How many of you will admit to be addicted to the Weather Channel?
It drives my husband crazy as I turn on the Weather Channel as background noise. And whenever we take a trip, one of the first things I do is turn on the TV to see where the Weather Channel is on their cable system.
Weather Channel Addicts
We don't have a weather channel. However, I'm a certified weather geek! (I have 3 weather radios!) I have weather webpages I can easily access (and use them!).
Plus I watch the trees and animals, and tend to stare into the sky quite often!
I turn on the Weather Channel when I get up, even before coffee, and it stays on all day. I love it!
I admit to watching it more than the average person, LOL. And at times like now when I have SO many friends and much family in this storm's path, the Weather Channel just stays on, woth occasional forays to CNN.
patischell, I'll bet you will be watching that Weather Channel 24/7 for the next few days as Francis approaches!!! Best of luck to you and stay safe!! My sis lives in Ft. Pierce also and she states she and her husband are heading to Okeechobee to avoid the nasty weather heading your way.
I am a weather channel person too.....look out patischell...here is comes!
Me too, it's the background to everything else - first thing in the morning while I run up the satelite pics on my computor. Then coffee, and Nightowls forum. Now it will be Nightowls, then Weather. Thanks Dave, ~Blooms
There have been a couple of times that tornados were extremely close to my house without a particularly bad storm where I live. Thank goodness that I have never had damage - - but there have been about half a dozen within a mile of my house in the last 10 years. Having the weather channel on has alerted us several times to be on the lookout. And Shoe,I admit those are the times that I go out and watch the sky.
Keep the weather channel on as background noise, if I'm not watching it!
http://www.freeweather.com/
plus there are a zillion weather websites.
I have our local weather reports come into my email in box. When I'm really concerned, I head for our local weather web page and check the radar. I'm addicted.
I just look out the window or even step outside. I also have an outdoor thermometer.
I have a min-max thermometer and rain guage. The wind broke my anemometer! :-D
Well I cannot say I am addicted to the weather CHANNEL, but I am addicted to their website, http://www.weather.com
I love it & I find they are much more accurate then our local news station. And I use the 10 day forecast feature as well as the weather maps that show movement.
Nobody can fortell the weather more than a day ahead, if that far! You are kidding about the 10 day hoax, right?
five day and ten day are regular fare - not that they don't adjust the later end as it gets nearer. weather.com is a favorite here too.
Why not just flip a coin then? LOL
When you're working on a harvest, those 5 day forecasts help to give you a shot at knowing what's out there as a possibility. We are in our best week of weather for this summer - we may get 5 dry, mostly sunny days this week. Whole lot of hay going down, getting fluffed, raked and baled. The corn fields are getting some drying time as well. It could be a horribly soggy mess when the corn finally gets ripe enough to chop, if we don't get a freeze that stops it in it's tracks! Being a farmer means you check the local weather, the national weather, the weather outside, the wooly worms, the bark on the trees, the thickness of the hair on the cows and then take a leap and do whatever you were going to do anyway!
Hey Kathleen....you forgot about checking your aching joints! Good luck on the harvesting.
Ulrich, here is an exerpt from FSU "Superensemble" Approach to Predicting Hurricanes' Path
Quoting:
Still in the testing stage, the superensemble model has nonetheless shown remarkable promise in its first full season of hurricane plotting, says Krishnamurti. He's seen a 20- to 30-percent improvement overall in his own forecasting and up to 100 percent in other models using the technique. Support from a private company--an insurance underwriting consortium--already has contributed towards the main computers, an IBM SP supercomputer and two IBM high-powered workstations, and if tests continue to show promise, interest in getting the technique into the public arsenal of forecasting tools surely will follow.
The latter development could prove to be a boon to regions outside hurricane alley, meaning most of the continental U.S. Given enough computing power, Krishnamurti says the model could be applied to everyday weather analysis, a prospect that could make today's much-ballyhooed "six-day forecasts" of nightly weathercasts finally worth paying attention to.
http://www.research.fsu.edu/scicol/3/teest.html
Actually, Ulrich - - I enjoy my delusion that weather forecasters actually can predict what nature is going to do. Every one needs a little fantasy in their lives. :-)
TAMPASAL, check back with your sister ASAP, they are already evacuating Okeechobee. The wind will pile water up against the dikes on the North end of the lake.
Pati
Having lived most of my life in California and Alaska I can attest to the lack of reliability of weather forcasts especially the longer range forcasts. However, here in the southern plains the forcasts are really quite good. Now if they could only tell us where those tornados are going to touch down! In my location all forcasts are worth paying attention to.
