Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and my name is Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: what's your favorite non scientific weather forecasting tool one that
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about today? The whole like I
Speaker 1: feel it in my bones? That one's an interesting because
Speaker 1: I do feel it in my bones and particularly my
Speaker 1: knee if there's there's some sort of weather change coming
Speaker 1: you do. So yesterday when that ominous front was rolling
Speaker 1: through Atlanta and we were looking out the windows, were
Speaker 1: you were your knees like buckling? No, my my right knee,
Speaker 1: which is the one that speaks to me. It was
Speaker 1: fine then, But earlier in the week, like the day
Speaker 1: before and the day before that, that's when I felt
Speaker 1: it and I was thinking, oh, well, maybe the thing
Speaker 1: that they always say is true, and that means that
Speaker 1: some sort of weather front is coming in. Is that right?
Speaker 1: Me an old gaming injury. No, it is a dancing injury,
Speaker 1: actually dancing in the field. You know, there's a whole
Speaker 1: you know how it goes. I do. My favorite, my
Speaker 1: current favorite non scientific weather forecasting tool is it has
Speaker 1: to do with the chalk drawings that I do with
Speaker 1: my son in the driveway. The more that accumulate, I know,
Speaker 1: the more likely it is to rain. So once we
Speaker 1: reached the point where we've covered every foreseeable space with
Speaker 1: scribbles and elephants, I know that it's got to be
Speaker 1: about to rain, because it means like two weeks is past. Okay.
Speaker 1: I like that. It is a method. It's a method.
Speaker 1: You know. It's based on observational data in my surrounding environment,
Speaker 1: and I look to it and I make a distinct
Speaker 1: call about what the weather may or may not do.
Speaker 1: And this is one of those things whether that we
Speaker 1: kind of take for granted because we've got the little
Speaker 1: Doppler radar systems in place, we can easily access information
Speaker 1: about the weather whenever we want. But you kind of,
Speaker 1: if you want to think about whether in really big
Speaker 1: terms and even cosmic terms, you have to go all
Speaker 1: the way back to when the atmosphere actually even developed.
Speaker 1: And we won't go, you know, too deep into this,
Speaker 1: but just consider for a second that atmosphere that life
Speaker 1: depends on is created by life itself. So whether you
Speaker 1: have back in the earliest of days when the Earth
Speaker 1: formed really just rudimentary. We're talking about hydrogen and helium
Speaker 1: hanging out on Earth, and not for very long either,
Speaker 1: because hydrogen and helium are fast moving molecules, and at
Speaker 1: that time in Earth's very young history, it was a
Speaker 1: hot planet, and so they sped up even more in
Speaker 1: the escape out into space. But then you have much
Speaker 1: later volcanic activity happening. And with this volcanic activity happening,
Speaker 1: you have steam escaping right from the volcanoes. You have
Speaker 1: H two O, you have carbon dioxide, you have ammonia
Speaker 1: which contains nitrogen, and you begin to see this sort
Speaker 1: of base stock of the atmosphere building up. And then
Speaker 1: a bit later you have the carbon dioxide being absorbed
Speaker 1: by oceans. And this is great because now a bacterium
Speaker 1: comes to comes to be and it gets a lot
Speaker 1: of this energy from the Sun and from the carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide in the oceans, and it's byproduct as a result
Speaker 1: is oxygen, and all of a sudden boom, you have
Speaker 1: the elements for an atmosphere that's right. Currently our atmosphere
Speaker 1: consists of seventy percent nitrogen oxygen. Then you have point
Speaker 1: nine argon point O three carbon dioxide, and the remaining
Speaker 1: point of seven consists of water, vapor, hydrogen, ozone, neon, helium, crypton,
