Field of Science

Midwest Weather - Strange

June is already one of the wettest on record and it's only the 22nd. And the temperature seems to be fluctuating from well above to well below average. After two hot, muggy days, it's quite cool today. Now there's two things about this. One, models of global warming predict that greater vacillations will occur before the means actually change very much. As the Phactor has always said, you can average the weather, but there is no average weather. Now it seems the variance about the mean is getting greater, which would be a true prediction. Two, the bloody prairie loves getting all this water, and more short students than ever will be getting lost out there. This will make vegetation harvesting and data gathering a lot more work. Groan. On the good news side of things, the raspberries look big, the rejuvenating strawberry bed is looking good, and snap peas are getting ready to eat. Just about time to get out the buffalo (not bison) and till the rice paddy, too.

2 comments:

Larissa said...

mmmm snap peas

William M. Connolley said...

> models of global warming predict that greater vacillations will occur before the means actually change very much

I think this is garbled, though if you have a source for it I'd be interested. You might be thinking of the idea that if a normal distribution shifts, then the probability of high-end events increases far faster than the mean moves. But that is quite different.

FWIW, the weather has been weird here this year too, but I have valiantly resisted posting about it so far!