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Weird Weather

Why does every bit of dramatic weather we get in the UK now get a name? We’re told ‘Storm Ignatius IV’ is going to cause nationwide chaos and is definitely a pensioner killer yet all I see is a bit of rain and blustery wind. You know, what we used to call ‘seasonal weather’.
In the US, it was the product of The Weather Channel. Makes it easier for headlines and clicking, I guess.
 
Truth in media

That was the news...and now for the weather.

Tomorrow will see parts of the country lashed by rain that will drown some, and discommode others.

Meanwhile, in the south, we will have the usual heatwave of 43 degrees C plus, which will cause electric substations to overheat so expect housefires with certain death for the slower and the incapacitated, while those areas that do have power will suffer surges. Those residents relying on breathing apparatus will need to be transferred to General hospitals with back-up generators.

Dust storms are expected in the west.
 
Thing is, the weather is still notoriously hard to predict, regardless of the technology advances.
They speak of potential hazards of some conditions, naming storms to increase awareness. And as far as assuming that people will stay indoors during particularly bad weather, remember the need for stating the blindingly obvious E.G. "May contain nuts" or "Contents will be hot!" Folks 'round here are noted for going out in stormy weather ... just to see how stormy it is.
People have always dismissed weather reports because of it's unreliability. It's not a matter of crying wolf. Recently I listened to the pub boor/expert/conspiracist saying "They said there was going to be gale-force winds but we didn't get anything like it!"
"What about (5 miles down the road) where that tree came down, crushing two or three cars?" "What about the 90+ mile an hour winds up in Scotland?"
*pause*
"You can believe anything the meeeja tell you. Wake up sheeple!" etc. etc.
 
Why does every bit of dramatic weather we get in the UK now get a name?

The Global Warming hypothesis predicts that there will be more storms, so now every time we have a couple of days of wind and rain it’s christened “Storm [name].

Result? There are “more storms”, and weeer’re aaall going to die! Again.

maximus otter
 
Thing is, the weather is still notoriously hard to predict, regardless of the technology advances.
They speak of potential hazards of some conditions, naming storms to increase awareness. And as far as assuming that people will stay indoors during particularly bad weather, remember the need for stating the blindingly obvious E.G. "May contain nuts" or "Contents will be hot!" Folks 'round here are noted for going out in stormy weather ... just to see how stormy it is.
People have always dismissed weather reports because of it's unreliability. It's not a matter of crying wolf. Recently I listened to the pub boor/expert/conspiracist saying "They said there was going to be gale-force winds but we didn't get anything like it!"
"What about (5 miles down the road) where that tree came down, crushing two or three cars?" "What about the 90+ mile an hour winds up in Scotland?"
*pause*
"You can believe anything the meeeja tell you. Wake up sheeple!" etc. etc.

When have there ever not been anomalous weather events? When was the climate ever perfectly, predictably “average”?

Just because we now have news of every downed tree or flooded road in the world beamed into our living rooms 24/7/365, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s happening more frequently.

maximus otter
 
The reason they name storms now is to indicate when the weather may be a threat - damage to property or life.
It was noticed that in the past, if the weather presenter just said it was going to be bad, people would shrug and ignore it.
The point is to accentuate - to get people to take notice. And heatwaves can kill the unprepared.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

H. L. Mencken

maximus otter
 
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

H. L. Mencken

maximus otter
Plus- there always needs to be a 'problem' to be 'solved';
 
Plus, plus - There's no such thing as 'shit happens'; everything has to be engineered for the benefit of shadowy 'hobgoblins'.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
 
Thing is, the starting proposition: refuse to take anything at face value.
So we get from 'there's an increase in severe weather events' via 'is there though?' to 'That's what THEY want you to think - you're all being duped!'
 
Oh, shit definitely happens too.
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As someone who has worked as an operational meteorologist for the US National Weather Service, I know a bit about how things are done here. My familiarity with how they work in the British Isles is limited; I have used observational data and model output from European agencies, but never had the opportunity to meet my colleagues there.

My educated guess is that more storms are formally named these days to make it easier for lay people to identify them and talk about them coherently. Human language works well with discrete, nameable objects. Professional meteorologists have a special jargon that we use among ourselves to get around the atmosphere's inchoate nature.

The philosophical problem remains: What exactly is an object? If you take away a little bit from that object, is it still the same object? If you add to it, is it still the same object?

