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eponymous_roseThis is long overdue, and does indeed serve a purpose beyond making shiny polls (hard to take, I know). I grew up in a family that watched the weather with rapt attention, mostly because my parents both happened to be living in Edmonton (and my mom happened to be toddling around outdoors, pregnant with me) when an F4 tornado ripped through the east side of the city. As a result, understanding the various risks of summer severe weather has never been much of an issue for me (especially not now that I study it for a living) - but now that there's a whole new generation of Albertans without any personal tornado history (although Pine Lake is still fresh in many people's minds), it's becoming apparent that safety awareness has fallen a few rungs on the ladder.
There aren't right answers to all of the below questions - I encourage you to answer before viewing my takes on them beneath the cut. I've turned off result-viewing, so nobody will know if you pick something that's a bit on the iffy side. These questions have been selected because they generally demonstrate popular knowledge - both myth and fact. I'd love to get a bit more information about this, and please read the section under the cut, if only to check your score. ;)
[Poll #1152652]
(Long poll is long. My apologies to your flist - let me know if you'd rather I cut it.)
Question 1: Driving in cars during tornadoes.
Best option: Theoretically, getting out of your car and lying flat in the ditch is your best option - the immediate danger due to a tornado involves flying debris and hail, and making yourself less of a target is infinitely desirable. The exception, of course, would be in a case where you expect flash flooding, at which point seeking slightly higher ground away from the highway would be a smarter choice. Also, if lightning seems to be particularly prevalent, and you're in immediate danger of being struck, remaining in the car is safest.
There's a follow-up question: why is a car the safest place to be in a thunderstorm? It's not because of the rubber tires, actually - it's because of the metal frame of the car, which provides you with a sort of Faraday cage (there's a theorem in electromagnetism that goes like this: the electric charge in a spherical shell will be located only along the outside). If a power line were to fall on your car, you would be best to keep inside until emergency personnel arrived. Uh. Unless, I guess, your car were on fire. Then you might want to jump out. Jump.
The moral of the story? Do not under any circumstances hide under an overpass - a certain camera crew once took refuge in one during a tornado and left their camera on: due to particularly lucky wind directions, they didn't get sucked right out in the wind tunnel that would form under any other circumstances, and so went on to propagate the myth that it's safest to do that sort of thing. No. Don't. No cookie. Bad.
Question 2: Watches and warnings.
Only option: Only option, as far as I can tell - a storm/flood/tornado/whatever watch means that you should be on the lookout for averse weather conditions and listen for updated watches and possible warnings. Tie things down outside. Or, um, don't, if it's a flood. When you get a warning, it means that there is immediate danger, and that persons in or near the areas affected should prepare for the event in question.
Case in point: tornado watch means that funnel clouds have been sighted in the region. You can get cold-core funnel clouds that will rarely if ever touch the ground, at which point a watch will be issued just in case. Tornado warnings usually come too late (see below for the typical lifespan of a tornado and you'll see why) - they mean that a tornado has touched the ground in or near your area.
Warnings and watches typically lead to much frustration among the general public. Think of it this way - you live in a massive city with a population over a million. A tornado warning is issued for your city - and sure enough, a tornado rips through a couple of neighbourhoods. Evidently the people in those neighbourhoods were grateful for the warning, but 99% of the population is frustrated over the false alarm to them. This sort of thing happened after the Edmonton tornado and was one of the subjects of the subsequent Hage report on public awareness.
Question 3: Clockwise or anticlockwise?
Only option: Either. It doesn't matter where you are in the world; the water going down the drain is determined uniquely by any flaws or imperfections in the drain itself. This is just a common misconception (The Simpsons and The X-Files got it wrong!), so I thought I may as well make my case here. ;)
Clockwise and anticlockwise rotation of moving objects on or above the Earth's surface arises due to the rotation of the Earth itself, in an apparent force called the Coriolis force. (It's the same effect you get when waging war - you have to aim your missiles a bit to the right or the left to take this into account. In a more familiar example, take a stool and spin the seat, then try to draw a straight line across it - when you stop it to take a look, it'll be curved. That's the Coriolis force of the stool messing with your inertial reference frame, and it's an example of why the physics of the atmosphere is so very bizarre and counterintuitive.)
