For regular readers you know we have been looking at the variety of weather apps available for the IPad. We've looked at general weather apps that look a lot like the weather you can get on TV. Today we'll take a look at more advanced (or too advanced) apps. These focus either on doppler radar or computer weather forecasting models.
You may remember we took a look at how Doppler radar works a few days ago. It is not all that easy to interpret raw Doppler feeds so most weather apps give you a composite Doppler feed of reflectivity which indirectly measures precipitation or a mosaic of several Doppler radars to show you a large weather front. What you don't normally get is up to the minute weather information. That's something you might want if a tornado warning was in effect, and with the regional radar just a few miles away we should be able to get it.
My favorite of the upscale apps is Weather+. This allows you to create a weather map of the world!! As I write this there is rain here and a heavy rain in the central Amazon. Tomorrow that spot in the Amazon will be sunny at this time. Weather+ draws on weather models from supercomputers to create these maps with a five day look ahea, but instead of burying you with complicated information you get the basics-temperature, barometric pressure, cloud cover, and precipitation. And if you don't need to know it's going to be raining in Ethiopia tomorrow night, you can focus on the New England area. The forecasts in this app are updated in three hour intervals so that every three hours you get a picture of the actual weather. The only drawback of this app is that it only uses celsius and metric measurements
An app called Hi-Def Radar gives you an animated view of the composite Doppler feed from Taunton (or whatever radar you want) for the last hour or so. It is updated every five minutes so it very useful for tracking approaching thunderstorms. Because it is a composite radar view it can show precipitation that isn't actually reaching the ground.
A similar app is RadarUS. This gives you some choice of what to look at including infrared satellite radar that shows cloud cover, base reflectivity, composite reflectivity, echo tops, and storm total precipitation. Some of these reach back four or five hours and move forward to between 5 and 10 minutes ago. The range of choices and the animation make this a great app to learn about Doppler forecasting. You can range through the maps, make up your own forecast and then test your hypothesis by using NOAA's predicted Doppler weather, the best feature of this app.
The closest you can come to actually sitting at the radar in Taunton is a $10 app called RadarScope. This is my other favorite in this group of apps. It allows you access to all the products of NOAA including each of the four "tilts" for base reflectivity or velocity. Since Taunton has recently upgraded to new SuperDoppler radar, you can get that feed also. These feeds are updated whenever you select a particular feed. All the caveats about using Doppler radar apply to the raw feeds here, but if you want to be a meteorologist, this is the app you want.
The most complex app I'll mention is Instant Weather Maps Pro. This is not the easiest app in the world to use. A good set of instructions would really help. At any rate, if you've ever heard your TV weather person say the computer models are conflicting, this is the app that lets you look at the predictions of the conflicting models. Unfortunately things you can access like SREF or NAM or GEFS Spaghetti is not explained. You'll need a course in weather forecasting to use this one. A simpler version of this mapping app is called Pocket Grib because it downloads GRIB files that create an old fashioned weather map with five day forecast model.
If you love weather, the apps presented over the last few days (and a fair amount of studying) will take you from weather info consumer to creating your own forecasts.
Welcome
A curiosity shop is a place of odds and ends in a wide range of categories. One never knows what one will find on any visit, and that is the goal of this blog. Here you'll find postings on doings around Easton, the world's environment, history, recipes, fly fishing, books, music, and movies with many other things thrown in as well. Hope you enjoy it and keep coming back.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Friday, September 28, 2012
Two Things
Sadly, these days it is not uncommon for an Easton resident to pass away in Florida and then return to Easton for burial. The Easton Historical Commission is reviewing the life of Hugh Washburn who may be the first person to die in Florida and be buried here. He passed away in January, 1828. In Florida, Massachusetts.
The Cemetery Commission is going to be placing a stone for Hugh Washburn, a Revolutionary War veteran, in the Thomas Manley cemetery. This was recommended by Chaffin way back in 1886! Washburn was born in Bridgewater in 1750 and was probably named for the famous Scots immigrant and iron master Hugh Orr with whom his family had some land dealings. In his day Hugh Orr was a more important figure in Massachusetts industry than John Ames, the father of our first Oliver. The Washburn family was prominent in our area as well. Descendents of the family served as Senators and Governors in many dstateslaborer. He married Catherine Packard in 1782 and had several children including one, Calvin, who served in the War of 1812 and may be buried in the same cemetery as his father. Another child, Catherine, only "partially" able to care for herself as an adult. Hugh served extensively in the Revolutionary War and applied for a pension in 1818. He told his story to someone who wrote it down and then he made his mark. In the petition he says that he is unable to work due to lameness. The pension request was extensive and had several sworn records by people who remembered his service. The pension was approved as was another petition by his widow.
