Archive for July, 2009

Using summer to prepare for a possible H1N1 outbreak on campus

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

This article, from Inside Higher Ed, is a nice overview of how several colleges and universities are using the summer to better prepare for an outbreak of H1N1 on campus. Seeing this prompted me to investigate what our campus has done about H1N1, as Virginia is one of the handful of states with a recorded “widespread” outbreak.

This follows last month’s H1N1 Summit, hosted at the National Institutes of Health. I can’t seem to find an archived copy of the webcast, which was streamed live, but this blog post by J. Solomon (“In case of emergency, read blog…”) gives a great overview and links to video from several key speakers.

2009 Hurricane Season Forecasts

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

My, how time does fly… It seems like just yesterday, we were bidding adieu to the 2008 season.

From the University of Colorado’s Tropical Meteorology Center:

“EXTENDED RANGE FORECAST OF ATLANTIC SEASONAL HURRICANE ACTIVITY AND LANDFALL STRIKE PROBABILITY FOR 2009

We foresee slightly below-average activity for the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season. We have reduced our seasonal forecast from our early April prediction. We anticipate a slightly below-average probability of United States and Caribbean major hurricane landfall.”
(as of 2 June 2009)

Colorado is a leader in this type of forecasting, and their page is full of great information: Current and archived tropical forecasts back to 1999, Landfall probabilities for the US and Caribbean, and news, FAQs and publications.

I’m officially back from vacation, and it’s good to be back. (Andy, did you miss me?)