Obviously, though, this doesn't apply at all scales of motion. When you throw a ball to/at your little brother, you don't think "I should aim a bit to the left to compensate" - that's because the timescale at which the Earth is turning is so massive in comparison. Consider the time it takes the Earth to make a complete rotation (2 pi radians, for those of you who remember your geometry) - that's a day, yes? 24 hours times 60 minutes to an hour times 60 seconds to a minute gives 86,400 seconds. Thus, the Earth travels 2 pi radians every 86,400 seconds - that's the Earth rotation rate. The Coriolis frequency/parameter is defined as two times that rotation rate, times the sine of the latitude in question - take 50 degrees latitude, and you get a Coriolis frequency of 1.11E-4, which is a very small number. The inverse of the frequency gives the period, which is 8975 seconds, give or take.
The upshot of all that is you have to have something that takes about 8975 seconds to complete a rotation - about two and a half hours - for the Coriolis force to have an appreciable effect on it. Giant weather systems and hurricanes have this timescale. Water swirling round the drain does not. End of story.
EDIT: For the record, even if a sink were at the proper timescale, the water would rotate anti-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere.
Question 4: Does a hurricane or a tornado have higher winds?
Best option: Tornadoes generally have much higher winds than hurricanes, statistically speaking. Of course, hurricanes last for weeks, whereas tornadoes...
Question 5: Lolsegue - how long does a tornado usually last?
Only option: Fifteen minutes. This is why people need to take watches seriously - warnings are nearly always too late. Of course, there are exceptions - the Edmonton tornado lasted over an hour, and the Tri-State tornado had more than enough time to cross into the eponymous (ooh, never get to use that word) three States. Generally, though, they're short-lived. Of course, they can dissipate and come back in force, or you can have several tornadoes at a time. Wait until the storm is well away from you before leaving your shelter (or ditch).
Question 6: What is this theoretical maximum for forecasting, beyond which the media is bullshitting me?
Only option: Eleven days. Yes, all those "two-week outlooks" are being a wee bit optimistic when it comes to stuff like Chaos Theory - all numerical weather prediction models forget their initial conditions beyond a certain point and take on a life of their own that has nothing to do with the physical world. That point's less than two weeks, anyway, though people are getting more and more clever about circumventing that sort of thing.
(Long-term climate prediction models, on the other hand, are seen as a boundary-value problem - describe all the conditions and constraints instead of the initialisation. Not good for fine-tuning things, but all right for general overviews.)
Question 7: Weather information sources.
Any option: It's good to stay informed about weather, but it's important to keep in mind that many local stations and commercial weather channels will just crib bits and pieces from official sources (generalisation, yes, but largely weatherpeople on the news are chosen for personality, not a degree in atmospheric dynamics). Government websites, in Canada and the States, at least, are the ones you should be consulting - they've got the money and the world's most powerful supercomputers on the job. If you trust one thing about your government, trust that.
(Of course, due to the understaffed nature of any weather station ever, if you know what you're doing enough to focus on your city alone, you'll probably get a more accurate forecast. They deal in generalisations, and considering that most areas of precipitation are only a kilometre or two across, your rainy day might just get averaged out of the equation. The industry's facing a staffing shortage, too. Lovely.)
Question 8: How tall is a thunderstorm cloud?
ONLY ANSWER: The one about the ticky box. Come on, you guys?
(Might also have accepted 10 km. That's weird, isn't it? A thunderstorm cloud is taller than Mount Everest. Weird and awesome.)
Anyway, hope that was in some way helpful. Spread the word. I'd love to discuss any of this/your severe weather experiences/negative experiences with forecasters (or positive - a girl can dream!). It's what I do for a living, after all. ;)
Thanks muchly!
There aren't right answers to all of the below questions - I encourage you to answer before viewing my takes on them beneath the cut. I've turned off result-viewing, so nobody will know if you pick something that's a bit on the iffy side. These questions have been selected because they generally demonstrate popular knowledge - both myth and fact. I'd love to get a bit more information about this, and please read the section under the cut, if only to check your score. ;)
[Poll #1152652]
(Long poll is long. My apologies to your flist - let me know if you'd rather I cut it.)
