HALLIE EPHRON: With all the bad weather news we’ve had this season, the forecast for Hurricane Lee looked like that last thing we needed.
I moved my car into the garage. Filled the tub with water. Stocked up on potato chips. Assembled candles and batteries and flashlights. Did some serious digging-out around one of my basement windows that has been leaking. Lay the garden chairs on their sides.
Then closed the windows and waited.
And waited.
Saturday morning when we were supposed to be inundated and blown away, the temperature was 60 degrees, it was drizzling out, and winds were blowing from the N/NW (Yay! Falling trees will miss the house) at a mere 15 mph.
I could plan a tomorrow-morning walk, breathe a sigh of relief, and pay attention to more benign seasonal changes like migrating birds and turning foliage (we’re supposed to have a brilliant year because of all the rain we’ve had – time to go to Vermont and Maine!)
Are you in “Phew!” mode with the weather in your neighborhood, or screaming “Aggggh, here we go again.”
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: First, I did nothing. Okay, I plugged in every laptop and phone.
I have no idea about the weather, and seriously, I think (based on absolutely no real knowledge except years of experience in the world) that the change in how the climate is behaving has also changed the way meteorologists should forecast the weather—but I don't think anyone has changed the “weather reporting” rules so it's even more difficult now to predict.
Again, I know nothing real, it just seems that the predictability is far less accurate than it used to be.
I remember once reading that they’d come up with a computer that could forecast, perfectly, exactly, what the weather would be. Problem was, it was so complicated that the computer didn’t finish the program until after the weather had already happened.
We just had new shrubs plants (long story) so I was kinda hoping it would rain. It kinda did.
DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hallie, I'm just glad it was anticlimactic for you. We joke that we have a rain shield around our house. Lovely, so desperately needed (two months with NO rain, not even a sprinkle, and triple digit temps…) rain was predicted all last week for our area, 80 or 90% chance every day.
But everything moved north or south of us, as usual, and only one day did we get a gentle quarter inch.
So you can put me in the "disappointed again" category.
LUCY BURDETTE: Never, never, never disappointed when a big weather event fizzles. We’ve been hit in two places, both CT and Florida, plus seen a million disasters in other areas of the country.
So for me, it’s only phew! (Plus I can’t help thinking it’s bad luck to gloat…plus we are only just now getting to the peak season.)
The weather people said this one would be hard to predict and it was. We took a wait and see–did not move all the outside furniture in, but we were poised.
JENN McKINLAY: At the time I’m writing this, our summer house in Nova Scotia is just south of the brunt of Hurricane Lee. Lots of rain and wind but I think it will be okay. Phew!
As for our home in the desert, we’ll take all the rain. All of it. It has been the longest, hottest summer ever and I am over it.
RHYS BOWEN: since I was scheduled to fly into New England on Monday I was watching the weather forecast anxiously.
Big sigh of relief.
Our summer in California has been remarkably cool, so no complaints from me.
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I did the complete prep as well, Hallie, because my town had a Tropical Storm Warning. Everything light off the porch, recyclable and trash can and lawnmower in the barn, food and water and everything charged up. I even put down the piddle pads, because I didn’t want my Shih Tzus to have to go out if it was dangerous! (They’re only about 16 pounds each; I could picture them blowing away like Toto.)
Honestly, I am beginning to believe the more you prepare for five days without power, the less likely it is to happen.
We did get some dramatic winds and lots of leaves down, but it cleared up so much by noon, my neighbor was out mowing his lawn!
By the way, the Maine Emergency management Agency had the best explainer I’ve ever seen for those of us struggling to remember the difference between Watch and Warning:
We're sort of "take it as it comes" folks . . . we listen to the forecast and see what happens.
ReplyDeleteWe've lucked out this year with reasonably good weather [although we would have been happy with a bit less heat and a lot more rain over the summer] . . . Ophelia gave us a day with a good bit of rain and some mighty winds, but we came through just fine. Like Lucy, we're always glad if the predicted horrible weather doesn't materialize . . . .
It's been a relatively benign year for us in the Boston area, too. Phew. Lotta rain... My grass is lush and I haven't watered once. Good for the water bill.
DeleteOK, as the retired climate change researcher & federal civil servant who also did a 3-year stint working for Canada's emergency preparedness agency, yes I do listen to the weather advisories & warnings!
