Re: Available consultant Vijay for Unix System Admin with sun Solories Expireance.

In article <slrng81tre.g4h.ibuprofin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
ibuprofin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Moe Trin) writes:
On Thu, 17 Jul 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.unix.admin, in article
<hIWdnXxPsNkmiR3VnZ2dnUVZ_qTinZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Robert Melson wrote:

<snip>
Up til 30 June we were on the verge of having our driest
1st half since they began recording weather in 1879: from
1/1 through 6/29 we had had 0.23 inch (normal for the same
period is 2.73 inch). We got just enough rainfall at the
official station of 6/30 to knock this year out of contention
and to remove it from the top 10 driest first halves.

It's difficult to speak about a 'normal' rainfall for the exact reason
you wrote in the first paragraph. Thunderstorm rainfall tends to be
scattered, because a storm cell is rarely larger than a few miles in
diameter, nor lasts longer than an hour. Groups of cells may exist,
but this means only that more random places may get varying amounts.

2000 9.06" 2001 10.53" 2002 5.11" 2003 13.15"
2004 14.25" 2005 17.44" 2006 8.07" 2007 11.45"

So, what is "normal"? Up to 6/30, we had 4.78" year-to-date, and added
0.74" in three "storms" this month.

I tend to look at "normal" in this case as being defined by the
historical weather records - if you will, the statistical norm.
In the case I've described, "normal" over the 100+ years that
weather records have been maintained for El Paso say we should
expect 2.73 inches of rain for the first half of a year.

In partial rebuttal to my own assertion above, I'd point to Isaac
Asimov's "The Abnormality of Being Normal", in which he pretty
much demolishes the concept of _human_ normality. While we _are_
dealing with weather and not with humans, the application is
similar.


Of course, we ARE on the northern fringe of the Chihuahuan/Sonoran
Desert, so minimal precip is NOT surprising.

nor is the variability.

What we don't have in the course of an ordinary year is the
temperature extremes - hottest ever here was 114 F a couple
of years back, coldest since records started -8 F back in the
mid 60s (-19 in Las Cruces, NM, that same winter; 42 miles
more-or-less north of here).

I remember it getting down into single digits when I did a week of
support at Orogrande in 1970 or 1971.

No question that it CAN get quite cold - nothing like the Great
White North, of course - but winters are generally pretty
tolerable and much as described. With the exception of a couple
of weeks in late January/early February, it's possible to run
around in little more than a light jacket or a sweater during
the day and nothing much heavier after the sun goes down. Other
side of the coin is that, because the RH is so low, the air
doesn't hold heat very well and cools pretty rapidly after
sundown - a blessing in the summer, something of a mixed-blessing
in mid-winter.


Most summers we'll have a double handfull of 100-105 degree days,
rarely anything above that, even more rarely anything > 110. Winter
overnights average in the upper 20s, rarely hit the teens and almost
never approach 0. While I said I'd rather do Minnesota than Phx -
some truth to that - climate here is a really nice compromise,
methinks.

You're a good bit higher than we (S. Diablo Way is ~1200'MSL, and I'm
all the way up at 1810' - KELP and Briggs are around 3950'), and
you should be ~9 degrees cooler just due to that. I've actually seen
white stuff on the ground here (it was actually hail, but it was quite
cold and the stuff lasted about an hour), but below freezing temps are
relatively rare even though the agriculture books suggest we normally
get killing frosts in January.

IIRC, our mean elevation is about 4500 feet. And, yes, we do
get a bit of the white stuff now'n'again. About 10 years ago or
so we had 36 inches in some parts of town over a period of 3-4
days. Most often ("normally"), if we get 6-8 inches over the
course of a week we feel like we've survived a blizzard of epic
proportions.

<snip>
Forecast says chance of thunderstorms over the weekend. Your swamp
cooler probably isn't blowing very cold right now.

No, but it moves the air around.

Bob

--
Robert G. Melson | Rio Grande MicroSolutions | El Paso, Texas
-----
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable
reason so few engage in it. -- Henry Ford

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