StreetUrchin

Rich (rclab) says, “That and winter snow measurement [by the NWS]. It’s as if rulers have become an incomprehensible alien technology.” If I’m understanding you correctly, Rich, you’re humorously decrying the sometimes odd and seemingly overly-elaborate procedures demanded by the NWS to measure snow-- I believe they insist upon snowboards, which must be swept clean every prescribed number of hours: not frequently enough and the true snowfall total will be undervalued by compression, too frequently and the total will be impermissibly inflated! I recall a few years ago reading about a record snowfall being rejected by the NWS for ‘official status’ because there were too frequent sweepings of the snowboard by the people doing the measuring. Y’know, Rich, I used to have your attitude towards this kind of obsessiveness about trivial or, at any rate, very narrow interests. I remember when I was a teenager picking up an old book my parents had lying around the house and reading a profile originally published in the New Yorker in the 1930s about a man named Irving Kassoy, whose sole preoccupation in life was barn owls. He worked in a jewelry store by day, but spent many of his nights on ten-hour, barn-owl vigils in the unoccupied Huntington mansion in remote Pelham Bay Park in the northeast Bronx. At one point in the story he told the reporter about an incident that had occurred during one of his normally very peaceful, solitary nights at the mansion: “I remember one time, though. It was about 2 o’clock on a Sunday morning. It was so quiet up here that I could hear my watch ticking in my pocket. Suddenly, someone slammed the door downstairs. I knew that I was the only one with a key to the place and that I had locked the door. And I knew whoever it was down there had no business in the house. Well, I never knew before that it really could happen, but my hair actually stood out on the sides of my head. Then I heard footsteps in the hall downstairs, and then they started coming upstairs. I heard them coming right up that stairway, to the trapdoor. Just then, though, one of the owls flew in to feed the young and I had to make a note of that in my records. So I forgot all about the footsteps.” Mr. Kassoy paused-- the reporter suspected for dramatic effect. But Mr. Kassoy said no more. “What about the intruder?” the reporter finally asked. “I don’t know,” said Mr. Kassoy. “After I’d made my notes, I didn’t hear the footsteps any more.” At the time I read that (as a teenager), I smacked my forehead in disbelief (figuratively at least) that anyone could be so obsessive about such a silly thing as barn owls, but in recent years I’ve come to cherish obsessives and to value, more and more, their contributions. So, to choose a random example, these days I’m delighted to be able to watch a documentary by an Alfred Hitchcock expert who’s carefully analyzed-- and describes, frame by frame-- exactly how Hitchcock managed to make the shower scene with Janet Leigh in Psycho embed itself so deeply in the subconscious minds of viewers that some of us are still suffering from PTSD as a result! (Even if we’ve only seen it on Netflix, and didn’t have the mutually-terrifying experience of screaming our lungs out in unison with five hundred other people in a movie theater!) With an attention to detail that only an obsessive could have, the documentarian asks us if we remember those only faintly audible sounds of the knife seemingly stabbing into human flesh? A melon was used to produce that effect. In fact, not just any melon: Hitchcock assembled a buffet table of every type of melon available and it turns out that only a casaba had the requisite density to create the desired sound! And nowadays, I have to struggle to control my eagerness when I see an article entitled, “Titans of Mathematics Clash Over Epic Proof of ABC Conjecture” even though I know in advance that it concerns a notion in number theory that is so removed from significant earthly pursuits that no one harbors the slightest belief that the proof, even if successful, will ever help human beings do anything practical like build a better bridge or navigate interstellar space more skillfully or even do anything purely theoretical like providing the mathematical basis for extending the Standard Model of particle physics. No, the ABC Conjecture is acknowledged to be of even less relevance to human lives than Mr. Kassoy’s barnyard owls and yet not one but two different winners of the Fields Medal (the highest award bestowed in Mathematics) have willingly devoted months of their valuable time to it. And I am charmed and entertained by reading about their obsession though I myself don’t have any of those kinds of tendencies! You seem astute enough Rich to exclaim at this point, “Wait a second, Street Urchin! You just claimed not to be inclined towards a preoccupation with narrow subject matter unrelated to weightier concerns, and yet you’re here in this forum, asking about utter minutiae involving the Central Park anemometer!” Actually, Rich, I have a very sound and practical reason for doing so. An elderly widow on my block, an immigrant from Eastern Europe, has been trying to deal with a very large, very dead tree near her house but on NYC property, so it’s the city’s responsibility to remove it. Because her command of English is limited, I’ve been making the phone calls necessary to funnel her request through the proper bureaucratic channels. The tree will soon be dealt with but in the meantime I want to make sure I can alert her should a high wind threaten to topple the tree onto her house! But I don’t want to needlessly alarm her. So even if LaGuardia Airport is reporting enough of a gale to get Mr. Beaufort excited, it doesn’t necessarily mean a danger is posed to her home-- if Central Park is reporting a mere 5 mph zephyr at the same time, I’d be quite reassured that nothing bad will happen to the tree (since CP’s conditions are much closer to what’s happening in my neighborhood). So, it would be very nice to know if and when Central Park will be reporting wind speed and direction again! Hence my questions.

