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31°C at 8am??? Blech!

yeah... really bad, really extended heat wave here. Temps up to 115F in some areas, people dying, wildfires, electricity down (due to overconsumption, with ACs), bad, bad. I've hardly been out of the house for 7 days.

our house is handling the heat really well though, and we haven't lost electric; probably because we're in the same general area as downtown/tourist/hotel/government/shopping/university.

Actually... it's been longer than 7 days; it's just that 7 days ago, I was totally out of cash and had to go to an ATM, so I had to venture out - further than three or four blocks to get to the closest small markets. It was already many days previous to that the weather was crazy.

You can't imagine how stir-crazy I am.

I look at weather sites (wunderground.com is good for this in the States) for the data. I look at trends, projected temps, atmospheric pressure, and so on. Then I take my 0 meteorology experience and analyze it, making my own projection. I'm pretty good at not getting rained at, but far from perfect (I swore up and down it would rain yesterday, but nope!).

If you ever want to know what the weather's going to be like, ask a motorcyclist with 200k or more miles under his belt. Those dudes have like shamanistic powers. I can remember being in the bike shop after work one day. Beautiful day out, if a bit hot. No forecast of rain for the weekend, or even indications (dropping barometric pressure, etc), but the dudes were talking about it like it was a done deal. I took a skeptical "wait-and-see" attitude, but sure enough, it rained like fuck that Saturday. Chalk it up to experience and not wanting to be wet, I guess. I hope I make it to that level some day, because damn. Talk about connected with nature!

:) Nice story. I love the Bikerdude Weatherman idea... (I'm getting a great mental picture), and I think that it's interesting that we often think of animals as having greater predictive powers as related to the weather, but perhaps (probably) our own are simply buried under our multiple layers of environmental protection.

I think the problem is that no human checks most of these sites to make sure everything is consistent.

I use that little ForecastFox extension in Firefox to keep up with the forecast, nowadays, but before that I used wunderground.com (which doesn't help you, taz, I realize) and it always seemed really accurate.

ya it's too bad wunderground seems to be US-only. i think it's so extremely accurate because it's run with a sort of 'peer-to-peer' concept; i.e. by a gazillion amateur weather nerds' reporting stations, which update to the site on a near-constant basis.

right here in gunbarrel, colorado (a tiny sub-neighbourhood of boulder, itself a small town) there are a half dozen reporting sites within a 3 mile radius. reports are based off your zipcode. it's even more accurate than the NOAA weather, and frickin NCAR is right up the road from us here in boulder. at least for this region, i've found that the gazillion local sites, which allow you to choose one literally in your backyard as your default reporting site, far more accurately reflect all the thousands of little microclimates we have here in the mountains. for example, at night, in winter, and in other specific conditions, gunbarrel is often about 5 degrees colder than anywhere else. reason being, it's in an old lake bed, so cool air / inversions / dampness tend to sink and stuff like cold air / fog / etc. clings to the bottom of the bowl.

here's a link. scroll about halfway down the page and you'll begin seeing all the reporting sites.

the closest one that the site uses for reference is the one at the top. it's across the street from me, roughly 200 metres away in the open space park.

oh, and (bi)cyclists are even more weather-nerd-prone and sensitive to conditions than motorcyclists, btw. wind, especially, is something we don't like.

That's part of the reason I track pressures, LFR. My bike is very tall, which means I have a large sail. Wind is my main enemy; moreso than even snow or ice. Though I plan to start riding my pedal-bike a lot more now that I'm in an actual city and not a suburban wasteland. phee34r my eventual predictionary suparpow3rZ

I meant to comment on this, too!

I think that it's interesting that we often think of animals as having greater predictive powers as related to the weather, but perhaps (probably) our own are simply buried under our multiple layers of environmental protection.

Taz, you have eloquated a thought I didn't even know I'd had. Your brain is lovely; may I lick it?