Will It Rain Today?

Will it rain today? According to the various weather apps on my iPhone, the answer ranges from "No, silly boy" to "Ark-worthy." Perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration.

In actuality, the free Weather app on my iPhone calls for a 20% chance of rain today based on a 30% prediction of rain at 10:00pm. 

The Weather Channel app also calls for a 20% chance of rain based on a prediction of anywhere between 15% and 35% chance of rain.

Then there's the roguish AccuWeather app, which calls for a 60% chance of rain based on an hourly forecast from now to midnight of between 20% and 56% chance of thunderstorms.

I wasn't a math major in college (that's Our Daughter), but I'm fairly certain if your hourly report says the greatest chance of rain is 35%, then you shouldn't be low-balling at 20%. Likewise, if you're calling for a 56% chance of rain at any point in the day, then the greatest chance of rain you should be predicting is 56%, not 60%. Imagine my boss's reaction if I told her I fully expect to make 100% of my annual goal based on an expectation of never exceeding 67% of any of my monthly goals. It sounds like the kind of mathematical acumen you'd expect from an English major.

These apps don't seem to play loose and free with numbers when it comes to the temperature. 

Today's high temperature is consistently predicted by all three apps to be 86 degrees Fahrenheit and the low tonight will be 71 degrees. When I check the hourly forecasts, I clearly see where the high and low temperatures fall throughout the day. None of the apps say the high today is 86 degrees but at 3:00pm it'll be 92 degrees, or the low tonight will be 71 degrees but at 10:30pm we'll have snow. That would be ridiculous! The high is the high and the low is the low, and no other numbers are dangled out there in the minutiae to the contrary.

Maybe there's some greater-concept thinking going on at national weather central headquarters that I simply don't comprehend. Maybe an over-riding formula beyond the grasp of my simplicity is applied that factors the forecasted potential for precipitation and averages it out to a number that, while seemingly ungrounded in reality, is soundly based in scientific actuality. 

For instance: If the greatest chance of rain is 35% at 8:00pm, and the least chance of rain is 5% at 4:00pm, and there will be seven hours of cloudless sky before noon with at least three hours of severe thunderstorms (with hail) after sunset, and if the color of the liver of a sacrificed park pigeon is favorably red, and there's enough milk in the fridge for all the Oreos in the pantry, and it's been more than six months since any of the college interns have filed a sexual harrassment complaint with Human Resources, then the chance of precipitation today is 20%. That's the only way it makes sense to me.

I understand weather forecasting is just a best guess given available scientific data. Fronts move, winds change, storms stall, hurricanes shift direction and unexpectedly gain strength off the coast... Anything can happen and frequently does. I don't expect the different weather apps to agree with each other, but at the very least they should agree with themselves.

So, will it rain today? Who knows...

© 2016 Mark Feggeler

Canadian Burn

My Lovely Wife has, on many occasions over the past twenty years, roasted my pasty pale hide in the equatorial sun for her own sick enjoyment.

Vacationing for her means escaping to a steaming, sun-washed tropical location. We've cruised the Caribbean, meandered through Myrtle Beach, adventured around Atlanta, and repeatedly returned to the flamingly fiery funparks of Florida. Our vacations typically require me to squeeze or spray SPF6000 into every last pore of my body until every possibility of ultraviolet rays sneaking their way to my pigment-challenged skin has been entirely eradicated.

And if the difficulty of avoiding sun-poisoining weren't enough, there's the heat. I might live in North Carolina now, and I have acclimated in recent years to my adopted climate, but it doesn't change the fact I'm a Yankee born and bred. If the thermometer tops eighty-five degrees and I move more than one muscle at a time, I'm going to sweat. Profusely. From my scalp.

Yes, I'm a head sweater and it isn't pretty.

So, when work brought me northward during this year's spring break, it seemed a perfect opportunity to bring the family along for a non-traditional vacation in the Great White North. Can you imagine my delight at the prospect of a vacation with no sun screen, no hat head, no fear of dining alfresco, no veering off from the pack to walk in the slim slivers of shade cast by random trees and buildings? I would be at home with my own kind, thanking the heavens for the remaining winterly tilt of the Earth.