ReplyDeleteThat being said, TS & hurricanes are NOT the main threat in southern Ontario. You have a lead time of several days to collect supplies & prepare to hunker down safely at home. For us, it's t-storms & more recently, tornadoes. We had 3 tornadoes hit the Ottawa suburbs this summer. FYI, we don't have tornado sirens in towns/cities as is common in many US cities. It was a bit alarming to get 2 tornado warnings blaring on my phone for downtown Montreal during my last trip in July.... so unusual!
RE: HANK's comment about weather predictability being less accurate than the past. The weather forecast models have generally gotten better. The problem is that the atmosphere has become more volatile (due to a changing climate) so it's very hard to forecast extreme storms. FYI, Hurricane Lee went from a level 3 to 5 in less than 24 hours. That is an unprecedented change in strength due to very warm sea surface temperatures. And with TS Franklin churning up colder sea water affected both the strength of the storm & where Lee eventually made landfall. The cone of uncertainly prediction significantly improves less than 48 hours before landfall. Lee veered further east to make landfall in southwestern Nova Scotia as most models predicted.
So interesting! Grace, I'm SO glad you're here!! We all "know" weather but we really don't actually know it from a science perspective. Glad I'm not a weather person. It would hard enough to be reporting on what HAS happened ... but talking about what's GOING to happen? Yikes.
DeleteGrace, thanks for adding your expertise!
DeleteGrace, years ago my husband did a bunch of research on sea warming as a cause of more storms, as background for a series of educational videos he did for elementary schools. It's taken me a long time to wrap my head around how such a tiny amount of warming changes the weather so drastically. Yesterday I heard an interview with an oceanographic scientist who explained that the part of the world that is covered with water is the largest carbon sink area on earth, and is why the water temperature makes so much of an impact. That connected the dots for me.
DeleteYes, that's exactly what I mean, Grace! The climate change is making the "weather" behave differently.
DeleteI kind of activate, because we're big weather watchers around here. Laid the deck umbrella furled and flat on the decking. Made sure everything was charged. Picked all the ripe tomatoes. But I didn't put water in the...oh wait, we don't have a bathtub anymore. And I know where the electric lantern is and the storm candles.
ReplyDeleteJulia, I loved that graphic! Perfect.
No bathtub! Rain barrel?
DeleteWe absolutely have a rain barrel. Would need to boil the water, but we do have a gas stove and matches. (We took out the first floor bathtub in favor of a walk-in shower, looking ahead to more infirm days...)
DeleteI love that graphic, too, Edith, and it was the first time the difference made sense to me! I only use the bathtub water for gravity flushing (ugh) so dipping into a rain barrel wouldn't make any difference to me.
DeleteWe live in Florida and take all watches and warnings seriously. We moved here 6 years ago and have been through 3 hurricanes all starting with the letter "I". We bought a big generator after the first one that powers the whole house which was a good thing as Ian we had to use it for 15 days.
ReplyDelete15 days! Goodness. I'll bet you had neighbors coming over to plug in.
DeleteOur weather in North Portugal has been weird: summer one day, fall the next, then summer, then fall. Although recently it looks like fall is really here to stay, so it's cool mornings, some rain, some sunshine. That sort of thing.
ReplyDeleteI really feel for the areas experiencing hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. When we lived in Georgia, every year there was a tornado warning or a tornado watch just about every day, and occasionally at school we had to take our classes out in the hall and have them sit on the floor with their heads on their knees while we waited for the "go back to class" signal over the loudspeakers. And I had an uncle in Florida (who has passed away) who regularly in hurricane season boarded up his windows and stocked his kitchen with supplies he would need. It just seemed to be a matter of course and didn't seem to daunt him.
Tornado shelters are so common in some places. Growing up in California we had fire (go outside) and earthquake (get under your desk) and bomb drills (sit out in the hall away from windows), but not for hurricanes of tornados. Now the poor kiddoes have to know what to do if there's an active shooter. What a world, what a world... to quote the Wicked Witch of the West.
DeleteElizabeth, I read in the Washington Post that Spain and Portugal had their hottest summers ever this year. Did it feel like that where you live?
