CDR: Weather [was: RE: Well, that's over. Heads up, America!]
i think the weather thing has more to do with the agricultural background of the country, and how this influenced the development of American Society at an early stage. Most Americans i've spoken with don't actually "MEAN IT"... perhaps there's some selfish concern about being comfortable in the weather at hand while doing some inane activity. Tennis (or whatever) in the snow? does this really seem so bizarre? -----Original Message----- X-Loop: openpgp.net From: owner-cypherpunks@Algebra.COM [mailto:owner-cypherpunks@Algebra.COM]On Behalf Of Trei, Peter Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2000 10:29 AM To: cypherpunks Mailing List; 'Ken Brown' Subject: Weather [was: RE: Well, that's over. Heads up, America!]
Ken Brown[SMTP:k.brown@ccs.bbk.ac.uk] wrote:
OK you folks on the downwind side of the Atlantic, now your election is over (even if you won't know the result for 3 weeks yet), can you take your weather back? We've had a month of egregious rain and floods over here and I'm sure it has to be your fault somehow. 5 tornadoes in Sussex (my home county) one of them even killed people. These things just don't happen in England. It must be the Americans fault. Somehow. It wasn't like this in my day... [...] Ken Brown [...]
I once heard a European pundit observe that Americans seem normal most of the time, but every now and then something surfaces to make it clear just how alien they actually are. The example he gave was the American obsession with weather. In Europe, talk about the weather is just conversational padding; noise of no serious consequence to fill an otherwise awkward silences. Americans, on the other hand, MEAN IT when they talk about the weather. They sit up and pay attention when forecasts appear. All US cable systems carry a channel which broadcasts nothing except weather reports, 24x7 - a notion which seems as bizarre to Europeans as would a channel for watching the grass grow. He surmised that this is due to the fact that in the US, unlike Europe, bad weather can kill you. [And even if it doesn't kill you, it can sure as hell play havoc with your day. I've had over 2 feet of snow overnight at my house, while 10 miles away there was just rain. Mark Twain once gave a speech about the New England weather: http://marktwain.about.com/arts/marktwain/library/speeches/bl_weather.htm It's worth a look. ] Peter Trei
On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, Templeton, Stuart wrote:
i think the weather thing has more to do with the agricultural background of the country, and how this influenced the development of American Society at an early stage.
No, it's because the continent of the US is larger and as a consequence the weather tends to be more violent. Got something to do with the size of the air masses and their ability to store energy. Review some good weather texts. [1] We have hurricanes, tornadoes, flash floods, locust swarms (here in Texas every year they get so thick you can literaly sweep them with a broom), etc. at a much higher rate than Europe. And anyone who hasn't seen a Force 5 tornado literaly rip the slabs of houses out of the ground and sling them for over a mile, or a playing card stuck edge on in a telephone pole, or ever seen a 20 ft storm surge come in (I grew up around Galveston & Freeport and used to surf the hurricane surges) will never understand keeping an eye on the weather. When was the last time a town literaly ceased to exist, except for an empty cow pasture, in less than 30 minutes due to a tornado in Europe? No houses, no fences, no trees. If you'd like to see an example review Gerrold, TX and the F5 that hit there a coule of years ago. And we get mud slides that will match anything in Meditteranean Europe (roughly same latitude...hmmm). All that flooding that Europe is going ga ga over we get here in the SW every fucking year. Hell, we had 4in. of rain in about an hour last week for example. The lake that was very low two weeks ago is now within 2 feet of being full. The lake is held at half depth normaly (for flood control) and runs about 680ft. It holds over a million acre-feet of flood storage at that level. You do the math. Our flow rates at some of the damns went from less than 100 cfm to over 20,000 in less than a day. Crests were 12+ feet over flood for example. And we've got another one coming this weekend. When I was about 7 or so (1967?) it rained for 28 days straight in Galveston. I have this vivid memory of us driving through flooded Houston in my dad's truck getting a giggle out of the thousands of stranded cars sitting in water that went halfway to the windows just so we could get my Aunt who worked on the other side of town and couldn't get out. There's a reason the houses down there are built on stilts and 3-4 ft pier-and-beam slabs. But it's not just Europeans, even yankee's (northerners) get a lot of guff about the weather. In Chicago we see reports of people dying when the temp. hits the high 90's for a few days. It stays hi 90's here in Austin for months. We had 2 weeks of over 100 temperature and the nightly temps don't get below 90. Yet we have very few if any deaths. And I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't stand in awe at the Texas thunder bumpers. Lightning and thunder like no place on Earth, except Florida. The flip side is that we, in the SW at least, don't know shit about cold weather and feet of snow. A cold winter for us is several 3-4 day stints of sub-freezing, above zero, temperature (though you don't usualy hear of anyone dying there either). When it snows here in Austin (and it doesn't melt instantly) the entire town literaly closes up and eveyrone goes out and plays in it. Drives folks from the cold climes absolutely batty. There's an old saw about Texas, If you don't like the weather, wait a few minutes. It'll change. [1] Dynamics of Atmospheric Motion J.A. Dutton ISBN 0-486-68486-5 (Dover) $18 US ____________________________________________________________________ He is able who thinks he is able. Buddha The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, Jim Choate wrote:
No, it's because the continent of the US is larger and as a consequence the weather tends to be more violent. Got something to do with the size of the air masses and their ability to store energy. Review some good weather texts. [1]
??? What map of the world have you been looking at? The old-world mainland is so big we call it two continents (Europe and Asia) even though it's one solid piece of land. (plus some islands at the edges, like England, Ireland, and Japan). And Africa is just immense! I won't deny that by all accounts our weather (especially on the central plains states) is substantially more violent than european weather (cf. my earlier comments about wind dismantling houses on occasion where I used to live in Kansas) but it's not because the continent is bigger. I'd be more inclined to believe it's just particular circumstances; that chunk of america gets warm wet air off the Gulf of mexico and cold dry air from the arctic by way of canada, which is a pretty extreme mix. Mountain ranges are in place that keep the air from getting mediated with anything before this extreme mix happens. The resulting weather is also extreme, natch.
We have hurricanes, tornadoes, flash floods, locust swarms (here in Texas every year they get so thick you can literaly sweep them with a broom), etc. at a much higher rate than Europe.
It's different in California. The year after I moved out here they had a tornado in San Jose that pushed a car across a parking lot. It dented this guy's car, but it was drivable. I had to laugh at that, because when I heard "tornado" I was thinking of something completely different. I watched this moron on the news, who was talking about how he'd stood right next to a large glass window in his home and watched it "suck the ducks right out of the duck pond".... and the TV meteorologist called him "brave" for this. I had to laugh, but I thought, "there really hasn't been much evolutionary pressure on humans here regarding weather, has there?" We kansas transplants used to tape the weather forecasts here and send them back to our friends for comedic value. Bear
At 06:30 PM 11/8/00 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
There's an old saw about Texas,
If you don't like the weather, wait a few minutes. It'll change.
Hilarious. Where I grew up, it was New England, not T'xas. But then, I grew up in NE. But then, NE was settled by english-speakers way before T. Tornadoes are gods. I hope to chase them when I have the time. Meanwhile I have to put up with earthquakes, landslides, brushfires and bureaucrats. Oh my.
participants (4)
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David Honig -
Jim Choate -
Ray Dillinger -
Templeton, Stuart