Mostly weather systems come in from the west, if you're in California they have to guess what a system which is over the ocean is going to do when it reaches land. For the rest of the nation, forecasting is easier as one can see where the winds are going to take the systems. Here in the four corners region we get a lot of our systems coming up from the Gulf of California thru Arizona to us in Utah and the satellite maps allow us to see them coming.
I have heard meteorologist in CA & AK "qualify" their forcasts by saying they preferred working in those places because of the "challenge." I wonder what is like going to work everyday knowing that you are going to blow it! :-D
ed. to say: And, have to put up with statements like that!
This message was edited Sep 2, 2004 10:23 AM
LOL, Weeds, they just ache ALL the time here - all the humidity from Lake Erie!
The crickets have even finally gotten wound up and are chirping away in the warm!
Patischell, thanks for the info. I called my sis and they had already cancelled their plans to go to Okeechobee because they could not get a room there. Now they plan on riding out the hurricane at the Legion on US 1!!!! Sheesh!! From the frying pan into the fire!! I'm still working on convincing her to come over here but she says she wants to stay close "in case" her mobile home gets damaged they can keep looters away! I told her looters were the least of her worries. I hope you have a safe place to ride this out!!!
Interesting article, darius.
I used to live in Brooklyn; 'partially cloudy' meant it might be sunny in The Bronx while it's pouring in Manhattan, with Brooklyn having both.
I used to be a weather channel junkie. I still am except on the web now instead of TV. I always hated having to wait for the local weather and now I don't have to.
I'm another www.weather.com junkie. I check it numerous times a day. I only seriously watch the weather channel on TV if there's something major going on, (like now). Otherwise, I prefer FoxNews or CNN as my background noise.
The Weather Channel used to be my favorite background noise channel but it has become so commercialized (way too many commercials now) that I don't leave it on like I used to. My new background noise channel is HGTV.
I've tried HGTV but, I wish there was more gardening. Because of that I find it very disappointing! Maybe thats because I am not a homemaker and miss the point. LOL
W2D, Me tooo, They talk about small bedrooms and then show one that's half the size of my whole house... and the 'get organized' ones!! - Somebody comes in and throws away half your stuff and then says look you're organized...lol...I'd be organized but I WANT that stuff. LOL
And that one gardener who puts in the 'circle that continues on the other side of the path' LOL and grabs his plants by their hair and never tickles the roots loose and it is always that loppy grass. Has the man never visited a nursery to see the diversity available.? ~oops this is off subj heehee ~Blooms
Oh, I agree the house sizes are totally huge. My house would fit into most of them with room to spare. I just like looking at the decorating ideas. My favorite show is Design on a Dime. They have some neat ideas for not a lot of money.
O.K. fellow addicts. Here's the site where you can see the eye of Frances. THis is the Melbourne doppler. The dark area to the right is the HUGE eye, At the top right of the screen in yellow is what's headed to Fort Pierce. It takes a minute to load, but it's worth the wait! The feeder bands are getting stronger and closer together. We will be in the eye about four hours. That's the calm part. Then after it passes the wind suddenly comes hard from the opposite direction. To show you how big and slow moving this storm is, usually they advise that the eye passes in 45 minutes to an hour. I have two panes of glass not boarded up yet so I can watch Mother Nature's big show!
Pati
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/radar/loop/DS.p19r0/si.kmlb.shtml
Thanks, Pati.
Wow, Pati... FOUR HOURS in the eye? Slow moving indeed.
I remember stories from the 1930's and early 1940's about the young men in my family who would go to the beach in the Eye (if it was large) and collect fresh fish thrown up on the beach for dinner.
Blooms.....you are way too funny...
I love watching The Weather Channel but find that they are not the weather-wizards of the meteorology community. Yesterday evening, their broadcasts kept stating that Hurricane Frances would make landfall "on Florida's east coast." Duh! I don't have a degree in meteorology, but I could have called THAT one. LOL.
Today, I've found that the Fox news channel has some fairly continuous coverge of conditions in Florida. The big drawback to that channel is having to watch Geraldo on the beach in his poncho :D
Some of them are not actually meteorologists, I think.
And are there no left-handed weather people who could stand on the left side of the screen instead of the right... They obscure half of what they're talking about.
When I'm watching for the four corners' weather the idiot in front of the map is NEVER standing in front of the empty Pacific, oh no, must stand where no one can see parts of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and the upper right [NE] corner of Arizona. A lefty could use his pointing hand and stand in the ocean... leaving the land for us to see.