Gene Nygaard writes:

On Fri, 04 Jul 2003 13:20:39 GMT, "Bob Harrington"
wrote:

While we're at it, who says we have to measure snow depth vertically?
Why can't we measure tangentially to the surface - just think of the
records that will be broken! Or we could measure snow depth in units of
area - "I had over an acre of snow on the back porch this morning, with
drifts of three hectares against the back door! I had to shovel a
square cubit just to get the car out of the garage..."

Some do measure rainfall in liters per square meter, an acceptable
unit for this purpose.

Ah, but how do they measure the square metres? Compare these two
ASKY ART diagrams:

-------------- \ /
\ /
\ /
\ /
\ /
\ /
--

Does the level ground or the sloping ground have greater surface area?
What about for measuring rainfall purposes?

Heck, just the other day at the ballfield, I saw a fellow with a
baseball as big as a hailstone!

DEATH TO MILLIBARS!

Naturally. Those obsolete units didn't even fit in with the cgs
predecessors of SI, the modern metric system, the International System
of Units which was introduced 43 years ago. The cgs unit of pressure
was the barye (a millibar is a kilobarye, or 1000 dyn cm/s²).

There has, of course, been considerable pressure to get rid of those
obsolete millibars. If it weren't for that, we wouldn't have the
problem that the OP is complaining about.

What annoys me is that everybody knows that air pressure is about 15
psi, right? And I know that I want my truck tyres to be inflated to
about 30psi front, and 45psi rear. So I go to the service station, and
the air hose meter is calibrated in kPa. I think about the weather
report, and they say that atmospheric pressure is 996 hPa, so then I
double and triple it to get about 2000 hPa and 3000 hPa, and then I
look at the air hose meter and it's kPa, and I have to convert the
pressures so that I can pump up my tyres! Because unless my tyres are
EXACTLY two atmospheres' pressure front and three atmospheres'
pressure rear, then MAYBE my truck's handling will be adversely
affected! That's why I always let some air out of my tyres if there's
a cyclone coming, and put a bit more in for fine weather! ALWAYS DEFLATE
YOUR TYRES IF IT'S RAINING!

Some people will tell you that you should also deflate your tyres if
you are crossing a sandy creek or gully, but that's just silly. You'll
just have to pump them up again on the other side. You're better off
just winching across.

Unfortunately, those applying the pressure to get rid of millibars
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^
HAW HAW! THAT'S FUNNY!

as pressure unit weren't smart enough to explain what the proper SI
units would be (i.e., the units used by Canada in their public
weather reports, the units I hear used on Canadian TV and radio:
kilopascals). This left the door open for this screwball scheme to
hang onto millibars by disguising them under a pseudo-SI name.

If I ever meet a real live meteorologist, first of all I'm going to
ask her how many meteors she's actually seen, then I'm going to use
wacky units to measure everything. "Yes I was driving my truck along
at 167024.24 furlongs/fortnight, when suddenly a kangaroo jumped out in
front! This kangaroo was at least 216 barleycorns high! So I did the
only safe thing and ran into it. At least I salvaged 750 hectograms of
meat for the dog out of this sad incident".

cheers
Beable
--
No, YOU'RE A CRACKPOT, which is why you think I'm a crackpot...
because all crackpots like you think everybody else is a moron
not them. -- George Hammond
http://beable.com