Saturday, February 3, 2024

Wherein I complain about the weather:

In typical 80's movie style, it' more concerned
with a shitty dude's redemption arc than it is with
the woman with power over space and time.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't put our faith in some poor groundhog who, once a year, is torn from its peaceful slumber by some rando dressed as Charles Dickens who then pretends to talk to it about meteorology. But maybe we shouldn't? Better yet, let's knock the whole thing off. It's cruel and at this point the phrase "Groundhog's Day" is more closely associated with the movie about Bill Murray being stuck in a time loop that can only be resolved by convincing Andie MacDowell to have sex with him that it is annual animal abuse. 

Besides, can we just agree that we've broken the climate? I mention this because the forecast for Santa Cruz, CA--where I am--was for zero rain. And yet.
Above: the view when I stepped outside of work. Notice anything, precipitation-y?
"What if, instead of numbers, we use a 
repeating cycle of real and mythological animals?"
-Some Chinese Scholar, 1350 B.C.E.
So what gives? Sure, the weather app on my phone might just be really bad at predicting the weather, but all the forecasts seem to disagree with one another. Take a calendar for instance. Pretty much any 2024 calendar you come across should be reasonably good at predicting, say, Tuesday, or Flag Day. Should it put March between October and November, it would give you pause. And while I realize that the Earth's trip around the sun is somewhat more predictable and easier to map out (usually, see left) than the onslaught of atmospheric rivers we've been subject to, I still would like to talk to someone's manager about this.

I have a fraught relationship with weather. I moved across the country to avoid it, only to have the cumulative effects of three centuries of industrialization on the planet creep up on me. And, while rain is great if one lives in the heavily wooded mountains, as I do, it's less appealing when it's so heavy that the ground liquifies and the aforementioned trees fall on power lines and houses. All this to say, could we leave that rodent alone now?
"Let him go! He doesn't know anything. Take me, I'll you anything you want
to know. Early spring, six more weeks of winter, whatever you want!"
-hopefully someone

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