Dear Jerry,
You might like to reflect on that for a little longer. Consider this
statement from 'the Age' newspaper this morning:
The hottest recorded temperature in Victoria was 45.8 degrees at
Avalon airport, near Geelong, at 5pm on Thursday. This is from http://www.theage.com.au/national/as-train-tracks-melted-and-trees-wilted-we-all-went-a-little-bit-troppo-20090130-7u1c.html?page=1
and there is further evidence at http://www.theage.com.au/national/fire-rages-through-6000-hectares-towards-transmission-lines-20090131-7u7f.html
In Geelong, we lost all electrical supplies, due to a heat-related
circuit fault, for about 6 hours from about 7:00 last night. No radio,
no television, and (wait for it) no air conditioning. The train tracks
buckled and many train services simply ceased, thousands of commuters
who go from Geelong to Melbourne each day were stranded in Melbourne.
Many houses were lost in wild fires known here as 'bush fires'
However, look on the bright side. All of the reports in the media,
print, radio, and television use metric units only in their
broadcasts. It is quite rare for anyone to try to dumb the initial
reports down 'for the public'. It seems that the Australian public is
now quite used to weather reports in metric units.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Geelong, Australia
On 2009/01/31, at 3:27 PM, Jeremiah MacGregor wrote:
Pat,
That right, rub it in! It is bad enough we have freezing cold of
-10~-20 C, but the unplowed roads and the meter plus mountains of
snow are enough to drive one to the happy farm. I have 50 cm of
snow in my yard with piles to 1.6 m. Care to trade?
You could be kind and ship some of that heat towards North America.
Jerry.
From: Pat Naughtin <[email protected]>
To: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 5:49:43 PM
Subject: [USMA:42609] Hot and dry
Dear All,
As you enjoy your nice crisp cool winter days, spare a thought for
we folk in the southern hemisphere. In the next few days we expect
the following temperatures:
Tuesday 38 °C
Wednesday 41 °C
Thursday 40 °C
Friday 40 °C
Saturday 40 °C
Sunday 30 °C
See the article http://www.theage.com.au/national/melbourne-faces-worst-hot-spell-in-100-years-20090126-7q0c.html
for the details. Melbourne is the nearest big city to Geelong.
Melbourne is 70 kilometres north-east of Geelong.
You might recall the rhyme:
Zero is freezing,
10 is not,
20 is pleasing,
30 is hot,
40 frying,
50 dying.
I don't know who wrote the first three lines but I added the last
two to consider Australian conditions. We live near the coast of the
Southern Ocean but 200 kilometres inland from us you can expect the
predicted temperatures to be about 3 °C hotter than here. Swan Hill,
for example, will reach 44 °C on Wednesday and 43 °C on Thursday,
Friday, and Saturday..
It's amusing to see chatter in northern hemisphere media reports
about 'global cooling'. You won't get much empathy for that position
here in Australia as we are about to experience our second driest
January in 159 years that is being topped off with this current heat
wave. So far this month Geelong has had 0.4 millimetres of rain
compared to a long term average of 35.6 millimetres for January.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that
they now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or
selling for their businesses. Pat provides services and resources
for many different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial,
industrial and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and
in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google,
NASA, NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the
USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com for more metrication
information, contact Pat at [email protected] or
to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter
to subscribe.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for
their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many
different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial
and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA.
Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com
for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected]
or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter
to subscribe.
