The national passenger railroad company of the United States, which has taken the lead on a long-planned high-speed railway between Texas' two largest cities, continues to explore the initiative but also promoted the idea in a video released this week.
Welcome to the “just in the nick of time” April edition of the SCW Q&A. Each month Eric and Matt tackle the most interesting questions you’ve thrown at them. You can leave more questions in the comments here, or hit the Feedback link in the blog’s sidebar. We’ll also scan our social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X/Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky) for queries. And we’ll try to get the Q&A posted sooner in May!
– Dwight
Q. Could this be is our last front until Sept/Oct? April is coming to a close soon, and I can’t recall many pronounced cooldowns in May.
A. Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. We are very near the end of the road when it comes to cool fronts in Houston. However, it is not unheard of to see cooler nights in May. That is not to say cold. If I squint into the distance, I can see a decent chance of a front around the May 11-13 period, so a little less than two weeks from now. That’s a long way out to have some confidence, but I’m modestly hopeful we may have one final fling with drier air before sultry summer settles upon us for months on end.
–Eric
Q. I had read before the event yesterday that clouds sometimes clear during an eclipse due to the cooldown. Is that what happened yesterday in Houston when we had a thinning of clouds enough to see the crescent?
A. This is a great question. The answer is yes. During the eclipse in Houston, we had an issue with various sorts of clouds. We had higher level cirrus clouds, mid-level clouds, and low-level clouds. Most of the low-level clouds were cumulus clouds. What usually causes cumulus clouds to form? Heating. You heat the ground during the daytime, the heated air parcels rise, cool, condense, and you get clouds. Well, as you begin to block out the sun during an eclipse, you begin to reduce that heating mechanism. And in time, a lot of those cumulus clouds (or what we often call “fair weather clouds”) will dissipate. The animation below is from the 2017 eclipse, and you can see how the cumulus cloud field over Missouri and Illinois really dissipated as the eclipse unfolded.
A satellite loop of the 2017 total eclipse over Missouri and Illinois. (University of Wisconsin CIMSS)
This is likely what “saved” much of Texas this year. There were still plenty of clouds higher up, which are less impacted by daytime heating and more driven by physical storm systems. But by virtually eliminating a layer of lower cumulus clouds, you had one less obstruction to view the sun, which periodically broke through the higher clouds.
–Matt
Q. How far inland would you recommend having hurricane shutters to board up if a storm comes inland? I find myself trying to calculate what would be the strongest type of hurricane that we could feel in order to decide if I want to invest in shutters, but can’t find any info. Would you guys know?
A. We’re not storm damage experts, but whether you should have hurricane shutters depends upon several factors. First of all, the most important factor is whether you’re close to the coast, as winds do die down significantly as a storm moves inland and encounters friction with trees, homes, high rises, and other structures.. The second factor is the proximity of stuff, like trees and unattended deck chairs and you name it. The most common reason windows break is due to flying debris. So if there’s lots of things around that you can imagine flying into your windows, that’s a risk factor.
Maximum sustained winds from Hurricane Ike in 2008. (NOAA)
I’ll be honest with you. I’ve lived through flood storms in Houston. I’ve lived through surge storms. But I’ve not really experienced a wind storm. Hurricane Ike was the closest thing, but it barely brought Category 1 winds to parts of Houston. This was bad enough, knocking power out to the city for up to two weeks. At the time I lived in Clear Lake and we had to get a new roof. I guess what I’m saying is that it’s not just your windows, it’s also your roof. And a prolonged period without power.
I guess what I would advise is that, if you live south of Interstate 10, and can afford it, hurricane shutters are not a bad idea. You will probably never need them, but if it proves peace of mind, that is not a bad investment in an uncertain world. Make sure they’re easy to put up on short notice.
–Eric
Q.On your weather app I notice that the humidity (sorry I mean HOUmidity) can be low in the evening and then go way up in the morning, coming back down again as the day goes on. Why?
A. Relative humidity (RH) is just that, relative. Dewpoint temperature is the temperature to which you’d need to cool the air to saturate it. In other words, the higher the dewpoint, the damper the air is. Dewpoint can fluctuate, but it’s usually more stable than temperature. So, let’s say you have a dewpoint of 72°. The morning low is 75° in this example. That means your morning relative humidity at 75/72 would be 90 percent. Obviously, you warm up during the day, so with a high of 88 degrees but a steady dewpoint still sitting at 72, your RH at 88/72 has dropped to 59 percent. As the air cools around sunset bringing the temperature relatively closer to the dewpoint, the humidity rises again. It limits the usefulness of RH. This is why we flout other metrics like dewpoint to drive home how humid it actually feels.
–Matt
Q. After your earlier answer, I’m confused by the description of what “percent chance of rain” represents. I was taught in my meteorology classes that probability of precipitation in weather forecasts means the probabilistic chance that it will rain at the point specified in a given time period. For example, if I enter my zip code to get a National Weather Service forecast for my area today, a 40 percent chance of rain means each point within my zip code has a 40 percent chance of seeing rain, not that 40 percent of the land area within my zip has a chance of seeing rain. Insights? Or is this just splitting hairs?
