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christina p

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Everything posted by christina p

  1. As I prepare to leave your community (at least for a while) after a very brief sojourn here, I thought I might make a few observations in a 'valedictory' post. First, scientifically, it was, regrettably, a disappointment. The Great Airport Mystery remains utterly unsolved, and, while there was a good response to the smaller, subsidiary issues I raised (like, did the UK systematically measure actual snowfall in the past 60 years) the larger questions (which, after all, were what principally motivated me) were scarcely nibbled at by posters. But oh how their appetites would have been whetted had I brought up a thunderstorm in Kent, or even just some naughtily provocative cumulus clouds in Hampshire!! But, I accept this outcome good-humoredly, "chacun a son gout." By the way, though I realize the likelihood of this is in the six sigma range of the probability curve, if someone reading this post sometime in the misty future (it's currently July 18, 2009) actually IS as engaged by the larger issues as I am, and has (or finds out) some answers, I would truly love it if you would convey them to me, preferably through the netweather private message system. I have some additional important related questions that I didn't post, feeling it was premature, but I could pose them to you through the PMs. But if my visit to netweather was a scientific disappointment, sociologically it was a banquet, one I'm still digesting! So many interesting things happened which are worthy not just of comment, but of long discussion. Unfortunately, discretion prevents me from mentioning most of them (yes, I am capable of discretion, though it's unnatural for me and requires great self-discipline). But I will mention two. In the first line of this post I referred to this site as a community; I meant it literally. It's not just a discussion site or a forum, it IS a community. In the US, the sociologist Robert Putnam has documented a phenomenon that I have no reason to believe is confined to my country. In a book aptly titled "Bowling Alone", he offered hard evidence of a really precipitous decline in the connectedness of people to each other in the past 40 or 50 years. All sorts of informal, friendly interactions have disappeared from people's lives; the book's title refers to the vanishing of bowling leagues, replaced by people going to the lanes with a just a friend or two, or perhaps alone. That symbolizes his theme. But humans are social animals, and the herding instinct will not be denied. And I think places where people of common interests congregate (like this site) have become much more of a community than would have been the case 40 years ago, when there was no need of a substitute. And I wanted to mention two illustrations of how this site has operated like a community. Those who have followed this thread will recall my discussing (in post #18) how a friend of mine told me I was the object of a quite ugly attack (that was so quickly removed, by poster or moderator, that I never saw it myself) based mainly on the criminally large font size I have chosen. (By the way, did you notice how the two posters immediately before this post used a gigantic font size, one that dwarves mine? Is this coincidence or am I Robespierre fomenting a Revolution that overthrows the Ancien Regime?) The immediate thought one has as to the kind of person My Denouncer might be is that he's probably like the social outcasts who spray-paint graffiti. Wrong. In fact, since I know his identity, I can state that he is a fairly prominent member of the community, which makes perfect sense, sociologically. In a wolf pack, or tribe of chimps, it's one of the senior members, the alpha males who aggressively protect the territory, sometimes by violent means, and, just as importantly, protect their own superior rank. So here I was, an interloper, female no less, and assertive in demeanor. I had to swiftly be put in my place, the more crudely the better. He was asserting his alpha-maleness and my low rank. And simultaneously he was enforcing the arbitrary norms of the community (in this case font-size) whose purpose is to inculcate obedience and provide a ready means of spotting deviance, the better to act against it. In just this way, society at large mandates certain attire, certain haircuts, etc.--and the instant that white-collar guy over there lets his hair grow beyond a certain length he identifies himself as a deviant and is excluded from certain higher realms--and if it's long enough he's told to get a haircut or be fired! The crack-down on little old deviant me, me of the too-large font size, was very swift and crude indeed. But that's standard operating procedure in a community, even if it often results in a sad loss of personal freedom, individuality, creativity. It's worst in small towns, which is why small towns have grown ever smaller, as people flee to the cities to escape this tyranny. The second thing I wanted to comment on was this: There was a particular poster who never missed an opportunity to respond, very well I must say, to my posts. He was as thoughtful as he was prolific. UNTIL.... Without going into details, I have excellent reason to be convinced that the alpha male I've been discussing communicated his loathing of me to the Prolific Responder at a certain significant moment, and the Prolific Responder was prolific no more. In fact, there's not been a peep out of him since. Can there be a more classic example of the alpha male compelling a lower-ranking member to act in accordance with his desires, no matter how inappropriate those desires may be? (I picture my Prolific Responder as a lovely, mild-mannered, perhaps aging gentleman who is no match for the raging Alpha--he was easily cowed into silence.) As I said, this is not just a discussion site, but a real community.... Should I not return, let me, in parting, wish all of you at least one real-life glimpse before you die of an F5--barreling harmlessly through a meadow, of course. christina p New York July 18, 2009  