Speaker 1: and xenon. Right. Instead, the more that life developed, the
Speaker 1: more the these molecules were created and came to create
Speaker 1: this envelope, this atmosphere that we live in, and it
Speaker 1: became so supportive that it supported complex life, such as
Speaker 1: say humans that became acutely aware of the tides of wind,
Speaker 1: of the moon and the sun and began to obsess
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, I mean, indeed, I mean this is
Speaker 1: the movement of our environment. We live in the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: We live on the Earth, but we are we're slaves
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere. And the better we can understand it,
Speaker 1: the better we can predict it all the better. Now,
Speaker 1: how long have we been keeping records of what the
Speaker 1: weather is doing, because obviously we've been obsessing over the
Speaker 1: weather since time out of mind. But when you look
Speaker 1: at observation data, generally you go back to around nine
Speaker 1: UM and because that's when observation stations became more uniform
Speaker 1: in the way that they were collecting the data and
Speaker 1: measuring it. So if you need to start point like
Speaker 1: that's the easiest place to go to, right, But there
Speaker 1: were other systems in place before that, but not as uniform, right,
Speaker 1: not as uniform. For instance, UM the England and Wales
Speaker 1: precipitation series, which measures rainfall and snow, that goes all
Speaker 1: the way back to seventeen sixty six. The Central England
Speaker 1: Temperature series, which covers temperature from the south the Midlands
Speaker 1: to Lancashire, goes back to sixteen fifty nine. But again,
Speaker 1: nineteen that's generally modern UM forecasting start date. Right now.
Speaker 1: A lot of people will point to that date too
Speaker 1: and say, oh, this is when we began to really
Speaker 1: UM record information about hurricanes, and maybe that's why it
Speaker 1: seems like there are more hurricanes lately because we only
Speaker 1: have this limited data set, which may be a possibility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's always a concern when you're looking at
Speaker 1: at patterns in our atmosphere and patterns and climate, is
Speaker 1: that the records, the dependable records, only go back so far.
Speaker 1: But again, we have been uh trying to forecast the
Speaker 1: weather since uh our earliest days. It's pretty much one
Speaker 1: of the earliest sciences tackled by any given culture. Because
Speaker 1: you know, as we after the agrarian revolution especially, we
Speaker 1: have crops that need watering life depends on the cycle
Speaker 1: of the rains, the shrink and swell of the local river,
Speaker 1: the coming of the monsoons, UH, the advance of dangerous
Speaker 1: weather patterns UM you know, and again this is particularly
Speaker 1: important for agriculturally bound societies that are depending upon this
Speaker 1: artificially maintained version of vegetation that requires water, that requires
Speaker 1: UH and again, like all of us is as a
Speaker 1: slave to the atmosphere UM. And then as we develop
Speaker 1: the surplus of these items, we start warring with each other.
Speaker 1: So military navigation also becomes key. You need to know
Speaker 1: what the weather is doing because you want to UH,
Speaker 1: you want to game your advantages in trying to attack
Speaker 1: or defend yourself from your adversary. And when you take
Speaker 1: that situation on to the ocean, you have even more
Speaker 1: can turns to deal with. There are several cases in history,
Speaker 1: of course, where see weather has saved a nation from
Speaker 1: an invading army, particularly in the case of the Japanese
Speaker 1: being saved by the divine wind protecting them from Mongol invasion.
Speaker 1: The fate of the Spanish armada headed towards towards England,
Speaker 1: so it becomes important from a military standpoint, to be
Speaker 1: able to tell what the weather is going to do.
