The weather again
13/02/14 05:18
The lead story on the BBC news website this morning is headlined, “Winter storm brings havoc to US east.” It speaks of a winter storm of “historical proportions.” Yesterday was a hard day to be commuting in Atlanta, Georgia or Raleigh, North Carolina. The ice was coating everything and the roads came to a standstill. And the storm is big. It stretches from Texas to Maine, with a lot of clouds and precipitation.
But it isn’t quite as big news her in the US, yet. Although it isn’t the lead story on the Washington Post website, it is front and center with a headline only a little bit smaller than the article on Health exchanges exceeding targets. The Post calls it the “worst storm of the season.”
The New York Times, sometimes prone to exaggeration, had a lot of other news to report. Articles on Iraqi prison breaks, winter olympics, the Comcast purchase of Time Warner Cable, college costs and congressional action on the debt ceiling all were put ahead of the article on the storm. According to the Times, “Another Major Snowstorm Rolls Through New York.” In New York the public schools are open today even though the storm is expected to dump as much as a foot of snow in the region.
The Bangor Daily News in Maine buried the story about the storm in the midst of lots of other articles, headlining: “Nor’easter expected to dump up to 18 inches of snow on part of Maine.” A foot and a half of snow doesn’t get the folks in Bangor too uptight. As far as I can tell from the website, the Great Maine Outdoor Weekend, scheduled to begin tomorrow is still on with over 100 events scheduled across the State of Maine and designed to get folks outdoors and off on adventures.
I suspect that there will be some elements to the winter of 2013-14 that will go down in the record books. After all, it is the first winter that I was aware that they were naming winter storms. And we kicked it off with a doozie - Winter Storm Atlas had us snowed in from Friday until Sunday, much of the time without power. The rest of the storms have left our roads passable and although caution is always a good rule in the winter, we haven’t been inconvenienced much.
People have complained about the number of snow days taken by the Rapid City Public Schools, but I’m sure that the schools in Washington, DC have taken a lot more.
It does seem to me that weather forecasters have been more accurate in recent years. We have friends who live in the Washington, D.C. area who had planned on taking a road trip this week and cancelled based on the forecast. I’m pretty sure that they are thinking that they made a wise decision with all of the pictures of cars in the ditches and traffic snarled by the slippery roads.
We grew up paying attention to the weather. In the flying business, weather is very important. We had airplanes that were capable of flying in instrument weather conditions, but we never had any with de-icing systems for flight into known icing conditions and, for the most part, our operation was based on fair weather flying. So we paid attention as closely as we could. In those days, the FAA operated Flight Service Stations all across the U.S., so there were lots of reporting stations to see what the weather was like in another place. We studied the weather maps for information on temperature, pressure and other factors that could indicate where the storms might be lurking.
Advanced weather radar changed all of that. Today we can look up the doppler radar on a home computer and take a look at the actual conditions in a different part of the country. The radar can be animated, so we can see the progress of storms. And in more than a few places that I frequent, the weather channel, with its nonstop reporting of weather disasters, is on the television entertaining (or frightening) the folks. One of my pet pieces is the overuse of the weather channel in area nursing homes. When you are struggling to stay focused with a touch of dementia, constant reporting of weather disasters in other places doesn’t make it any easier. Most of those folks would do better to look out the windows instead of watching television.
I used to lead worship at an area nursing home where the television was constantly tuned to the weather channel. I would turn off the set when I arrived and one of the residents would ask me over and over what the weather was like outside. No matter what answer I gave, I heard a report of much more severe weather than we were experiencing. One day, when asked, I responded with, “Let’s take a look,” and directed the person’s attention to the window. For the next 20 minutes or so I kept hearing, “Well, the weather isn’t as bad as they said it would be.” I hope she is still looking out of the window from time to time, but I suspect that her attention has once again been redirected to the television.
The weather gives us a point of connection - something to talk about that is important in our lives, but unlikely to spawn controversy or disagreement. It is a safe topic when you don’t know people very well. However, like other small talk, such conversations run the risk of stating the obvious and wasting time without increasing knowledge or connection.
