How to pick a halloween costume appropriate in Boulder

Take a costume you might wear anywhere else, and add “skanky” in front of it. It’s really easy; here’s some ideas:

- Skanky angel
- Skanky devil-creature-thing
- Skanky nurse
- Skanky dentist
- Skanky whale biologist
- Skanky garbage collector
- Skanky Dwight Shrute

Thanks.
Dan

sometimes in Boulder we have a climate

The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) forecasts trend positive right now and deepen toward winter, suggesting an El Nino year brought on by warmer waters in the southern Pacific Ocean.  The effects of this on your weather vary with your location.

Here in Boulder, thanks to our high density of climate research scientists, we have a lot of different types of climate data available for our perusal online, if you look for a little bit.  What is the effect of El Nino in Boulder?  A good summary can be found here, I’m definitely not the first person to think about this.  The long and short of that article is that when El Nino comes around, our average temperatures don’t change much, but our average snowfall does.  On average, El Nino winters  are drier than other years, but then when March rolls around, the mean monthly snowfall rises from 17in to 23in.

Comparing historical temperature data for the ENSO phenomenon against historical snowfall data in Boulder gives a finer-grained picture.  Looking at our winters during strong El Nino (1957-58, 1963-64, 1965-66, 1972-73, 1982-83, 1986-87-88, 1991-92, 1994-95, 2002-2003), most had outlier months with unusual amounts of snow:  November (1972-73, 1986-87, 1991-92, 1994-95), December (1972-73, 1982-83, 1987-88), January (1986-87), February (1965-66, 1986-87, 2002-03), March (1963-64, 1982-83, 1986-87, 1987-88, 2002-03 right after spring break iirc ) and/or April (1957-58, 1963-64, 1972-73, 1982-83, 1994-95).

Moral of the story: I expect to get socked with at least one really wet month this winter.

I’d like to try some more proper statistics on this with less handwaving if I get an opportunity, hopefully I will.

Arcane

adj Describes something the speaker doesn’t understand, and hopes nobody does for the sake of his/her ego

About solar energy

The world generated 2TW of electrical power on average in 2005 [1].  Each (unobstructed, clear) square meter of the earth’s surface is illuminated by around 1.4 kW of solar energy [2].  Replacing the world’s electrical generation with solar sources would then require at least 2TW / (1.4 kW/m^2) = 1.4 billion sq. m = 1400 sq. km (equivalent to a square 37km on a side) worth of ideally efficient solar panels with unobstructed solar light.

With realistic panel efficiency and atmospheric effects like clouds are taken into effect, this can still suggest a rough order of magnitude estimate.  A 50% efficient solar panel in a desert would need to be about the size of Rhode Island to supply enough power for the entire 2005 world.

As always, if my data or my calculations contain errors, please bring them to my attention

[1] http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/electricitygeneration.html
[2] http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1998/ManicaPiputbundit.shtml

Poetrie Numbre 2

Wickets!

Some suave television characters

Anyone else have nominations for this category?