freemason9 wrote:beeline wrote:Great images.
So far this year, in my opinion, it has been much colder. But according to the local paper, we haven't broken any records regarding high and low temeperatures. We've been lucky in Philly, avoiding the snow that has blanketed most of the Northeast.
I do know that my steps were coated with a near-invisible ice this morning, and that I hyperextended an elbow and damn near broke my ass when I left the house.
Rules of Weather:
(1) All storms represent substantial deviations from normal.
(2) Tomorrow's high temperature will be different from today's.
(3) Every day, a weather record is set somewhere.
(4) This happens all the time.
You know, it
is christmas... but I'm not a christian and I've just spent 13 hours with my family repressing every impulse to voice my true thoughts about much of anything and so I am in no mood to be charitable or tolerant. Bah humbug I say.
(1) I suppose it is true that "all storms represent substantial deviations from normal". I'll give you that because then I'll have the freedom to use indistinct terms like
substantial and
normal without fear of being asked to define those terms. It is of course equally true that there are normal storms and abnormal storms.
(2) Strictly speaking, whether "tomorrow's high temperature will be different from today's", can't be known. Once you go enough decimal places out our instruments are no longer accurate enough to ascertain with certainty whether the high temperature for one day is the same as another. If we decouple ourselves from the handicap of the limitations of our instrumetation and instead just theorize then I would say that it is almost certainly the case that there have been successive days when the high temperature was identical out to ten decimal places. Obviously the odds go down as we extend the decimal places out. The earth is over 3 billion years old. So, slightly less strictly speaking than the statement 'whether "tomorrow's high temperature will be different from today's", can't be known', you may be right that no two successive days ever have exactly the same high temperature. It's the patterns that matter.
(3) "Every day a weather record is set somewhere." Well, we know that because people
record weather data. We record weather data because we can then discern patterns over time. It's the patterns that matter.
(4) "This happens all the time" and luckily people have been keeping track of the data and we can look at it and analyze it and discern patterns in it, which, as you might have noticed is what I think matters, the patterns that is.
There is the very strong possibiity that the earth's climate is currently changing, perhaps drastically relative to the normal climatic fluctuations. We could therefore expect that the earth's climate will become less predictable and that we will set more records of greater variability than normal. To what degree are records broken? How great is the deviation from the norm? At what pace are records being broken? Is it a normal pace? These are a few of the questions I ask myself.
I'm not suggesting this thread is likely to provide any answers to those questions, but they are questions worth asking nonetheless.
I realize it is extremely unscientific to look at NOAA radar and satelite imagery and conclude much of anything from it unless you have the knowledge and expertise to do so. Even then, I don't think looking at such images can be very scientific absent an analysis of the data. Hence my disclosure that I have no climate science creds at all.
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King Jr.