  2. chionomaniac (or should I say, "fellow chionomaniac"), you comment that the amount of snow in England is too small to be concerned with precise snowfall forecasts: An interesting case can be made that just the opposite is true! Consider: In NYC, once the predicted depth exceeds 12 inches or so, NYC public schools are closed and many people don't go to work or they otherwise cancel their plans. So, suppose the forecaster predicts 6 inches and is off by 100%, and we get 12 inches-- then people are stranded who otherwise wouldn't be, fury ensues, etc. But still, the forecaster has wide latitude to be wrong- 6 inches. But in England, from what you say, if it's half an inch, or an inch, people soldier on, but at two inches, the world stops. Thus, if the forecasters predict an inch but are off by 100% and you get two-- then people are stranded who otherwise wouldn't be, fury ensues, etc. But now the forecaster's margin for error is only ONE INCH! Hence the need for greater, not lesser precision in British snowfall predictions! chionomaniac, you say, regarding possible reaction to my font size choice: "some people may feel that it is an aggressive way to put your point across... To me it is a little bit like that I am talking to some one who stands a little bit too close and invades my personal space" That makes me feel a little (JUST A LITTLE!) like that not-very-well-behaved girl in the original Chris Isaak music video, "Baby Did A Bad, Bad Thing"--Unfortunately that video's been removed from YouTube, over the usual copyright issues. But maybe, in this one case, it's actually FORTUNATE it has been, because I fear if some netweatherites, impelled by curiosity, had checked it out, it might have proved just a wee bit (okay, WAY!) too racy for the delicate constitutions of some of the forum's older members. I wouldn't in any way want to have been responsible for increasing the mortality rate among weather-lovers. Hey, Thundery! You say,"My guess is that the UK has not been as interested in providing hourly snow data because snow is less common". I really had intended my question to be about Europe, not just the UK, since all available evidence says the two had the same policy--no data collection of snowfall, whether hourly or by snow event. Why did the meteorological community throughout Europe fail to adopt the US policy once its airports had round-the-clock meteorological staffs, since it would have enabled rapid advances in snowfall forecasting for the whole of Europe, including the snowy northern portions, as I argued at length in my last two posts (and so I won't repeat it here)? Without such data, snow forecast models cannot be verified or falsified and thereby improved. STAGNATION! Coast says, teasingly, about my font size, "Well of course, everything is bigger in the States!!!" (With a smile.) You know, Coast, here in the States, we have that same attitude towards Texas. I understand there was a New Yorker who went down to Texas, to visit an old army buddy he hadn't seen in years, Big Joe. Big Joe had done very, very well since their army days and he wasn't shy about showing it. He picked up the New Yorker at the airport in his custom car, which was long enough to have had to factor in the earth's curvature in its design. As the New Yorker gaped in awe, Joe just smiled and said, "Everything's bigger in Texas, pardner." They entered Joe's house through a cathedral door- St. Patrick's Cathedral!! Joe's children's swing set-- Little Joe was 100 feet in the air when the New Yorker had to look away, from fear. And so it went, the rest of the day. Unfortunately for the New Yorker, the drinks were served in tumblers that conformed to the "Everything's bigger in Texas, pardner" motto, and he foolishly downed three of them. Later that night, when everyone had gone to bed, he was feeling very drunk and very dizzy, so he went out for a breath of fresh air. Unsteady on his feet, he walked in the pitch dark over the vast and unfamiliar grounds--suddenly, he slipped and fell into the pool. Struggling desperately but unsuccessfully in his drunken state to climb out, he frantically screamed at the top of his lungs, "Don't flush! Don't flush!!"
  3. Coast, you say "They do take the measurements, but they don't make that information (even historically) available to the general public for free". I won't repeat my arguments, I won't again offer my evidence, read my previous posts for that--but I contend they do not, and have not, systematically taken the measurements. It's not a question of being free or charging for it. A chart of monthly and seasonal snowfall over the past 60 years at the UK 's airports DOES NOT EXIST, I strongly believe. If you can show me the place to go where I, or an "official researcher", could pay X pounds sterling and procure it, you will have proved me wrong. I challenge you to do so. Thundery wintry showers, a pleasure to see you again! You ask what my use would be for hourly snow data? I PERSONALLY couldn't use a vast compendium of such data (though during a big storm here in NYC they often give reports from the 3 local airports of hourly snowfall to quantify the intensity, and I HAVE delayed auto journeys when I've heard the rate is 3-4 inches an hour!! Yes, that's actually occurred during some portion of each of the three monster storms we've gotten in NYC since 1996), but it would be invaluable to meteorologists trying to improve the prediction of snowfall. Maybe in southern England predicting amounts is not important, but in snowier climes, in the UK, in Europe generally, and certainly here in the northeast US, accurate prediction of amounts is essential. It