I'm assuming Hugh was illiterate because he made his mark in 1818 rather than signing his name, but a so far unsubstantiated source indicates he was declared mentally incompetent a year later, and John E. Howard was made his guardian. Still, Hugh was listed as a head of a household in the 1820 federal census. The real mystery is his death in Florida which allegedly took place in January, 1828. There is no doubt about the date of death, but why a mentally incompetent lame man would be in Florida, Massachusetts in January is beyond me. I've been in Florida, MA in January. It's damn cold and in 1828 there were probably huge snow drifts as opposed to the sleet storm of 2008.
Florida, Massachusetts is about as high in the Berkshires as any place can get. It became a town in 1805 and has just under 25 square miles making it just 5 square miles smaller than Easton. In 2010 Florida had a population of 752; Easton had a population of 23,000. In 1850 the population of Easton was 2,337 while that of Florida was 561. If Hugh did indeed die in Florida, there has to be a good story attached to it. Right now we just don't know what it is.
Second thing. For those of you waiting for part two of the weather app story, please hang on until tomorrow. You've probably heard of the supposed magical powers of the seventh son of a seventh son. My dear cousin Robin claims the same uncanny reputation for members of our family. We hadn't talked since the wedding of the century (her son Will the artist) back in the Spring. I really felt the urge to reconnect and was writing down her number when the phone rang and Robin was on the other end! OK maybe the family does have a sixth sense, but why didn't it warn me the last time I was about to be stabbed in the back at a local non-profit? Reiki master Robin claims that my power runs in the "connection to nature" department. All this is neither here nor there for what I'm about to share. As you might imagine, Robin is the least technological of our interrelated group of cousins so I was shocked when she told me she had bought an IPad and shouldn't we link up on FaceTime. I had completely ignored FaceTime on my IPad, but soon to be Grandma Robin had learned that it was a program that allowed users of Apple products to see each other during phone conversations. Yes, I know about Skype, but I had never done a visual phone connection before. It seemed like a page out of science fiction, but we finished our conversation actually seeing each other talk. For me, it was a "Mr Watson, come here I want you" moment. Now if we can only find a way to get her husband's herb encrusted roast beef through the internet, I won't have to drive to New Jersey for the holidays.
The Cemetery Commission is going to be placing a stone for Hugh Washburn, a Revolutionary War veteran, in the Thomas Manley cemetery. This was recommended by Chaffin way back in 1886! Washburn was born in Bridgewater in 1750 and was probably named for the famous Scots immigrant and iron master Hugh Orr with whom his family had some land dealings. In his day Hugh Orr was a more important figure in Massachusetts industry than John Ames, the father of our first Oliver. The Washburn family was prominent in our area as well. Descendents of the family served as Senators and Governors in many dstateslaborer. He married Catherine Packard in 1782 and had several children including one, Calvin, who served in the War of 1812 and may be buried in the same cemetery as his father. Another child, Catherine, only "partially" able to care for herself as an adult. Hugh served extensively in the Revolutionary War and applied for a pension in 1818. He told his story to someone who wrote it down and then he made his mark. In the petition he says that he is unable to work due to lameness. The pension request was extensive and had several sworn records by people who remembered his service. The pension was approved as was another petition by his widow.
I'm assuming Hugh was illiterate because he made his mark in 1818 rather than signing his name, but a so far unsubstantiated source indicates he was declared mentally incompetent a year later, and John E. Howard was made his guardian. Still, Hugh was listed as a head of a household in the 1820 federal census. The real mystery is his death in Florida which allegedly took place in January, 1828. There is no doubt about the date of death, but why a mentally incompetent lame man would be in Florida, Massachusetts in January is beyond me. I've been in Florida, MA in January. It's damn cold and in 1828 there were probably huge snow drifts as opposed to the sleet storm of 2008.
Florida, Massachusetts is about as high in the Berkshires as any place can get. It became a town in 1805 and has just under 25 square miles making it just 5 square miles smaller than Easton. In 2010 Florida had a population of 752; Easton had a population of 23,000. In 1850 the population of Easton was 2,337 while that of Florida was 561. If Hugh did indeed die in Florida, there has to be a good story attached to it. Right now we just don't know what it is.