Speaker 1: It's important from an agricultural standpoint, and then when you
Speaker 1: get into trade as well on the seas, you need
Speaker 1: to be able to accurately depend on how this uh,
Speaker 1: this this atmosphere is going to behave because on on
Speaker 1: the ocean especially, this is a situation where the weather
Speaker 1: can see you safely to your harbord destination or it
Speaker 1: can just utterly destroy you and your economy in the
Speaker 1: blink of an eye. Right, and before we had accurate
Speaker 1: meteorological instruments to help us with this, to you know,
Speaker 1: to accurately measure temperature, accurately measure pressure in the air,
Speaker 1: and then compare that to our records over time. What
Speaker 1: can you turn to? You turn to uh idioms, You
Speaker 1: turn to time warn lore, um different sayings that are
Speaker 1: based on observational data uh that deal with what the
Speaker 1: weather may be about to do. Yeah, and then on
Speaker 1: top of that you have the cultural layer, right, so
Speaker 1: you have all of the traditions that are bound up
Speaker 1: with weather in the seasons. And so this kind of
Speaker 1: guiding principle of you know, sayings based on observational data
Speaker 1: sometimes take on more of a superstitious quality, and people
Speaker 1: begin to see these as guiding forces. And that's all
Speaker 1: well and good, except that some are actually helpful and
Speaker 1: some are not. So we're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: ones that are actually rooted in in the scientific soundness.
Speaker 1: Indeed examples where they're scientifically grounded at the route and
Speaker 1: the game of cultural telephone has not really lost the
Speaker 1: truth of it over time. All right, So we'll roll
Speaker 1: one out for you. Now. Um, let me get one
Speaker 1: of my best sailor voices. I guess here, red sky
Speaker 1: in the morning sailors take horn and red sky at
Speaker 1: night sailor's delight. There you go. Uh So, of course,
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here is that blood red sky,
Speaker 1: that the kind of fucia and red sky co mingling.
Speaker 1: And what's behind it, Well, you're seeing a scattering of
Speaker 1: sunlight by small particles, but they're they're suspended in dry,
Speaker 1: dusty air. And that's key here because at sunset, these
Speaker 1: conditions imply a zone of dry high pressure between you
Speaker 1: in the sun, and since weather in the mid latitudes
Speaker 1: moves mainly west to east, that means a day of
Speaker 1: clear sailing is on the horizon for the next day.
Speaker 1: But if you witness the same scattering of red wavelength
Speaker 1: near sunrise, it implies that the calm high pressure zone
Speaker 1: and has already passed and that a stormy low pressure
Speaker 1: system could move through soon. So again, take the perspective
Speaker 1: of someone who does not have Doppler radar at their disposal. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, they're hanging out in the sixteen hundreds. They
Speaker 1: need to go out on the boat the next day.
Speaker 1: Their livelihood depends on it. These sort of signs and
Speaker 1: symbols present to you in the sky would become really important,
Speaker 1: but they're not always correct. A lot of this depends
Speaker 1: on where you stand on the earth. Um, okay, because
Speaker 1: this is very true, this sort of red sky in
Speaker 1: the morning. Sailors take warning for those who are in
Speaker 1: the mid latitudes, which include most of North America, Europe,
Speaker 1: and Asia, as well South Africa and the southern halves
Speaker 1: of South American Australia. But if you are in the
Speaker 1: polls or in the tropics, where weather tends to progress
Speaker 1: in the opposite direction, you'd want to reverse the saying. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's no cultural right. You go to one part of
Speaker 1: the world and they have a totally different thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course that's going to come into play with
Speaker 1: the globe try and sailors obviously. Alright, another one, and
Speaker 1: this is what I had not heard of before. Um
Speaker 1: if a few different versions of it, now haul out
Speaker 1: my sailor voice too. Mackerel sky and Mayor's tale will
Speaker 1: make lofty ships carry low sails. Mackerel in the sky,
Speaker 1: three days dry, mackerel sky, mackerel sky, never long wed
Speaker 1: and never long dry. Now that that I hear that,
Speaker 1: and I have no idea what that even means, right,
Speaker 1: because I don't know what the mackerel sky is, what
Speaker 1: a mayor tail is, And then what does it mean
Speaker 1: that ship carries low sails? You're waiting for Grendel to appear, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like when I first read it, I thought low sails,
Speaker 1: like maybe that means that there's not enough wind filling
Speaker 1: up the sails. But what it's actually saying is if
Speaker 1: you look up in the sky, gentle sailor, and you
Speaker 1: see a fish or a horse tail, Uh, there's a
Speaker 1: storm approaching, and you better lower your sails to protect
Speaker 1: them from the accompanying high winds Okay, which at least
Speaker 1: to the question, what on earth is acral sky? Well,
Speaker 1: mackerel sky known in Germany and France as sheet clouds.
