Thursday, September 25, 2008

Where was this 1996-2000?

Betsy's biggest (only?) piece of advice to me when I went to college was this:

Always carry an umbrella. If you don't have it, it will rain.

Good advice and I usually followed it. Too bad this site didn't exist when I was in college (ok, yes, I would have also needed a cell phone and no one had texting yet):

http://umbrellatoday.com/

You type in your zip code and it says YES (as in yes, you need an umbrella) or NO (you do not need an umbrella). If you want, you can sign up for it to send you a text message on days when you need an umbrella.

I love it!

Monday, September 8, 2008

Thoughts on Weather Forecasts

Every morning when I'm getting ready for work, I have the Today show on to distract me and gain some knowledge on current events. Like most people, I zero in on the weather forecast portion so I can be prepared for the day.

Why am I writing about this? Well, because weather forecasts on Bay Area stations are so very odd. Rather than showing expected highs and lows for the next 7 days in a graphic like the rest of the country, they show coastal and inland temperatures. Today's temperature range was 55-92 (give or take a degree). Yes, that's a nearly 40 degree range. So, if you're watching this channel, you have to take an educated guess of your actual temperature.

Further, given the size of the region, they will show a map with expected temperatures in the different cities and towns. This is all well and good except San Francisco gets one number. The challenge is to guess if this one number is an average? for the bay side? ocean side? middle? in the heights? in a valley? It's a wonder I don't carry an extra large bag to hold all the layers I might need in a day.

That said, I'm happy to live here with its weather oddities any day.