Question 1: Driving in cars during tornadoes.
Best option: Theoretically, getting out of your car and lying flat in the ditch is your best option - the immediate danger due to a tornado involves flying debris and hail, and making yourself less of a target is infinitely desirable. The exception, of course, would be in a case where you expect flash flooding, at which point seeking slightly higher ground away from the highway would be a smarter choice. Also, if lightning seems to be particularly prevalent, and you're in immediate danger of being struck, remaining in the car is safest.
There's a follow-up question: why is a car the safest place to be in a thunderstorm? It's not because of the rubber tires, actually - it's because of the metal frame of the car, which provides you with a sort of Faraday cage (there's a theorem in electromagnetism that goes like this: the electric charge in a spherical shell will be located only along the outside). If a power line were to fall on your car, you would be best to keep inside until emergency personnel arrived. Uh. Unless, I guess, your car were on fire. Then you might want to jump out. Jump.
The moral of the story? Do not under any circumstances hide under an overpass - a certain camera crew once took refuge in one during a tornado and left their camera on: due to particularly lucky wind directions, they didn't get sucked right out in the wind tunnel that would form under any other circumstances, and so went on to propagate the myth that it's safest to do that sort of thing. No. Don't. No cookie. Bad.
Question 2: Watches and warnings.
Only option: Only option, as far as I can tell - a storm/flood/tornado/whatever watch means that you should be on the lookout for averse weather conditions and listen for updated watches and possible warnings. Tie things down outside. Or, um, don't, if it's a flood. When you get a warning, it means that there is immediate danger, and that persons in or near the areas affected should prepare for the event in question.
Case in point: tornado watch means that funnel clouds have been sighted in the region. You can get cold-core funnel clouds that will rarely if ever touch the ground, at which point a watch will be issued just in case. Tornado warnings usually come too late (see below for the typical lifespan of a tornado and you'll see why) - they mean that a tornado has touched the ground in or near your area.
Warnings and watches typically lead to much frustration among the general public. Think of it this way - you live in a massive city with a population over a million. A tornado warning is issued for your city - and sure enough, a tornado rips through a couple of neighbourhoods. Evidently the people in those neighbourhoods were grateful for the warning, but 99% of the population is frustrated over the false alarm to them. This sort of thing happened after the Edmonton tornado and was one of the subjects of the subsequent Hage report on public awareness.
Question 3: Clockwise or anticlockwise?
Only option: Either. It doesn't matter where you are in the world; the water going down the drain is determined uniquely by any flaws or imperfections in the drain itself. This is just a common misconception (The Simpsons and The X-Files got it wrong!), so I thought I may as well make my case here. ;)
Clockwise and anticlockwise rotation of moving objects on or above the Earth's surface arises due to the rotation of the Earth itself, in an apparent force called the Coriolis force. (It's the same effect you get when waging war - you have to aim your missiles a bit to the right or the left to take this into account. In a more familiar example, take a stool and spin the seat, then try to draw a straight line across it - when you stop it to take a look, it'll be curved. That's the Coriolis force of the stool messing with your inertial reference frame, and it's an example of why the physics of the atmosphere is so very bizarre and counterintuitive.)
Obviously, though, this doesn't apply at all scales of motion. When you throw a ball to/at your little brother, you don't think "I should aim a bit to the left to compensate" - that's because the timescale at which the Earth is turning is so massive in comparison. Consider the time it takes the Earth to make a complete rotation (2 pi radians, for those of you who remember your geometry) - that's a day, yes? 24 hours times 60 minutes to an hour times 60 seconds to a minute gives 86,400 seconds. Thus, the Earth travels 2 pi radians every 86,400 seconds - that's the Earth rotation rate. The Coriolis frequency/parameter is defined as two times that rotation rate, times the sine of the latitude in question - take 50 degrees latitude, and you get a Coriolis frequency of 1.11E-4, which is a very small number. The inverse of the frequency gives the period, which is 8975 seconds, give or take.