Speaker 1: These are large is a large, spreading assemblage of clouds
Speaker 1: that resemble a series of waves or fish scales, with
Speaker 1: streaks of blue sky peeking out between the puffs. If
Speaker 1: you look at pictures of this that it kind of
Speaker 1: looks marble to a certain extent. And then you have
Speaker 1: Mare's tails, which are long thread like cirrus clouds, often
Speaker 1: stretched by strong high level winds. And when we're looking
Speaker 1: at this, what we're observing, uh, this all consists of
Speaker 1: serial cumulus and alto cumulus clouds, which means there's moisture
Speaker 1: high up in a cold sky at an altitude of
Speaker 1: around eighteen thousand and thirty thousand feet or six thousand
Speaker 1: to ten thousand meters. Uh. Simply put, these are the
Speaker 1: cloud systems that develop prior to a storm. Um. And
Speaker 1: the blue streaks that you see indicate that the clouds
Speaker 1: are breaking up due to instability in the air. So
Speaker 1: why is it correct? Well, again, these are these are
Speaker 1: the cloud systems to developed tend to develop prior to
Speaker 1: a storm. Uh. And both the clues, whether you're talking
Speaker 1: Mackerel's or mayors suggest an impending storm about six to
Speaker 1: eight hours away. If the clouds proceed in approaching warm front,
Speaker 1: they'll thicken and the winds will veer from northwesternly to
Speaker 1: more southwesternly directions. Now, if not, if the clouds mostly
Speaker 1: consist of bigger, darker auto cumulus clouds, then you're likely
Speaker 1: facing better weather in the short term in advance of
Speaker 1: a possible cold front and an associated thunderstorms. So as
Speaker 1: a general rule, the mackerel mayor sky thing holds out,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of up in the air, no pun
Speaker 1: intended um as to whether you're actually talking about strong
Speaker 1: winds coming in or if you're talking about better weather
Speaker 1: in the short term followed by potential thunderstorm. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: again this isn't full proof, but it's the best gus
Speaker 1: based on weather patterns and knowing what happens when conditions change, right,
Speaker 1: And I think people pay attention to these kinds of
Speaker 1: forms today because maybe they're they're cloud porn enthusiasts, but
Speaker 1: really people would again stare at the sky in earnest
Speaker 1: to try to figure out what was going to happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to stake your life on something when it
Speaker 1: comes to navigation, and this, some simple idiom are saying,
Speaker 1: is ultimately better than nothing. This is all well and good,
Speaker 1: but tell me, Julie about my knee. What is going
Speaker 1: on with my knee? And it speaks to me, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta say you're You're not alone obviously in feeling
Speaker 1: this way. And in fact, Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine,
Speaker 1: noticed that certain illnesses seem to worsen under particular weather conditions.
Speaker 1: And you've probably heard people say it, you know, time
Speaker 1: over time, like I can feel it, I can finish
Speaker 1: weather coming. And according to Dr Aditya. Matto, writing for
Speaker 1: n y U longown online Journal of Medicine, quote surveys
Speaker 1: have demonstrated the upwards of any percent of patients believe
Speaker 1: that weather plays a role in their arthritic pain. The
Speaker 1: question is whether or not this is, in fact, uh
Speaker 1: an actual thing. And I will say that the jury
Speaker 1: is a bit out on this, okay, But you can
Speaker 1: look at a two thousand and seven study by Mcallendon
Speaker 1: at all. It's a multi site study which followed two
Speaker 1: hundred patients with knee osteoarthritis over different times of the
Speaker 1: year and used a well validated paining questionnaire. Called WOMAC
Speaker 1: and data from the U, S, O, A, A, and
Speaker 1: UH compared knee paying with different atmospheric conditions throughout the
Speaker 1: continental US. What they found was statistically significant positive correlations.
