Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Someone explain something here to me. There's currently a winter weather warning out for this area of PA for tomorrow into Thursday. The forecast is for sleet and freezing rain. The temperature low is about 34 to 36 degrees. Now I'm not a genius (okay I am really, but let's pretend I'm not for a second) but last time I had high school chemistry, water froze at a temperature of 32 degrees. If it's not even supposed to get to 32, how can we possibly even have ice??!! I understand how freezing rain works and it doesn't unless it's 32 or below outside. If it's warmer than 32, it's just called rain. Have we as a civilization finally come to a point where we just refuse to even try to think anything thru and instead put our faith in poorly coded computer programs with faulty logic? My gosh! Why don't we just let women rule the world in that case! Whoops, did I type that out loud?

In any event, I've got my pet spider monkey warming up his throwing arm for the season. "Hey! Watch it! The weather dart board is over there you stupid foo!" **Monkey squeals as he's tossed to the other side of the room**

Note: No actual spider monkeys were harmed during the writing of this post!
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2 comments:

Andy said...

You're not a genius, and here's why: there can in fact be freezing rain at temperatures in the 34-36 degree range, as it is only 34-36 degrees on the ground. Up in the air, where rain/snow/sleet forms, it is significantly colder than it is on the ground. Thus, water droplets freeze and fall to the ground as freezing rain. It doesn't melt by the time it hits the ground. It sure was tough being the smartest person in our basement apartment for the 2002-2003 school year.

5.1.05
Jimmy said...

Youth! Silly Andy, you're mistaking sleet for freezing rain. Sleet is when it is above freezing in the clouds the droplets are forming in and colder than freezing most of the way down. I will agree in that it can sleet if the ground temperature (or that just above the ground) is above freezing. Freezing rain however is caused by warm air during droplet formation, warm air on the way down and below freezing temperatures at ground level. When freezing rain strikes an object on or near the groud it freezes! Freezing rain is not rain that is frozen as you are implying (that's sleet), it is rain (in the liguid state) that freezes on contact. And in order to freeze on contact, it must be at or below freezing on the ground or just above. It must have been tough for you to be the smartest since that really wasn't the case...

5.1.05

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