A. It’s more or less splitting hairs. But this is a fun topic so why don’t we dive a little deeper. Let’s go directly to the National Weather Service, where we find this delightful introduction to its “probability of precipitation” explainer:
The probability of precipitation forecast is one of the most least understood elements of the weather forecast.
I just love the “most least” phrasing. A perfectly confusing introduction to a confusing topic. Anyway, fundamentally you are correct that it is a point forecast rather than an areal forecast. But it is a point forecast based on an areal forecast. If that makes sense. Which it probably doesn’t. And that’s ok.
There are two factors that go into making a “probability of precipitation” forecast. First there is the forecaster’s certainty that precipitation will form or move into the area, and this is multiplied by the areal coverage of the precipitation that is expected. Here are two examples for how one might derive a 40 percent chance of rain:
(1) If the forecaster was 80 percent certain that rain would develop but only expected to cover 50% of the forecast area, then the forecast would read “a 40 percent chance of rain” for any given location.
(2) If the forecaster expected a widespread area of precipitation with 100 percent coverage to approach, but he/she was only 40 percent certain that it would reach the forecast area, this would, as well, result in a “40 percent chance of rain” at any given location in the forecast area.
Does that clear things up? Probably not.
But given the general inaccuracy of precipitation forecasts, I think it’s fine to think of a “40 percent chance of rain” as either a point forecast or, more generally, that about 40 percent of an area will receive rainfall during a given period of time. This is not an exact science, it’s just a forecaster making a most best guess of things.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
Since starting my first work-from-home job last year, I’ve noticed the unexpected perk that being able to work from an armchair, recliner, or my couch has SIGNIFICANTLY reduced chronic pain from an old injury because I’m able to support my body in ways that a desk chair doesn’t allow.
My concern is that in a very cameras-on culture, it looks like I’m slacking off or lounging. For what it’s worth, I’m always sitting upright with a lap desk to stabilize my computer, dressed professionally, and I default to blurring my background, but it’s still pretty obvious that unlike my coworkers I’m not usually at a desk. For extremely important meetings with higher-ups or rare in-office days, I can make a desk setup work for a few hours to keep up appearances, but it sucks and leaves me sore so I’d rather not do it for every call I have to be on.
Theoretically I could get an ergonomic desk set-up, but the kind I’d need would be expensive and it seems wasteful to spend my own money or ask my employer to use limited nonprofit resources on something that can be accomplished just as easily with the furniture I already have.
My supervisor, HR, and coworkers know about my injury (I’m very open about it), but I’ve never formally said “working on my couch eliminates my need for painkillers,” and even though I’ve never gotten the impression that this is a problem within my organization, I am a little insecure about it!
Are there ways to make the optics better? If meeting with someone from outside my company should I address it proactively? Am I overthinking this? I’m really interested to hear what you suggest.
You’re in an armchair. It’s designed for sitting! Throw in a smoldering pipe and a bookcase behind you and you will look extremely distinguished.
If you really want to get peace of mind about it, you can always run it by your boss and say, “I’ve found sitting in an armchair while I work has significantly reduced pain from an old injury. I’m assuming it’s fine to appear on video calls that way — but you would let me know if it comes across oddly or I should get any kind of formal accommodation to do that, right?” They will almost certainly laugh and say it’s fine, and you will have peace of mind about it that you don’t currently have.
Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SC) defended killing her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, after the anecdote was leaked from her upcoming memoir, saying that the dog was “untrainable” and “tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm.” What do you think?
TORONTO – Loblaws announced this week that it will lower its record-breaking prices once the Toronto Maple Leafs stumble their way into a third round victory for the first time in their franchise history. “Listen, we know that our prices have skyrocketed over the last several years for no real reason,” explained Galen Weston Jr. […]
GRAND CANYON VILLAGE, AZ—Awestruck as they watched the creature scarf down the grease-stained paper product, visitors at Grand Canyon National Park were reportedly treated to the majestic sight of a crow eating a napkin Tuesday. “Shh, kids, quiet—we don’t want to scare him off,” said tourist Pierre Boulard, who took…
The arrest of dozens of Pro-Palestinian demonstrators since last week has left First Amendment advocates asking who gets to enjoy speech protections in Texas.
WASHINGTON—Saying they’d learned a lot about her life and the adversities she’d faced over the years, the nation’s white women announced Monday that they had a new perspective on socialite and media personality Paris Hilton. “After many difficult, arduous hours spent reflecting on our own deeply held biases and…
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
I’ve found myself in an odd situation and would love some thoughts on what to do. I work in fundraising at a nonprofit and today, following a donor event, I got back to my desk and saw that I had five missed calls from the same number. The first four had no messages, but the fifth one had a message from a (supposed) elderly woman I didn’t know stating that she and her husband wanted to make a gift of $7 million. Immediately my spidey-senses pinged, as people don’t just make six-figure donations out of nowhere (in all my years in this line of work, the only surprise million dollar gift I ever saw was an estate bequest).