snows constantly here and few people alter plans just because it's going to snow. Everything is contingent upon the amount. And anything that will enhance the forecaster's ability to get those amounts right will be of inestimable value to the public, and also to city officials, for obvious reasons. Actual hourly amounts and actual storm totals matched against forecast models' PREDICTIONS of hourly amounts and storm totals provide feedback vital for improving forecasts. That's how science works--my last post was devoted to zealously making that point. It's, to me, a huge embarrassment and totally unfathomable that researchers in Europe have been hampered (disabled, really) in their efforts to improve their snowfall predictions in the last 60 years by the absence of measured snowfall to confirm or prove false their models' predictions. What the heck did these researchers do to check their models' predictions, call their Aunt Sally in Stratford, and their old college buddy Jim in Glasgow and 20 other people all over the UK every time it snowed (sometimes in the middle of the night!), telling them to quickly (quick before it melts!!) go to their backyards and measure the depth and call back? I still haven't gotten an answer to this issue, The Great Airport Mystery. Why didn't the meteorological community utilize this incredible resource (ALREADY IN PLACE FOR AVIATION-SAFETY REASONS!) of round-the-clock meteorological staffing at airports to at least get storm totals, if not hourly data, to provide this feedback for researchers. It's a scientific scandal that they didn't, in my opinion, but more than that, it's completely incomprehensible. That's why I'm seeking an answer. None has been offered so far that makes sense to me. Thundery, you clearly are an intelligent person, what is the reason in your opinion? I'm too curious to rest until I have an answer.   peterf says "Thank you for that, first long post i could read without squinting.", a reference to the font size I've chosen. That's precisely the reason I chose it! But Peter's comment gives me a chance to remark on an interesting event that happened in this forum. A friend of mine who's been following my posts told me a few days ago that someone unleashed a furious diatribe against me (by the time I got a chance to look, it was gone; whether My Denouncer had misgivings or the moderator intervened I can't say) which apparently was based largely on my having used a font size different from the norm in this forum! My Denouncer, by my friend's account, was vicious and threatening in demanding that I immediately adopt a sensible type size or.... Fascinating-- as Mr. Spock often said in situations where he was confronted with especially outlandish human behavior. I suspect it was not just the DIFFERENT font size, but the fact that it was LARGER than the custom that so perturbed My Denouncer. Just who did I think I was, better than others, more important? Actually, I selected it because a tiny font size makes sense only if there are space limitations, as in a newspaper. Question for My Denouncer: Are you aware that cyberspace is as boundless as the universe? Therefore, the only logical consideration is comfort in reading. Request to My Denouncer: Go to your bookshelf and select 5 books at random. Do any of them have a font size as small as that used on this forum? Of course not, because that's far too small to be comfortable for many people. But what's of interest to me is a larger issue: Conformity. Did you notice by the way that peterf, who praised me for the larger font size I used, himself used the tiny size that's the custom here (go look!). Even though he preferred the larger, he didn't have the courage to violate the norm! Terminal Moraine and I were discussing this in another context in posts #5 and #6, above. (Hey Terminal, how are you? I felt bad when I saw you refer to the snow amounts in England as 'pitiful'. For an Ice-Age-Lover like you to have to endure that is a crime against nature! You should try to arrange to spend some January and February in Boston, a great city where the winters NEVER disappoint!) Terminal made the point about how difficult it is for people to violate a precedent or tradition and I expanded it to a more general docility or passivity that characterizes most people. They just go along, whether they approve of what is happening or not. It's illustrated in this very forum not just by the font-size conformity but by the passivity of visitors. If you compare the number of views to the number of posts (and this is true not just at netweather but at all forums on the internet) the ratio is often greater than 100 to 1. (Analogously, I've heard radio call-in show hosts comment that fewer than 1% of listeners ever even dial the number.) Is it having nothing to say, or perhaps not wanting to make the effort, that makes people not post in forums? Possibly those reasons sometimes apply, but I suspect something else is afoot. Surveys have shown that people's greatest fear is not snakes, or heights or dying of cancer, but public speaking. And posting is, at root, similar to public speaking. And it's one part of this phenomenon I've just been talking about, essentially people being afraid to act 'conspicuously', whether in defying a silly font-size custom, or in posting in a forum and bringing attention, possibly negative attention, to themselves. I feel a little like that girl in what's considered the best commercial ever made, which aired only once, during the SuperBowl 25 years ago. Google it, search with the terms "1984 Apple ad", and watch it--it'll send chills down your spine! But I'm trying to rouse you, yeah YOU!, the person reading THIS word, out of your passivity. You're almost certainly an intelligent person with something to say. Why not say it? We'd all like to hear it! And if some wouldn't like to, and object to what you say, the heck with them!