Putting a name on something and drawing boundaries around it is, on some level, artificial. However, when the newly defined object is dynamically interlinked with itself, and moves more or less as a whole, it can be identified and tracked. People can talk about the effects that this particular object has, as opposed to effects caused by something outside the boundary. Once the object ceases to behave as a unified whole, and effectively dissipates, by convention people assume that it has ceased to exist.
 
Even in this day and age, weather can only be predicted fairly well within 3 days. Beyond that, it has many more variables that can and will change.

The more urban a society becomes, the more disconnect from reading weather signals.

I grew up on a farm. Many years ago, now. I can guess the weather, to a point, by looking at clouds and even by how the air smells. I can tell if it is going to rain whether or not the forecast says rain, just by where the clouds are sitting in the sky.

This is only an at the moment prediction of course, but I also know, by watching weather forecasts and looking at the maps that our weather moves from the west to east and that whatever weather Alberta is having is going to hit us in 4 to 7 days.

Imo, the more disconnect people have from experiencing nature/weather around them, the more distrustful they are of knowledgeable people. Because if you are sitting in a cave seeing only dulled colours and shadowy figures, you cannot begin to understand the vibrancy and vistas beyond. If you have little knowledge and no thirst for learning new things, then you distrust everything. Minor proselytizing done :)
 
Interesting...Australian inland has seasonal 'weather', with the chance of dumping down rain about Christmas time, and into January and February.

This is brought about by 'The Wet' of the top end, which can be predicated on the intensity of Monsoons over the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman sea. If India has a big Monsoon, the Top End does too.

If the mid regions of NSW are fortunate, we get steady summer rain from the fag end of the wet. If we aren't, then we flood - big time.

We get our winter rain inland, which we rely on to do our cereal cropping as it is too warm in summer.

Our climate is west to east and so we can pretty much predict what is going to happen within the coming week, with little nuances after South Australia where the weather curls up into inland NSW due to the geological configuration of The Great Dividing Range of Vic. and NSW.

We get Highs coming up from the Antarctic, normally, with Lows descending over the interior, which tends to 'lock in' the Highs over Central Australia, causing a slow passage of hot days and cool nights due to the lack of cloud with the High Systems.

It's all pretty predictable for us...but then there is the East coast which is where it gets a little dicey. The weather is determined by prevailing winds with winter westerlies, and in Summer, the benign Nor'Easters with the southerly lows that careen up the coast around about 4 oclock in the arvo. (afternoon)

What I've just described is over a massive area and so, it CAN be predictable to a greater degree...but an area like the East coast of NSW has all sorts of anomalies that create micro climates that will alter regional weather...I would imagine that the Islands of the UK would be rather difficult to read due to the associated variables, similar to the East coast of NSW - then the alternating temperatures of the Ocean to the West, the land mass of Europe, and the heat from Northern Africa and the Mediterranean which just buggers up any attempt at rational predictability - Still - It makes for polite conversation when there's nothing else to speak of. Dunt'it.
 
While we can all understand how complex and problematic the science of meteorology can be ... there's still folks out there saying "Huh. The weathermen are never right! I ignore them and just look out of my window!" Yup. Like that helps to plan your day or tomorrows activities.
 
While we can all understand how complex and problematic the science of meteorology can be ... there's still folks out there saying "Huh. The weathermen are never right! I ignore them and just look out of my window!" Yup. Like that helps to plan your day or tomorrows activities.
If Bob Dylan sang it then it's ok by me.
 
Any meteorologist worthy of the name has long since come to terms with the fact that nobody sends fruit baskets for a successful prediction of mass destruction.

We just wish people would ease up on the threats and questioning of our parentage when we fail.
It's probably one of the few careers that all of your failures are known publicly. Tough job, especially when someone asks you "What do you do?"
 

NASA space photo shows odd-looking sky holes near Florida​


/"sky-holes"? <sigh>, they're cavum clouds

https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-space-photo-shows-sky-holes-near-florida-2024-3
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This unusual phenomenon isn't new. Researchers have been documenting it since the 1940s, according to NASA. But it wasn't until about 15 years ago that scientists finally found an explanation.
...
And, in fact, they aren't your average cloud. If it weren't for human technology, cavum clouds would never exist.

They form when airplanes fly through banks of mid-level altocumulus clouds — clouds made of supercooled droplets — according to a pair of studies published in 2010 and 2011.

Researchers from NASA's Langley Research Center found in 2010 that the more shallow the angle that the plane takes to pass through the clouds, the larger the cavum left behind will be.
 
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