Boulder’s Weather: Fact or Fantasy?
Is Boulder Weather Prediction Fact or Fantasy?
My believe is that it is both! Boulder weather is a mix of fact and fancy. Even Dumbledore would be baffled! Historically, weather has been predicted based upon weather patterns over many years. Weather one year give clues to to what to expect the next year. These patterns over many decades have been somewhat reliable, even in Boulder. BUT is that still true? Weather prediction is moving from “fact” to fantasy!
Boulder weather has been said to be forecast by fools and tourists. That is more true than ever.
Boulder may be the world epicenter of weather prediction. With the University of Colorado and NCAR National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder has also been home to some of the fastest and most powerful computers on the planet. The amount of data which is examined is virtually beyond comprehension.
To handle this data, supercomputers with substantial computational capabilities are employed. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at home in Boulder utilizes supercomputers operating at 14.5 petaflops each, enabling them to process 29 quadrillion calculations per second. Can we get our heads around that number? Let’s try. NOAA.
A petabyte (PB) equals 1,000 terabytes or 101510^{15} bytes. In numerical terms, that’s:1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. So, there are 15 zeros in a petabyte. At 14.5 petaflops that means 29 quadrillion calculation per second, TIMES 14.5!
Petabyte
In numerals, that is 14.5 times 1,000,000,000,000,000. OR 14,500,000,000,000,000,000 per second. While I personally cannot fathom that, I can appreciate that it is a HUGE number!!! That number is so big that even typing it is challenging. You can see why some of the world’s most powerful computers have come out of the need for and desire for predicting weather.
Even with that number of computations, we still need to know what to do with those crazy large numbers. Historically we have examined the history of weather on the earth and in specific regions. Then, based upon that information and history, we attempt to predict the weather.
Let’s over-simplify. If we knew that every Thanksgiving it snowed, we’d be somewhat comfortable in predicting that it will snow this year on Thanksgiving. We add more information if we know that the chance of a Thanksgiving snow is 70%. Our prediction gets better. We are predicting based upon the history of the weather and the current data, what is going on right now all over the earth. We are predicting based upon historic patterns.
Boulder Weather Changes As We Move From The Plains To The Mountains: All Boulder County
As if that is not complicated enough, we live in the Boulder Valley. That means we have mountain weather, valley weather, and the transition between the two. And even that does not hold still! We live in the region of instant and drastic change in the local weather.
Boulder’s Weather: Fact or Fantasy?
Generally our predictions, even with the largest fastest computers, are based in large part on historic weather patters. BUT what happens when those historic patterns change? As the climate changes over time, our historic models become more and more useless and misleading. In our current period of rapid changes in these patterns, prediction becomes even more difficult. Imagine a puzzle with one moving part. Can you predict your competitor’s next checker move? Perhaps. But what if all of the pieces move every time it’s your turn? How hard is it to predict where the pieces will be after your turn? You’ve moved every piece during your turn.
REALLY LARGE NUMBERS!
THEN, imagine the same thing with checker board with 100 pieces and 800 squares. THEN imagine it if you can with 14,500,000,000,000,000,000 pieces on a board with 64 times THAT number of squares. To answer that my tiny computer is sending up plums of smoke! The number is now truly incomprehensible, with special notations needed to even write the number.
The saving grace used to be the reliance on historic patterns. The number of ways in which the pieces move is constrained by “rules.” Even the “rules” are approximations.
NOW, take the rules, the historic weather patterns, and shuffle them. Not a gradual shuffle, a slow change in the patterns, but a FAST change in the patterns. Imagine that the rules of the changes are also changing.
Weather Pattern Changes
That goes together to mean that predicting weather is FAR more difficult than ever. We can’t even tell what the new evolving rules might be. Add to that the fact that Boulder weather has always been tricky to predict and we end up with one simple all-encompassing rule. Always travel with clothing to be prepared for every type of weather you can image, and even types you cannot imagine.
We need a safety whistle and a winter coat in the trunk in July, sunscreen in December, and even shorts in February. We have been snowed on during every month of the year, and that was before this period of more rapid changes in climate. Regardless of your thinking on what the changes might be, global warming or not, we can be pretty certain that the patterns are changing, and that prediction has become incredibly more difficult.
Lenny Lensworth Frieling
Shared Knowledge is Power!
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