  4. Coast, thank you for your contribution from your intriguingly mysterious source. You express some nice cynicism when you say, "However like so many things, there is a cost to obtain this information and it doesn't appear to be made available to us the general public online or in any other format. So in conclusion, the data exists, what do you want to pay to receive it?"-- but Coast, I think you're not nearly cynical enough. Let's analyze what your source is actually saying, in conjunction with some other, indisputable facts. First, your source says NOTAMS are sent that "include snow depth at half hourly intervals (when applicable)". The key phrase is "when applicable". In light of information I'll cite momentarily, "when applicable" almost certainly means nothing more than "during the most intense phase of a few snowstorms". This would comprise a meager few data points of no use to anybody and it certainly isn't something anyone would pay for! This is a far cry from systematic hourly readings during every snow event, as has occurred in the US and Canada since airports became official weather stations, or even just storm accumulation data for each snow event that would allow the compiling of monthly and annual totals! As proof that this latter has NOT been done historically in the UK, I cite Terminal Moraine's comprehensive listing of exactly what the annual Snow Surveys of Great Britain, published for decades until the 1990's, contained--there is absolutely no information on actual snowfall, only morning lying snow. (See my previous thread, "Astonished By Apparent Absence Of Snowfall Data", post #9, where Terminal Moraine recounts in exquisite detail the content of those Snow Surveys.) If there had been comprehensive half-hourly measurements, or even just storm totals for each event, the compilers of the Snow Surveys surely would have used the information to give us monthly and seasonal snowfall at the sites--it's obviously far more relevant and valuable than "morning lying snow" and there's no reason to keep it secret, for goodness sake! Especially if you are NOT simultaneously offering to make it available at a price, which they have in fact NEVER DONE. Clearly, comprehensive data--heck, even just your most basic piece of information, "average annual snowfall"--does not exist. NONE of the many researchers who have made their life's work the history of British weather have cited it, and THEY surely would have laid their hands on it if it existed. Furthermore, this complete unavailability of snowfall data, including the simple "average annual snowfall", evidently is the case throughout Europe. Are we to believe that for 60 years all the varied governments of Europe, conservative and liberal, Communist and democratic, have compiled the snowfall data but conspired to keep it (alone among all weather data) a STATE SECRET?????!!!! Cue the "Twilight Zone" music!! No, Coast, all logic says that data doesn't exist. If your source says it does, all he needs to do is provide us with 60 years of monthly snow totals for all the major British airports (hey, I'll settle for just one airport) and I'll do a legendary grovel in apology. That's how science works; you don't CLAIM data exists, you PRESENT it. But now I want to move on to my major point, a truly important one I believe. Apart from the reasons already discussed in this thread and my previous one regarding the need for precise snowfall measurement, there is another reason, one that far transcends those already mentioned, that I've delayed discussing because of some controversial conclusions that flow naturally from it. Snowfall prediction is simultaneously the most difficult and the most important of a meteorologist's tasks. No regularly occurring weather event is more disruptive to people's lives, but none is harder to forecast accurately. Having observed the evolution of East Coast US storms practically since my infancy (my mother claims I cast my dolls aside and was busy measuring snow out in our backyard with a ruler at age three), I'm all too aware of the many factors that can cause a proclaimed "lurking monster" off Cape Hatteras to fail to explosively deepen as expected, or to be surprisingly starved of expected Gulf of Mexico or Atlantic moisture, or to turn out to sea, etc. or, contrarily, I've seen the occasions when the city was besieged with "ten inches of partly cloudy", as the public likes to joke. No one would dispute that the essence of science is forming a hypothesis, making predictions of outcomes based on that hypothesis, and then seeing if the predictions are confirmed or proven false. Thus, as meteorologists in the 20th century sought to predict the course and magnitude of snowstorms, they formed hypotheses about the way a variety of factors would affect storm development, and made predictions of snowfall in various locations based on their hypotheses. THE CRUCIAL FINAL STEP, WITHOUT WHICH THERE IS NO SCIENCE, IS TO THEN GO OUT AND MEASURE THE ACTUAL SNOWFALL IN THOSE VARIOUS LOCATIONS, COMPARE IT TO YOUR PREDICTIONS, AND ACCEPT OR REJECT YOUR HYPOTHESIS! How else can you improve snowfall forecasts and advance the science of meteorology? In the US and Canada the meteorological community recognized the LITERALLY INDISPENSABLE requirement to measure actual snowfall, and they meticulously did so. In Europe they did not. (And it's even more desirable, though this is not NECESSARY, to make many interim measurements, such as hourly, during the storm. This would allow one to see exactly what portion of the hypothesis (in this context, the hypothesis was simply their forecast model) was faulty. For example, did they get the early stages of the storm just right, but then fail to account for its middle stage intensity?) So, in the US and Canada, excellent measurements were made, and thanks to this feedback, forecast models changed and improved radically over the decades, as meteorologists saw their predictions regarding storms in the early years painfully fail to conform to the reality on the ground-- but then they modified those models, saw predictions improve, etc. But in Europe, where no such feedback from snowfall measurements was available, there could be no such progress. That is the burden of European meteorology-- a 50 year abandonment of the scientific method. Once measuring was made so easy, by having airports with round-the-clock meteorological staffs, to not have done so is completely inexplicable and frankly, inexcusable. Happily, in the US and Canada, scientists retained their sanity and provided the data that allowed the formulation of quite beautiful models (for everyone, here in the US and in Europe) that permit the superior prediction of snowstorms we have today (though decidedly far from perfect). And believe me, I say that without the slightest chauvinism-- I care not at all what countries are responsible for progress, only that progress be made. If the US had been as unscientific as Europe, it too would be the object of my ire, as it is whenever I think the US goes astray. And I'm not forgetting for an instant that Europe gave birth to Galileo and Newton, Maxwell and Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, and my personal favorite, Euler--though more a mathematician than a scientist, I can't omit the greatest pure intellect in history. So I am putting this European meteorological lapse in the context of otherwise brilliant science. Finally, I'm reminded of a story told about the legendary violinist Jascha Heifetz and the virtuoso pianist Arthur Rubinstein. They attended a concert together one evening at Carnegie Hall by a seven-year-old piano prodigy who was performing some of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire. He displayed not just the most extraordinary technical ability, but showed, in his interpretation of the music, a sensitivity and insight unprecedented in one of his tender years. He was indeed a wunderkind! About midway through the performance, Rubinstein loosened his collar, complaining to Heifetz how uncomfortably hot the Hall was that night. "Not for violinists," Heifetz said. I can easily imagine European meteorologists loosening their collars if the profoundly uncomfortable truth of their forsaking of the scientific method becomes clear to them.
