The Incredibility of Weather.
I find the weather to be incredible.
Ever since I was a kid, I would stand outdoors by the road, on the high hill prairie, just to watch the storms roll across the countryside. I majored in meteorology, at Florida State, in the early 60s but dropped out because of too much math and physics. I found it strange that over one-third of the weather majors *never* looked out of the windows! They were math majors. Their weather was math and physics. You needed to be, really, in this department.
Most people sense a cloudy sky and they wonder if the rain will fall. They have no weather sense at all. [
[Me, a man, I might fear to drop the baby if someone were to give to me one to hold; we cannot be experts at everything!]
When I lived in my upstate New York hometown for a few years in the 90s, the Syracuse TV station newsman was commenting upon the heatwave. 94 degrees that day! He then said that Syracuse gets about four 90 degree days a year. New York gets about 10 to 12 days. The tropical summer city of Washington DC has about 30 days a year and the British embassy staff receives tropical hazard pay for July and August. The newsman then said that if you want to go where heat rules, just keep driving south where they have 40 or 50 or even *more* days a year of 90 degrees or higher! Tallahassee, Florida, where I live now, has about 90 days a year of 90 degrees, or over, and nearly 30 days a year of 95 or higher.
[Okra needs 65 days in a row to really grow well! Okra will not grow if there are many days of a high temperature of only 80 degrees for weeks on end!]
Tallahassee has about 85 thunderstorm days a year. There are days, not the total number. [I think the number of storms here totals about 110 to 120 a year.]
I feel for the kids at Cornell University! Imagine walking across the large green to attend your eight-o'clock class. The elevation is about 900 feet above sea level and to the Northwest is Cayuga lake, 60 miles long at an elevation of about 400 feet. The temperature is about 5 degrees above zero.
The photo comes from the Cornell live camera. https://www.cornell.edu/live-view/
Would you like a little *wind* with that order?! The wind is free and there is always wind. How about 10 to 30 mph! The wind is fresh, right off of the lake of 60 miles running. Brrrr….
Oh, there are 120 to 180 cloudy days a year here too. Winter lasts about five to six months with 40 to 100 inches of snow per year.
I lived *in* Ithaca, next to that University, for years. Every late fall, about early November, I would hear the Cry of the wounded tire! I could hear the screams maybe five miles away! The first five inches of snow have fallen and on that 500-foot high hill someone probably from New York City did not install their snow tires and there the car sits, on a hilly street with the tires a-spinning on the icy snow. Gun it faster. Faster!
I once took a bus back to college from Christmas break, the night before 15 inches of snow had fallen. Here, 15 inches stops no one, after the snowplows have come out. 20 miles from Ithaca, the bus drove along two miles of open fields where the wind must have been blowing 40 mph! Then the bus entered the small town. The driver stops in a complete white-out! He yells out, “Slatervllle, I *know* there is a town around here somewhere!” I, sitting on the front seat, could only see the white roaring snow but once in about every 20 seconds, I could dimly see a corner of the town fire station! No one got off or on.
That same year, I learned later, a greyhound bus, the same route-bus as that slaterville bus, got stuck on the main highway near my childhood home. All the passengers had to stuff themselves into the living room of the nearest farmhouse. Maybe 15 to 20 people. They were snowbound for maybe 10 to 15 days! They could look out of the picture window to see their bus nearly covered in drifts as the 50 to 60 mph winds snow blasted it! They ate up every bit of food in the family freezer. Grayhound paid them $500 for that event, a lot of money in 1961. Shudder. This bus was, then, a direct route to New York City. I wonder if some Manhattan people got to enjoy a *real* winter?!
[I might as well call this article the “Tale of Two Cities” as both places, where I lived, had near opposite climates.]
Tallahassee has its own shuddering climate. Humidity to die for! How about an 80-degree dew point? I find this city to be the only city where I have seen mold growing on mushrooms!
We have a tropical rainy season here in Tallahassee. A few showers nearly every day. The summer rains can be anywhere from three inches to 20 inches a month. This year June had about 9 inches.
A few years ago a tropical storm dropped 30 INCHES of rain onto some area just east of the city. I often have seen 5 to 6 inches fall within only a few hours.
Frogs. They are everywhere. There are at least two frogs now on the second-floor patio. How would you like to check your mailbox for mail and open up the door and reach in and clasp your hand onto a nice squishy frog?! I have!
Every day here the clouds are different.
Oh, there are hurricanes and even tornadoes here too.
Back in the late 50s, a couple drove to town to go shopping. They lived on an acre of land surrounded by pine trees about 15 miles south of town. They, while shopping, saw a squall line storm pass by so they waited at the store until the storm was over. Now it was dark, so they drove back home. They drove into their driveway and their headlights showed………
…….showed only two things. One, their concrete steps that sat before their front porch. Tow, on these steps, upside down, was a dead cow, in rigor mortis, its four legs held upwards, stiffly!
There was nothing else! Here was an acre of land with nothing on it but the steps and the cow. There was not a single board, their garage, the house: nothing!
A tornado had dropped down only onto this acre, then lifted again. They were later told that their house and furniture were probably scattered over a 70-mile long strip, board by board, fabric by fabric. Maby years later someone walking in a woods in south Georgia might stumble upon a bed pillow and then wonder why it is here!
You too, only have just to look out of a window, or better yet, walk outdoors and the Glories of weather can be experienced by you. I knew of a retired man who sat often on his front porch and he could look out over Cayuga Lake from the hilltop, 400 feet about this lake. He told me that the color of this lake changes hour by hour and day by day, reflecting the skies about the lake. He loved to just sit there and to watch this.
This is my weather ramblings for today.
