[LEMONS] 10.29.2003
And Now, A Word About The Weather.
Depending on your viewpoint, San Francisco either has wildly varying weather, or no weather whatsoever. A fantastic climate, or a cold and foggy one. I tend to take the former view in both cases. If you've ever been caught out in a suddenly foggy day here, endured a Southern summer, or Northern winter, or tanned at the beach here on a beautiful February day, odds are you'll agree with me.Our apartment is a fourth-floor flat on a hillside, surrounded by three story Victorians. We have the best view in the whole damn City. You can look out on the Bay, Golden Gate Park, Alamo Square, the downtown skyline, the Transamerica building, the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge (through trees), Mt. Tam, Mt. Diablo, Oakland, Berkeley, the sunrise over the East Bay hills. And that's just from the kitchen.
But the real thing to watch is the fog. Some days it comes barrelling in out of nowhere, rioting over Twin Peaks and spilling into downtown through the Hayes Valley corridor. I've watched it appear seemingly out of the ground, filling up the Bay and slowly easing over the City. Since we moved in here in April, I've become obsessed with the weather.
Hence the barometer. A few months ago--probably on a freezing July day--I got it in my head that I wanted to track the weather myself. I wanted to present my own acu-view forcast. I needed a barometer, and began asking everyone I knew for one. Harper came through.
But does it work? Well. On Saturday, the first day I used it, the barometric pressure was 30.11. It rose slightly during the day, and continued to hover in the 30.1 - 30.15 range until yesterday. But then yesterday morning, I awoke to see that the pressure had fallen slightly. By last night, it had fallen dramatically, to 29.775 or so. Meanwhile, the Hygrometer, which measures relative humidity and had been hovering around 30%, started to rise. The temperature, however, was unchanged, static in the mid-80s. The air was clear. It was a perfect, balmy night, just as the last several had been. There was no perceptable change in the weather.
Today, however, is another story. The barometric pressure this morning is about what it was last night, but we're 15 degrees cooler, and the relative humidity is up to 65%. Look outside and it's a cold, blustery day. The wind is whipping about, and I can't see across to the East Bay.
In other words, it works.
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