Saturday, August 05, 2006
Canicular Aberration
The bad news: Technorati still finds no blogs which link to this one, ranking it 1,669,958.
The good news: The local amateur weather station is back on line (its comm was knocked out by a thunderstorm last week) so I can get confirmation that the weather has really cooled off a lot! Todays high has not yet (at 11 a.m.) reached the lows of last week's nights! And we finally have had some rain, although I suspect it hasn't soaked in very deep yet.
No rain from July 12th to 27th, then only less than a cm spread over a couple of days: immediate evaporation, especially given that the daytime temperatures were over 30°C.
The cooler nights are nice, much more restful. I suppose people in the tropics "learn" to sleep well without coolness (do they?), but it is a problem for us Northerners. Really: I read it in a newspaper! A few weeks ago, reporting on the heat wave across much of Europe, a journalist noted that in Austria they were particularly troubled by the "tropical nights"--those when the temperature doesn't go below 20°C. Personally, I'd make that "doesn't go below 20°C and stay there for, say, four hours or more so I can get some rest!" We had nights recently when the low was below 20°C, but only for a few minutes around 5:00 a.m. after it trended down from 30°C at midnight and before it started rising again. For four straight days, July 25-28, it never dropped below 20°C, and I was going crazy. It is now the middle of the canicular period (22 July to 22 August) and I consider wearing a sweater or jacket when I go out at mid-day! Probably should take advantage to do some yardwork.
Tags: climate
The good news: The local amateur weather station is back on line (its comm was knocked out by a thunderstorm last week) so I can get confirmation that the weather has really cooled off a lot! Todays high has not yet (at 11 a.m.) reached the lows of last week's nights! And we finally have had some rain, although I suspect it hasn't soaked in very deep yet.
No rain from July 12th to 27th, then only less than a cm spread over a couple of days: immediate evaporation, especially given that the daytime temperatures were over 30°C.
The cooler nights are nice, much more restful. I suppose people in the tropics "learn" to sleep well without coolness (do they?), but it is a problem for us Northerners. Really: I read it in a newspaper! A few weeks ago, reporting on the heat wave across much of Europe, a journalist noted that in Austria they were particularly troubled by the "tropical nights"--those when the temperature doesn't go below 20°C. Personally, I'd make that "doesn't go below 20°C and stay there for, say, four hours or more so I can get some rest!" We had nights recently when the low was below 20°C, but only for a few minutes around 5:00 a.m. after it trended down from 30°C at midnight and before it started rising again. For four straight days, July 25-28, it never dropped below 20°C, and I was going crazy. It is now the middle of the canicular period (22 July to 22 August) and I consider wearing a sweater or jacket when I go out at mid-day! Probably should take advantage to do some yardwork.
| Some summary stats: | Criterion | May | June | July |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Summer days | (Tmax >= 25°C) | 8 | 21 | 31 |
| Canicular days | (Tmax >= 30°C) | 0 | 7 | 23 |
| Tropical nights | (Tmin >= 20°C) | 0 | 0 | 7 |
Tags: climate
# posted by Maurice Lanselle @ 11:10 AM 
