My condolences go out to all people who suffered under hurricane Ike, or under the remnants of it.
Following scripts portray the imaginary(and fictional!) media I have written about before during these days. This pretty much should sum up what thoughts I had about this storm in my head. This time I have written into some new characters, LWTV, a weather related English language channel, and LWS, a local (but also fictional weather service). If you want to read more about ex-Ike's effects on Iceland, I'd suggest to read Iceland Review.
LRET 1: 15:30 on 18.09.2008
Ident: SPECIAL REPORT: Ex-Ike
Anchor: Good afternoon, although the main news just concluded, this is once again a special report of LRET 1 News on the remnants of Ike. We would like to remind that continuous coverage on ex-Ike can be seen on LRET 5. Just less than a half an hour ago, Iceland Review released another report on the remnants of Ike. There have been reports of flooding and damage to the roads. It has been told that this was probably the worst storm in years. We shall now switch over to our sister station LWTV, which has been on the air monitoring Ike since last Friday. Let's listen in now..."
LWTV Meteorologist 4: "Honestly, these reports are even worse than I expected. I expected a strong storm with gusts at low hurricane force, but..."
LWTV Meteorologist 3: "Meanwhile, let's say hello to viewers of LRET 1, who will be following us for next few minutes. We here at the LWTV studios in LWS have been on the air continuously, with the exception of weather updates and hourly newscasts, since Friday noon. Now, let's bring out some important reports. Recently a report emerged from Iceland that airstrip in Gjögur had reported wind speed of 47 meters per second last night, per Iceland Review. We were unable to determine whether this was a sustained reading or a gust. For our international viewers's here's a little conversion. 47 meters per second is 169 kilometers per hour, 91 knots or 105 miles per hour. This is the last we have heard from out there."
LWTV Meteorologist 5(leaves roundtable and walks to a video screen): "All right, I'd like to put this reading into perspective. Can we get Saffir Simpson scale to the video screen?"
Hurricane scale appears on the video screen
LWTV Meteorologist 5: "OK. I would first like to put a little caveat on this - Saffir Simpson hurricane scale is used for tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean. Ike is no longer a tropical cyclone... and there is chance that it might not even be an ex-Ike anymore by standard means, but possibly the moisture from ex-Ike as a part of another cyclone."
LWTV Meteorologist 4: "Don't forget ex-Lowell that joined ex-Ike!"
LWTV Meteorologist 5: "And moisture from ex-Lowell. Of course, merger with another system will certainly remove identity from the weather maps, but the bad weather itself... Depends. Sometimes the weather conditions doesn't make it through the merger either, but sometimes they might provide extra fuel to the resultant system. Anyway, we have a report from Iceland about winds reaching 47 meters per second. I assume that this was a gust. Now, if this was a tropical cyclone and 47 meters per second was a 1 minute average speed, this would mean a strong Category 2 hurricane. If I remember such wind speed is kind of close to the intensity Ike had at making landfall in Texas. Does anyone have the Texas landfall intensity?"
LWTV Meteorologist 2: "Hang on, I'll check... 49! 49 meters per second, but that was sustained. Gusts were obviously higher."
LWTV Meteorologist 3: "By the way, has Europe even had storm with winds even gusting more than that?"
LWTV Meteorologist 5: "In fact we have. A storm which Germans called Anatol in 1999 had gusts to 48 meters per second. (fact sheet about European storms appears on video screen) Now, of course, in the mountains, much higher above the ground, it can be much windier, but during Kyrill in 2007, winds reached 62 meters per second! I however think this was measured at a pretty high elevation. Also the gusts in The Great Storm of 1987 in the UK were slightly stronger than our today's reason of attention."
LRET 1 Anchor: "Ok, we are breaking away now from LWTV to pass over to our weather studio for the latest comment."
Weather announcer at LRET 1: "Yes, and indeed, we are having a some sort of an identity crisis. Apparently Ex-Ike with the moisture from Ex-Lowell may have lost its identity early this week. Regardless of it, the... even if merged... remnants have probably acted like a high octane fuel, and intensified an extratropical low pressure area to the intensity that is probably even comparable to beasts like Anatol and Erwin. Latter one is also known as Gudrun and that name is also probably familiar for residents in Pärnu and other coastal areas... and also people at far inland. However, folks in that city, don't grab that sand bag! This system is already weakening and in addition, a high pressure area in our neck of the woods, which we here have been aptly calling "The Ex-Hurricane Levee" after it blocked ex-Hanna, will block off ex-Ike either..."
LWTV 20:53 on 19.09.2008
LWTV Meteorologist 12: "And this was the summary of this hurricane and its afterlife. All right, we all have now gathered here to finally end this, for us, record-breaking broadcast. We have been on the air, practically continuously in Estonian on ILTV and English on LWTV, for 7 days, 8 hours and 50 minutes, minus the newscasts and weather updates in every 10 minutes. We have been also simulcasted on Ilm FM in Estonian and on Weather AM in English, and we have been passing notes to each other all the time through the departments at the LWS."
LWTV Meteorologist 9: "Indeed, we decided to stay on the air continuously even after Ike became a tropical depression after it became evident that Europe might need to track this system, and after we almost lost the track of the storm. For about 24 hour time period, locating ex-Ike... or what was left of ex-Ike was like finding a needle from a haystack."
LWTV Meteorologist 7: "I have a strong feeling that we won't get to see Ike in the year 2014."
LWTV Meteorologist 8: "Speaking of the name, did anyone else find the word "ike" from Estonian Language Institute's Estonian Language dictionary - a legal basis of our language?"
LWTV Meteorologist 6: "Sure. But I was on the air here when Ike made landfall and thus the staff trusted me to say following: we here at LWTV would like to send our thoughts and sympathy to everyone who suffered under Ike."
LWTV Meteorologist 4: "And with that, we here at LWTV are now signing off and returning to our regular schedule. Listeners at Weather AM, will have one hour of "Calm Evening" and we will have "Weather Evening" as usual. We thank anyone for watching and may we all have a fair weather for some time. Have a nice evening"
Credits roll as the ominous theme music plays, camera zooms out and mets shake hands, lasting until 20:58, followed by weather update aired in weather alert mode.