So I still keep paying attention to the weather. Back home in my Montana home town, they’ve got a good Chinook blowing. The temperature is nearly 40 already, but the winds are really whipping. Regular wind is at about 25 mph. It is supposed to pick up to about 40 with gusts over 60 by this afternoon. That’s a pretty good blow, even for a place that knows wind.
It gives us something to talk about.
But it isn’t quite as big news her in the US, yet. Although it isn’t the lead story on the Washington Post website, it is front and center with a headline only a little bit smaller than the article on Health exchanges exceeding targets. The Post calls it the “worst storm of the season.”
The New York Times, sometimes prone to exaggeration, had a lot of other news to report. Articles on Iraqi prison breaks, winter olympics, the Comcast purchase of Time Warner Cable, college costs and congressional action on the debt ceiling all were put ahead of the article on the storm. According to the Times, “Another Major Snowstorm Rolls Through New York.” In New York the public schools are open today even though the storm is expected to dump as much as a foot of snow in the region.
The Bangor Daily News in Maine buried the story about the storm in the midst of lots of other articles, headlining: “Nor’easter expected to dump up to 18 inches of snow on part of Maine.” A foot and a half of snow doesn’t get the folks in Bangor too uptight. As far as I can tell from the website, the Great Maine Outdoor Weekend, scheduled to begin tomorrow is still on with over 100 events scheduled across the State of Maine and designed to get folks outdoors and off on adventures.
I suspect that there will be some elements to the winter of 2013-14 that will go down in the record books. After all, it is the first winter that I was aware that they were naming winter storms. And we kicked it off with a doozie - Winter Storm Atlas had us snowed in from Friday until Sunday, much of the time without power. The rest of the storms have left our roads passable and although caution is always a good rule in the winter, we haven’t been inconvenienced much.
People have complained about the number of snow days taken by the Rapid City Public Schools, but I’m sure that the schools in Washington, DC have taken a lot more.
It does seem to me that weather forecasters have been more accurate in recent years. We have friends who live in the Washington, D.C. area who had planned on taking a road trip this week and cancelled based on the forecast. I’m pretty sure that they are thinking that they made a wise decision with all of the pictures of cars in the ditches and traffic snarled by the slippery roads.
We grew up paying attention to the weather. In the flying business, weather is very important. We had airplanes that were capable of flying in instrument weather conditions, but we never had any with de-icing systems for flight into known icing conditions and, for the most part, our operation was based on fair weather flying. So we paid attention as closely as we could. In those days, the FAA operated Flight Service Stations all across the U.S., so there were lots of reporting stations to see what the weather was like in another place. We studied the weather maps for information on temperature, pressure and other factors that could indicate where the storms might be lurking.
Advanced weather radar changed all of that. Today we can look up the doppler radar on a home computer and take a look at the actual conditions in a different part of the country. The radar can be animated, so we can see the progress of storms. And in more than a few places that I frequent, the weather channel, with its nonstop reporting of weather disasters, is on the television entertaining (or frightening) the folks. One of my pet pieces is the overuse of the weather channel in area nursing homes. When you are struggling to stay focused with a touch of dementia, constant reporting of weather disasters in other places doesn’t make it any easier. Most of those folks would do better to look out the windows instead of watching television.
I used to lead worship at an area nursing home where the television was constantly tuned to the weather channel. I would turn off the set when I arrived and one of the residents would ask me over and over what the weather was like outside. No matter what answer I gave, I heard a report of much more severe weather than we were experiencing. One day, when asked, I responded with, “Let’s take a look,” and directed the person’s attention to the window. For the next 20 minutes or so I kept hearing, “Well, the weather isn’t as bad as they said it would be.” I hope she is still looking out of the window from time to time, but I suspect that her attention has once again been redirected to the television.
The weather gives us a point of connection - something to talk about that is important in our lives, but unlikely to spawn controversy or disagreement. It is a safe topic when you don’t know people very well. However, like other small talk, such conversations run the risk of stating the obvious and wasting time without increasing knowledge or connection.
So I still keep paying attention to the weather. Back home in my Montana home town, they’ve got a good Chinook blowing. The temperature is nearly 40 already, but the winds are really whipping. Regular wind is at about 25 mph. It is supposed to pick up to about 40 with gusts over 60 by this afternoon. That’s a pretty good blow, even for a place that knows wind.
It gives us something to talk about.