The Great Airport Mystery

[christina p]

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

　

[Methuselah]

Good luck to you too, Christina...

I'm sorry I couldn't help you with what you wanted to know. It's not my area of expertise... :lol:

PS: I don't find large fonts agressive, merely easier to read!

Edited July 18, 2009 by Pete Tattum

[J07]

Cristina, you are an entertaining presence for sure, I find your writing style to be like something out of the 18th century!

[Phil UK]

(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."

We do have our own tastes, yep. But as I said earlier, snow can be very fickle in the UK. And to clear up another question. Snow reports have been reported in the UK since 1892. (But I remember 1982, now that was a blizzard and a half, going to school and back as a then 11 year old in a level foot of the stuff. :lol: )

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.

Well ask the questions on here then you'll probably get the answers, if not from me then someone with a wider knowledge of weather and scientific on here most likely will. When I first joined Netweather on 25th June 2003, member 152 (I still remember my member number, how sad is that! Ignore March last year as it says in the left hand column below that ugly thing that is me. I took a two year sabbatical so thanks to Paul, he allowed me to rejoin again. Me bad, I know. :lol: )

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

Sounds almost Shakesperian. Oddly enough, I spent a few hours in Stratford-upon-Avon (Shakespeare country) only last Saturday.

Phil M. Solihull, 18th July 2009.

[Phil UK]

Sounds almost Shakesperian. Oddly enough, I spent a few hours in Stratford-upon-Avon (Shakespeare country) only last Saturday.

Phil M. Solihull, 18th July 2009.

Should have added a couple of pics...

To add, or not to add... That is the question.

Whether be it nobler in the mind, I question them...

Alas, poor camera... I knew it well and spent £160 on it too.

"My Canon, My CANON... Wherefore art thy Canon Powershot A570 IS"?

Sorry! :o

Philkspeare.

[Phil UK]

Oooooops, forgot this one...

Phil. (Alas, poor Christina P, we knew her well. Joke!! Welcome anytime. :o )

[Methuselah]

Well Phil, I'd rather the lyrics of the late Johnny Cash, anyday...That said, my Jack Daniel's electro-acoustic is giving me feedback problems.

Or, far more likely, am I giving it feedback problems!! :o

[Phil UK]

Well Phil, I'd rather the lyrics of the late Johnny Cash, anyday...That said, my Jack Daniel's electro-acoustic is giving me feedback problems.

Or, far more likely, am I giving it feedback problems!! :o

Ring of fire? Probably will if too much Jack Daniel's. :o

Phil. (You see Christina, it's called a British sense of humour (Not humor!) )

[Methuselah]

Ring of fire? Probably will if too much Jack Daniel's. :o

Phil. (You see Christina, it's called a British sense of humour (Not humor!) )

:o Phil. Nothing that the Preparation H won't cure...

BTW, Merle Kilgore and June Carter wrote Ring of Fire...

[Phil UK]

Pete...

Preperation H. Mmmm!! I'd tell them to shove it up their @rse.

Oh and back in 1987... Too much information!

And ring of fire... Twelve pints of Carling and a hot beef balti did that for me. (Way too much information!! ) You can guess the rest. Was walking funny that Sunday morning... Felt like I'd sat on a hot coal.

Never repeated it since, now 39.

Phil.

[Roger J Smith]

This has to be a send-up, I suspect the work of some long-lost Netweather regular of days gone by.

Like Ken McKillayuppie. B)

[chionomaniac]

This has to be a send-up, I suspect the work of some long-lost Netweather regular of days gone by.

Like Ken McKillayuppie. B)

I suspect a rat as well. A rat cries frost perhaps?

[Terminal Moraine]

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.

With regard to the existence, or otherwise, of hourly snowfall data at British airports, you're probably right, it does not exist. As to why it exists in the USA and not here or in Europe I've run out of theories and can only revert to those I've already put forward, all of which are little more than speculation.

I'm sure that predicting snowfall amounts is just as important in southern England as elsewhere, despite ( or perhaps because of ) the relative scarcity of snowfall. As has been mentioned elsewhere on this thread, it takes only a couple of centimetres of snow falling at the 'wrong' time to cause chaos in parts of this country and this in itself would be enough to focus the minds of forecasters into that extra effort into getting it right.

Whether or not a data base of hourly snowfall would increase the accuracy of predicting future snowfall is open to question. I can understand that this would be the case in areas where winter storms occur regularly in sub zero temperatures and produce only snow but in this country the greatest forecasting errors with regard to the amount of snowfall tend to occur in marginal situations. The error here is not so much to do with the amount of precipitation falling but whether or not it falls as rain, as snow or partly as rain and then as snow and vice versa.

I suspect that the only way to reduce forecasting errors in these situations is to have a greater, and much more detailed, understanding of the upper air temperatures prevailing at the time, the amount of radiative cooling due to precipitation rates, a detailed knowledge of the spatial variation in precipitation in any given event and a more detailed knowledge of the movement and development of Atlantic depressions.

With ever increasing computing power these advances may be possible but there will remain the enduring problem of conveying the relevant information to the general public. Not only is there a lamentably limited amount of time allocated to weather forecasts on radio and television but the problem is compounded by the over simplification of forecasts in the mistaken belief that the public are incapable of assimilating any information which is couched in words of more than one syllable. Of course there are such members of the public but they are in the minority and, given the time and good presentation, the majority are more than capable of understanding any modestly technical information required to impart a well rounded forecast.