Winter Weather

I’m a fan of winter. I like to play in the snow. I like to snowboard, make snowmen, and I even enjoy shoveling the driveway (as long as it’s not 24 inches of snow). I enjoy sitting by a fire with large snowflakes falling outside. I like looking out of the bedroom window when I get up to see an untouched coat of snow covering the brown ground left behind from the fall. There is something fun about being outside as the snow falls around you. I just like it.

All of that is great.

All of this is terrible:

I hate trudging through half melted slush. I hate walking through the parking lot and getting salt stains all over my pants. I hate the cold rain of a 35 degree day. I hate the black-brown snow that the plow pushes up into my front yard. I hate the white specs of salt that turn my black car into a sliver one.

In the end, I enjoy 10 days of winter and hate the other 120. But those 10 days of fun usually outweigh the bad and hence my reason for being a fan of Winter.

How is it not raining?

This system has moved from the southwest across the Detroit metro area since about 1 today (it’s now 5:15). There hasn’t been a moment where the red dot was not covered by green on the radar screen. How is it not raining?

Cold Air and Your Nose

Walking into work the last few days in the sub-zero temperatures, I have noticed that breathing through my nose gives me a weird sensation. It feels like my nose is constricting; which I guess is normal when you take a deeper breath through your nose, but this is more than that. It seems like the nose hairs stand straight up and the nose gives a full feeling, almost like I am congested. I was curious about this and did some research:

The nose is a remarkable organ designed to condition inhaled air in order to protect the delicate lung tissues. Whether the inhaled air has a relative humidity of one percent or ninety percent, the nose adds or extracts moisture so that air reaching the lungs has a constant relative humidity of about 75%. The same is true of temperature. When breathing through the nose, one may breathe in air at 40 degrees Fahrenheit or at 100 degrees Fahrenheit, but within a quarter of a second the air temperature is quickly brought to 98.6 degrees. Many tiny blood vessels are used to affect a temperature exchange. When a person breathes cold air, the tissues lining the nose swell as the capillaries dilate, bringing warm blood to heat the cool air. Excess blood in the nose is the cause of nasal congestion (nasal congestion is backed up blood, not increased mucus).

Source

I thought this was pretty interesting. I’ve never thought much about the nose doing all that work (yes, I knew your nose hairs collect pollutants/dust/etc and act as a filter but the humidity and temperature regulations were new).

And You Thought It Was Cold

Unless you live in Jamestown ND, I don’t want to hear your complaints about how cold and terrible your weather is.

And to top if off, schools are opening after a 2 hour delay. The kids must be tougher in ND than in MI or OH where they close schools when its 10 degrees out. You can see the news story here.

Unfair Weather Today

79 degrees in Dayton Ohio at 4:15 PM. A whopping 60 degrees in Auburn Hills. 240 miles apart, yet nineteen degrees. That’s a one degree difference every 14 miles.

My Kind of Weather

Can’t ask for much more in mid-September (in Michigan at least)

Partly Sunny vs. Partly Cloudy

An interesting Facebook status lead me to look up the difference between Partly Sunny and Partly Cloudy.  The following page gives a good idea of when to use what:

Weather Works

Two Realizations in One – Snow & Suggestions

I was checking the weather forecast for the weekend and was presented with this. See if you notice what I did:

Snow Showers with a low of 40? That’s less disturbing to me (for reasons quoted below) than the Snowboarding link for April 13^th. There aren’t any ski resorts open other than a few Colorado resorts up in the mountains. Weather.com has my zipcode and knows I am not in Colorado, why would the suggest this?

Explanation of snow fall at temperatures above freezing

Snow forms when the atmospheric temperature is at or below freezing (0 Celsius or 32 Fahrenheit) and there is a minimum amount of moisture in the air. If the ground temperature is at or below freezing, of course the snow will reach the ground.

However, the snow can still reach the ground when the ground temperature is above freezing if the conditions are just right. In this case, snowflakes will begin to melt as they reach this warmer temperature layer; the melting creates evaporative cooling which cools the air immediately around the snow flake.This cooling retards melting. As a general rule, though, snow will not form if the groud temperature is 5 degrees Celsius (41 deg Fahrenheit).
Source

CDL – a new kind of license

This morning, a drive that normally takes me 30 minutes ended up taking 65 because of a light snow shower.  There was no reason other than the weather for the hour long backup, and I got to thinking:  there should be a lane for competent winter drivers, those who are able to drive normally in the snow. Let the idiots who get freaked out by 1/100″ inch precipitation drive in the other lanes and trudge along.

In order to be able to drive in the special lane, you would have to pass and extra driving test at your local license bureau. Upon passing the driving test, you’d get a special sticker for the plate of your car as well as a different license, a Competent Drivers License, so that you could drive in the lane. In the summer and/or good conditions, the lane could be used for carpools or HOV (High-occupancy vehiclie) lane.