I played the voicemail back for my team, essentially saying “This is someone trolling us, right?” We couldn’t quite make out the name given and a search of the phone number didn’t do much. Finally I decided to call back to see if I could figure out what was going on. I spoke with the woman, who reiterated their interest in a multi-million dollar gift to name a theater. I told her that if she wanted to talk about naming opportunities, I’d have to forward her to my boss. She got quiet, then said “Never mind.” When I confirmed she no longer wanted to make a gift, she said she had been told I could handle this for her. I confirmed that while I process gifts, anything involving naming rights had to go through my boss. She said she would call my boss later as now wasn’t a good time. I asked if she wanted my boss’s phone number. She said no and hung up.
As my team and I were discussing what was, at this point, obviously a prank, my phone rang and the screen showed the name of a high school intern who just started with our team this week. However, when I picked up there was a man on the other end claiming I had been speaking with his wife and apologized for her, saying, “She’s a bit tipsy this afternoon.” He then said he did want to speak to my boss about a gift, so I transferred the call. Our intern’s name also appeared on my boss’s phone screen, and when she answered he had hung up.
At this point, we were all thoroughly flummoxed. We confirmed that the number for the original call (and the one I called when returning the voicemail) is the one given to us by the intern (he had already gone for the day when this happened). Obviously we’re going to talk to him about this and figure out what’s going on, but I’m not sure what the best course of action is.
On the one hand, we don’t know if this is something he was in on. I could easily see this being a friend or sibling stealing his phone to make a prank call (and while I haven’t interacted with him much, he struck me as a pretty shy and sweet guy). On the other hand, even if he had nothing to do with this, I’m not sure what we can say to him other than letting him know it happened. Don’t let someone take your phone? Be careful who you’re friends with? Watch how much info you’re giving out about us? And if he admits this was a prank by him, does it warrant cutting his internship early? I get high schoolers aren’t known for their maturity, but it does feel annoying if he’s squandering an opportunity he’s being given here.
In my youth, I was an expert prank caller — and not to brag, but I was once awarded a trophy made of clay for Top Prank Caller by my nieces after passing along my skills to them — but even I knew that you don’t prank call your job with false promises about money, particularly when you are a high school intern.
That said, “she’s a bit tipsy this afternoon” did make me laugh out loud, so kudos to this young group of hooligans. I can vividly imagine the mirth this must have produced on their side after they hung up.
Anyway. Your intern. The chances he wasn’t involved in this are low. Not non-existent, but low. Lots of high schoolers who appear shy and sweet at their jobs are quite different when they’re with their friends. (I was another example of that; my high school jobs all thought I was an angel. I was not.)
But the first step is to talk to him. Tell him you got a prank call from his phone number and ask if there’s anything he wants to tell you. He’s likely to be embarrassed (which is good; this is how we learn things), and there’s a good chance he’ll confess. Whether he admits his involvement or blames it on his friends, explain that you know it was meant as a joke but organizations take fundraising really seriously — it’s the only way your work can happen — and that wasting people’s time chasing donations that don’t actually exist is really disrespectful to his colleagues and to the work you’re all there to do.
He probably hasn’t thought of it like that, because he’s in high school and they don’t know much about the world. This is a good way for him to start learning.
I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to fire him over it (although you should hear him out and see how he responds first). It’s reasonable to decide he showed a level of immaturity that’s not compatible with the work you need done. But I also think internships — especially at that young of an age — are about learning, and there’s a big opportunity for growth here if you do keep him on. Sometimes mortification at being called on one’s behavior is a perfectly suitable consequence, and you don’t need to mete out anything more than that.
NEW YORK—Earning widespread praise from adult viewers, a new episode of the animated children’s TV series Bluey tackled the difficult subject of walking in on your parents during their scheduled weekly sex, sources confirmed Monday. “We watch Bluey every week as a family, and I tell you, when Bandit sat Bluey down to…
OTTAWA – Facing criticism for not having any plans to combat the climate crisis, opposition leader Pierre Poilievre has promised that if he becomes Prime Minister, “the country will be facing much larger problems.” “We know Canadians are frustrated with the government’s inaction on the environment, which is why my cabinet will ensure there will […]
Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives plan to make Canada the freest country in the world if (ok once) they get into power. In unrelated news here is a list of everything Conservatives currently in power provincially have banned Canadians from doing. 1. Using a name and pronouns that reflects their gender identity in school (Alberta, […]
VANCOUVER – No official outdoor Canucks viewing parties will be held in Vancouver during the NHL playoffs, prompting angry fans to make due by drunkenly smashing their own possessions. “I have fond memories of the year we competed for the Cup against Boston or Carolina or whoever it was,” said self-proclaimed hardcore fan Dennis Ford. […]
NEW GLARUS, WI—Tsking her tongue with envy as she put the finishing touches on her teen’s at-home hairstyling, local mom Sandra Bennett told reporters Friday that she was pretty jealous of all the dick her daughter was going to pull with those highlights. “Honestly, I’m happy knowing what these dirty blond…
The Transportation Department issued a new rule requiring airlines provide customers with automatic cash refunds in the event of flight cancellations or significant delays, saving passengers a projected $500 million in the next year. What do you think?
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