Welcome to Winter

Quit complaining about the cold. It's January. It's supposed to be this cold.

Go out and about despite the weather. Embrace it. The winter weather won't be here forever.

Headlines for November 17, 2014

It's cold, rainy, and foggy out there today. Good Scottish weather.

I was going to have a trial today, but the case settled just before we started picking a jury. Consequently, you get a blog post. (Lucky you!)

Looking around, here are some of the headlines that caught my attention today and over the weekend:

1. South Carolina beat Florida in overtime which got the Florida head coach fired. What's really interesting is whether South Carolina will now offer the former Florida head coach a job as a defensive assistant.

2. A doctor who was transported from West Africa to a Nebraska hospital has died of ebola. Apparently, he got to the US just recently, and it looks like he was in a pretty advanced stage of the disease before he got here.

3. One of the scientists who helped land the Rosetta probe on a comet wore a shirt that offended some people. If you're over 13 and offended by someone's shirt, you're a weak-minded moron. Get a grip, people. It's a shirt. You people are worse than the preacher in Footloose.

Other than that, what else you got?

An Autumn Weekend in Williamsburg, VA

William & Mary in 1902 (it hasn't changed much since then)

I'm spending the weekend in Williamsburg, VA. Autumn is absolutely wonderful in Virginia. Enjoy the weekend, y'all.

Monday Game Week Links

Happy Monday.

A few things going on this week:

Rick Perry will be in Columbia fundraising for SC Republicans in various different places. He'll be at First Citizen's Cafe on Main Street on Wednesday to raise money for the SC GOP in general, and on Thursday, he'll be at Doc's BBQ for Kirkman Finlay.

In case you want to attend any outdoor events, it looks like the tropical storm is going to miss South Carolina. So the weather should be nice all week.

Oh, and there's a football game that will be played on Thursday.

#BringBackOurGDP

Am I the only person slightly concerned about this whole economy contracting by 2.9% in the first quarter of 2014?

It's not all "weather related". The weather doesn't drop your GDP by 2.9%. Or as Reuters puts it:

While the economy's woes have been largely blamed on an unusually cold winter, the magnitude of the revision suggests other factors at play beyond the weather.

No kidding? The weather isn't entirely to blame? I think we need to deploy a hashtag. Remember #BringBackOurGirls?. If we have another quarter of negative GDP, that's a recession.

Yeah, I think it's time for #BringBackOurGDP.

No Hurricanes for SC This Year?

Hurricane Irene Via NASA

According to scientists at Coastal Carolina University, we won't have any hurricanes hit the Palmetto State this summer.

But wait! I was told that global warming would increase hurricane activity. How can this be?

"Slight risk of severe weather in the Midlands this week"

That's the headline on a piece over at WIS.

If given a choice, I would prefer a severe risk of slight weather.

Coldest March In Over 20 Years?

AL GORE, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Obviously, record cold temperatures are directly caused by humans, or something.

Winter Storm Watch Issued for Midlands

Once again, we play our dangerous game, a game of chess against our old adversary -- The Winter Snow. For forty years, your father and your older brothers before you played this game and played it well. But today the game is different. We have the advantage.

Yes, the winter weather is headed our way again. Looks like the storm will hit the midlands on Tuesday night and persist until Wednesday. As always, drive safely. 

One other note, unrelated to the weather: I'm fed up with The State website. They've cluttered it with drop-down ads, pop-up ads, and paywalls. Frankly, I've had enough, so I'm not going to be linking them anymore. There's never really a story on The State that isn't found elsewhere, so I'll go elsewhere. However, if I have to discuss something that is there and nowhere else, I'll be just generally discussing it without linking it. I know that The State isn't relying on me to send them traffic, but I'm just going to take a stand against bad websites that make it difficult to get to the content.

So yeah, mood status: Cranky

Midlands Schools to Have Delayed Opening Because of Cold Weather

No precipitation, but we're now having a delayed opening for the cold? I could understand if it was going to be icy due to snow, or sleet, but there isn't any actual precipitation being forecast. It's just going to be cold.

I don't really think that two hours is going to make much of a difference.

Bart Starr in the 1967 Ice Bowl

Put on a coat, y'all. Or don't. Bart Starr didn't need a coat in the Ice Bowl. Man up.

Do You Care About Lake Levels?

A reader (Dr. Gamecock) brings this to my attention in the form of an Op-Ed about local television. When I first read it, I laughed so hard I almost knocked over my bourbon.

I was talking to someone today about why they always have the weatherman on TV report the lake levels every day. Do we really need to know if the lake level changed by 0.1 up or down. Who cares? The only people who probably care are the ones that live on the lake, and they can just walk out in their back yard and look. Also, is this really weather? Why does the weatherman have to tell us everyday what the lake level is? It is usually about the same every day. 

It is not really news, unless it changed dramatically for some reason, and then the news would be the reason it changed, not the lake level.  With the advent of computers, it you really wanted to know the lake level, just look it up on the internet. There are lots of places to find real time information. I would rather know if there is going to be frost on my windshield in the morning. That is information I could use.  "Be sure to watch our show tomorrow, when we report the latest lake levels." 

WIS Television: Your most trusted news source for lake level reporting.

Hurricane Experts Give Up Trying

In South Carolina, the natural disaster that we worry about more than any other is the hurricane. (No, not this one.) Every so often, the weather experts tell us whether or not we should expect an active hurricane season or not. Personally, I put very little stock in these predictions. However, we're seeing a change in this:

“We are discontinuing our early December quantitative hurricane forecast for the next year … Our early December Atlantic basin seasonal hurricane forecasts of the last 20 years have not shown real-time forecast skill even though the hindcast studies on which they were based had considerable skill.”

Basically: Our predictions have been worthless, so we're going to wait until the hurricanes are closer before we try to predict them so we stop making fools of ourselves.

The two scientists from Colorado State University will still discuss different probabilities of hurricane seasons in December. But the shift signals how far humans are, even with supercomputers, from truly knowing what our weather will do in the long run.

What? You're telling me that even with a "supercomputer" you can't predict general hurricane patterns a couple of months out?

One Question: Are we still supposed to go along with all your friends who are telling us that the entire earth is going to heat up in the next twenty years, the polar ice caps will melt, the cute polar bears will all die, and we'll all cook to death because Mrs. PP (and company) drives an SUV?

Just checking, because if you can't tell me whether or not a hurricane season is going to be big or not in less than a year, I have trouble believing you when you talk about things that will happen in 20 years.

[H/T: Ace]