Comments on: A Cold Snap?

By: JoAnne

JoAnne — Mon, 15 May 2006 20:02:03 +0000

DilbertDogbert: Who can believe a weather forecast, anyway! Lucky for us this time, eh?

Zeke: Thanks for the info. I was hoping somebody here could explain.

By: dilbert dogbert

dilbert dogbert — Mon, 15 May 2006 16:08:43 +0000

82 degrees in the shade on the south side of the house yesterday the 14th. This is Palo Alto! The weather guys are totally wrong!!!!

By: Zeke

Zeke — Mon, 15 May 2006 11:55:26 +0000

-30000 is a poorly-thought out “catch all” sentinel value within the text formatters to indicate no data. Apparently the forecaster forgot to publish the low temperature grids to the web server.

Another amusing text formatter incident involved the use of floats instead of integers. For about one-hour on a NWS web site, the text formatters were creating wind phrases using float values using waaay too many significant digits, e.g., “southeast wind 5.7612109-11.9176151 mph”

By: Aaron F.

Aaron F. — Sun, 14 May 2006 16:40:28 +0000

“…actually, it’s a photo of a print-out of a web page…”

That’s disgusting.

“Anyone doing a low-temperature experiment should head to the Bay Area for the weekend…”

I’d think even non-low-temp people would be excited to experience temperatures a few thousand degrees below absolute zero… ^_^

By: spyder

spyder — Fri, 12 May 2006 20:20:40 +0000

Geez, it is perfectly lovely up here in the inland northwest. By Sunday it is supposed to be in the low 80′s, a far cry from the freezing temperatures of two days ago. And to think i was, just yesterda,y bemoaning the fact that i would not find enough adequate, outside heat to prepare for summer-tour season, that starts in CA in a couple of weeks.

By: janet

janet — Fri, 12 May 2006 00:19:34 +0000

Hmm, it’s nice and warm in the East Bay. These microclimates!

By: Count Iblis

Count Iblis — Thu, 11 May 2006 23:00:10 +0000

JoAnne, why not go back to India for the weekend, see here

Saturday
Clear. High: 116Â° F / 47Â° C Wind NW 8 mph. / 14 km/h.

By: adam

adam — Thu, 11 May 2006 22:01:19 +0000

Stewart Granger recited this poem at some public event as a young man (according to his autobiography):

Cold, Cold, Cold
Cold as a frog in a pool
Cold as the tip of an eskimo’s tool
Cold as charity, and that’s pretty chilly
But not as cold as our poor Willie
He’s dead, poor bastard
He’s dead.

By: JoAnne

JoAnne — Thu, 11 May 2006 21:53:42 +0000

I’m starting to worry about my heating bill.

By: Sourav

Sourav — Thu, 11 May 2006 21:35:49 +0000

Makes sense. The more you energy you pump into the Bay Area, the smaller your space of accessible configurations becomes.

By: adam

adam — Thu, 11 May 2006 21:02:18 +0000

Unseasonably cold for this universe. Colder than the reception that President Bush would get at a Pride rally (which temperature we might take as an alternative definition for Absolute Zero).

By: CanuckRob

CanuckRob — Thu, 11 May 2006 20:12:36 +0000

Well that proves that global warming is just a liberal myth. -30,000 F is kind of unseaonably cold for California isn’t it?

By: JoAnne

JoAnne — Thu, 11 May 2006 19:28:18 +0000

Anon: actually, it’s a photo of a print-out of a web page…. This web page appeared at 6 AM (a time of day of which I am not aware exists) and a friend left the print-out in my mailbox.

By: anon

anon — Thu, 11 May 2006 19:20:01 +0000

PS: Sorry these images are rather blurry – best I could do!

They came from a web page? Screen capture?

By: adam

adam — Thu, 11 May 2006 18:47:57 +0000

I daren’t look to see what is in store for upstate New York.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 11 May 2006 18:15:20 +0000

Finally some justice.