Not Exactly on Cloud Nine

Well, at least it’s over. Earlier this evening I took the Cloud Physics exam, which I’d been studying for for the last couple days (minus interruptions for watching stuff like “24” and the Winter Olympics). Dr Harrington said the test was only intended to take an hour, but that he’d give us as much time as we wanted, up to a max of three hours. Well, guess what, I took the full three. I think I did okay on most of the problems, but there were a couple where I’m not at all sure about my answers, and one in particular that was very tricky and confusing to just about everyone, myself included. I spent over an hour on that stupid problem about what percent of molecules in liquid water have a sufficiently high energy to break their hydrogen bonds and enter the vapour state, and I still have no idea if I got anything remotely close to the right answer. Sigh. At least we were able to make a one-page “cheat sheet” to bring into the test with us, it made the test (and studying for it) a bit less stressful, and the sheet will certainly be a big help when it comes to reviewing for the final exam the first week of May.
I had big plans to do a bit of homework tonight, such as working on finishing the Dynamics hw or starting to read that 20-pg, dense journal article for Mesoscale about conditional slantwise instability that I have to write a review for (both assignments due Friday), but my brain is so fried right now I just wanna veg a bit. And then go to sleep. Oh sweet, sweet sleep.
I’ve been forecasting since last September or so in the NCWFC, the National Collegiate Weather Forecasting Contest, and just this week I joined a second contest, WxChallenge, which is sponsored by the University of Oklahoma. For both contests everyone forecasts for a particular city for two weeks (NWCFC is just finishing a stint for Fairbanks, AK (which has been a total crapshoot, forecasting for there is all luck and no skill for a myriad of reasons…), while WxChallenge just started the first forecast period, in Anchorage, AK), and there are certain prizes for the top forecaster(s) nationally in each category (freshmen/sophomores, juniors/seniors, grad students, faculty) for each two-week period. It takes a bit of time, especially to forecast for two cities every day, but I think it’s valuable to learn where to look and what to look for and whatnot, especially since prior to coming to Penn State I had no forecasting experience. For both contests we have to forecast the high/low temps, but instead of then predicting a category of precip like in the NWCFC, the WxChallenge contest requires us to forecast precip to the nearest hundredth of an inch as well as the max wind speed, with penalties for each degree, hundredth of an inch (precip) or knot (wind speed) that we’re off by. Kinda tricky, but it should be good for me to learn to forecast for all that. I may get to be a real forecaster yet someday. 🙂