The upshot of all that is you have to have something that takes about 8975 seconds to complete a rotation - about two and a half hours - for the Coriolis force to have an appreciable effect on it. Giant weather systems and hurricanes have this timescale. Water swirling round the drain does not. End of story.
EDIT: For the record, even if a sink were at the proper timescale, the water would rotate anti-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere.
Question 4: Does a hurricane or a tornado have higher winds?
Best option: Tornadoes generally have much higher winds than hurricanes, statistically speaking. Of course, hurricanes last for weeks, whereas tornadoes...
Question 5: Lolsegue - how long does a tornado usually last?
Only option: Fifteen minutes. This is why people need to take watches seriously - warnings are nearly always too late. Of course, there are exceptions - the Edmonton tornado lasted over an hour, and the Tri-State tornado had more than enough time to cross into the eponymous (ooh, never get to use that word) three States. Generally, though, they're short-lived. Of course, they can dissipate and come back in force, or you can have several tornadoes at a time. Wait until the storm is well away from you before leaving your shelter (or ditch).
Question 6: What is this theoretical maximum for forecasting, beyond which the media is bullshitting me?
Only option: Eleven days. Yes, all those "two-week outlooks" are being a wee bit optimistic when it comes to stuff like Chaos Theory - all numerical weather prediction models forget their initial conditions beyond a certain point and take on a life of their own that has nothing to do with the physical world. That point's less than two weeks, anyway, though people are getting more and more clever about circumventing that sort of thing.
(Long-term climate prediction models, on the other hand, are seen as a boundary-value problem - describe all the conditions and constraints instead of the initialisation. Not good for fine-tuning things, but all right for general overviews.)
Question 7: Weather information sources.
Any option: It's good to stay informed about weather, but it's important to keep in mind that many local stations and commercial weather channels will just crib bits and pieces from official sources (generalisation, yes, but largely weatherpeople on the news are chosen for personality, not a degree in atmospheric dynamics). Government websites, in Canada and the States, at least, are the ones you should be consulting - they've got the money and the world's most powerful supercomputers on the job. If you trust one thing about your government, trust that.
(Of course, due to the understaffed nature of any weather station ever, if you know what you're doing enough to focus on your city alone, you'll probably get a more accurate forecast. They deal in generalisations, and considering that most areas of precipitation are only a kilometre or two across, your rainy day might just get averaged out of the equation. The industry's facing a staffing shortage, too. Lovely.)
Question 8: How tall is a thunderstorm cloud?
ONLY ANSWER: The one about the ticky box. Come on, you guys?
(Might also have accepted 10 km. That's weird, isn't it? A thunderstorm cloud is taller than Mount Everest. Weird and awesome.)
Anyway, hope that was in some way helpful. Spread the word. I'd love to discuss any of this/your severe weather experiences/negative experiences with forecasters (or positive - a girl can dream!). It's what I do for a living, after all. ;)
Thanks muchly!
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-11 11:01 pm (UTC)This was very informative! I enjoyed it. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-11 11:08 pm (UTC)Growing up in Minnesota, which gets its fair share of tornados, we always took weather reports very seriously. And then in the winter there were blizzards to watch out for. Heh. It's exciting to live somewhere the weather can kill you!
no subject
Date: 2008-03-11 11:15 pm (UTC)All of the above questions were posted because I've known people to get them wrong on several occasions. (The best was when I worked in the kitchen at a big restaurant and the flat-top cook caused a panic over a supposed tornado warning, which actually turned out to be a severe thunderstorm watch. D'oh.)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-11 11:20 pm (UTC)Very informative. Thanks.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-11 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-11 11:26 pm (UTC)I've only ever seen precursors - golfball-sized hail punching holes through picnic tables, rapidfire lightning strikes, horizontal rain - and on one occasion I happened to be looking out the window at a storm that was setting a tornado down about 20 km away (the cloud itself was rotating and lowering, which was really amazing and would have been petrifying close up). We get a fair number of tornadoes in Alberta (between a dozen and four dozen, depending on the year), and more hail than anywhere else in the world (thus my research specialty). My classmates are planning on a tornado chase this summer, which, ehm, maybe? I'd love to see one far off, and travelling with people who know their stuff would be nice. But then, I am a bit terrified of thunderstorms in general, and the rational part of me says it's a bit silly to go looking for that much trouble.
