Why This Site?

By the time my wife and I moved permanently to Garrett County, in 2000, I had experienced the area almost every weekend for five years. My regular work was mostly with systems analyses, simulation, modeling, whatever you want to call it. Consequently, I had an interest in how the wind flowed in the lake area because of my interest in sailing the Flying Scott. Ours is #4896, and one of my kids and grandkids are now sailing it.

At that time I had access to sophisticated computer codes that predicted weather, and hence winds, and I was trying to figure out how to make them work on the tiny home computers that we had in those days. But, for a variety of reasons, I could not make it work.

After moving to Garrett County full-time in 2000, I went to several public meetings that were held by the Department of Planning and Zoning, then under John Nelson, to support contracted work being performed by ERM, Inc. of Baltimore.

One of the things they talked about was a computer simulation of the lake and the data they used to do their analyses. I was astounded by the assumptions they had to make because there were no appropriate data. For some, they had to use data from the Chesapeake Bay! At first I was rather critical of their work, but in succeeding years I've become to realize that it was the best they could do. I've come to appreciate their work as being a good approach.

The ERM experience made me become a kind of an 'environmental engineer.' Although my background was mechanical/nuclear, my interests were in fluid mechanics/dynamics and heat transfer, processes that can be found in nature everywhere. I spent about 3 months googling and learning what it would take to keep the lake healthy. The term 'eutrification' became important.

And that's why this website.