post. The Post said that the United States turned down 54 of the 77 offers from three of its biggest allies, Canada, England and Israel. CREW obtained the documents under the Freedom of Information Act

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday that the United States "frankly is not accustomed to receiving large-scale foreign assistance offers." But she said many of the offers of help, especially money, ended up going to private charities, such as the American Red Cross and the fund managed by former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

In the end, Rice told ABC News, the United States used a lot of the assistance, including some from the poorest nations in the world.

Much of the problem, according to the documents, rested with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was already overwhelmed trying to coordinate the U.S response to Katrina and couldn't decide what offers of foreign aid to accept and reject.

"It is getting downright embarrassing here not to have a response to the Estonians on food relief -- everyone at FEMA is swamped, but at this point even a 'thanks but no thanks' is better than deafening silence," one State Department e-mail writer said.

Given the desperation of thousands of New Orleans residents waiting on rooftops to be rescued, Sloan said it's hard to understand why the United States wouldn't have accepted more of the offers from countries ready to dispatch search-and-rescue teams to the Gulf Coast, or the offer of cruise ships from Greece to house displaced residents and rescue workers.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., chair of the Disaster Recovery Subcommittee, promised to ask hard questions of administration officials about the foreign aid problems.

"Louisiana and the Gulf Coast deserve better," Landrieu said. "And while we did not seek handouts, a hand up was and remains sorely needed." She promised to "get to the bottom of how this administration could so foolishly turn away an outreached hand in a time of such desperate need."

In some cases, particularly for medical workers and search-and-rescue teams, government officials raised liability concerns about the foreign volunteers.

Concerning the cruise ships, some U.S. officials, according to the released State Department memos, had concerns about the boats' sprinkler systems and whether they could arrive soon enough to be helpful. Ultimately, the government turned down the Greek offer, and contracted with Carnival Cruise Lines to provide two large ships at a cost of about $249 million.

In all, the U.S. government says it has committed about $125 billion to emergency response and recovery efforts for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

"Given the situation we were facing with so many people in need, you would have thought that the government could have worked around some of the concerns raised by the agencies," Sloan said. "Even if we decided that we needed ships sooner to handle the emergency workers, we still had a lot of homeless people who could have stayed on the cruise ships offered by the Greek government."

FEMA and other government agencies were worried about huge bottlenecks if specific plans hadn't been made to distribute donated materials.

"There is the potential for an unmanageable logistical back-up to occur at the US Air Base at Little Rock, where foreign hurricane assistance will most likely be directed," a State Department memo said.

"If a foreign flight arrives with assistance relief, but that assistance has not been approved, bottle-necks can quickly occur as Little Rock has limited storage."

Even with so much aid being rejected, some of the materials that did get through weren't properly handled. The State Department released several e-mails in which officials discussed what to do about medical supplies, including gauze from Italy that was left unusable after being "exposed to the elements."

"I think we need to come clean with the Italians, tell them we blew it, deeply appreciate and regret handling of this and let them know about disposal," a State Department official wrote a colleague in October 2005. "The flip side is just to dispose of it and not come clean. I'm willing to be persuaded. Thoughts?"

According to the State Department, most foreign nations understood the problems the United States had in processing so many donations. Still, the United Kingdom was critical of delays in acceptance and the relaying of logistics information, CREW said.

Bruce Alpert can be reached at bruce.alpert@newhouse.com or (202) 383-7861.

morning all! :)

looks like a mini-blob off of Honduras/ Nicaragua........

maybe an old frontal boundary?

Thelmores where did u get that zoomed in imagery

notice that low over Texas and the blob off of honduras

got the image here.....

http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/GOES/

love those interactive views! :)

Morning guys :)

That blob is convection generated by a surface trough in the area. There is NO surface circulation if you look on the visible loop.

Posted By: StoryOfTheCane at 2:58 AM AKDT on April 30, 2007.
these troughs are barely phasing the High, definitely not going to have a repeat of last year.

SOTC if you don't mind I need to clear something up. That surface map you have there shows nothing that we want to know. If you're looking for troughs and ridges that will steer hurricanes this year, look at the upper air maps, not the surface. That high that you guys are saying extends all the way across the Atlantic doesn't matter at all because it's the high in the upper atmosphere that matters.

Here's a link to a northern hemisphere 500mb map if you want to see it. Link

Anyway, if you want to find troughs and ridges that will affect hurricanes look either on a map like the one I gave you or the initial images of model runs. The surface map tells us nothing.