July 31, 2008: While I'm here on an island of my own, I'm watching some episodes of Magnum, P.I. on my iPod.* Magnum was the inspiration that led to my having built a full closet of Hawaiian shirts (and a couple of red sportscars) over the years. When I was 10 years old, the idea of being a private eye living in Paradise seemed like the ultimate goal. Well, it didn't turn out that way for me, but I still enjoy the show.

Anyway, one of the episodes that I've watched this week was "The Big Blow," about a hurricane sweeping the islands. Being a meteorologist, of course I noted some scientific inaccuracies. The description of Episode 62, which originally aired on April 7, 1983 is, according to TV.com:

A hurricane battering the islands isn't enough to stop Robin Masters's spring equinox party, a lavish event attended by a close circle of friends, but the arrival of an about-to-give birth young woman and two ex-cons intent on grand larceny does. Further complicating matters is Robin's assertion that one of his guests is plotting to kill him that evening, and Thomas's plans to trap the culprit with the help of Rick and T.C. have been foiled by both the weather and the intruders.

The episode features James Doohan (of Star Trek fame) as a guest star, along with the voice-only talents of Orson Welles playing (the never-seen) Robin Masters. It got a rating of 8.8 on TV.com and 8.2 on iMDB. As one user noted on TV.com, "This episode is unique for two reasons: it takes place entirely inside the main house of the estate and there's no narration from Magnum at any point in the story."

In any case, back to the weather. Here are the scientific goofs that I saw in this episode:

- The Hurricane comes during the Spring Equinox, which would be late March. Hurricane season in the Central Pacific is June 1st to November 30th, although there has been one "tropical system" in the Central Pacific during March, I doubt it was a hurricane.

- There has never been a Hurricane Hukara (Hukari?). The current "H" names for Central Pacific storms are Hone, Hene, Huko and Halola. They repeat every 4 years and I'm not sure this list was in effect in 1984.

- There were no hurricanes that hit Hawaii in 1983 until Hurricane Gil in July, although in very recent memory was Hurricane Iwa 1982, which Wikipedia says was the most damaging hurricane. It had passed over the northern islands in November 1982, bringing 16-foot waves and 120 mph winds to Oahu, the island on which the Robin Masters Estate is established, according to this episode.

- Higgins also mentions that the Hurricane reminds him of "one in the Keys in '53, '54". There were no hurricanes near the Florida Keys during those years, though there were several Tropical Storms in 1954.

- I knew something was wrong with Higgins' shortwave radio Callsign - over at MagnumMania they tell me "Higgins uses a California call sign prefix (W6) instead of the correct Hawaii prefix (KH6)." This was corrected in Season 7. I'm not even sure that "WP6RNA" is a valid callsign (maybe you Hams out there can tell me). Certainly if you Google it, you can't find anything other than Magnum references.

- The lightning depicted was not only fake Hollywood lightning, but lightning in a hurricanes has been proved to be very rarely seen and only in the outer bands or eyewall. If it were there, it would likely be mostly obscured by windblown rain.

*Getting DVDs on your iPod or Playstation Portable shouldn't be hard, but even Google can't help you there. I picked up a copy of 123CopyDVD at Best Buy for $10 and it did a great job of ripping DVDs into the correct format for these devices.

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