Second thing. For those of you waiting for part two of the weather app story, please hang on until tomorrow. You've probably heard of the supposed magical powers of the seventh son of a seventh son. My dear cousin Robin claims the same uncanny reputation for members of our family. We hadn't talked since the wedding of the century (her son Will the artist) back in the Spring. I really felt the urge to reconnect and was writing down her number when the phone rang and Robin was on the other end! OK maybe the family does have a sixth sense, but why didn't it warn me the last time I was about to be stabbed in the back at a local non-profit? Reiki master Robin claims that my power runs in the "connection to nature" department. All this is neither here nor there for what I'm about to share. As you might imagine, Robin is the least technological of our interrelated group of cousins so I was shocked when she told me she had bought an IPad and shouldn't we link up on FaceTime. I had completely ignored FaceTime on my IPad, but soon to be Grandma Robin had learned that it was a program that allowed users of Apple products to see each other during phone conversations. Yes, I know about Skype, but I had never done a visual phone connection before. It seemed like a page out of science fiction, but we finished our conversation actually seeing each other talk. For me, it was a "Mr Watson, come here I want you" moment. Now if we can only find a way to get her husband's herb encrusted roast beef through the internet, I won't have to drive to New Jersey for the holidays.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Weather Apps and a Fun Link
First the fun link: a Slate magazine article on the origin of what exactly "tastes like chicken." For those of us with adventurous palates see if you agree!
I now have 12 weather apps which is probably about 8 more than I will ever actually use. My basic three are pretty much interchangeable unless you really, really want one of their special features. My Number 1 choice is Fahrenheit which comes in a free (ad supported) or paid version. Its gimmick is an icon that always shows the current temperature even when the app is closed. It opens with a pretty page that gives a ten day forecast with maximum and minimum temperatures, the typical sunny cloudy icons, and wind speed and direction. It also has picture of the current moon phase. Click on a day and a drop down menu gives you detailed forecasts for the day in three hour increments. The drop down for the current day gives additional information like the "feels like" temperature Icons along the bottom open animated predicted weather maps for cloud cover, temperature, precipitation, and wind for the whole east coast. It's such an elegant little app that it is all most of us will ever need.
Of course, I had to have two other apps that do mostly the same thing. One is the Accuweather app. Accuweather is the company that provides weather information for many radio stations including WBZ. This app also comes in a paid or free version. The front page is similar to Fahrenheit. A click on the current day opens the Accuweather.com website which is like a newspaper about weather keyed to your locality. Back at the front page a touch on a small circle opens an icon bar that opens up some fun things including a clock you can click for an hourly local forecast, access to weather forecast videos for the whole country, a so-so satellite map, hurricane tracking, and a lifestyle page. The lifestyle page tells you things like today is a great day to fly a kite with low migraine risk and high hair frizz risk. Today the fishing forecast is fair. When it was excellent on Saturday, I actually caught fish!
The last app is free and its advertising is pretty unobtrusive. This is the Weather App from NECN (NECN WX HD). It has two pages and you can decide which will be the opening page. I keep it on the map page. This has a small ad in one corner with basic ten day and hour forecast next to it. Most of the page is devoted to a radar mosaic map which you can customize. One of the choices is a patented road condition report which this morning showed fog in central Mass and just south of here. On the forecast page you get more detailed information including an hourly forecast that includes predictions on humidity, wind direction, and visibility. You also learn that the moon is in a waxing gibbous phase and sun and moon rise and set times. Sunset is 6:35 so dusk will last until 6:59 tonight (although Accuweather assures us the mosquito threat is relatively low even though the temperature is expected to be about 63 at 7 pm.
OK, three good choices for all around weather apps. I'll add three more apps quickly. One is Hurricane Track for IOS which replaces those old hurricane tracking charts we used to follow when we were kids. It gives you satellite and radar imagery, NOAA storm track information, and updates on all tropical depressions, storms, and hurricanes. Another specialty app is called BuoyData which gives you information from all the weather buoys and tide stations in the US. Nice if you are a weather crazy following a storm or someone who owns a boat. The last app is called SnowForecast which takes up the difficult challenge of using Doppler radar and other data to forecast snow. You'll be happy to know that the closest snow storm will be in Alaska tomorrow, but less happy to learn that northern Quebec already has snow on the ground. Looks like this one might be useful-we shall see.
Tomorrow I'll tackle the weather radar and weather modelling apps that will let out your inner Don Kent.
I now have 12 weather apps which is probably about 8 more than I will ever actually use. My basic three are pretty much interchangeable unless you really, really want one of their special features. My Number 1 choice is Fahrenheit which comes in a free (ad supported) or paid version. Its gimmick is an icon that always shows the current temperature even when the app is closed. It opens with a pretty page that gives a ten day forecast with maximum and minimum temperatures, the typical sunny cloudy icons, and wind speed and direction. It also has picture of the current moon phase. Click on a day and a drop down menu gives you detailed forecasts for the day in three hour increments. The drop down for the current day gives additional information like the "feels like" temperature Icons along the bottom open animated predicted weather maps for cloud cover, temperature, precipitation, and wind for the whole east coast. It's such an elegant little app that it is all most of us will ever need.