When we arrived, it was almost too much of a good thing. Ohio was frigidly, bitingly cold, but we toughed it out for several hours at the zoo and left the next day for Niagara Falls once my work in Columbus was complete. We scanned the weather forecasts that promised temperatures in the fifties and sunny skies for our two days across the Canadian border. Perfect for a pale New England boy.

We began our second day at the Butterfly Conservatory and exited an hour later into lovely spring weather. From our hotel we sauntered sans jackets to the skywheel, then down through Queen Victoria Park, and along Niagara Parkway to catch glimpses of double rainbows at the Horseshoe Falls.

As we walked, the all too familiar signs began to appear. Twice I caught myself trying to adjust the brim of a hat I knew wasn't on my head. At one point I found myself sinking into shadows cast by a wall. The skin on my expansive forehead was beginning to grow taut, and when I pressed my hand to it I could feel the transfer of heat to my cool palm.

Good Lord... Could this really be happening? This was Canada.

Freaking Canada!

I ask you, what kind of genetically mutated cave dweller manages to contract a sunburn in Canada in fifty-degree weather with the chilly mists of Niagara Falls swirling through the air around him?




© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Send Money Instead

Why do politicians visit the aftermaths of natural disasters?

I consider it one step short of those idiotic weather people who stand in the midst of a gale so we can watch them get battered to and fro before they duck back into the relative safety of their hotel rooms. They might be idiots, but at least they can claim the advantage of firsthand experience.

Okay, I understand the PR value a politician gains from arriving on the scene after the fact and getting caught on camera consoling strangers with whom he or she never otherwise would have any contact. It looks good to the general public and the voters. They gain sympathy by association just for having the hurricane-ravaged downtown district of Pigsknuckle, NC, behind them when they tell the press about understanding the people's pain. Yeah, right.

While Farmer Brown over there lost his crops, livestock and barn to the twister that rolled through yesterday afternoon, the politicians will drop in for a 20-minute briefing with the local mayor and a sight-seeing tour to gawk at the damaged Piggly Wiggly before rolling back to the state capital in their chauffered limousines.

It's a blip on their calendars and a few extra dollars from the till to repair some roads. Maybe a form or two that a staffer fills out to request some Federal aid.

And how practical is this VIP visit to the people who remain behind?

"Hey, Jimmy! A brush fire took out the old folks home, a tornado sucked the roof off the high school, and the creek flood washed away the Children's Hospital. But guess what? The governor's coming to town!"

If I'd just lost my home and family dog to a 120-mile-per-hour wind gust, would I really feel like entertaining visitors? I tend to doubt it. Chances are I'd be too busy trying to pick up the pieces, literally. If the governor really wants to help, maybe she could bring a bunch of Hefty bags and a shovel.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Pink Snuggie Thief

Twenty years ago, I laughed at people who complained about winter weather in North Carolina.

How seriously can you take people who raid the grocery store for milk and bread at the mere mention of a snow flurry? How can you not poke fun at school systems and businesses that shut down twenty-fours in advance of a predicted snow storm?

I hate to sound like a stereotypical old codger but when I was a kid we needed six inches of snow on the ground and the threat of more before the superintendent even considered closing school for a day. I recall quite a few mornings on which my brothers and I would reach out into the snow to measure the depth with a wooden ruler. Oh, the disappointment of only three or four inches...

During college at SUNY Plattsburgh in upstate New York -- just a short beer run to the Canadian border -- when the winter weather finally gave way to a day above 45 degrees, you would find many of us outside enjoying the sunshine in shorts and t-shirts.

If you wanted to go tubing down the Saranac River that ran behind the dorms, you had to do it in April, when the spring runoff from the mountains raised the level of the river high enough to keep you from bashing your head on a rock. The water was a bone-chilling 50 degrees. I still remember washing up on the wrong side of the river and trembling for a solid hour before regaining enough control of my muscles to walk back to campus.

