weather-radar

The mighty MAC.

A squall-line is approaching.

My weather-radar is deceptive.
I get my weather-radar from My-Cast, an Internet weather-site recommended by the Webmaster at the mighty Mezz.
It’s the site he uses.
I suppose My-Cast is like 89-bazilyun other weather-radar sites available, but you can personalize it to a specific location — I suppose you can others too.
I never have been able to get the exact geodesic coordinates for our house (yet anyway), so I eyeballed on their map.
Crank “West Bloomfield” on their site, and the crosshairs appear south of 5&20 — which makes sense since most of West Bloomfield is south of 5&20, yet we live north. Crank Canandaigua into their site and the crosshairs appear in Canandaigua Lake (????????).
I had to relocate our “home” crosshairs north of 5&20, and the Canandaigua crosshairs onto dry land where the mighty Mezz was. —Coordinates would be more precise.
Ultimate precision of crosshairs location ain’t that important, especially when I’m looking at a 170-mile picture (the picture is at 490 miles).
I can go tighter, but A) the radar depiction gets jaggy, and B) you can’t see what’s coming — it’s cropped out.
Who knows how My-Cast makes money — what I’m using is free.
My-Cast has a paid service to put the radar on your cellphone, but I would be interested only if it were putting on the radar for where you’re standing. It’s putting on the radar for your crosshair locations. (I.e. I’d have to set up the location for where I’m standing.)
So PASS!
I have a bunch of crosshair locations in My-Cast; Elz, Houghton College, Kinzua Bridge, the mighty Curve, even wacko-Jacko. Bill too, and MayZ.
Last Tuesday morning (June 5, 2007) the weather-radar indicated a shower was approaching — a strident green plume — and would probably hit while walking the dog at the so-called elitist country-club.
So we stayed home.
It never really did rain.
The weather-radar indicated the shower was passing right over our heads, but it was apparently evaporating.
I also have learned the green plumes aren’t serious. The downpours are yellow or red.
That afternoon I fired up the weather-radar again, and it was a completely dry scan, so I got the zero-turn out.
It was cloudy and cold and windy, but I got quite a bit done before it started to rain.
It wasn’t raining that hard, so I kept mowing; but as I finished it was raining hard. —Linda had to stop (she was mowing the backyard with our small walk-behind mower).
So much for the weather-radar.
I fired it up again, and putting everything in motion (an hour and 10 minutes), a small green plume appeared over our house during the dry scan. It never approached; just appeared.
My 93-year-old nosy neighbor just laughs. His alternative to My-Cast and these “infernal computers” is to stand outside, wet his finger, hold it up in the air to determine the wind-direction, and then look into the wind to see what’s coming.

RE: “Webmaster at the mighty Mezz”.......... “The mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper where I once worked. It had a web-site administered by its Webmaster. I did the Messenger web-site for about a year until I retired — did the sites for other weekly newspapers the Messenger owned before that.

“5&20” is the main east-west road through our area: state Route 5 and U.S. Route 20, both on the same roadway.

“Elz” (Elizabeth, Betty) is my sister in Fort Lauderdale, “Hufton” (Houghton College) is the college I graduated from in 1966, “Kinzua Bridge” is a huge abandoned railroad viaduct across the Kinzua Creek valley in northwest Pennsylvania, once the largest railroad-bridge in the world, now partially collapsed by a tornado (2003), “the mighty Curve” is Horseshoe Curve, by far the BEST railfan spot I’ve ever been to, “Jack” is my macho blowhard brother-in-Boston, “Bill” is my brother in northern Delaware, and MayZ is my Aunt-May in southern New Jersey.

“The so-called elitist country-club” is nearby Boughton (BOW-tin) Park, called that long ago by an editor at the Messenger newspaper because the park would only allow residents of the three towns that own it to use it.

“The zero-turn” is our large riding lawnmower — it’s a zero-turn.

“Linda” is my wife.