On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, John D. Giorgis wrote:
> At 08:26 AM 1/23/01 -0800, Darryl wrote:
> >Oh, I can hear you say, "But with Fahrenheit we get more precision!"
> >Bzzzzzt! Wrong! Sure, one degree C is two degrees F. But so what?
> >When they predict the weather, or when they report the weather, what is
> >meaningful? They say, "High seventies" or even "In the Fifties".
> >Which means that meaningful temperatures are given in blocks of 5 or 10
> >degrees!
>
> Maybe they do things differently in Alaska, but we get forecasts down to
> the degree here on the East Coast a day or two ahead.
Sure, they give those on the local news everywhere, but I don't
believe them. I've been looking a lot at the real thing, the NOAA
website containing the information they give to local meteorologists;
on _their_ forecast page, they don't quote temperatures even for the
current day to more than, i.e., "near 70", and on the discussion page
they admit things like, for today, "NEXT 24 HOURS OF WEATHER FOR
SOUTHEAST ARIZONA STILL HAS A LOT OF UNCERTAINTY"; once not long ago
they said something like "the models are getting confused even for 12
hours from now, much less 36". (The main NOAA website where you can
get to this sort of nitty-gritty detail for various locales is
at http://iwin.nws.noaa.gov; "forecast discussions" are where they
talk about their uncertainty.)
> Besides, everyone knows that freezing is a very relative thing anyways. I
> have seen snow and ice many times at 34-35 F (or slightly above your
> beloved 0 C).
You have got to be joking. Of *course* you've seen snow at 34 F, hell,
even at 40 F, but it's *melting*; either it fell earlier, in sub-freezing
temperatures, or the flakes formed at altitudes where the temperatures
are sub-freezing and just haven't melted yet by the time they get to
a couple feet above the ground. (If the ground temperatures is < 0 C,
because of previous snow, it may even stick.)
--
Andrea Leistra [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"If you can keep your head while all those about you are
losing theirs, perhaps you have misunderstood the situation."
-- Daniel Keys Moran, _The Long Run_