Of course, I had to have two other apps that do mostly the same thing. One is the Accuweather app. Accuweather is the company that provides weather information for many radio stations including WBZ. This app also comes in a paid or free version. The front page is similar to Fahrenheit. A click on the current day opens the Accuweather.com website which is like a newspaper about weather keyed to your locality. Back at the front page a touch on a small circle opens an icon bar that opens up some fun things including a clock you can click for an hourly local forecast, access to weather forecast videos for the whole country, a so-so satellite map, hurricane tracking, and a lifestyle page. The lifestyle page tells you things like today is a great day to fly a kite with low migraine risk and high hair frizz risk. Today the fishing forecast is fair. When it was excellent on Saturday, I actually caught fish!
The last app is free and its advertising is pretty unobtrusive. This is the Weather App from NECN (NECN WX HD). It has two pages and you can decide which will be the opening page. I keep it on the map page. This has a small ad in one corner with basic ten day and hour forecast next to it. Most of the page is devoted to a radar mosaic map which you can customize. One of the choices is a patented road condition report which this morning showed fog in central Mass and just south of here. On the forecast page you get more detailed information including an hourly forecast that includes predictions on humidity, wind direction, and visibility. You also learn that the moon is in a waxing gibbous phase and sun and moon rise and set times. Sunset is 6:35 so dusk will last until 6:59 tonight (although Accuweather assures us the mosquito threat is relatively low even though the temperature is expected to be about 63 at 7 pm.
OK, three good choices for all around weather apps. I'll add three more apps quickly. One is Hurricane Track for IOS which replaces those old hurricane tracking charts we used to follow when we were kids. It gives you satellite and radar imagery, NOAA storm track information, and updates on all tropical depressions, storms, and hurricanes. Another specialty app is called BuoyData which gives you information from all the weather buoys and tide stations in the US. Nice if you are a weather crazy following a storm or someone who owns a boat. The last app is called SnowForecast which takes up the difficult challenge of using Doppler radar and other data to forecast snow. You'll be happy to know that the closest snow storm will be in Alaska tomorrow, but less happy to learn that northern Quebec already has snow on the ground. Looks like this one might be useful-we shall see.
Tomorrow I'll tackle the weather radar and weather modelling apps that will let out your inner Don Kent.
Monday, September 24, 2012
A Surprise
Yes, we do research here at the Curiosity Shop. While checking out weather apps I ran across a sale on a series of art history apps. So we'll talk about the weather tomorrow!
A company called overdamp led by a person called Boram Kim has produced a large series of collections of artists works. One of the nice things about an IPad is its luminous color screen and these pictures certainly show about as well as anything I've ever seen. Some of the collections are exhaustive; the John Singer Sargent collection includes 412 works. The collections are divided in logical ways-some artists chronologically, others like Rembrandt by type of work. Most have a slide show mode with music. Some like the Rembrandt have connections to Wikipedia. The organization is not perfect with some pictures presented in duplicate and an occasional mistake in naming a work, but all in all these are outstanding apps. They are on sale now for 99 cents. I downloaded the Sargent, Rembrandt, Homer, and Waterhouse collections.
Also in the art category are the collections from MOKOO.org by Wei Yao. Here along with a gallery of works you get a wikipedia based biographical book and links to YouTube pieces on the artist. I downloaded the Vermeer and was really entranced. Again, the works were on spectacular display, but one of the most interesting things were two YouTube films. Both were professionally made and originally show on TV. The first from the BBC explored Vermeer's masterpiece "The Art of Painting" while the other from the National Gallery of Art give us four pieces on four different works plus a segment on camera obscura. Vermeer only did 34 paintings that survive and 17 have a mysterious pin prick in them. It's worth the very low price of this app just to learn the secret of the pin.
MOKOO also has similar works on several other artists including Rembrandt, Monet, and Van Gogh. The two great Japanese artists Hiroshige and Hokusai are also featured. All these apps are good sized to giant files, but if you love to look at great art this is way to go!
A company called overdamp led by a person called Boram Kim has produced a large series of collections of artists works. One of the nice things about an IPad is its luminous color screen and these pictures certainly show about as well as anything I've ever seen. Some of the collections are exhaustive; the John Singer Sargent collection includes 412 works. The collections are divided in logical ways-some artists chronologically, others like Rembrandt by type of work. Most have a slide show mode with music. Some like the Rembrandt have connections to Wikipedia. The organization is not perfect with some pictures presented in duplicate and an occasional mistake in naming a work, but all in all these are outstanding apps. They are on sale now for 99 cents. I downloaded the Sargent, Rembrandt, Homer, and Waterhouse collections.
