How's the weather?

Jul 8 00:40 UTC 1994

Weather rules our lives, and at times, ends our lives.

Perhaps this is less true for computer conferencers, unless they are
caught clutching the keyboard during a lightening strike.

The Nature of this item is:  What is the weather like right now, where you
are?  How has weather influenced you?  How has weather dramatically  or
subtly affected you in a specific instance?

  

response 2 of 14:

Jul 8 06:53 UTC 1994

Agreed.  I work in Detroit.  This week has been alternating high
heat/humidity and rain/lightening blasts. In the city it is hard to see
where the weather is coming from if you are buried indoors or amongst
buildings, but my exposure to it is not buffered much, as my building
leaks and, eventually, floods.  Upstairs is an old many-windowed
warehouse that stores heat as well as anything else; imagine walking
inside a hot air balloon.

  I wasn't thinking about Georgia and Colorado directly when I started
this item, and so that remark I made about "weather" taking lives was more
immediately appropriate than I realized.

  About a week ago I was in Worth County, South Georgia.  While traveling
to Sylvester, Ga. for a two day stay, we crossed the Flint River a short
time before arriving.  Of course, being from Michigan, we duly noted the
coincidence of a local name.  I owe a letter to someone there, and since
learning that 14,000 people have been evacuated from the region of the
Flint River in Georgia, and since I have learned that the Flint River is 30
feet above flood stage, I know this region is feeling the effect of the
"weather" acutely.  My letter will certainly offer sympathy and an inquiry
of well being...in addition to my routine purpose. 

  Incidentally, I don't always feel sympathy for people choosing to live
in a flood plain, or thinking that channeling a river is the surest way to
"control" it.  I recently read in "Game Wars" by Marc Reisner that
Louisiana is losing thousands of acres of wetlands annually because
channeled and dammed Mississippi water is a) dumping its silt load at the
mouth of the river instead of overflowing to spread silt and create, or
sustain land, and b) dams upstream act to a certain extent as silt traps
by creating giant settling ponds.  In any event, the Flint River in
Georgia is said to be in full flood, with its waters pouring out among the
forested lands.  The trees and surrounding landscape actually serve to
slow and disperse the flood waters, rather than pass the flood tide on
downstream as with a channelized river. 

  The fires in Colorado brought to my mind the book "Young Men In Fire" by
Norman Maclean who wrote "A River Runs Through It".  The book is about the
Mann's Gulch Fire in the 1930's that killed a number of young firefighters
in Montana.  This very personal book offers an interesting look at the
little or mis-understood connection between weather, topography and fire. 
  

response 4 of 14:

Jul 8 23:56 UTC 1994

The Mann Gulch fire was in 1949.  NPR had an item about "Young Men In
Fire" on the news this afternoon.

  I didn't know you could feed something like the weather forecast into a
conference..this sounds like a job for an expert!

  Remember that I am looking for personal experiences and impressions as
well, although the weather service data would make a great baseline, at
least for the AA area. Anything else would be overload in our poor little
conference perhaps.  For other areas, I would like impressions from
various Grex members from around the world.  Last night I saw members from
Germany and Italy and who-knows-where else logged on.  It would be
interesting to read from them a short item of weather description.  Sort
of reinforces the idea that we can have discourse day and night, winter
and summer, (any south of the equator members?) etc. etc. all at once in
cyberspace.  I may write a J Nature and describe the weather response in
"other conferences" item over in Agora. 

response 6 of 14:

Jul 9 22:06 UTC 1994

Is this better? Downloaded from Compuserve - but as a PICT. Had to
copy into text (is there a utility to convert a PICT of text to text?)

Melborne, AUS

Currently it is mostly cloudy with a temperature of 5C/41F. The wind 
chill is 3C/38F. The relative humidity is 92%. Winds are from the 
northeast at 9 kph/6mph.

Sunday's forecast: Some sunshine. High 13C/56F. Low 9C/48F.

response 8 of 14:

Jul 10 07:31 UTC 1994

That should be Melbourne. Further to the Compuserve source - the weather
and forecast were stated to the *copyrighted*. In addition, Compuserve
disabled all Menus, so I could not Save Selection. Instead, I captured
it with Flash It, in Marquee mode, as a PICT file. I presume that a
PICT can be copyrighted, but certainly not the information. 

response 10 of 14:

Aug 19 02:21 UTC 1996

We've been watering the lawn furiously for the last month and hoping that
eventually it may rain here in AA.

response 12 of 14:

Aug 19 17:33 UTC 1996

I don't water my lawn either. The grass just hunkers down and turns a nice
shade of brown - a pleasant contrast with all the other green. I was
observing the grass-watering practices in Colorado, last week. Most people
don't bother. It is surprising to see selective watering of patches of
grass along major streets. You wouldn't know then that water is a scarce
commodity (of course, the Front Range communities are stealing a lot of
water across the Continental Divide, parching the Southwest more than it
would be). 

response 14 of 14:

Oct 16 12:16 UTC 1996

Maybe they should GO outside and enjoy the weather.