  5. TERMINAL, YOU ARE A VERITABLE HYPOTHESIS-GENERATING DYNAMO!!! I certainly agree with one point you made: once a tradition is established, people find it difficult to depart from it, no matter how misguided that tradition might be. Actually, it's even worse than that--it needn't even be a tradition. If a person in a position of authority issues a command (or, merely, quietly requests that something be done) the overwhelming majority of people will do it, even if the behavior requested is violative of every norm of decent, moral conduct. The famous Stanley Milgram/Yale University "Obedience to Authority" experiments in the 1960's demonstrated that in a stunning, nauseating way. I don't know how familiar those in the UK are with these utterly fascinating studies. Essentially (I'm greatly simplifying here), the subjects were (falsely) made to believe they were participating in a study of 'learning and negative reinforcement', and were instructed to give an escalating series of electric shocks to the 'learner' as he answered questions incorrectly or not at all. These shocks, according to the control panel in front of the subject, were labeled from mild to dangerous to XXX. Actually, no shocks were given, but the study was constructed so that the subjects completely believed they were in fact administering shocks, and a large majority of subjects continued to press the button to deliver the voltage, including XXX shocks and beyond, when they had good reason to believe the recipient was unconscious or dying!!! So, I agree, whether a person in authority, or a tradition, instructs an individual to do something, generally he'll do it. (Not me, NOT ME!-- but perhaps I'm deluding myself. Nobody ever believes oneself a docile, pathetic marionette ludicrously dancing at the whim of the puppeteer and yet studies show most people, in the right circumstances, will be just that!) And it's probably true that in Europe (including of course the UK) a tradition arose that a morning measurement of lying snow was all that was necessary; in the US, a different practice was established either because, as you put it "perhaps the Pilgrim Fathers and their immediate antecedents were so overawed with the immensity of the USA and Canada and their grandiose cimate/ meteorology that they decided, as they had a completely clean slate, that things would be done properly from the outset", or, simply, given the very limited dissemination of information in those days, they were just plain UNAWARE of what the European practice was. After all, the people emigrating to the New World would hardly have been spending their leisure time (as if they had any!) reading meteorological journals (as if there were any!!). So they just did what seemed logical to them, which was recording actual snowfall rather than morning lying snow. But even a powerful tradition can be overwhelmed by the arrival of radically new circumstances, with overarching new priorities. And that's exactly what happened with the advent of aviation. Measurement of snowfall totals, and especially snowfall rates, was now something that had immediate, practical, life-saving value. No longer was this merely a data-collection enterprise for the "sake of improving mankind's knowledge". Whatever the European tradition HAD been, in order to have safe landings and take-offs, and to know whether to divert or cancel flights, you had to know the precise status of the snowstorm. Incidentally, Terminal, you've made several references to the hourly measurement of snowfall in the US, as though this has been the American way from the beginning. In fact, this was NEVER done until the measurement shifted to airports, and was specifically undertaken to determine the rate of snowfall for air safety reasons-- in those days of course there was no sophisticated Doppler radar to effectively establish rates. The official Central Park measurements in NYC (one of the few official stations NOT at an airport) does NOT do hourly snowfall measurement and never has--there's never been a need. And that's the point of this thread. Given the absolute need to precisely determine snowfall rates, hourly measurement, or frequent measurement, was necessary. And once you have those hourly records, simple addition is all that is required to establish daily amounts, storm amounts, monthly totals, and seasonal accumulation. All this climate data should have flowed from the hourly snowfall rate measurements, and those measurements were indispensable to the safety of commercial aviation from its advent to at least the 1990's (when fairly reliable radar measurements of snowfall intensity could be made). So then, did millions of people fly in Europe for 6 decades with their lives endangered because the airport meteorologists were content to just look out the window now and then instead of doing careful measurements of snowfall rates? Even though they were aware of what their colleagues in the US and Canada were doing? This is literally incredible to me; I really find it impossible to believe this situation could have been allowed. Or did they do the hourly measurements and then just discard them when the storm passed? That's even more unbelievable. That's why I so badly want input from people who have worked on, or know someone who worked on, an airport's meteorological staff, or from people who, by whatever means, know what has actually gone on in this domain during more than half an century. This is truly The Great Airport Mystery, and it must be solved!!! For heaven's sake, Where oh where is the meteorological Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple!? Rumpole! Disobey your wife, discover the truth and explain it all to us, the assembled, eager multitude!!!!!!  