Speaker 1: Now why would this be. It's because your body is
Speaker 1: responding to atmospheric pressure. You don't think about it, right,
Speaker 1: because you don't necessarily feel it, But your bodily fluids
Speaker 1: are trying to exist in a constant state of balance
Speaker 1: with ambient air pressure. So as the barometer falls, as
Speaker 1: with what happens with an approaching storm, your tissues can
Speaker 1: swell in response, and that can irritate nerve endings and
Speaker 1: cause your pain level to wratch it up a bit. Okay,
Speaker 1: problem here is that that swelling happens on such a
Speaker 1: small scale that it's it's difficult to objectively detect and
Speaker 1: measure it. So researchers have to rely on people's subjective
Speaker 1: accounts of pain, which, as we know, vary and they're
Speaker 1: not always reliable. And there's also the psychological factor of priming. Right,
Speaker 1: So you see approaching storm, maybe you start to feel achy.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're paying just a little more attention to that
Speaker 1: ever present condition, right, right, So that's not to say
Speaker 1: there's not something there, it's just the jury is truly
Speaker 1: still out on that. However, those who suffer from migraines
Speaker 1: may have a level of sensitivity to their environment that
Speaker 1: gives them a leg up on predicting the weather. And
Speaker 1: according to Dr Caroline Bernstein, who is the clinical director
Speaker 1: of the Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians comprehens of Headache Center, quote,
Speaker 1: it maybe that people who get migraines are very susceptible
Speaker 1: to any fluctuation, whether it's a weather change, foods, sleep,
Speaker 1: or stress. Okay, well, I will keep that in mind
Speaker 1: the next time I feel my knee talking to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just see if your head hurts. Alright. That brings us
Speaker 1: to our next one. This one is cold as the
Speaker 1: Night when the stars shine bright, also known as clear
Speaker 1: moon frost soon. So what is this one? That's basically
Speaker 1: things basically saying, hey, if you have a clear sky,
Speaker 1: it's going to be a cold or night, right, pretty
Speaker 1: straightforward And and really the explanation of this one is
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward too. So it gets into the basic realities
Speaker 1: of how the sun heats our world. The Sun emits
Speaker 1: a vast amount of energy travels across space in the
Speaker 1: form of short wave radiation, and only a tiny portion
Speaker 1: of this power actually reaches the surface. Um Most of
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, fear is directly heated by solar radiation, but
Speaker 1: rather by the terrestrial radiation that the planet itself emits.
Speaker 1: So during the day, the Sun's shortwave radiation is absorbed
Speaker 1: by the Earth and converted into heat. The examples I
Speaker 1: often go back to when explaining this are, Okay, you
Speaker 1: have a fried egg and you're gonna cook it on
Speaker 1: a sidewalk in New York because you need some sort
Speaker 1: of visible display of how hot it is for the
Speaker 1: local news. Well, it's the heat emitted by the pavement
Speaker 1: that's doing the frying, not the sun above. And that's
Speaker 1: basically the reality of heat on our world. Also, you
Speaker 1: have a mountain climber. They're climbing up a mountain they're
Speaker 1: in encountering increasingly colder conditions as they ascend, despite effectively
Speaker 1: moving closer to the sun. Okay, so when the sun sets,
Speaker 1: the planet begins radiating this heat at various rates depending
Speaker 1: on the materials involved, and lacking clouds to capture that
Speaker 1: heat and hold it in place, the surface and atmosphere
Speaker 1: grow increasingly colder through radiative heat loss. So essentially, again,
Speaker 1: solar energy coming down hitting the Earth, it's emitted as
Speaker 1: terrestrial radiation, and if there aren't clouds up there to
Speaker 1: keep it and contain it, it just goes off into
Speaker 1: space again. So yes, indeed, if you have a night
Speaker 1: with no cloud cover, it is going to be colder
Speaker 1: because you're going to have more heat loss. That makes
Speaker 1: sense because the clouds are kind of like a blanket
Speaker 1: on the night exactly. Yeah, it's like sleeping without your blanket.
