Monday, December 22, 2008

More weather whining.

And now it's 2 degrees above zero out there. But not to be worrying, because it's supposed to be a sunny seventeen by noon! And the gentle zephyrs from the southwest mean the wind chill shouldn't be any worse than about fifteen below today. Sunbathing weather, I tell you!

19 comments:

  1. Just warm enough for the annual Broad Ripple Running Of The Santas:

    http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/04qh6me4P02I3/610x.jpg

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  2. A big thanks goes out to Al Gore.

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  3. I just heard yesterday on cnn that this is an expected part of global warming. Really cold one day and then warms right up and does it again. This is why the polar ice cap is melting and it is almost too late to save the planet.

    Baaaahhhh.

    Its called winter and it is due to that big hot thing in the sky called the "sun" that is now farther away then during the summer.

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  4. *sigh*

    From wikipedia:

    The tilt of the Earth's axis relative to its orbital plane has a dramatic effect on the weather. The Earth is tilted at an angle of 23.44° to the plane of its orbit, and this causes different latitudes on the Earth to directly face the Sun as the Earth moves through its orbit. It is this variation that primarily brings about the seasons. When it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere faces the Sun more directly and thus experiences warmer temperatures than the Northern Hemisphere. Conversely, winter in the Southern Hemisphere occurs when the Northern hemisphere is tilted more toward the Sun. From the perspective of an observer on the Earth, the winter Sun has a lower maximum altitude in the sky than the summer Sun.

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  5. Wa, wa, wah! -19 at 7am for me. And I'm sure that you've got Montana readers can do colder than that.

    The great thing about this weather is that it makes putting out the trash or getting your mail in your shorts when it's 5 degrees seem reasonable.

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  6. You use Fahrenheit? In that case, yes, 2 above zero is getting a tad cool. Just about right for winter, actually. It's still raining instead of snowing here in Finland, which sucks since snow would at least make things look a bit cheerier at this time of the year (we have about six hours of daylight, right now, except that the sun stays low enough it's more like twilight. And I live nearly as far south as it is possible to get in this country).

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  7. Notice no one ever says, "But it's a dry cold!"...

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  8. Maybe you ought to consider moving south....

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  9. Just to pile on with Adrian, the Earth is actually closer to the sun during the Northern Hemisphere's winter.

    Linky.

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  10. 34 and switching between snow and rain

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  11. Yearly Records

    High Temperature 104.2° F 8/1/2008
    Low Temperature -22.5° F 12/15/2008
    High Humidity 95% 12/5/2008
    Low Humidity 7% 3/24/2008
    High Dew Point 68.4° F 8/10/2008
    Low Dew Point -34.1° F 1/29/2008
    High Alt Barometer 30.806 inHg 11/20/2008
    Low Alt Barometer 28.668 inHg 1/22/2008
    Max Wind Gust 48.3 mph 10/26/2008
    Max Wind Gust Average 36.9 mph 7/26/2008
    Low Windchill -45.6° F 12/15/2008
    High Heat Index 100.8° F 8/1/2008

    Eastern Montana....great gun laws ...four seasons.....

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  12. One of my favorite lines from Dr. Johnny Fever:
    "It's a balmy seventeen degrees outside, with a gentle breeze wafting out of the north at about a thousand miles per hour."

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  13. Hey Anonymous, did you ever read that great quote from John Steinbeck concerning Montana and Wyoming? I believe it was in Travels With Charlie.
    He said "If they had a seacoast I'd never leave them".
    And Farenheit was a serious dude. I love it when sneering Europeans (I work with a lot of them. The smaller the cojones, the bigger the sneer) talk about how "foolish" the "American" system is.
    Item: Farenheit was a German, and I think Germany's in Europe. What he did was find the coldest common temperature in the north temperate region, and call it zero.
    Then he found the hottest common temperature in said area and called it a nice, metric 100. If it's over 100, it's unusually hot, and if it's under zero, it's unusually cold.
    Makes sense to me. Who gives a rampant rabid rat's ass how hot boiling water is? It's too hot to touch long before the bubbles start to roll.
    But weather? People talk about weather. Almost certainly, temperature gets used in conjuction with weather far more than anything else ever discussed.
    So our choice is between a 100 degree based metric system based on the freezing and boiling point of water, or a 100 degree metric system based on about the hottest and coldest days most of us are likely to see.
    All the science aside, I'd have to say it's been colder than witch's spit the last few days.

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  14. Don't worry tomorrow should be even better!

    http://www.weather.com/weather/wxdetail/USIN0305?dayNum=1&from=36hr_fcst_undeclared

    Tomorrow sounds like a good day for drinking! ;-)

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  15. Foster, great point about the fake objectivity of the metric system (invented by the people who brought you oleo, the guillotine and the draft). 100 degrees to define the limits of what humans can take, sounds reasonable on this planet or on another that may not be water-based. Same token, one thousand pairs of steps for a Roman legionary, not a hundred-millionth of the distance from Earth equator to Earth pole, is a measurement you can take with you across the galaxy. Metric modern? Short-sighted, I call it.

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  16. Okay, the guillotine sounds good when properly applied (about 72% of all politicians) and I can see applying a draft to some beers...but oleo??!? Gimme real butter all the time!

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  17. I'm SOOOOOOOO glad you chose to live up there. Somebody has to. It's um, 36 here right now. Will be 60 tomorrow. 70 on Xmas. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr 36! And I had to scrape a little ice off my windshield this morning. Made my hands cold. THANKS Algore.

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  18. my loft is so c c c cold. otoh, the puppies are too cold to fight tonight.

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  19. Jay G,

    Actually, yes, yes we do say "at least it's a dry cold." As in "It may be twenty below, but at least it's not like the lower 48, east of the mississippi, where they have temps over freezing and so humid that the chillsinks into your bones and cripples your joints. Give me a dry cold any day!"

    And it's true. you can dress for the cold here - throw on a couple layers, good gloves and boots, and ready to go - but when I was in Florida and it was 55 and blowing, all my joints wanted to lock up and the humidity stole the warmth.

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