  6. Hello again, Terminal. You suggested that it might be America's inheritance of a European "attention to detail" that accounts for our precision in recording snowfall. I can only say that anyone in my country who's had any work done on their homes--say, the installation of a plumbing fixture, only to see it burst apart within a week, flooding the bathroom-- will be less convinced than you that Americans display an "attention to detail" as a national trait. (Sorry my compatriots, but I must be honest.) But militating even more strongly against your hypothesis is the fact (I think it's a fact, but in this arena everything is suspect) that all of Europe is exactly like the UK regarding snowfall data. Despite my searches, I can't even find the simplest, most basic information--annual snowfall-- for ANY European city! Even Oslo! At one site, amidst the wealth of temperature and rainfall data charts, it said simply that Oslo is "a snowy city". THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THAT PRICELESS MORSEL! And to me, what's remarkable (at least since 1950) is not that the US (and Canada) have collected the data, but that the rest of the world (apparently) has not. It's not OUR attention to detail, but THEIR obliviousness to crucially important data! By the way, did you take the name Terminal Moraine solely because of its connection to the Ice Ages whose departure you (and I) lament so bitterly, or do you actually have terminal moraine near where you live? I know there is some in England, but I'm not sure of its location. Incidentally, a few days ago I said to a friend of mine--one who's often teasing me about my incessantly exhorting the weather gods to send NYC yet another blizzard, the more crippling the better-- that I'm not entirely alone in my madness. I told him there's a kindred spirit in England who's 'patiently awaiting the return of the Younger Dryas'. He laughed uproariously--once I explained what the Younger Dryas was! I think you and I are two of about eleven people on earth who want to fight global warming because it's delaying the next Ice Age! Oh, I wanted to mention that "NOVA", a science program on Public Television in the US, had a pretty decent show a few months ago on the latest evidence regarding the initiation of the Younger Dryas, called "Last Extinction" and you can watch it online at pbs.org/wgbh/nova/programs/ But I must warn you, the evidence for an unlikely-to-be-repeated-anytime-soon extraterrestrial impact event is compelling enough to force you to change your tagline to "Despairing of the return of the Younger Dryas".
  7. We have a scientific mystery I hope you'll help me solve, but one perhaps ensnared in the riddle of human nature. First, let me briefly recap: In my previous post, "Astonished By Apparent Absence Of Snowfall Data" I basically presumed the existence in the UK of comprehensive snowfall data of the sort we routinely have in the US and Canada and asked, perhaps a bit petulantly, "Where is it?" Thanks to some excellent responses, especially a link supplied by Thundery Wintry Showers to the Met Office Anomaly and Actual charts, and Terminal Moraine's detailed, exhaustive description of the content of the old Snow Surveys of Great Britain, I think I can answer my question: "Nowhere!" Yes, I believe that the kind of records we have for every major and many minor cities in the US--exact monthly and seasonal snowfall amounts going back at least many decades, often more than a century; daily snowfall, if any, for the entire period (Did it snow, you randomly ask, on Valentine's Day in 1971 in New York City? Yes, as a matter of fact, 1.1 inches officially in Central Park, and it continued on the 15th where the city had another 2.3 inches.) and many more precisely measured snowfall indices--don't exist in a systematic way in Britain. All indications are that the only official,systematic records that do exist re snow in the UK involve the depth of snow lying on the ground at 9 in the morning and the number of days on which snow fell in a given month. Both are only very roughly correlated with actual snowfall amounts and are thus laughably unsatisfactory. But why then collect this data and not the more sensible and desirable kinds? Well, here's where it gets interesting, and it is what prompted this new thread. For the period from the late 18th century to say, 1950 or so, there's a ready explanation: time, effort, money, and most of all, an unwillingness to get out of a warm cozy bed in the middle of a bitter January night . To collect the kind of data we have in the US requires someone who will go to the site at any hour of the day or night, i.e. the moment the snow stops falling, so that the measurement will not be corrupted by melting, compacting, drifting, or being washed away by snow that's changed to rain. Further, during a storm, he must go to the site at midnight to make a measurement for the calendar day. I needn't point out how this differs from all other basic measurements--you had your "minimum" and "maximum" thermometers in the old days, and your ample rain gauge, so that you could visit the site once a day (say, when you're measuring the lying snow!), and have fully and with scientific precision discharged your data-collection responsibilities. Why Americans of that era in so many places were happy to shoulder the added burden of accurate snowfall measurement (or were well paid to do so!), while the Brits were not, is a matter for speculation. But that brings us to The Great Airport Mystery. By 1950, maybe a little later in WWII-ravaged Britain, all major cities had round-the-clock airports, with a meteorological staff, wide-awake and on duty in the middle of the night. They were not just fully capable of doing the required measurements, but there was a vital necessity-- gathering information on the amount of snow accumulation and its rate of fall, for the safe operation of one's own airport and for the safety of airports yet to experience the storm, is probably more important than acquiring any other kind of information. And of course, the official temperature and rainfall data, for most cities, has been taken from its airport for 60 or 70 years at least. Just picture the situation: They're already doing other official measurements, it's easy to include snowfall measurement (just step outside), and, more important, it's absolutely essential, plus you have trained meteorologists right there LITERALLY 24/7/365 to do it, so.... But the data apparently doesn't exist. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? Somebody connected with, or knowledgeable about, weather observations at Heathrow, Gatwick, the airports of Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, etc. at any time from the 1950's to the present please respond with some explanation, some solution to this genuinely perplexing mystery, or even just the tiniest hint of an inkling, because this absence of data defies logic, human nature, and the irresistible imperative a scientist feels to collect and preserve essential data in his field.    
