An apt topic, giving today’s sudden swelter: The Weather Ball in downtown Portland.

Once I was driving with Mr. Pencil, on the off-ramp from I-5 south, city center exit, and said “Oh, the weather ball says it’s going to rain.”

And Mr. Pencil: “The weather what?”

“Surely you know about the weather ball.”

Just a moment ago, I stuck my head out of the office window, and pulled it back in, then closed the window because it is wavery hot out there. It gleams, and hot wind blows in.

“Drat!” I said to Aileen, across the room at her desk. “You can’t see the weather ball from here.”

“The weather ball?! What’s the weather ball?”

And so it goes. I guess it’s not as common knowledge as I would have assumed.

The weather ball is, well, a ball of sorts (if by “ball” you mean “cube”–it has squared edges) on a pole on a building in downtown Portland. It’s covered in lights. It’s on a squat, dull building–I’m not sure which one. It might be the Unitas building. It might not. It’s near the Standard Insurance Building.

It can tell you one of six things, that is:

1. It’s going to get hotter (steady red)
2. It’s going to get colder (steady white)
3. It’s going to stay about the same (steady green)
4. (and 5 and 6) It’s going to precipitate (blinking)

Yesterday I imagine it was steady red. I don’t know what it says today because I cannot, as I said, see it. Well, I can see it, by running down the hall to the west end of the building and using the unfinished unit’s view, but it’s so bright I can’t make it out. I think it’s red.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who knows about this. It’s been around a whole lot of long time. I loved it as a child.

According to Wikipedia, it’s one of a whole lot of similar weather beacons in the world.

Tags: PDX, weather

70 degrees this morning and suddenly last night the first time since last fall the air has gone soft and you can smell things, sometimes things you don’t want to smell, but we take the bad with the good because this city’s winter climate is the cross we bear until it unfurls into something so glorious we can barely talk about it for the grins we’re carrying on our faces.

A confused season. Daffodils, tulips and iris all blooming at once.

David and I suppose we will go camping today. We’re headed for the gorge eschewing trees because trees get in the way of seeing the sky.

Was up last night til four reading, reading, sleepless with my shattered belly parts making sounds of discontent–I’ve started eating vegetables again and the system has taken voluble notice.

In Boston, I understand, it’s also a beautiful day. My sister is there, and is ecstatic because she got the (foregone, if you ask anyone else) news yesterday that she passed the bar. As if we’re surprised. Magna cum laude from Harvard Law. As if we’re surprised! But we congratulate her!

Tags: camping, maggie, spring, weather

It’s the 13th! Know what that means? It means that, at least until I change the logic again, that it’s the day you’ll see a photograph of a rainbow in Finland (it was an epic rainbow, believe me) in the header of the site. I know most of you don’t actually visit the site itself, but you can trust me.

So in that vein, I’m going to talk about the weather.

My OS X weather widget shows a mostly sunny icon for today. Word on the street is that it’s supposed to be mild. But here it is 10:38 and the sky is crusted over and it’s only 40 degrees. This got me to thinking about weather, forecasting, and challenge that putting the two together causes for meteorologists in the Pacific Northwest. I gather the weather is hard to predict here.

If you prefer to receive your weather outlook as more of a fascinating, introspective musing (often with shades of grey) than a simple icon, and you live ’round here, I highly recommend Fox 12’s Weather Blog. I like how the jargon and the zeal show through in passages like this:

Models continue to show longwave ridging over the Northwest through at least the early part of the next week. This weekend looks especially nice with very high 500mb. heights and a sharp ridge.

I also like how the forecast is posited as a theory, not an inevitability. The blogging weathermen question themselves and their data in their posts. There’s lots of use of “maybe.” I like that. And there’s a heck of a lot of commenting by other people who also seem to have zeal.

Also interesting to me is ForecastAdvisor, which has apparently been around for some time. They collect forecasts from the major providers and analyze it for accuracy. Looks like forecasts for Portland are right about 3/4 of the time, which is more than I would have expected. And their icon for today shows rain (albeit I can’t figure out the source of their forecast from their FAQ–is it boiled down from all of the forecasts they process or their own data?)! Also noteworthy is that you can click on a day’s forecast and see past guesses for the same day leading up to the current outlook.

Other interesting weather sites or data I should know about?

Thanks to @donpdonp for the inspiration here.

Tags: forecast, weather