DeleteWe've only had a couple of summers' heat, and we're in north Portugal, so we weren't having the horrible heat waves southern Portugal experienced, but it was hotter than we remembered from the earlier trips before we moved. So much of Europe suffered wild fires.
DeleteHallie, I laughed out loud at « or crawl into bed and repeat: show me «
ReplyDeleteJulia, I like the Maine Whoopie Pie explanation.
We had a good summer here, the grass kept exceptionally green which means we had a lot of rain but nothing dramatic.
I mostly prepare when they announce high winds because I live in a corridor of wind with the possibility of power failure. Living in the country, when no power, no water ; so I have to plan.
Danielle
Power failure is possible everywhere! Especially where there are outdoor lines and trees. Our towns have gotten better about prophylactic pruning of tree limbs.
DeleteNest time there's a storm coming, I'm going to tell everyone on JRW where I am in the Whoopie pie process, Danielle.
DeleteWe live among the highest of the High Peaks of the Adirondacks. Years ago, hearing about weather disasters, our daughter, then about ten, said, "I'm so glad we live here! The only storms we have to worry about are snowstorms and who cares about that!" (She is a skier.)
ReplyDeleteIn fact we could be crippled by an ice storm, as the area was for a couple of weeks in January 1998, when we were briefly living away, and really should get a whole-house generator.
But my biggest fear is drought. We live in a six-million acre forest that has not burned since 1903. Reading about the Canadian wildfires this summer has made my stomach churn.
Selden
Oh wow, Selden, I hear you on fear of wildfires. So awful. I live in Manitoba that was, largely, spared this year, but watched in horror as so much of Canada burned this summer.
DeleteI also think wildfires are terrifying. I'm not at risk here in northeastern Massachusetts, at least in principle, being not far from the coast in a spot that usually has plenty of rain (it did this year, anyway). I hope you stay safe, Selden, and Amanda, too.
DeleteEvery year there's fires in our local forested reserve. A dry spring and it looked bad... but with all the rain we've had since, we've been largely spared. I wonder how forest management is going to change.
DeleteSelden, I well remember that ice storm. My son was in college at Plattsburgh and another friend's parent lived way up near the border and had no power for more than a month. Even years later, driving up the Northway, one could see signs of devastation, how the ice took the tops of trees down.
DeleteSelden, there's a series on Apple TV called EXTRAPOLATIONS that deals with the future under anthropogenic climate change in a series of linked "short stories." The first episode, set in 2037, deals with a massive wildfire in the Adirondacks blanketing the entire east coast in dangerous smoke and ash. And this came out BEFORE the Canadian wildfires. Scary.
DeleteJulia, I love the graphic. It captures the essence of forecasting the weather.
ReplyDeleteThe team that forecasts weather in our local station should all wear Marvel Superhero costumes to work. They have a Doppler radar that pinpoints exactly where the rain is falling.
They show the conflicting graphs (models) of where storms are predicted to go and who will get the most rain, snow, wind, etc. As scientific as all this is, they are still dealing with millions of factors, both seen and unseen. As Grace laid out so clearly, with the climate changing, factors are changing, too.
As for running around putting things away, stocking up on essentials, charging phones, add in sandbags. We live on the lowest point in our neighborhood. We have flooded a half dozen times since we bought this house in 1984. We believe that there was a stream that ran through our yard and that this lot would not have gotten a permit in this day and age. Surely, they would have had to raise the foundation another foot or two. It is heartbreaking to watch the street fill with water and to pray that the heavy rain will stop, or lessen, before water seeps into the family room. Don't even ask about the craziness here when we have to dry out after flooding. And, we are talking about inches of rain, not anything as severe as the storms that are hitting all over the place these days. If one of those hits here, our house will be a total loss.
Yes, so many streams got dammed up or diverted without a thought of the consequences. And then there's the ocean that has a bad habit of covering the adjacent roadway in a storm.
DeleteDoppler is incredible, and so accurate! Living in a tornado-prone region, it's comforting to be able to turn on the local news and watch the progression of a twister and know for sure whether or when it's time to head to the basement.
DeleteI definitely prepare, but have never had to live through anything severe. Unless you count the blizzard in April 1997, followed by the flood in May of the same year. That was extreme. No damage experienced, but the blizzard delayed our departure on a driving holiday to Arizona by several days as the back lane was not ploughed and we had to get several friends to help dig us out. Then, when I was back home and the flood warnings began, I brought all manner of things up from the basement, but all was safe. Not everyone was so lucky, as is too often the case with these weather events.
