Storm in a tea cup

There is a widely held belief that you can tell much about a person or a nation from the way they handle themselves in a crisis.  

Great leaders of our time, and David Cameron.
The Prime Ministerial spectrum; from the 
original salad dodger to the risible porker porker

Wartime heroism is such a distant memory that the quote most often heard about crises these days is the cynical observation; 

"When the going gets tough, the tough get going". 

In the wake of Cameron's resignation after the Brexit referendum, political satirists joyfully updated this quip to; 

"When the going gets tough, the toff gets off".

This divisive issue continues to dangle British politics over a precipice. With Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg all jockeying for leadership positions, it is still too early to assume the next update will be; 

"When the toffs gets tough, May will stay".

Quotes about crises from people in the public eye range from the sage Dexter Morgan; 

"There's nothing like a crisis to define who you are". 

To the sublime Jeremy Corbyn, who evidently didn't see the current antisemitism storm brewing on the horizon when he shared his wistful thinking;

"I find if you are in an office, the crisis finds you. 
If you're not in the office, the crisis finds somebody else".

Either way, this summer it was the tropical typhoon which provided the barometer by which to measure how different countries respond to a looming weather crisis. 

Most people are aware of the annual monsoon which  gestates slowly before midsummer then unloads torrents of water shortly and sharply over much of India. However the wider geographical area, from North Australia through to China, experiences approx 27 large, heavy storms each year which form quickly, barrel in from the western Pacific Ocean every fortnight and then ping around the archipelagos of south east Asia at the whim of some atmospheric pinball wizard. 

Trajectories of 2018's western pacific typhoons to date

Thanks to weather satellites and cloud penetrating radar, the speed, strength and direction of these storms can be monitored and to some extent predicted. However reacting to the risks is still very much an individual national decision.

Of the average 27 storms, the smallest 10 are usually only of concern to international shipping. The remaining 17 develop into typhoons, most of which make landfall somewhere between the Philippines to the south west and Japan to the north east. While half of these simply deliver long, soggy days of unending rain, the other half form 'super typhoons' characterised by destructive winds and enough rain to cause severe flooding. 

Espana Boulevand, Manila 2014

In some places the rain is manageable; cities have sewers and canals to route water quickly to the river or sea. However deforested hill-sides in rural communities are at high risk as the rain saturates the topsoil, increasing its weight, while simultaneously lubricating the soil so it slides more easily. Unfortunate townsfolk buried under large mudslides are regular events. High winds generate powerful waves and uproot trees while broken overhead power lines have greatest impact, cutting off electricity and thereby also water and gas.


In 2016 South Korea's national weather service proudly hailed the installation of its new Cray weather-predicting Super Computer No4 (SC4). At US $54m it was staggeringly expensive, lightning fast, highly sophisticated, it was the bee's knees; the last word in weather analysis. It would make Korean weather sexy.

Cray supercomputer, a snip at US$ 54m

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2014/06/25/cray-signs-a-54-million-supercomputing-contract-with-south-korea/amp/

Ever critical and always hard to satisfy, it was not long before a dubious public started to comment on significant differences between the weather promised by SC4 and what they were actually receiving. It rapidly became something of a national hobby to check SC4's daily forecast and then watch for the correlation, in much the same way that people might check their daily horoscope and then look for evidence of its predictions as the day unfolded.

http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=212464

Criticism rapidly turned to scandal as every man, woman and dog eventually concluded that the forecasts spewed by the new computer were correct less than 50% of the time. This meant in practice, that if the forecast said no rain, then the chances were that you should take an umbrella with you.

A deeper analysis showed that forecasts were indeed more accurate before the new super-computer. What had gone wrong ? Who had ripped off the Met Office and pocketed a fortune ? Who had been duped by a lousy pile of circuitry dressed up with bells and whistles ? The public demanded answers.  Attempts were made to deflect criticism by blaming the extraction of data from the nation's weather satellite Chollian-1.

http://m.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170822000749#cb 


Two years later, after all the outrage, the investigations, the exonerations and the excuses, the dust settled and the public turned their ire to more urgent matters; such as impeaching a president who had never even twittered a tweet. 

In August 2018 typhoon Soulik formed in the western Pacific, looming large and leaning heavily towards South Korea. The bells and whistles on SC4's super circuits warned of the worst typhoon since 2012; the wind speed measured in hundreds, injuries predicted in thousands and property damage expected in millions. Public events were canceled, people stockpiled food and water while others even dusted off the apocalypse survival kits they were gifted the previous summer at the height of Kim JongUn's 2017 attention-seeking, missile-launching, frenzied rite of passage.

Govt and employers even took the astonishing and previously unimaginable step of telling people to "work from home" (a new phrase never previously heard in Korea). This advice was totally unprocessable by most middle managers who still cannot conceive of people working dutifully if they are not in the direct line of sight of a 'superior'. Team leaders attempted to control their colleagues by scheduling as many online video conferences as possible to ensure their team members were awake, properly attired and actively engaged in their duties at home, not just kicking back in their slippers on the sofa with their kids in front of some K-drama. Most notable was the number of family men who ignored the typhoon warnings to brave it to the office. This time not for the usual reason of habitual presenteeism but rather the sly, unspoken truth that with the schools closed and the kids at home with the wife, an empty office offered the most peaceful environment to finish binge-watching on Netflix.

http://m.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20180823000573&ACE_SEARCH=1

http://m.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20180820000522&ACE_SEARCH=1

In the end typhoon Soulik came and went. The entire nation spent a whole day in total lock down anticipating events of biblical proportions. What happened in most places were simply long, tedious hours of drizzle. Somewhere on the south coast, which apparently took the brunt of the storm, damage rose into the high single digits as an old lady's umbrella blew inside out. Definitely it was the dampest of squibs.

http://m.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20180824000589&ACE_SEARCH=1

And the solution ?  Why, to buy a bigger supercomputer of course ! Supercomputer No 5 is already on order at a whopping US$56m to go !

http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=243468

Even so, Korea's newest and most expensive number cruncher yet will still rely on the same quality of data from the same satellite used today.

At the current rate the govt is spending anything upwards of US$50m on weather prediction supercomputers every 5 years, or US$10m per year, for predictions which are more often wrong than right.  Meanwhile old folks can make more reliable predictions by simply looking at the weather on the horizon in the direction that the wind is blowing in from and preparing for the same the next day.