When my Lovely Wife and I began dating in 1992, my future Father-in-Law would constantly offer me sweaters or jackets when he saw me leaving their house in 40-degree weather without one of my own. He was a lovely man, and well intentioned, but I doubt anything he wore would even have wrapped around my thigh, let alone cover my torso.

And it didn't matter, anyway, because I wasn't cold. I was in North Carolina. Hundreds of miles south of where I grew up and almost one thousand mile south of where I went to college. During my first ten years combined in the Tar Heel State, I barely witnessed more than an inch or two of snow. Quite quickly, my wardrobe changed from flannel shirts and knit sweaters, to short-sleeve shirts and year-round flipflops.

But lately I've noticed something peculiar. Whereas I once sought out light coats with no heavy liners, I am now the owner of several winter-weather jackets. Even my mild-weather jacket has a liner. I'm wearing gloves again, too. I have this pair of black leather gloves I've owned for several years that now, inexplicably, are with me where ever I go.

Perhaps the most rattling indicators of my thinning blood are in evidence at night.

My Lovely Wife gets cold somewhere around the end of August and stays that way until the first of July. As a result, every winter we drape our bed with an electric blanket. The first one we owned had one control for the entire blanket, meaning she would be toasty warm and I would slowly dissolve into a puddle of sweat. We now have a blanket with two controls. Well, this winter my side has been on just as much as hers, and more often than not at the same setting. This wouldn't bother me so much if I found myself waking up at two in the morning to throw off the covers and cool down, but I don't.

The final evidence of my acclimation to the Southern climes, however, came just a few weeks ago. One evening, I scurried to the computer in the basement family room to work on my book after the rest of the family had fallen asleep. Before I realized what I had done, I was wrapped in the pink Snuggie my Lovely Wife keeps in the game closet.

So, in twenty years I've gone from running around outside in shorts and t-shirt in 40-degree weather, to sitting in a 72-degree carpeted basement wearing socks, long flannel pajama pants, long-sleeve shirt, and wrapped in a pink Snuggie like some refugee from an alternate lifestyle monastery.

I'd love to keep writing about all this, but unfortunately I have to go. They've just called for a dusting of snow on Thursday, so I need to run to the grocery store to stock up on bread and milk.


© 2010 Mark Feggeler

Hot

I am hot. I am extremely, very, muchly, undesirably, sweatily, drippingly, head-achingly, filthily, and smelly hot.

If not for the fact of having met my wife, fallen in love, and created an amazing family here in North Carolina, I would without a moment's hesitation move to the Canadian tundra. It makes no sense at all for a pale, pasty, fluffy German from Long Island to live in a sub-tropical climate. If you're going to tell me North Carolina isn't sub-tropical, save your typing. Today, it feels fully tropical, so I was really already being kind.

The only reason I'm writing this blog post at all is because the laptop sits right above an air vent.

What the hell is wrong with people who like this kind of weather? My lovely wife loves it, so maybe she can tell me. How can you enjoy a day when the air itself is so heavy and humid you have to expend energy just to draw it into your lungs?

And did I mention that I'm pale? I can burn at the October state fair on a cloudy day. Yesterday, after only an hour in the sun spreading pinestraw, I could feel a burn developing on the back of my neck. I went inside to apply sunscreen but it was already too late.

Thank goodness our children don't have my extreme whiteness. Our daughter darkens so much each summer she no longer looks caucasian. Our Italian has beautiful skin that stays right in the middle at the GQ level of tan. Even the German tans, something I've never been able to do. Nope, for me it's always been white, to red, to white.

And as I sit here typing, I just told the boys that once I cool down we're going to Wendy's for lunch, Walmart for grocery shopping and then? Where else? To the pool to roast in the sun some more.

I must be brain-damaged.

P.S. Happy 51st Anniversary to Mom & Dad!



ⓒ 2010 Mark Feggeler