ReplyDeleteYou're reminding me of our Blizzard of '78... We were recent homeowners with a 2-year-old and knew next to nothing about extreme weather.
DeleteAMANDA: True, estimates are that over $40 billion in damage in Winnipeg has been prevented due to the construction of the Winnipeg Floodway. Of course, all that water had to flow elsewhere, and the surrounding RM (rural municipalities) did pay the (economic) cost caused by prolonged submerged fields.
DeleteSo true, Grace. Our floodway take the water elsewhere...
DeleteSince I live in a low-population area, when our power goes out, we're last on the list for the repair crews. I swear, if I'm not prepared, the power goes out. If I have phones and laptops charged and the sink filled with water, nothing happens. So, yeah, I over-prepare and hope I scare the storm monsters away.
ReplyDeleteThis is reminding me of the movie The Rainmaker, the old movie with Katharine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster...
DeleteSevere thunderstorms with high winds and hail, tornadoes, floods, and ice storms and blizzards are the weather threats here but no hurricanes or tropical storms. Weather is a daily topic of conversation. Interestingly, we have been in a drought all Spring and Summer. We’ve had rain but not enough. Now it has basically been raining since Friday afternoon. I’m sure we have had well over an inch, but I haven’t ventured out to our gauge to see. Harvest has already begun so I think it is too late to help the crops and may make matters worse for getting them out. We don’t farm so I don’t know the particulars. I’m sure there will be a news article to keep us city folks abreast of the situation.
ReplyDeleteHere too much rain did in the New England peach crop... you probably didn't know there was such a thing. But judging from my farmer's market the corn and tomatoes benefited.
DeleteIn my area, Hallie, farmers lost the peach crop to that severe cold snap late in the winter.
DeleteUpdate 3.2” in my gauge with more rain coming today.
DeleteWe do go to the basement if the sirens blow. If it is really bad we have a small room under the foyer that has concrete walls on 3 sides. Our lines are underground so we don’t usually lose power. In winter, if we can get off our culdesac we can get anywhere as we are last to get plowed.
When we lived in Atlanta, my father sent me a NOAA weather radio that would shriek if we had a storm warning or alert--tornados, hurricanes, ice storms, or flooding. It would pinpoint tornados by location: if we heard Jones Bridge and Haynes Bridge Roads, we would herd kids and dogs down to the basement. Otherwise, it was earthquakes in NorCal, wildfires in SoCal, blizzards and 24 below zero temps in Cleveland, and hurricanes and tropical storms in Jersey. Cincinnati seems benign by comparison, though I pay attention to the tornado siren blaring from the fire department.
ReplyDeleteTornadoes are terrifying... and devastating... but fortunately usually cut a narrow path.
DeleteThough the weather has been cooler this week after a heat wave (it was so hot that it was hot inside my building, which is rare), the manager closed the ventilation in the buildings because of the wildfires.
ReplyDeleteA few days ago, the air was so bad outside that it was dangerous for sensitive groups. Right now the air quality is 36, which is good.
Speaking of storms, I remember the worries before the Hurricane hit San Diego just before the Bouchercon conference. The hurricane was changed to tropical storm. Our Governor made sure that they were prepared for anything. I'm amazed by all of the preparation work.
Diana
DIANA: It was fortunate that TS Hilary only brought excessive rainfall and limited damage. to the San Diego area. But the damage caused by the high rainfall that fell in Palm Springs looked pretty significant. I was surprised that Hilary was the first TS to hit the west coast in 84 years. It was good that the Governor & emergency management authorities took precautions & erred on the side of caution.
DeleteGRACE: Thank goodness there was limited damage. I remember the photos on social media about Palm Springs after the rainfall.
DeleteDiana
Tornadoes are my biggest worry--they form quite often north and south of us. The last one to come through my town was about 70 years ago, so I feel like our luck could easily run out. When there's a warning, I get the emergency lights and head to the basement. The animals come to see what I'm doing, so we all wait together until the all clear. Winds in general cause a lot of havoc in this area--downed trees, limbs, downed power lines. In the winter I worry about heavy, wet snows or ice bringing down the power lines as well.
