Posts Tagged ‘Threat Level’
“I’m having a magenta day. Not just red, but magenta!”*…
Your correspondent is still on the road; regular service resumes on or around May 6. Meantime, a colorful update…
Forget about red hot. A new color-coded heat warning system relies on magenta to alert Americans to the most dangerous conditions they may see this summer.
The National Weather Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday — Earth Day — presented a new online heat risk system that combines meteorological and medical risk factors with a seven-day forecast that’s simplified and color-coded for a warming world of worsening heat waves.
“For the first time we’ll be able to know how hot is too hot for health and not just for today but for coming weeks,” Dr. Ari Bernstein, director of the National Center for Environmental Health, said at a joint news conference by government health and weather agencies.
Magenta is the worst and deadliest of five heat threat categories, hitting everybody with what the agencies are calling “rare and/or long-duration extreme heat with little to no overnight relief.” It’s a step higher than red, considered a major risk, which hurts anyone without adequate cooling and hydration and has impacts reverberating through the health care system and some industries. Red is used when a day falls within the top 5% hottest in a particular location for a particular date; when other factors come into play, the alert level may bump even higher to magenta, weather service officials said.
On the other hand, pale green is little to no risk. Yellow is minor risk, mostly to the very young, old, sick and pregnant. Orange is moderate risk, mostly hurting people who are sensitive to heat, especially those without cooling, such as the homeless.
“When red-hot isn’t enough: New government heat risk tool sets magenta as most dangerous level,” from @AP.
* Stephen King, Needful Things
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As we reassess risk, we might recall that it was on this date in 1986 that Russia announced the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, two days after it happened.
All that glitters…
In the age of Photoshop and Auto-Tune, it’s no real surprise to find that icons don’t actually look nor sound as they do in the media for which they are adored (see, e.g., here and here). Still, as this Britney Spears feed reminds us, the reality can be jarring…
Your correspondent has done his best to confirm the legitimacy of the loop. While there’s (understandably) been no confirmation from Ms. Spears’ camp, it’s included here, as he can find no meaningful refutation… rather, mostly just comments expressing no surprise whatsoever that things are not as they are meant to seem. The “T-Pain effect,” as it’s come to be known, is now so widespread (again, see– and listen– here) that it seems to be taken for granted. Indeed, readers can download a T-Pain iPhone app that will do a similar job for them… all of which must be a frustrating state of affairs for performers like Billy Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones, who actually do their own singing, unaided and beautifully.
In any case, it’s a (painful) reminder that too often these days, what glitters isn’t even nearly gold… indeed, too often it’s tin.
As we reach for the earplugs, we might recall that it was on this date in 2002 (in anticipation of the first anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon) that the TSA “Threat Level” was raised to Orange. It bounced between Orange (high) and Yellow (elevated) from then until mid-August, 2006, when it returned to Orange– where it remains to this day.
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