Rich (rclab), thank you for explaining Dan76's colorful but (until-now) mystifying remark about not touching my question with a ten-foot pole. Before you clarified things, I felt like I'd been suddenly transported to Uzbekistan where a local with a very unpleasant expression on his face and an even more unpleasant tone of voice was seemingly taking very serious exception to something I'd done, but because he was speaking Uzbek I had no idea what horror I'd inadvertently committed! It strikes me as funny-- though incomprehensible-- that arguments over the details of the measurements of Central Park's weather instruments should drive men to madness!

nyc winter says, "central park reported winds are always the lowest in the nyc area...." Yes, nycwinter, that's exactly why I value those reports-- because they more closely parallel my personal experience while the airport weather station wind observations-- though certainly more melodramatic-- are simply not reflective of life on the streets of the city. And of course it's not surprising that that's the case: one thing all airports have in common is a relative absence of nearby wind-reducing obstructions. @shades: Thanks for the info! I'm not sure how responsive the NWS office would be to an inquiry of this sort from me, but I love your supplying me with the personal weather stations. The one on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History would seem highly likely to be accurate and well-maintained: the character of anyone working at a museum would seem to assure that! Incidentally, I did a little sleuthing, using the NWS records on their site for the Central Park station. Checking the Daily Climate Report, I see that the last time they had any wind information was October 13th! So it's been about 3 weeks! doncat says (in reference to the wind instruments):"Central Parks are on the castle, if I'm correct. A tower above tree level would be nice." A tower above tree level would be nice, doncat? Done! A quick consultation of Wikipedia tells me that the wind instruments at the NWS CP station are at the top of the tower of Belvedere Castle, safely above tree level unless Central Park has, unbeknownst to me, acquired a grove of mature redwoods! By the way, doncat, I immediately checked out your personal weather station. Great-- it has more info than many others I've been looking at in the past few minutes, though I'm not sure I can bear to be without precise data on Staten Island 'leaf wetness'!

nyc winter says, "central park reported winds are always the lowest in the nyc area...." Yes, nycwinter, that's exactly why I value those reports-- because they more closely parallel my personal experience while the airport weather station wind observations-- though certainly more melodramatic-- are simply not reflective of life on the streets of the city. And of course it's not surprising that that's the case: one thing all airports have in common is a relative absence of nearby wind-reducing obstructions. @shades: Thanks for the info! I'm not sure how responsive the NWS office would be to an inquiry of this sort from me, but I love your supplying me with the personal weather stations. The one on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History would seem highly likely to be accurate and well-maintained: the character of anyone working at a museum would seem to assure that! Incidentally, I did a little sleuthing, using the NWS records on their site for the Central Park station. Checking the Daily Climate Report, I see that the last time they had any wind information was October 13th! So it's been about 3 weeks! doncat says (in reference to the wind instruments):"Central Parks are on the castle, if I'm correct. A tower above tree level would be nice." A tower above tree level would be nice, doncat? Done! A quick consultation of Wikipedia tells me that the wind instruments at the NWS CP station are at the top of the tower of Belvedere Castle, safely above tree level unless Central Park has, unbeknownst to me, acquired a grove of mature redwoods! By the way, doncat, I immediately checked out your personal weather station. Great-- it has more info than many others I've been looking at in the past few minutes, though I'm not sure I can bear to be without precise data on Staten Island 'leaf wetness'!

I understand that you're being funny, but I'm not really sure I get the point you're trying to make with your humor. Not touching things with a ten-foot pole is usually reserved for controversial material that might get someone into trouble. My question is perhaps trivial, and certainly not as interesting as discussing a tropical storm projected to make landfall in the metro NY region-- but I don't see it as remotely falling into a 'not touching it with a ten foot pole' category. I see you're a veteran of 1285 posts, while this was my first: perhaps you could take a minute to explain what I'm missing, or what aspect of the American Weather website protocol I'm inadvertently violating.

A very hearty 'thank you' for the tip, Roger-- which I instantly acted upon! Do I need to point out that, as a native New Yorker, I am unaccustomed to such civility! My mind reels, and my immediate instinct is to search for the ulterior motive-- but, by God, you don't seem to have one! I guess it's just your inherent Candianness manifesting itself!

I live in NYC and when it concerns high wind situations, I find the Central Park observations most valuable because they are most relevant to my actual meteorological environment-- almost all other regional stations are located at airports which in most circumstances report both higher average wind speeds and, especially, higher gusts than both Central Park and my own personal encounters with the weather. And twice in the past couple of weeks we've had some kind of high wind advisory for the region and when I clicked on the Central Park observations I saw-- initially to my distress and eventually to my annoyance-- the letters NA. So the CP anemometer has been offline for at least several weeks. Thus the boring question I am nonetheless curious about is "How long has it actually been offline, in toto?" And I will quickly pose two cousins: Why has it remained offline for even two weeks, if not much more, given its importance? and When, if ever, is it expected back in operation? I would think that the length of the period of observations (about 150 years!) at CP and its predecessors-- at slightly different but nearby locations-- would make the full panoply of observations there-- including wind-- especially valuable. After all, the CP station's founding antedates that of most airports' meteorological stations by about 80 years!

I live in NYC and when it concerns high wind situations, I find the Central Park observations most valuable because they are most relevant to my actual meteorological environment-- almost all other regional stations are located at airports which in most circumstances report both higher average wind speeds and, especially, higher gusts than both Central Park and my own personal encounters with the weather. And twice in the past couple of weeks we've had some kind of high wind advisory for the region and when I clicked on the Central Park observations I saw-- initially to my distress and eventually to my annoyance-- the letters NA. So the CP anemometer has been offline for at least several weeks. Thus the boring question I am nonetheless curious about is "How long has it actually been offline, in toto?" And I will quickly pose two cousins: Why has it remained offline for even two weeks, if not much more, given its importance? and When, if ever, is it expected back in operation? I would think that the length of the period of observations (about 150 years!) at CP and its predecessors-- at slightly different but nearby locations-- would make the full panoply of observations there-- including wind-- especially valuable. After all, the CP station's founding antedates that of most airports' meteorological stations by about 80 years!