Also in the art category are the collections from MOKOO.org by Wei Yao. Here along with a gallery of works you get a wikipedia based biographical book and links to YouTube pieces on the artist. I downloaded the Vermeer and was really entranced. Again, the works were on spectacular display, but one of the most interesting things were two YouTube films. Both were professionally made and originally show on TV. The first from the BBC explored Vermeer's masterpiece "The Art of Painting" while the other from the National Gallery of Art give us four pieces on four different works plus a segment on camera obscura. Vermeer only did 34 paintings that survive and 17 have a mysterious pin prick in them. It's worth the very low price of this app just to learn the secret of the pin.
MOKOO also has similar works on several other artists including Rembrandt, Monet, and Van Gogh. The two great Japanese artists Hiroshige and Hokusai are also featured. All these apps are good sized to giant files, but if you love to look at great art this is way to go!
Friday, September 21, 2012
Doppler Radar
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Throw a ball against a wall and when it bounces back towards
you, you have the basic idea of radar Traditional radar shoots a beam of
electromagnetic waves off into the atmosphere. If the beam hits something a
certain percentage of the beam will be reflected back to the radar receiver
making a spot on a screen.
Doppler radar uses the well-known Doppler effect to get more
information than traditional radar. The Doppler effect is where the sound of an
approaching car is higher pitched than the same car going away. The speed of
the approaching car causes the sound waves in front of it to be squished
together which is the same as raising the pitch. Moving away the waves get
further apart lowering the pitch. So Doppler radar uses this effect to detect
motion.
Doppler radar read-outs measure two things: reflectivity and
velocity. The more solid an object, the more it reflects radar pulses in both
traditional and Doppler radars. The problem is the radar doesn’t “know” if it
is bouncing off a wall or a heavy thunderstorm. One way around this is to
adjust the wavelength of the pulse to make it more responsive to certain size
objects. Unfortunately, Doppler radar wavelengths can pick up anything from
smoke to birds and no amount of tuning is going to make a wall invisible. This
means that raw Doppler reflectivity scans have to be interpreted to avoid thinking
a patch of trees is a patch of rain.
This Doppler radar scan shows Hurricane Katrina’s
reflectivity pattern as it made landfall in South Florida. The heaviest rain is
in red.
To overcome some of these observation problems Doppler radar
sends pulses out at different angles. The lowest angle reaches out the greatest
distance at the lowest level of the atmosphere while the successive layers aim
progressively higher and have a shorter range. Most radars I’ve studied show returns
from four “tilts.” Most of the time the Doppler you see on TV is a composite of
all four tilts. This does a great job of showing the extent of a line of bad
weather, but it might not show you whether it is raining in your backyard
because the precipitation pictured in a composite may come from a higher tilt
where the precipitation hasn’t yet reached the ground.
One thing you usually don’t see on TV is the other factor
that Doppler radar can measure: velocity. The radar can’t measure wind speed
directly. What it can measure is whether whatever the pulse is bouncing off is
moving toward or away from the radar. Anything moving perpendicular to the
radar can’t be measured at all. Unlike the usual color coding where cool colors
represent little precipitation and warm colors heavier precipitation, cool
colors represent stuff blowing towards the radar and hot colors stuff blowing
away. This allows weather observers to determine the direction of the wind. Determining
wind speed is a little more complicated and has to be calculated by analyzing
the scan. This complication of calculation is why you don’t see this one on TV.
Just to make things even more complicated if the wind is
blowing faster than the radar can measure, it shows on the screen as if it is
blowing in the opposite direction. In other words you’ll get a big red dot in
the middle of a patch of green or vice versa. These “swirlies” help track
powerful storms like hurricanes, thunderstorms, and tornados.
This is a velocity
scan of Katrina. Note location of highest winds
So, I hope, you can see that interpreting raw Doppler radar scans
requires some study. How does this play into your choice of weather apps for
your IPad or smart phone? Tune in
tomorrow!
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Weather Apps and Chickadees
I've been interested in weather since the days of Don Kent's broadcasts on WBZ. Just a glance at this picture shows you that Mr. Kent was giving you more meteorological information than most weather people today. Mom and Dad went out and bought a barometer, and I learned all the symbols for warm and cold fronts and many other bits and pieces of weather forecasting.
The radar looks like a giant golf ball on a tee. It stands about 100 feet high and is across the boulevard from the regional headquarters of the National Weather Service. Believe it or not, this radar is only on for about 7 seconds per hour. The rest of the time it is listening.
