Geoff Arnold

An extraordinary perceptual illusion

You absolutely must check out Mr Angry and Mrs Calm. Simply amazing. I can't begin to imagine how it works...

(Via BoingBoing.)

Missed me

While I'm in India, where Bangalore has been experiencing its wettest month since records began, they also seem to have been having some weather back in Massachusetts. From the Boston Globe: "In Boston earlier yesterday, occasional gusts as high as 55 miles per hour forced pedestrians to lean into them, while downed trees snarled public transit. In the Berkshires, heavy snow fell. Along the coast, ocean waves battered beaches and seawalls, but only minor damage and flooding were reported."

New England washout

This has been one of the wettest weeks I've known in New England. It's true that it's relatively insignificant compared to the hurricanes, mudslides, and earthquakes that have afflicted the world in recent months. However in a region not used to such things, the effect has been dramatic. Here in the metropolitan Boston area we've been spared the worst of it, but in western Massachusetts and southern Vermont and New Hampshire the flooding has been dramatic, severe and fatal. See Kimberley's blog for more (with photo).

The accompanying image makes the point dramatically. (Click for a larger image.) It's the storm total precipitation from the local National Weather Service office. The data is approximate; it's estimated from the Doppler radar returns, and tends to understate the local maxima. What's interesting is the date range: this shows "Precipitation totals since 12:44 AM EDT Fri Oct 7th 2005". We're talking about a more or less continuous rain event lasting six-and-a-half days so far... and it's not supposed to wind down until Saturday afternoon.

The secret to a long life

The BBC reported on Tuesday that the oldest person in the world, a 115 year old Dutch woman named Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper ("Hennie"), had just died. When she assumed the title last year, reporters asked the inevitable "to what do you attribute, etcetera" questions, and she gave a conventional answer: "I eat a herring every day and I drink a glass of orange juice every day for the vitamins." However I suspect the real reason was emotional rather than dietary:

Mrs van Andel was a passionate football fan, and supported Ajax of Amsterdam, the Netherlands' leading team, for most of her life.

(More support for the thesis expounded in How soccer explains the world.)

Wind, rain, floods, trees

A huge storm has been pummelling New England for the last couple of days, and isn't going to move out until later tonight. (There's a low of around 995 hPa that's been stuck just south of Nantucket, blocked by a Greenland high.) The folks at the National Weather Service office in Taunton, MA, say that it's the most severe storm in late May since 1967. Just down the road there's a huge tree (a London plane, Platanus x acerifolia) uprooted, leaning at 45 degrees and resting on the roof of a house. This means that my street is blocked off while things are cleared up. Elsewhere around the Boston area there are numerous reports of flooding, power outages, trees down, and other storm damage. In our neighbourhood, we've had about 3 inches of rain; last night we experienced sustained winds of over 35 MPH, with gusts around 50 MPH.

A good day to work at home, I think.

It's snowing.

Enough. Please.

Oi! US TV!! We want our Doctor Who!!!

The first episode of the new Doctor Who series just aired in the UK. Reports from colleagues such as Chris and Dave are positive. So why are we in the US having to wait? From the BBC's FAQ:

Q. Will the new series be aired outside the UK?

A. So far, we only have confirmation that the new series has been bought by CBC television in Canada, who air it on Tuesdays at 7pm, starting on April 5, and Prime TV in New Zealand, who have not yet announced an air date. No Australian or US broadcaster has picked up the series yet.

AARGH!!!!

The First Day of Spring

Today is the Spring Equinox, the first day of Spring*. It's the season when people have honoured various deities: Aphrodite from Cyprus, Hathor from Egypt, Ostara of Scandinavia, and others. Here in Brookline, Massachusetts it's a beautiful, sunny day, around 48°F or 9°C. It's really bright out, in part because the sun is reflected off the high banks of snow left by the snowploughs. In such circumstances, it seems almost churlish to note that the weather forecast for tonight and tomorrow calls for snow....

Oh no, not MORE bloody snow!!!
OK, I'll stop whining. I really will. It's a beautiful day, and the snow won't amount to anything, and the first robins have appeared.... **

* However when I was growing up, I was taught to reckon these things by the month. So winter was December, January and February, while spring included March, April and May. C'est la vie.
** Robins. That's another thing that's hard to wrap my head around. Back in England, robins were these cute (yet fierce) little birds that were resident the year round; many Christmas cards included pictures of "robin red-breast" in the snow. (Obvious religious connotations.) Here in the US, robins are simply a variety of thrush, with vaguely rust-coloured breasts, and they're wimps when it comes to severe weather. I find it hard to think of them as robins. Hmmm: perhaps this was all part of a fiendish plan by the first professors of Philosophy at Harvard back in the 17th century: they wanted to set up an ambiguous referential situation for their lectures on cognition. "Consider the mental representation robin. In England, this refers to...". Cue Jerry Fodor (closely followed by Dan Dennett).

Will this storm beat the blizzard of '78

Since they're forecasting snowfalls of 20 to 30 28 to 38 20 to 30 inches in Boston before this storm winds down, I thought I'd see what it would take to break the records, especially the famous "blizzard of '78". Here's the data from the NWS:

Most Snow in 1 Day     Most Snow in 2 Days       Most Snow in 3 Days

21.0  Jan 20 1978      27.1  Feb   6-7 1978      27.1  Feb   5-7 1978

20.0  Jan 24 1945      21.4  Jan 20-21 1978      25.8  Feb 24-26 1969 

19.3  Feb 16 1958      20.7  Feb 24-25 1969      22.8  Jan 22-24 1945

19.0  Feb  7 1978      20.0  Jan 24-25 1945      21.7  Jan 18-20 1978

15.0  Feb 20 1934      19.7  Mar   3-4 1960

14.3  Feb  4 1961

13.8  Jan  7 1977

A blunt warning from the weatherman

When severe weather threatens, I usually visit our local National Weather Service website and open up the discussion page. This is where the forecasters exchange information: where they talk about how the computer models are converging (or not), the range of possibilities, and how - and why - they come up with an overall forecast. Lots of little details that don't make it into the forecast you hear on TV, using lots of jargon. But this afternoon, the discussion begins very simply: "Probable top ten snowstorm/blizzard for portions of sne is at hand and whereever you are this evening around 7 PM we recommend you be prepared to stay there through at least noon tomorrow". "sne" is Southern New England, and we're talking about a storm that will be among the 10 biggest on record for this area. 20 to 30 inches of snow and blizzard conditions, from late this afternoon through into Sunday. Cape Cod may get in excess of 30 inches.

How should one cope with such a situation? It seems very simple. I'm about to cook up a big pot of stew - beef, root vegetables, mushrooms, celery, red wine, onions, garlic, and herbs. Comfort food for a wild and wintry night. Now, where did I put the potato peeler...?

It's too early in the season for this kind of thing

We're not yet half way through November, but winter can't wait. The picture is from a traffic webcam about a mile from where I live in Brookline, MA. According to the NWS, Boston got 4 inches and Milton got 6.8 inches; we're half-way between those points, so figure about 5+ inches. That's what it felt like as I lugged the trash to the curbside.