ReplyDeleteBut we've got great weather stations along the lake--they can pinpoint areas of concern, describe what the models are predicting and what might change--so yeah, I pay attention.
We had a lovely summer here in western Oregon. We didn't get much rain, but we also didn't have very many days over 95. AND we only had one not-so-bad smoke day. This week brings our first sustained rain, so the plants will be happy.
ReplyDeleteI love the Whoopie Pie image, Julia. So true! I'm definitely a weather watcher. Because my career included getting to work when the rest of the city was told to stay home, the weather events that are most memorable are the ice storms. I learned over time that they are pretty difficult to predict--a couple of degrees means the difference between a sheet of ice and wet pavement.I promised myself when I retired that I would never have to drive in the ice and snow again.
Living in Maine (and having learned to drive in Syracuse, NY!) snow doesn't daunt me, Gillian, but I know enough to be extremely wary of ice.
DeleteVery rare, but connected to squall lines in t-storms, we had a significant DERECHO wind event in May 2022. FYI, there was NO specific weather warning for this event & Ottawa was hard hit. FYI, the last derecho happened in Ontario over 20 years ago. It was one of the most costly weather disaster in Canada
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMomqqxGuEY.
OH, I should clarify, here in Ottawa, we did get a typical t-storm warning 15 minutes before the storm hit. But the derecho, with EF2 tornado-like winds & rain, swept across all of southern Ontario, Ottawa & suburbs, before continuing on into Montreal & other parts of Quebec. Weather forecasters here would have had no recent/prior experience in recognizing a derecho & such a warning does not exist in Environment Canada's list of extreme weather. We were poorly prepared for the devastation that occurred.
DeleteI think the weather forecasters have amped up their language over the past 30 years or so. I grew up in Tornado Alley, and we would often get a foot of snow or more in the winter. Back then we kids would hope for bad weather and days off school, but the weather guys (they were all guys in those days) would just shrug it off with, "we might see some snow accumulation," or "these storms could be strong so stay tuned." But when I moved to Texas it seemed to me that the weather forecasters got significantly more hysterical about any impending storm. "Dangerous storm," "Damaging hail," "Gale force winds," and lots of other scare words popped up in the forecasts, and now it's as if they feel a duty to frighten the bejeezus out of us so we'll take a storm seriously at all. After a few decades of that, I'm firmly in the "show me" class.
ReplyDeleteTwice our house was justmissed by a tornado that whipped around our house and knocked trees over all around the neighborhood. The last time was five years ago when, along with at least 100 other big trees, a massive bald cypress a few doors down fell over across the road and took out the power of the entire area for more than a week. Then just a couple months after we sold that house a rogue wind/minor twister blew over a century-old walnut tree and two elms onto the house, something I'd always been worried would happen.
ReplyDeleteThis has been the first year in decades we have not had a single tornado alert here. And the Ohio River didn't flood, either, because we just didn't have enough rain. Even though we live less than two miles from the river it only affects our travel, since our neighborhood is at least 100' above the river elevation. But many have been through the years.
We used to get significant snowfall here, leaving us stranded at the top of our steep 300' long drive, but it's been years since we had more than 6-10" for the entire winter. The lake at the end of the street also used to freeze solid enough by Christmas that Steve and his brother and their friends could play hockey for at least a week or two. That lake has not frozen in more than 10 years now.
I worry so for my kids and grandson.
Although it is early days, the Northern Tornado Project team members are theorizing that Canada's historic tornado alley is shifting geographic locations from southern Ontario further east (towards Ottawa Valley). Oh, yay (not)!!
Deletehttps://www.uwo.ca/ntp/
We are also noticing fewer snow days, more freezing rain (yuck). And 2022 was the first year on record that the Rideau Canal Skateway was CLOSED the entire skating season (0 skate days). This is both sad and scary since our Winterlude Festival brings huge #s of visitors who come to skate the 7.8 km/4.8 mi outdoor skateway.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Rhys!
ReplyDeleteFacebook reminded me!
DeleteHappy Birthday to Rhys! Diana
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday, Rhys - a day after my mother's!
DeleteYesterday was my mother's birthday also. Happy Birthday, Rhys.