It's exciting to live somewhere the weather can kill you!
Isn't it just? I always say it's no wonder I wound up studying this stuff - our temperature swings from -50C in the winter to 40C in the summer, and we get all the interesting severe weather to go with it (droughts, floods, blizzards, severe thunderstorms, hail, tornadoes). It's nuts!
no subject
Date: 2008-03-11 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-11 11:30 pm (UTC)Tornado sirens are something I only got introduced to when I helped my brother move to Iowa - we don't have them around here, even in the most tornado-prone areas. Which is silly and something we should get working on!
I've never seen so much as a funnel cloud before - but they do sound really very strange! I used to get nightmares as a kid about tornadoes touching down all around me, so sometimes I feel like I have seen one. ;)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-11 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-11 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-11 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-11 11:42 pm (UTC)I'm hoping most of this (well, the important ones at least) will become common knowledge at some point in the near future!
no subject
Date: 2008-03-11 11:44 pm (UTC)(I am baffled as to why most people think the water would rotate clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere - I think that's probably a factor that's perpetuated the water-down-the-drain myth in the first place. You head south of the equator, flush the toilet and go: "Hey, that looks different!" I know I would've done. ;))
Mm, Faraday cages! That was the best part of my otherwise disastrous electromagnetism course.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-11 11:59 pm (UTC)I love my cozy little harbor-city, but it does make me way too complacent about extreme weather. These questions are probably the most thought I've given to hurricanes and such since my survival science class in high school!
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 12:31 am (UTC)I still get tornado dreams; it usually involves me being in a house, looking out the window and seeing one approaching, then running (slow motion of course) to the stairs hoping to get down to the basement in time. Fortunately I don't get more than one of those every couple of years!
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 12:59 am (UTC)And once we had yellow winds from the south, which was Sahara sand getting blown across the Mediterranian Sea and the Alpes to us. That was impressive.
You could unlock this, then people who aren't on your f-list could take the poll as well :).
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 01:02 am (UTC)Ooh, foehn winds! We've got the analogous Chinook winds here due to the proximity of the Rockies - they're so very nice in the dead of winter.
And yellow winds! Very cool.
Hee - didn't even realise this was locked. *headdesk* Thanks for letting me know!
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 01:05 am (UTC)And all of the above questions were selected because, at one time or another, I've heard people get 'em wrong. ;) Now you have fun factoids to share!
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 01:14 am (UTC)Plus, as far as I'm concerned young weather gods in training should be able to predict the weather up to a year in advance. *nodnod* I'm revoking your cape privileges until you defy this fact of nature and become properly weatherly god-line. So mote it be! *poses*
Seriously though, I was surprised about the fact that tornadoes had faster winds than hurricanes... Then I, you know, tried to think about it and do that whole logic thing (peh). Is it because tornadoes are contained (like you said, days vs. 15 mins.) whereas hurricanes apply to a much broader area/time?
In any case, really informative stuff. Thanks for the info!
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 01:15 am (UTC)So you're east of the Rockies, right? Then the Chinook thing probably occurs rather often, no, because of the west winds? Or are they too high up? Eeh, high school geography is definitely way too long ago ;).
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 01:45 am (UTC)Then the Chinook thing probably occurs rather often, no, because of the west winds?
Yup, that's right! We generally get winds from the south-west over the Rockies, which is a perfect condition for Chinooks to occur. Sometimes, though, the warm air comes down off the mountains and hits a wall of cold air - and so, being lighter, just hovers above us. It's depressing on the days when it's fifteen degrees warmer about a skyscraper's height above our heads. ;)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 01:50 am (UTC)Ooh. Visited links are de-bolded. That's weird. Lol. But I'm glad there's an easy explanation, I was this close to spending my night taking your source code apart xD.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 01:54 am (UTC)*resolves to take this hardship and adversity and turn it into DETERMINATION to WIN this BATTLE*
*strikes a pose*
*DOES NOT FALL OVER*
*overuses asterisks*
*Mwahaha*
Is it because tornadoes are contained (like you said, days vs. 15 mins.) whereas hurricanes apply to a much broader area/time?