The other thing that has caught my interest recently is mixed flocking in birds. Maggie and I were walking through the Ames Estate the other days and found ourselves surrounded by a flock of small birds that included tufted titmice, chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, some warblers, and a brown creeper. Nothing unusual on the surface; you actually see these mixed flocks quite often during the winter. But how do they form? It's not as if these birds are flying around with cell phones. And what is the big advantage for the participants? Turns out that there has been a lot of research on this. Flocks look like cooperative enterprises, and cooperation in nature is a big deal for biologists. Remember that Darwin's idea of survival of the fittest postulates animals working against all others to pass on their genes. Examples of cooperation, especially cooperation between different species, seems to oppose that idea. There are many surprises about these common birds which I also intend to take a look at over the next few days. Stay tuned.
Today every smart phone or IPad has access to weather apps. Many of these are very simple giving you just the temperature and an icon indicating sunny, cloudy, or rainy weather. However, the trend is towards more complexity. Even the simplest weather apps some to have extra features hidden inside them. The most common feature is some form of doppler radar. For the totally obsessed you can get access to the weather projection programs used by the TV weather people as well as up-to-the minute feeds from super hires next generation doppler radars, weather buoys at sea, and specialized views of hurricane alley.
Anyone who watches TV weather has seen the familiar doppler read-out. Green means light rain and red means downpours. It isn't that simple folks! Getting ready to rate the weather apps led me to explore just what the heck doppler radar actually is. It's something I'm going to be blogging about for the next several days.
Here are two tidbits to get you started. During WWII radar was used to spot incoming German planes. Radar operators quickly learned that a lot of the interference on their radar came from weather. After the war researchers began to develop radar for weather forecasting, and a rudimentary radar weather net was phased in starting in 1957. In 1961 a major hurricane was about to strike the Texas coast and a young reporter was sent to stand on the shore and get blown around. He stopped on the way to check with the National Weather Service and discovered that their radar showed the typical doughnut shape hurricane signature. The intrepid reporter got a camera on the radar and inaugurated the use of weather radar on television. The reporter: Dan Rather.
The doppler radar used today is very different from the one Rather showed that day in 1961. The regional radar for southern New England is located just a few miles down Bay Road in the Taunton Industrial Park. Here it is:
The other thing that has caught my interest recently is mixed flocking in birds. Maggie and I were walking through the Ames Estate the other days and found ourselves surrounded by a flock of small birds that included tufted titmice, chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, some warblers, and a brown creeper. Nothing unusual on the surface; you actually see these mixed flocks quite often during the winter. But how do they form? It's not as if these birds are flying around with cell phones. And what is the big advantage for the participants? Turns out that there has been a lot of research on this. Flocks look like cooperative enterprises, and cooperation in nature is a big deal for biologists. Remember that Darwin's idea of survival of the fittest postulates animals working against all others to pass on their genes. Examples of cooperation, especially cooperation between different species, seems to oppose that idea. There are many surprises about these common birds which I also intend to take a look at over the next few days. Stay tuned.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Dusk
The plague of mosquitoes is a constant source of conversation at Li'l Peach. If you're an Eastoner, you know that the Board of Health has suggested curtailing outdoor activities at dawn and dusk, but when exactly is dusk? Gil from the Board of Health let everyone know that you could get a calendar that tells you the approximate time of dusk from their website. Now I always thought that dusk was the time on both sides of sunset when things started to get dark. Wrong! According to the calendar dusk is the "time period between when the sun sets and it gets completely dark." Today through September 22 the approximate time is 6:45 pm trending towards the 6:15 which becomes the approximate time on the 23rd. (At least one OA sports team is technically violating the voluntary ban by holding practice until 7)
Luckily for us, Richard, an attorney, was at the Peach during this discussion. You have to know that lawyers have been down with this stuff since Abraham Lincoln won a case by using an almanac to show a jury that a witness couldn't see what they claimed to see because it was the dark of the moon. According to Richard, dusk officially begins when the sun is 6 degrees below the horizon and lasts for 34 minutes. A quick visit to Wikipedia confirmed that "civil dusk" occurs when the center of the sun is 6 degrees below the horizon. A rough definition of civil dusk is when on a clear night, you can still see the horizon, but the brightest stars and planets are already out.
Our resident attorney knew about this because dusk is the legal time to turn on your auto lights. It's actually called "lighting up time" in England (for American hippies lighting up time was not clock specific). It's also the time when the penalties for burglary go up apparently because "back in the day" all good people supposedly went to bed at dusk to save on candles.
