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Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Barometers, the Dummy Explanation

storm glass barometer
Glass weather barometer
Ever shopped a garage sale?  a rummage sale at a local church? Of course you have! And while you were there, you probably picked up some gewgaw that caught your eye, getting it for a song. Of course, when you got it home, you realized that it didn't come with instructions... but wait! there's the internet! And so you type your question into Google (or Bing, or maybe even Yahoo... if you're a little paranoid, DuckDuckGo) and voila! an answer! The problem, of course, is that the person who answered your question may have known exactly as much as you. That someone may be like Racheal Ambrose of eHow, who tripped herself up with the simple question "How to Read a Glass Weather Barometer."¹

The young journalism graduate quickly made it obvious that she had no idea what she was talking about, introducing the "glass barometer" like so:
"Rather than be solely dependent on the weather forecast to tell you what type of weather is predicted, use a glass barometer. Specific levels of air pressure, which a barometer detects, indicate what type of weather could arrive. For example, cyclones tend to develop in lower air pressure. The air pressure reading also helps predict rain or thunderstorms. Use two different types of glass barometers: stick or dial. Overall, the dial glass barometer is easier to read."
   Ummm, Racheal, "Specific levels of air pressure"? are you sure about that? and here we thought it was all relative... Oh, and no one asked you whether dial barometers are easier to read; just "How to read a glass weather barometer." The problem being, of course, that Ambrose had no idea what a glass weather barometer is, which is probably why she wrote a bullshit answer like
  1. Wipe the glass part of the thermometer to remove any debris that may hinder your view.
  2. Position yourself eye level to the barometer. Locate the highest point of the liquid inside of the glass tube. Look for the hash mark on either side of the glass tube that matches the level of the line.
  3. Read the information next to the hash mark.
No duh... Actually, Racheal, the answer the OQ was looking for is a lot simpler than that: Compare the water level today with the water level yesterday. If the water level is higher, atmospheric pressure is dropping. If it's lower, atmospheric pressure is rising. Not to mention that there are no "hash marks" on the typical weather glass... Oh, and we'll let you figure out for yourself what changing pressure might mean, Racheal...

It's a darned shame Ambrose couldn't come up with something like that, since the information is all over the internet! But we can't leave without letting people read through Racheal's scintillating instructions for reading a dial barometer, which you apparently included to meet the minimum word count:
  1. Hold your finger over the large hand.
  2. Draw an invisible line with your finger past the tip of the hand.
  3. Read the description on the barometer that correlates with where your finger rests.
Wow. Just wow. "Draw an invisible line with your finger..." Thanks for that suggestion: otherwise we'd have never figured out how to determine where the "large hand" is pointing. No, wait a minute: that would make us the dumbasses, and we know we're not. It's  Racheal who's the dumbass -- the Antisocial Network Dumbass of the Day, to be precise.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was    ehow.com/how_8006319_read-glass-weather-barometer.html
copyright ©2016-2022 scmrak

SI - METEOROLGY

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