  8. First, thank you Pete for that "Aye, welcome Christina"; I appreciate the welcome and I LOVE that "Aye"--it instantly makes this American feel she's in the deeply exotic climes of Scotland. (Laugh in amazement if you will Pete, but to me Scotland is exotic! Deeply!!) As for "I think some of us have forgotten what snow even looks like"-- while you UKers are prostrate with swollen bellies from snow starvation it would be highly insensitive for me to drum my fingers impatiently because my next serving of blizzard caviar has been delayed, but...honestly, the four consecutive seasons ending in 2006 all had 40 inches of snow or more, unprecedented for NYC, and included two mammoth storms, the latter 26.9 inches, a record, so that in the ensuing three winters a storm of a mere six inches has been regarded by me as a personal affront from the weather gods. I know, I know--as my grandmother once said in an entirely different context, "Christina, you're spoiled rotten." Harry, you're completely correct--This absence of data, or its inaccessibility, really has a palpable detrimental effect on people's lives because city fathers can't plan rationally for snow. I know in NYC not only do sanitation officials (they're responsible for snow removal) pre-position plows and salt-spreaders based on an intimate knowledge of the highly variegated snow history for each of the hundreds of communities that comprise NYC (remember, some are on the often warm ocean, some many, many miles removed from the sea, some in areas that traditionally get the brunt of the precipitation shield of major "Nor-Easters", etc.) but they also have scores of spotters relaying snow depths in real time so they can deal swiftly with each storm's idiosyncrasies. Jethro, though I grasp why you called the results of your search dismal, from my standpoint (having had till now nothing but Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens novels on which to base my sense of British winters!) your links provided a real treasure trove, especially the booty.org one. I had a fine time reading about the "Severe Winters of World War II" curled up in front of my air-conditioner! But yes, we want comprehensive charts and graphs, not just charming anecdotal accounts. Thundery Winter Showers (I must be formal, nay, deferential, as Member 10,117 addressing Member 7!), I await your categorization project more impatiently than I do the return of the Younger Dryas (see above)! Please provide a link to your website. In looking at Jethro's links, I saw some of the previous work you alluded to, and so I have an idea of what it is you're doing. One point I wanted to raise was this: I'm someone who has personally been through relatively mild and snowless winters, average ones, and exceptionally brutal ones. The winter of 1996, for example, was one of perpetual snow in NYC; we shattered the existing seasonal snow record (itself a notable outlier) by about 20%, and endured a 20.2 inch blizzard to boot. While of course, I (imagine the most dramatic bold face type for that "I") enjoyed every minute of it, the rest of the city's population, including self-described snow-lovers, were becoming seriously deranged by its relentless savagery. But if you compare the total snowfall to the norm, you would say that the winter was only about three times worse than average. It wasn't. From a subjective standpoint, people suffered some immeasurably large multiple more than they did in an average winter. My point is that, though the depth of snow increases linearly, the real-life impact of depth increases exponentially. Just as 20 inches of snow compared to 2 inches physically impedes you many times more than the ten times greater depth it represents, so a very snowy winter may be only 2 of your categories away from an average winter, but psychologically and emotionally they're not even part of the same multiverse!! I hope your work somehow constantly reminds people of that fact, especially those (probably a majority) who have never personally experienced a truly snowy winter. And, Thundery Winter Showers (do you intend the oxymoron of "winter thunder" to suggest you have a contradictory nature, or perhaps one full of the most unexpected surprises?) your links were wonderful. In studying them, I felt I finally had something firm to grasp. And I realized I was wrong in declaring that your weather service had banned the very word 'snow' from its website. It was there. Actually it was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over there. But still. And finally, Terminal. Thank you so much for elaborating on the contents of the Snow Surveys. But when I consider it in conjunction with Thundery Winter Showers' links to the anomaly and actual snow information that your government publishes, I must say I'm not nearly as optimistic as you that "the Archives of the Met Office contain the information that {I'm} looking for", as you put it, available for "probably quite a tidy sum". In fact, I've come to the diametrically opposite conclusion. Here's why: All the information that they have published, in every category not just snowfall, has one thing in common--they are collectable just once daily and/or remotely. Accurate snowfall records of the type I wanted (notice my shift to a sadly resigned past tense) would not only have to be created with a human being on the scene, but on the scene at any hour of the day or night since melting, compacting, and washing away of snow when it turns to rain would render delayed measurement scientifically meaningless. And of course, the observer would also have to go to the site at midnight during a snowstorm to get the information for the calendar day. The snow measurements at the Met Office website and in your Snow Surveys is notable for its requiring the observer to go to the site only once a day, and at a pleasantly convenient 9 AM. Also, the fact that comprehensive snowfall charts (of the type that are omnipresent in the United States and that I described in detail in my original post) have never actually been seen by you or Thundery Winter Showers, two passionate, pro-active, go-getters, tells me that they simply can't exist.    