Sort of, yes! They're governed by really different processes overall, though, so comparing them is tricky. An F5 tornado like the one they had in Manitoba last summer has winds of up to 318 miles per hour. That's 512 km/hour. (A Category Five hurricane, on the other hand, has maximum winds just over 155 miles per hour - only equivalent to an F2 tornado.) I think it's a sustainability issue, really - sustaining psychotic 512 kph winds takes a lot of energy from somewhere. Can you imagine a hurricane with tornado-force winds? *hides*
Needless to say, much more destruction comes with a hurricane - it's spread out and less likely to annihilate everything in its path, but much more costly in terms of every measure imaginable. Tornado damage is intense and focused (well, except when the tornado leaves one house unscathed and destroys its neighbour, which I should maybe explain in my next weather post of wonderment!) - if your house is in the way of an F5, it's toast. But contained, yes - the people across the street may well be chortling. Chortle while you can, people across the street! *shakes fist*
Education! There you go. :D
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 02:32 am (UTC)I would love to beta more of Wasteland! I don't believe I replied to your last e-mail, because I'm just evil that way, and also because I won't have a chance to do said beta until after the 16th, but if you send it my way I can start in on it. :D
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 02:34 am (UTC)By the way, the Edmonton Science Centre is quite fun. And has a much better gift shop than the one over here.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 02:39 am (UTC)(Don't worry about the anticlockwise thing - 60% of people have said clockwise so far, versus 6.7% anticlockwise and 20% with the correct answer. Yay, statistics!)
Ooh, Edmonton Science Centre! I have great nostalgic love for that place - it was where, ages and ages ago, I first used the internet. *tears up*
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 04:07 am (UTC)..Last week I was in a plane descending through a thunderstorm at night. Horizontal rain snapping past the winglights and lightning dancing behind mountains of black cloud... that's my weather story for the week, besides the six feet of snow at my dad's place. *grins*
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 04:18 am (UTC)I also know that I'm safer in a ditch than in my car if a tornado happens by. But realistically? Am I going to leave my cozy warm car and lie in a cold and rainsoaked ditch IN THE PATH OF A TORNADO? Probably not, unless the tornado is so close that it's shaking my car around, and then it's too late. If I see a funnel cloud I'm probably going to drive away from it. And yes, it might get me killed.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 05:30 am (UTC)"The Simpsons", naturally! Not that I believe everything on a cartoon is true, but it's the only time I'd ever heard about rotating water at all, so, y'know, it sticks with you. ;)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 06:41 am (UTC)Spent most of our time on the second level though, wishing we had a good ripple tank back at school and other similarly gadget-jealous thoughts.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 07:07 am (UTC)ME: *bribe cape with candy*
CAPE: *looks decidedly annoyed (in a capey fashion), but obviously enjoys candy so sticks around*
ME: *satisfied*
It was definitely the destruction wrought factor that got me all confuzzled. Since we don't really have much in the way of hurricanes/tornadoes over here (yay for earthquakes!), the easiest way to evaluate the strength/etc. of either is, in my mind, the damage left in their wake. I'm sure there's a deep meaningful conclusion I can draw from these important scientific facts to demean them in some way, something about the ones who create the biggest fuss aren't necessarily the ones who deserve it/who are all that impressive, but that would take work and thinking, and I'm (generally) against that. *nod*
And no worries - the chortling folk are always the next ones on the tornado of wrath's list. Proven fact. *shifty eyes*
Yay! Education!
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 07:12 am (UTC)Are you absolutely sure you want to, though? I know you've got deadlines coming up left and right, and that whole 'education' thing that people are always talking about, plus I do believe that your beta services are highly desired throughout the land. If you haven't got the time it's okay! Over extension = bad.
That being said, if you are sure, in the words of a certain alien we all know and love: Fantastic!