FYI there is also nautical dusk (sun at 12 degrees below the horizon) when the horizon is too indistinct to use for navigation, and the outline of outdoor objects may be visible, but detailed outdoor work is impossible. Wikipedia assures us this is a swell time to launch an attack on a fort if you are a Native American. Finally there is astronomical dusk when the sun is 18 degrees below the horizon and even the dimmest stars and nebulae visible with the naked eye can be seen.
It is interesting that the Board of Health has not issued a warning about the period immediately before dusk. That's the time between sunset and dusk called twilight. Yes, the danger period for vampires begins BEFORE the peak period of mosquito activity. Perhaps you've heard the old saying that "the early vampire gets the virgin?" And apparently the movie rights and a TV show also. So protect yourself, lock your doors, and hang up the garlic at sunset!
Luckily for us, Richard, an attorney, was at the Peach during this discussion. You have to know that lawyers have been down with this stuff since Abraham Lincoln won a case by using an almanac to show a jury that a witness couldn't see what they claimed to see because it was the dark of the moon. According to Richard, dusk officially begins when the sun is 6 degrees below the horizon and lasts for 34 minutes. A quick visit to Wikipedia confirmed that "civil dusk" occurs when the center of the sun is 6 degrees below the horizon. A rough definition of civil dusk is when on a clear night, you can still see the horizon, but the brightest stars and planets are already out.
Our resident attorney knew about this because dusk is the legal time to turn on your auto lights. It's actually called "lighting up time" in England (for American hippies lighting up time was not clock specific). It's also the time when the penalties for burglary go up apparently because "back in the day" all good people supposedly went to bed at dusk to save on candles.
FYI there is also nautical dusk (sun at 12 degrees below the horizon) when the horizon is too indistinct to use for navigation, and the outline of outdoor objects may be visible, but detailed outdoor work is impossible. Wikipedia assures us this is a swell time to launch an attack on a fort if you are a Native American. Finally there is astronomical dusk when the sun is 18 degrees below the horizon and even the dimmest stars and nebulae visible with the naked eye can be seen.
It is interesting that the Board of Health has not issued a warning about the period immediately before dusk. That's the time between sunset and dusk called twilight. Yes, the danger period for vampires begins BEFORE the peak period of mosquito activity. Perhaps you've heard the old saying that "the early vampire gets the virgin?" And apparently the movie rights and a TV show also. So protect yourself, lock your doors, and hang up the garlic at sunset!
Friday, September 7, 2012
The Picker Field
Back in the world. For the last four years I have spent my vacation week volunteering at the TPC Golf Tournament in Norton. While not exactly the Magic Kingdom, New Englanders are too dour to make anyplace here "the happiest place on Earth," the TPC in Norton really is an otherworldly experience. Now I'm back home with a stiff neck and a sore throat, wondering whether that last mosquito bite was "the one."
At any rate someone was checking out a map on their cell phone the other day and came across a place called the Ricker Field. We quickly determined that it was a misspelling for Picker Field which lead to a discussion of who Picker was. Picker Field is at the end of Picker Lane a short side street off Canton Street. Picker wasn't anybody-the Picker Field is named for a machine that was housed there almost two centuries ago. Old George Ferguson built a dam at the site sometime before 1759, and he and others ran a sawmill until shortly before 1815. George and some family members are buried in a little cemetery nearby. About twenty years later E. J. W. Morse installed a cotton picking machine at this old dam giving the street its name.
It's interesting that the name stuck just like Hoe Shop Street. By 1835 the shovel works was roaring along and it had become clear that despite a number of shoe shops and cotton mills we were going to be Shovel Town not Shoe or Spindle City. If things had been different could we have become a textile town?
At Lowell the major processes of producing textiles were unified into one building. There were three main steps. Picking machines, a variety of cotton gin, cleaned the baled cotton and then another machine called a carder straitened the fibers. These fibers were then spun into thread. Finally, the thread was woven into cloth. At each step the machines needed to do this became increasingly complex. The cotton gin was invented in 1793 by Eli Whitney. In the same year Samuel Slater arrived in Rhode Island with plans for a spinning machine "stolen" from an English company. The Rhode Island model adopted by Slater used machines to produce thread which was then sold or given out to local weavers who produced the cloth on home looms. This idea spread quickly and soon people like Elijah Howard, David Manley, and even Old Oliver Ames were running Slater style businesses in Easton
Meanwhile many people including several here, tried to perfect a power loom, then an English monopoly, but it wasn't until 1814 that Francis Cabot Lowell and Paul Moody announced the creation of the first American power loom. At that point there were apparently a number of balky, cranky, and unreliable looms occasionally in operation in small mills in this area. When the Lowell and Moody power loom was perfected in 1817 their firm, the Boston Manufacturing Company, was in position to unify all the steps in the textile making process in one building. Ultimately the Slater model of "putting out" the thread for home weaving became obsolete. So was it the lack of water power or the business model that presented the problem here in town?
