Saturday, September 7, 2013

Caribbean Weather

While at the church for Branch Council Tuesday evening, a heavy rain began to fall and continued for two hours.  The church has a metal roof, so when the intensity of the rain increased, so did the noise.  At times it was difficult to hear what the others were saying.  That was a tropical storm passing the island.  The storm was later given the name of Gabrielle.

I have been quite interested in weather patterns for some time.  Alaska has its patterns.  Southeastern Idaho has its patterns.  I always enjoyed hearing Mark Eubank talk about storm tracks and their effects on Salt Lake.  Here in the Caribbean it is no different.  The weather follows patterns, and those patterns make weather forecast possible.  When I was young we did not have satellites and computer predictions, so the weatherman was often sort of close, but also often quite wrong with weather forecasts.  Our bishop in Seattle, an orthodontist by then but earlier in his career a weatherman in the US Air Force, told us about a missed prediction he made in Alaska.  It was winter, so people would hang their moose or caribou outside to keep it frozen.  He predicted that the weather would continue to be cold, staying around -25F for the foreseeable future.  A chinook hit the next day and the  temperature went up to +40F for the next week.  He said people were really ticked with him for his missed forecast.  Everybody was cooking all their meat so it would not spoil.  Bishop Merrill said he still holds the record for magnitude of missed temperature forecast!


Check out this site.  http://www.accuweather.com/en/hurricane  It has lots of interactive capability so you can check what is happening in the weather anywhere on the planet. I have it bookmarked so I can go to see what is coming along the hurricane pipeline.  Right now there is a gentle breeze from the east, ALWAYS from the east, with temperatures about 85F, as it is every day.  Humidity is about 70-80%, as it is every day.  Enjoy the wonderful autumn in the Great Basin, my favorite season.

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