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 10:14 am (UTC)Mind you, I've seen them get the present weather wrong, so I take all future predictions with a pinch of salt. (There's also a famous occasion that I'm too young to remember where they failed to predict a hurricane).
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 04:31 pm (UTC)I need to do some reading on weather phenomena now... I hate getting caught up on "common misconception" stuff. ;)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 10:27 pm (UTC)(In which case, my parents, two dogs, two cats and I have to attempt to fit into our laundry room. We have a distinct lack of rooms without windows.)
I have seen exactly one tornado up close and personal, quite a few years ago. I was with my grandparents at the time. We got in the car and attempted to drive away, but my grandfather's amazing directional skill meant that we drove parellel to the tornado for quite a while. (That tornado lasted at least 30 minutes, I think. No idea what the strength was, but it did tear one farm to absolute shreds. Thankfully, my grandparents live in the middle of nowhere, so there weren't any major population centers around.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 10:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 10:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 10:32 pm (UTC)Ooh, a friend and I infiltrated a fluid dynamics lab and got to see all the crazy ripple tanks there - they were spinning them around and shooting plumes of salt through them and there were cameras all over the place filming the whole thing. It was awesome.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 10:35 pm (UTC)I love tripping my brain up like that - just when I think I've got the basics solid, something will mess with my brain and remind me I've still got a ways to go. Love that feeling!
Eek! Planes in thunderstorms are definitely scary (my professor was on one that got struck by lightning - very loud, but the Faraday cage explanation above applies to airplanes, too, so there was no harm done). When I was coming back from a spelling bee in Montreal about ten years ago, our plane circled the airport for over an hour during a storm - it was terrible, because we were right near the mountains and the winds were crazy. Bleah.
Yikes, snow! Ours has almost totally melted, which is strange. I think it's trying to lull us into a false sense of security.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 10:38 pm (UTC)Hah - no kidding on the lying-in-a-ditch thing. Most weather-related safety precautions are Just Not Practical - somebody should come up with a guide that takes this into account!
(Besides, having been through a tornado warning, I know that while my initial reactions are good - get everyone down to the basement - the fact that I'm back outside peering at the sky a couple minutes later is probably less than ideal.)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 10:45 pm (UTC)I wouldn't think speed is an issue when forecasting rain, though - especially near large bodies of water, you're not going to see storms move in: they'll develop right overhead. Which is, of course, even trickier; most numerical models don't have enough degrees of freedom to account for all the possible latent heat fluxes in that sort of equation. Silly water.
Whenever I see present weather being wrong, it's usually because I'm using a dodgy source (38C and sunny! Yes, I can tell by the snow on the ground.). A good rule of thumb: if the website in question ever forecasts less than 30% or more than 70% chance of rain, it's probably not the sort of thing you'll want to rely on. Well. Unless they've found a more accurate prediction model that I don't know about yet. Which is very possible, actually.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 11:16 pm (UTC)And hey! Alberta love indeed! :D I grew up in Red Deer (and my parents still live there), so I get all excited at any mention of the place. Hee! I'm currently living in Edmonton - not too far away, which is nice.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-13 09:40 am (UTC)The speed refers to fronts, I think. They always show them and bands of rain out in the Atlantic and it's all a question of how long they take to hit various parts of the country and how much rain will be left by the time they do. Which is why the weather forecast often tells us it'll be 'showers and sunny intervals' - which is a codeword for 'we don't know'. Not that long ago when there was snow forecast in the North, one of the forecasts I looked at said every part of the country had a chance of snow. Nothing like hedging their bets.
The present weather being wrong I've usually seen on TV. The only forecasting websites I usually go to are the BBC and Met Office - any more than a couple and you get more than a couple of different forecasts :)
The most reliable way of forecasting weather: if you're going out and don't want it to rain, take an umbrella. If you do want it to rain, hang your washing out. It works more often than not.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-13 07:38 pm (UTC)We had turbulence too, but for some reason I find it worse in daylight when one can see what's going on out there. My basic not-being-scared-in-thunderstorms tactic is to stare out at it and fill my brain with THAT'S SO AWESOME!
Heh, weather does that.