  9. Terminal, if I may address you by your 'first name', thanks for your excellent response. May I press you a wee bit for clarification, if you don't mind? From what you've said, it seems evident that substantial records have been compiled, although the extent in time and geography, and the degree of precision, are not clear to me. But it does seem likely that for some period of time, probably continuing to the present, accurate measurements (at least to the centimeter, perhaps even more precise) have been made of many, possibly every, snow event beyond a trace in some areas of Britain--and unless the UK has suffered an event comparable to the fabled destruction of the Library at Alexandria that I'm unaware of, those records must still exist. And truly, if they do, even the most extensive compendium (a record of say 150 years for 5 or 10 major cities, nicely distributed geographically)wouldn't take up more than 10 or perhaps 15 pages. Therefore, it would be relatively short work for someone in possession of such a record to make it available online, don't you think? Or failing that, simply the monthly and seasonal norms of 10 large cities in your country, based on the entirety of the record, or the last 30 years, or on some representative sample of years. That would fill all of one-quarter of a page, and could easily be posted right here, in response to my post. Terminal, could you elaborate on those Snow Surveys of Great Britain that you mentioned? Exactly what sort of information do they contain? I would appeal to anyone reading this who has access to any concrete snowfall data to either provide a link, or simply post it right here. Since, despite my efforts, I have quite literally zero data, even the most minimal contribution by any of you would represent an infinite improvement in my state of knowledge. And you have no idea how much I would appreciate it. By the way Terminal, I had to grin at reading your tag line. Beautifully put. But for me, I'm IMpatiently waiting for the return of the Younger Dryas. So, clearly, you have a more virtuous character than I.
  10. I am thoroughly perplexed and seek enlightenment. In the United States, one can immediately access a great variety of snowfall data. For example, with respect to New York City, you can easily find: 1)Monthly and seasonal totals of snowfall to the tenth of an inch going back to the start of official record-keeping at Central Park in 1869 (that's a chart with about 1700 different numbers, updated monthly), 2)The norms for monthly and seasonal snowfall, based on the previous 30 years, updated every ten years, 3)The ten greatest snowstorms, exact dates and snowfall amounts, 4)the record snowfall for each of the 365 days on the calendar, with year and snowfall amounts to the tenth of an inch (this is different from item 3 since a 'snowstorm' rarely occurs on a single calendar day, but usually bridges two calendar days, and sometimes three). A poorly educated orangutan can access all that with a few clicks, but in addition, with just a little more effort and a bit of ingenuity, you can find detailed official reports about all major (and many minor) snow events, with snowfall amounts from scores of communities in and around the city, plus some interesting anecdotal details, as well as the specific meteorological factors responsible for that particular storm's characteristics. For all major US cities similar data is available, with regional idiosyncrasies--in Chicago, for example, you can easily get the dates and exact amounts of every snowfall of ten inches or greater-- a very large number!! Substantial information, though not as extensive as in the US, is available from Environment Canada. But the UK and the rest of the world appear to be a vast wasteland where snowfall data is concerned!! I spent considerable time seeking it, and all I could find were some unofficial diary-like anecdotal references with crude approximations of amounts for vaguely-defined locations and, in some countries, the number of days per month of snow--as useless a piece of information as one could ever conjure up! I made a special effort to ferret out data on the UK, choosing it as a kind of test case since a)there's no language barrier for me, b)it's been not just civilized but science-oriented and number-sensitive since at least Newton (approaching four centuries!), c)it certainly has a history of regular and often significant snowfall, d)many of its cities are extremely vulnerable to the effects of snow (and thus there should be a high level of interest and concern on the part of the citizenry-- and a responsible weather service in a democracy should respond to that), and e)most significantly, in newspaper reports of major snow events there are references like "the greatest snowfall since ----", suggesting that detailed records exist SOMEWHERE. But it appears that every possible weather phenomenon has a plethora of precise, official data concerning it available online except snowfall. In fact, I was practically unable to even find the word 'snow' in official records. So I have several questions for this large and very well-informed forum. 1)Am I looking in the wrong places for UK data, and if I only click 'here' or 'there' I'll be inundated with precise, official snowfall information comparable to what's available in the US? (If so, I won't even bellyache about converting centimeters to inches!) 2)Since I didn't conduct extensive searches for data regarding the rest of the world, am I correct in concluding that other countries are almost as barren as the UK? 3)If all this is true, how can it possibly be so? In the US, people are more interested in snow ("They're predicting snow??!! Where? When? How much? How big was yesterday's snowfall? Was it a record?") than any other aspect of weather. Here in New York, before, during, and after every major snow event, (and in New York City we get storms of greater than 30 cm. perhaps three times a decade and have had three in excess of 50 cm. since 1996, including one of 68.3 cm.-- and I'm not referring to drifts) many of the local TV stations suspend normal programming and devote obsessive coverage to the storm, complete with all the numbers anyone could wish for, both those concerning the storm at hand and those offering a historical perspective. And in areas where snow is not as common, or is downright rare (the southern US), the interest is perhaps even greater, as is the quantitative information, since the disruption of normal life by even minor storms is enormous--those cities lack the snowplows and salt-spreaders that are ubiquitous in NYC, its cars aren't equipped with snow tires, and its drivers don't know how to cope with snowy roads. So, are the people of the UK and the rest of the world, however inexplicable it may be to me, vastly less fascinated with the phenomenon than Americans? Is there no demand for easy access to hard numbers? If I lived in Britain would mine be a lone voice, would I be regarded as an obsessive eccentric who should just sit back and watch the pretty flakes fall and not talk about numbers?
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