Thinking about talking about the weather

[redbird]

I've been thinking about the extreme cold in much of the US and Canada, and about some of the discussion of that weather, and wind chill, and how best to report on this sort of extreme weather.

The thing about unusually cold weather is that people aren't used to it. We're used to whatever's normal for where we live; that includes the coldest weather of a typical winter, but not the coldest of a typical decade or more. I used to get a daily paper (Newsday) that ran feature articles every late fall or early winter on "what you need to know about a New York winter, in a page or less." Basic things like wearing gloves, keeping your feet dry, and how to shovel snow safely. The first year I saw that article it surprised me, and then I thought about it: those articles weren't (mostly) a reminder for natives, they were for people who had just moved there from warmer climates, who didn't know what questions to ask. "Where can I buy gloves?" assumes that the person knows they should.

And remembering that reminded me of a winter almost twenty years ago. I was visiting Jo in Swansea, as was fivemack. Jo's 11-year old son Sasha, fivemack, and I went for a walk along the beach, while Jo and rysmiel sat in a cafe. It was a cold day, but not bitterly cold, and I didn't worry about Sasha saying he was cold. Then he said he was too warm, and I said "we're going back now." Sasha and fivemack didn't argue, and we walked back into town. I led them into the first open shop, where we walked idly around, warming up, before going to the cafe where Jo and rysmiel were. Somewhere, I'd read about that feeling of being too hot as a warning sign of hypothermia, and knew what to do.

Comments

[alatefeline]

Good chewy thoughts. Thanks for posting.

[gatheringrivers]

I was just saying to my husband last night "You still want a 'dead chicken' from the store? It's ONLY -20 with windchill, I got the gear for it..."

LOL

Sometimes I do that just to get a reaction... :)

[minoanmiss]

I forgot whatever comment I was going to make because both your comment and your icon made me giggle ever so much. Oh, ChooChooBear the ameboid kitty!

[redbird]

I started a longish comment and then realized that you're probably thinking Fahrenheit; my "it's -11, feels like -19, I can handle that" and starting to layer is in Celsius. (I do most of my serious winter calculations in C, because family in Montreal.)

[gatheringrivers]

Ahhh! Yea, Temperature, metric and me really don't seem to mesh yet. I used to have a widget on the desktop that I could switch from F to C pretty quickly, but that was on Vista, and I'm now on Win10, and that service doesn't exist anymore...

[redbird]

I mostly get my weather information from Weather Underground (which name still looks a little weird to me, but I didn't name it), which has a toggle for F/C in one corner of the page. I've also gotten into the habit of converting for the benefit of my Canadian partner: I at least got C in school.

I also have a weird trick for above-freezing temperatures, which is that there's a NYC subway line that makes a useful approximation. This was presented to me as "there's a conversion chart on the NYC subway map," but having ridden the 6 line to school for five years, I don't need the map. (Start at 33rd Street: 33 F is approximately 0 C, 42=5, 51 is about 10, 59 is about 15, 68=20, 77=26, 86=30. 96 is about 35, 103 is about 40, 110 is about 45, and that's higher than you're likely to need for dealing with the weather report/forecast.)

[gatheringrivers]

the subway map conversion, unfortunately, doesn't make sense to me - I've never been to NYC - would it be easier if I had a picture, or knowing what the side streets are?

[redbird]

Sorry, those are the station names: 33rd Street, 42nd Street (/Grand Central, because that stop is at a railway terminal), 51st Street. 59th Street, 68th Street (/Hunter College), 77th Street, 86th Street, 96th Street, 103rd Street, 110th Street. Here's a map of just that subway line; the "relevant" part starts slightly below the black bar labeled "Manhattan."

I read about this long enough ago that if you were riding the subway you were likely to have a copy of the paper map of the entire system, which were given away free at every token booth. Now, fewer people bother carrying any sort of map, but the smartphones that will also calculate things like "what's 47 Fahrenheit in C?"

The approximate conversion works because the stations on that stretch are about 9 blocks apart, if you start at 33rd Street. The line (6/Lexington Avenue Local, the south end of which is the oldest part of the New York subway system) starts at Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall but the stops below 33rd don't work for converting temperatures below freezing because the station intervals are different: south of 33rd it's 28th, 23rd, 14th (and then Astor Place, Bleecker Street, Spring Street, Canal Street, City Hall, which wouldn't be useful even if the intervals were right.

I think that's at least as much as you wanted to hear, but if not, by all means ask and I will go on further about the NY subway system. (The icon I'm using here is based on a NY subway train using cars of a design that's no longer in service.)

I am thrilled to know this.

[jesse_the_k]

Now all I need to do is insert this "local color" in the prose of the appropriate author.

yes, I've been backreading your journal.

Re: I am thrilled to know this.

[redbird]

I'm pleased that you're doing so.

[sfred]

*nods* I think it's often useful to say what 'goes without saying', especially in potentially dangerous situations.

[otter]

Our schools were shut down due to weather 4 of 5 days this week. We had the coldest day we'd experienced in 23 years on Wednesday. I didn't even open the door to peek out. I remember being upset with my mom when I was about 10 years old and she wouldn't allow me to walk to school. It was one city block away, windchill was -60F, worse than this week's -55F.