Sometimes in a world where information is readily available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, we can become desensitized to items we see in the news.

There is so much going on that unless we have something invested in a story, it does not seem to phase us.

Robin Williams was one of those rare voices in the world, a man who not only strove to make people laugh but also was a underrated actor and artist.

Despite the manic and wild aura that ran rampant through his stand up comedy and early roles like Mork from the series Mork and Mindy, even some of his early film work showed a desire to be more then just another funny face.

Long before getting recognition in the 1990’s for films like Dead Poets Society and The Fischer King, films like The World According to Harp and The Survivors showed more then average acting chops and a willingness to step outside the box.

Robin Williams also did brilliant stand up as well, running at break neck speed through routines that will always be able to get me to laugh out loud.

His interviews were the same, making even a normal question and answer session a lesson in improv.

Robin Williams will be missed, but the nature of his death also shows us that no matter how much you have you can never buy happiness.

Rest in peace.

In more local news the radar being used to track local storms has become a bit more advanced.

Regular readers of this space might know that I have a fascination with the weather and also have dual certification as a storm spotter. Once in Port Lavaca and once in the Chicago, Illinois area (There are differences in the classes. Where the Gulf has hurricanes to contend with, the Chicago area is more prone to twisters and high wind and hail events).

Since the Spring, the Corpus Christi National Weather Service has upgraded it’s Doppler Radar to being a dual polarization set up.

To explain what exactly dual polarization is, I will leave it up to the experts at the Corpus Christi NWS Field office, from their initial announcement of the upgrade:

“The old Doppler radars transmitted and received pulses of radio waves in a horizontal orientation. As a result, the radar only measures the horizontal dimensions of targets such as cloud and precipitation droplets. Dual-polarimetric radar transmits and receives pulses in both a horizontal and verticalorientation. Therefore, the radar measures both the horizontal and vertical dimensions of targets. Since the radar receives energy from horizontal and vertical pulses, we can obtain better estimates of the size, shape, and variety of targets. It is expected that this will result in significant improvements in the estimation of precipitation rates, the ability to discriminate between precipitation types (hail vs. rain), and the identification of non-meteorological returns.”

Simply put, better and more accurate weather radar that can distinguish between what is appearing on radar from an actual storm and what is something else entirely, such as tornado debris and birds.

It also allows for better measurement of precipitation droplet size, handy for predicting possible flood conditions.

The new set up also works for distinguishing the precipitation as rain or hail, as well as snow, although the latter of which may not be of great importance in South Texas admittedly.

Lastly, it helps to alert aviation officials and pilots of icing conditions in their flight patterns.

So in short, a major upgrade for an area that can be hard hit by a few different types of severe weather.