Inhabited Chair: The Weather Outside is Frightful
My name is Zachary Wolfson, I’m a student at Northeastern doing my internship at Shoebuy.com. I will be writing weekly blog entries, which I modeled after “Monday Morning Quarterback” by Peter King who is a great sports writer and always gives some love to my Philadelphia Eagles. Every week, there will be a main story where I discuss something that is happening in the world at that time, my shoe thoughts of the week, where I share my thoughts on a couple of styles and my non-shoe thoughts of the week where I just share random thoughts for your enjoyment.
Please don’t snow, please don’t snow, please don’t snow. Seriously, I have to take a deep breath before I check the weather report every morning, as it can sometimes be frightening. Last Wednesday, the weather report for Boston from weather.com said it was 15° and felt like 1°. By Sunday it was 60° and I was outside in shorts and a t-shirt. The very next day it was snowing. You’ve got to be kidding me! To say I don’t care for this wild weather would be a major understatement. Being a shorts and sandals guy, I am at my happiest firmly entrenched in the middle of summer. I can, however, deal with cold weather, but this in between and back and forth stuff is driving me insane. Before I actually go crazy, I decided to take a look into how weather works and why Boston weather is as crazy as it is.
Part of the answer is our proximity to the Atlantic Ocean. The east to west winds pick up water from the ocean and bring it over our fair city. This same wind that guarantees large snow falls in the winter also brings us a pleasant cooling breeze during the summer, so it’s not all that bad. That helps explain some of the rain, but how about all that wind? There are several factors that help explain the copious amounts of wind that bowl me over as I attempt to walk to the T every morning.
- Boston’s latitude; our weather is influenced by both polar and tropical air masses. When two air masses of unequal temperature meet, as they do over Boston, it creates wind. This is because nature will strive for balance, or disorder, and it achieves this by moving the hot air into the cold air, and vice versa, in the form of wind.
- Wind exists because the city itself does. Air temperature’s main determinant is the temperature of the matter below it. Since the city is made up of concrete and steel, which heats up and cools down much faster than the surrounding suburbs or nearby ocean, there is uneven temperature distribution which, as I said before, nature resolves by wind.
I’m no meteorologist, but it seems to me that the most likely cause of the unpredictable nature of our weather is the dual influences from polar and tropical air masses and during the change of the seasons, as we are currently experiencing, it is extremely difficult to predict which will prevail and exert the heavier influence over Boston.
Shoe Thoughts: Here a couple of things that will help you deal with Boston’s lovely weather.
Because it is guaranteed to rain at least once a week, every woman needs a good pair of rubber boots. These come from a good brand in Sperry Top-Sider, so you know your feet will remain dry even when the weather is not. For the men, it is always a good idea to have a pair of quality waterproof boots in the closet. When the weather turns sour, as it does all too often, you can rest assured your feet will remain warm and dry. I know these aren’t shoes, in fact they’re not even close, but this Patagonia jacket will protect you from the weather. In addition, it will also protect the weather from you as it is recyclable.
Non-Shoe Thoughts:
- LOST Thoughts: No new LOST on this week, hopefully next week’s is good.
- The Office Thoughts:
- Kind of a predictable story line but I don’t exactly watch the show for the drama.
- Once again Kevin is kind of pathetic, but it is funny. When he wants to say everything on his mind, two things come out.
- Jim chose to help Dwight over Michael with the blame/reward over the Golden Ticket situation, that was weird.
- Yesterday I went to an information session about studying at the London School of Economics, I wanted to go before, now I really want to go.
Thanks for reading. I always enjoy hearing from my readers so leave lots of comments on anything I’ve said. Please subscribe to the Shoebuyblog.com RSS feed and tell all your friends.