All the great textile cities had vastly more water available than Easton so it would seem that a textile mill with its many machines needed more power than a shovel factory with a few trip hammers. The one successful textile manufacturer in Easton arrived after the great textile mills of Lowell were already under way. E. J. W. Morse realized with all that cloth coming out of those great mills someone needed to provide the finely spun thread needed to sew it all together. His main factory still stands at the corner of Central Street and Washington Street, but for many years he had smaller shops at other dams like the one at the Picker Field doing the initial steps in the thread making process. So he made use of the limited water power and made a high quality niche product that didn't compete with the big mills. Towards the end of the 19th century J. P. Morgan created a thread monopoly that became the familiar brand Coates and Clark. The Morse family sold the patents for their premium thread to the new business and moved on to other things like automobile production. Coates and Clark's Silkateen thread, still available today, is the same thread perfected by Morse at places like the Picker Field way back in 1835.
For many years the Picker Field was the site of annual picnics by Irish shovel workers. In 1975, the Bicentennial Commission created a bicycle path that started at the field. When about to ride the path, I ran into a large snapping turtle burying her eggs, a much more memorable event to me than all this history!
At any rate someone was checking out a map on their cell phone the other day and came across a place called the Ricker Field. We quickly determined that it was a misspelling for Picker Field which lead to a discussion of who Picker was. Picker Field is at the end of Picker Lane a short side street off Canton Street. Picker wasn't anybody-the Picker Field is named for a machine that was housed there almost two centuries ago. Old George Ferguson built a dam at the site sometime before 1759, and he and others ran a sawmill until shortly before 1815. George and some family members are buried in a little cemetery nearby. About twenty years later E. J. W. Morse installed a cotton picking machine at this old dam giving the street its name.
It's interesting that the name stuck just like Hoe Shop Street. By 1835 the shovel works was roaring along and it had become clear that despite a number of shoe shops and cotton mills we were going to be Shovel Town not Shoe or Spindle City. If things had been different could we have become a textile town?
At Lowell the major processes of producing textiles were unified into one building. There were three main steps. Picking machines, a variety of cotton gin, cleaned the baled cotton and then another machine called a carder straitened the fibers. These fibers were then spun into thread. Finally, the thread was woven into cloth. At each step the machines needed to do this became increasingly complex. The cotton gin was invented in 1793 by Eli Whitney. In the same year Samuel Slater arrived in Rhode Island with plans for a spinning machine "stolen" from an English company. The Rhode Island model adopted by Slater used machines to produce thread which was then sold or given out to local weavers who produced the cloth on home looms. This idea spread quickly and soon people like Elijah Howard, David Manley, and even Old Oliver Ames were running Slater style businesses in Easton
Meanwhile many people including several here, tried to perfect a power loom, then an English monopoly, but it wasn't until 1814 that Francis Cabot Lowell and Paul Moody announced the creation of the first American power loom. At that point there were apparently a number of balky, cranky, and unreliable looms occasionally in operation in small mills in this area. When the Lowell and Moody power loom was perfected in 1817 their firm, the Boston Manufacturing Company, was in position to unify all the steps in the textile making process in one building. Ultimately the Slater model of "putting out" the thread for home weaving became obsolete. So was it the lack of water power or the business model that presented the problem here in town?
All the great textile cities had vastly more water available than Easton so it would seem that a textile mill with its many machines needed more power than a shovel factory with a few trip hammers. The one successful textile manufacturer in Easton arrived after the great textile mills of Lowell were already under way. E. J. W. Morse realized with all that cloth coming out of those great mills someone needed to provide the finely spun thread needed to sew it all together. His main factory still stands at the corner of Central Street and Washington Street, but for many years he had smaller shops at other dams like the one at the Picker Field doing the initial steps in the thread making process. So he made use of the limited water power and made a high quality niche product that didn't compete with the big mills. Towards the end of the 19th century J. P. Morgan created a thread monopoly that became the familiar brand Coates and Clark. The Morse family sold the patents for their premium thread to the new business and moved on to other things like automobile production. Coates and Clark's Silkateen thread, still available today, is the same thread perfected by Morse at places like the Picker Field way back in 1835.
For many years the Picker Field was the site of annual picnics by Irish shovel workers. In 1975, the Bicentennial Commission created a bicycle path that started at the field. When about to ride the path, I ran into a large snapping turtle burying her eggs, a much more memorable event to me than all this history!
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