Speaker 1: You're gonna wake up a little chili without your blank eyes.
Speaker 1: All right. The next one doesn't have a neat little
Speaker 1: rhyme to it, So attempt something crickets a bit chirpen.
Speaker 1: The sun must be bourbon, Okay, I like it an Yeah,
Speaker 1: so crickets. It turns out chirp faster and warmer conditions,
Speaker 1: and more slowly as the air turns more frigid. And
Speaker 1: this is particularly true in the species of campus full
Speaker 1: tony and uh you probably have you know you grew
Speaker 1: up in a rural area right as a youngster, as
Speaker 1: did I. And that's one of those features of nighttime,
Speaker 1: especially a summer. You hear that chirping, And it's kind
Speaker 1: of amazing to me that this isn't something that I
Speaker 1: knew as folklore. Yeah, me neither. Despite just yeah that
Speaker 1: that cacophony of insect noises that you deal with growing
Speaker 1: up in a rural environment. So you're probably wondering, how
Speaker 1: can I calculate this air pressure because that's actually what
Speaker 1: they're reflecting here. Well, there's edition of the American Naturalists
Speaker 1: by A Dolbear who created this formula T equals fifty
Speaker 1: plus n minus four divided by four, where t equals
Speaker 1: temperature f and n equals chirp rate per minute. And
Speaker 1: thankfully we have the Old Farmer's Almanac to help us
Speaker 1: convert cricket chirps to degrees fahrenheit by counting the number
Speaker 1: of chirps in fourteen seconds and then adding fort to
Speaker 1: get the temperature. Okay, that sounds a bit easier, right,
Speaker 1: So example, thirty chirps plus forty equals seventy degrees. So
Speaker 1: why is this important? Well, because listening eve's dropping on
Speaker 1: the mating calls of crickets can actually give you an
Speaker 1: idea whether or not a warm front is coming or
Speaker 1: a cold fronts coming. But I gotta tell you it
Speaker 1: has its limitations because it's only accurate down to fifty
Speaker 1: five degrees fahrenheit. Uh. Any lower than that than the
Speaker 1: crickets take off, they're not really interested in hanging out me. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: you mentioned the Farmer's Almanac there, and and I have
Speaker 1: I have to ask, like, what is the deal with
Speaker 1: the farm Farmers Alminate? Because it's one of those books
Speaker 1: that has always been in the background in my life.
Speaker 1: I think my grandfather had would have a copy setting around,
Speaker 1: and I may have like lead through it once or
Speaker 1: twice as a kid. And you see it, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty much in any bookstore you go to, that will
Speaker 1: be Armer's Almanac there. And I really have no idea
Speaker 1: exactly what to do. I just always assumed it was
Speaker 1: just a whole bunch of old wives tales and a
Speaker 1: little you know, idioms and sayings about the weather. Look
Speaker 1: at the size of a wooly caterpillar to tell what
Speaker 1: the rain is going to do, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And I've never really paid it much attention beyond that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember when I was a little it was usually
Speaker 1: a fixture in my relatives bathrooms. Right, it was good
Speaker 1: bathroom reading, and it turns out that there are two
Speaker 1: different farmers almanacs. Okay, they're competing. There's the Farmers Almanac
Speaker 1: and the Old Farmers Almanac, founded in eighteen twelve and
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety two, respectively, and they both rely on proprietary
Speaker 1: formulas for their weather prognostications and how stuff works. Actually
Speaker 1: has an article on this. Kate Kirshner wrote it, and
Speaker 1: she says, quote, the Farmer's Almanac uses mathematical and astronomical
Speaker 1: formulas which are passed along from one anonymous prognosticator to another,
Speaker 1: and this almanac formula is really just entrusted to what
Speaker 1: they say is one living being, a being, not not
Speaker 1: not a person, not a human, but a being. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well that makes me think it might just be like
Speaker 1: a centaur or something. Right. Wouldn't that be wonderful if
Speaker 1: it is a centaur and it is a living being? Right? Whatever?