DeleteHappy Birthday Rhys!!
ReplyDeleteI think the problem is not the weather itself but the TV newscasters. They turn everything into a mass media event with dire warnings, Everything is shouted at the viewer as if its the day of Armageddon. We had that happen here in our town when Hurricane Hillary was approaching. Everyone was buying up all the provisions at all the hardware and grocery stores, locating sandbags, we spent hours moving stuff from outside to a storage unit in our backyard, etc.
And NOTHING. A drizzle at best and maybe 20 mph winds. Although the storm did do damage further north and to the east of us in the desert areas.
Since I've moved from Houston I haven't had to go through that drill. Yay! Our house here has a nice big basement which I took refuge in a couple of months ago when a storm blew in with high winds. Tree and limbs broke and took out the power for 24 hours, but everyone was lucky. No trees in our neighborhood landed on houses.
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday, Rhys! xxxx
ReplyDeleteOne thing I have heard from all my meteorologist pals is that it's a no win situation for them--the weather is inherently "unpredictably predictable" or predictably unpredictable.
ReplyDeleteAnd when they get it wrong--meaning, things happen that they couldn't have predicted--viewers behave as if it's THEIR fault. And they call, yelling and enraged.
But if there's a possibility of a big storm, meteorologists say, would you rather know that, or not?
If they predict rain, and everyone stays home from the Cape, and then it doesn't rain--the merchants are incensed. SHould the meteorologists not say anything, and hope it doesn't rain?
If meteorologists simply say--"hey, all, it might snow, just saying, "and then it totally snows and people are unprepared, would you rather have that?
When people don't leave their homes in advance of a predicted "big storm" and then they are flooded, that's the potential consequence of doing nothing. Sometimes "show me" is too late.
Not to go on too long--HA! too late, Hank--but I think the problem is that weather forecasting is portrayed as a knowable thing. It isn't. You can be knowledgeable, and show what the computer models say, but things can change in an instant. But you can't know. See derecho above.
So question is: would you rather be warned of a thing that MIGHT happen, or not?
I've honed my hurricane skills during 40 years in Florida. Prep is in my DNA. Now that I live in Maine, I've simply applied the same skills to cope with the ever popular Nor'easters and ice storms. I think Hank is correct about predictions. Back in the day meteorologists did their own predictions and they were correct more often than not. These days computers and models do the predictions, few forecasters do more than read the printouts. Boots on the ground were so much better!
ReplyDeleteI use a private weather service geared toward weather in the County. The meteorologist had been a forecaster for WAGM prior to his move to Florida. Subscribers have a good seven day heads up for weather events based on models, predictions, and the meteorologist's interpretations. Not unusual for the interpretations to be more correct than the computer. I've stopped looking at other services. He gets it right and first!
Shalom Reds and readers – We’ve had some heavy rain yesterday and today, here in Bucks County, PA. Gratefully no high winds and stuff. Also, no flash flooding, like we had earlier in the year. I don’t really mind the weather, whatever it is, provided we don’t lose power. We live in an apartment complex, so having a backup generator is not really an option. In recent weeks, I’ve been having groceries delivered by our local supermarket. So, not having a car, I didn’t have to trudge in the rain yesterday, to fill the cupboards and refrigerator. It’s good to have ice cream in the freezer for those sit-at-home days. The Yankee game in New York has just begun. I think they’ve purposed to play despite the rain.
ReplyDeleteIn Buffalo we've seen snow. The forecast for the Christmas 2022 blizzard was very clear and accurate. But being complacent and somehow thinking it wasn't anything out of the ordinary resulted in a horrible death toll. Better to be prepared.
ReplyDeleteAfter living in Houston after Hurricanes Katrina and Ike and Tropical Storm Allison (36 inches of water in less than 24 hours), I always make sure I prep as much as I can in advance. I'm in Connecticut now and just make sure I had supplies for a couple of weeks in case of ice storms. aprilbluetx at yahoo dot com
ReplyDeleteHaving two Boy Scouts grow up in the house, "Be Prepared" has always been our motto! And it feels, perhaps, that even when the winds blow and the rain soaks everything or we are buried in feet of snow, it could have been worse. Prayers for anyone who had to endure the frightening fickleness of Mother Nature.
ReplyDelete