Speaker 1: This living being is, this weather forecaster since the publication's
Speaker 1: inception has gone by the pseudonym Caleb weather Be And uh,
Speaker 1: they keep pretty mum about Caleb about who he or
Speaker 1: she is. They just confirmed that this person exists. That's
Speaker 1: the only thing they'll confirm. Now, the Old Farmer's Almanac
Speaker 1: relies on a theory that weather is a result of
Speaker 1: magnetic storms on the sun surface, and the forecast a
Speaker 1: predicted based on a formula that is locked away in
Speaker 1: a black box at the headquarters. Wow, let's see, I
Speaker 1: had no idea it was this kind of secrety and
Speaker 1: could right. It feels masonic, right it does. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: both of the publications claim in accuracy rate when it
Speaker 1: comes to weather, but independent verifications looking at you know,
Speaker 1: years of data, say it's more like a coin toss about. Okay.
Speaker 1: So they each have their own systems based in whatever
Speaker 1: is happening on the sun or some sort of secret methodology,
Speaker 1: and it just kind of lines up with what's actually
Speaker 1: happening to a degree that you can roll with. That's
Speaker 1: the idea, right, like you can there's fifty chance that
Speaker 1: their year out from now, um forecast is going to
Speaker 1: be correct. Plus like you'll get some sort of tip
Speaker 1: about how to remove you know, butterbean stains or something. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't get that from your just iPhone weather app,
Speaker 1: you know, now you don't useful data. Siri will not
Speaker 1: tell you that information, all right, So there you have
Speaker 1: it just a little inside in the world of weather superstition,
Speaker 1: and how in some cases it does line up with
Speaker 1: what's actually going on in this complex chaotic system of
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. Um and I know, you know, let's let's
Speaker 1: call over the robot and have just a little bit
Speaker 1: of listener mail. We got this from Betsy Lange, and
Speaker 1: she starts out by saying, I had a paradigm shift
Speaker 1: two years ago while listening to stuff to play her mind,
Speaker 1: a marathon of it at a rainy campground near Barcelona.
Speaker 1: My master's thesis was on endocrine disruptors, and I cowered
Speaker 1: in fear of all the things plastic, even fearing the
Speaker 1: future of science and society. Your podcast, the first I
Speaker 1: ever listened to and still my favorite, woke me up
Speaker 1: and reminded me of the wonder and science, transforming me
Speaker 1: back into the optimists slash futurists that I forgot I
Speaker 1: was during those years of wiping butts. Just in parentheses,
Speaker 1: I was at home parent for six years, she says.
Speaker 1: I'm writing to you because you've inspired me along with
Speaker 1: so many others, and I'm in the process of creating
Speaker 1: a related but very different audio program that I hope
Speaker 1: you and or some of your listens can get involved
Speaker 1: in my production is called Stamma Gora and it will
Speaker 1: use the voices of people around the world to have
Speaker 1: a conversation about science and math topics. Contributors can submit
Speaker 1: short audio files on topics that intrigue them, interviews, monologues, debates, presentations,
Speaker 1: musical composition, and she said they don't need professional equipment.
Speaker 1: She said she wants more of a grassroots sound. So
Speaker 1: the first phase of this project is underway and a
Speaker 1: few guys are interested in it. Make sure you go
Speaker 1: to ww dot quilla dot info that's q U I
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