Weather Statistics

Weather: Today is the solstice.

Last minimal rain: 6/14. Week’s low: 45 degrees F. Week’s high: 90 degrees F in the shade. Relative humidity was down to 4% in Los Alamos and Santa Fé. Winds were up to 35 mph in Santa Fé.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, yellow-flowered potentilla, fern bush, trumpet creeper, red-tipped yuccas, Regale lilies, daylilies, red hot poker, Spanish broom, sweet pea, silver lace vine, blue flax, purple salvia, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, bouncing Bess, yellow yarrow, blanket flower, coreopsis

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, cholla cactus, alfilerillo, fern leaf globe mallow, datura, green leaf five-eyes, bindweed, silver leaf nightshade, alfalfa, yellow sweet clover, velvet weed, showy milkweed, toothed spurge, buffalo gourd, bindweed, Hopi tea, flea bane, plains paper flower, goat’s beard, native dandelions, strap leaf and golden hairy asters, cheat and three-awn grasses

What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature and Dorothy Perkins roses, desert willow, Asiatic lily, coral bells, Maltese cross peaked, pink evening primrose, Rumanian sage, catmints, Johnson Blue geranium, blue salvia, perennial four o’clock, larkspur, sidalcea, tomatillo, California poppies, white spurge, coral beard tongues, ladybells, Queen Anne’s lace, chocolate flower, white yarrow, Ozark coneflower, Mexican hats, black-eyed Susans, plains coreopsis, bachelor buttons

Bedding and house plants: Snapdragons, zonal geraniums

Tasks: There are fires in the Gila and Apache Kid wilderness, as well as some in Arizona and México. The smoke in the upper atmosphere makes it impossible to spend any time outside. I tried early in the week. I wore a mask and sat removing cheat grass from gravel paths. It didn’t take energy and so was just possible.

Then, Thursday and Friday we had air quality alerts. I decided if I had to wear a mask to turn on the water, I shouldn’t consider working outside. What’s possible isn’t always what’s wise.

Smoke is more inhibiting than Coronavirus because it can’t be avoided.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, small birds, quail, geckos, cabbage butterflies, bumble bees, hornets, grasshoppers, sound of crickets, sidewalk ants

Weekly update: I read that May was the hottest May on record (a mere hundred or so years of the eons of life on the planet). The global average temperature was 60.3 degrees. This May, the lowest afternoon high temperature in my yard was 70 degrees F, the highest high was 91, and the average afternoon high was 87 degrees.

Then I read farther. NOAA said the average increase for the month was "1.7 degrees higher than the 20th century average for Earth."

That’s where I lose perspective. 1.7 degrees doesn’t sound like much. I calculated the average difference in afternoon highs in my yard between 2019 and 2020 was 8.258 degrees.

How, you wonder, can such a small number mean so much, especially when it doesn’t fit our experience?

My statistics were simple. Anyone could do them. I just recorded the high and low each day. Excel ran the averages.

But what is an average temperature? How often do scientists check? Do they have equipment that can make automatic readings every 5 minutes, every hour? In how many places? Anything that averages the temperatures at the poles with those at the equator is going to smooth all the extremes into a great lumpen mass.

I see the difference between the average and the extreme in my yard. Because temperatures were so warm, I planted seeds in May. However, the average morning temperature was 42.26 so the soil wasn’t warmed enough to nurture them. They either didn’t come up, or didn’t progress beyond the first leaves.

The ones I planted later, when the soil was warmer, haven’t gone beyond the first leaves because the air is too warm and too dry in the afternoons.

Sometimes I wonder, if the purpose of publishing statistics is to influence action, why do we bother with global averages? Wouldn’t the averages at the poles be more relevant to global warming, since that’s where the effects on the masses of ice is greatest? What’s happening in Brazil isn’t important.

I realize the specific components of a statistic don’t matter. What’s important is that every calculation uses the same kind of data. The comparisons may not reflect the reality I feel on my skin, but they do become a reliable tracking metric. A small change can be significant in that abstracted universe.

The problem is the language of scientists is not that of laymen or of politicians. Telling congressmen temperatures changed by 8 degrees in their home districts probably won’t motivate them to act, unless you can add farmers are having problems sowing their crops. Telling them the world changed by 1.7 degrees has no meaning.

Notes on photographs: All were taken 21 June 2020.
1. Cardinal climber (Ipomoea coccina) planted May 11; germinate May 28; second leaves May 31. The brick is 2" high.

2. Zinnias (Zinnia elegans) planted May 4; germinate May 15; second leaves May 31. The gray block is 2" high.

3. Watermelons (Citrullus vulgaris) planted April 29; germinate May 13; second leaves June 10.

End notes: Associated Press. "Temperature Spike: Earth Ties Record High Heat May Reading." Published by Politico website. 12 June 2020.

Wind

Weather: We had a series of days with very high afternoon temperatures, which affected the roses. Then, following winds that knocked off petals, temperatures fell. It was 98 on Friday, June 5, and 73 yesterday, June 9.

Last rain: 6/6. Week’s low: 43 degrees F. Week’s high: 98 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Doctor Huey and hybrid roses, yellow-flowered potentilla, catalpa, trumpet creeper, red-tipped yuccas, daylilies, red hot poker, Spanish broom, sweet pea, silver lace vine, Japanese honeysuckle, blue flax, Jupiter’s beard, golden spur columbine, purple salvia, winecup mallow, yellow yarrow, blanket flower, coreopsis

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, prickly pear and cholla cacti, alfilerillo, fern leaf globe mallow, datura, green leaf five-eyes, bindweed, silver lead nightshade, alfalfa, yellow sweet clover, wild licorice, velvet weed, showy milkweed, toothed spurge, buffalo gourd, bindweed, Hopi tea, flea bane, plains paper flower, goat’s beard, native dandelions, strap leaf aster, cheat, brome, and three-awn grasses

What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature and floribunda roses, Asiatic lily, coral bells, Maltese cross, bouncing Bess, pink evening primrose, Dutch clover, Rumanian sage, catmints, Johnson Blue geranium, blue salvia, perennial four o’clock, larkspur, California poppies, white spurge, wintered-over pansy and snapdragon, coral, purple, fox glove and smooth beard tongues, ladybells, Queen Anne’s lace, Shasta daisy, anthemis, chocolate flower, white yarrow, Ozark coneflower, Mexican hats

What’s emerging: Watermelon seeds

Bedding and house plants: Snapdragons, zonal geraniums, pansies

Tasks: I’ve been pulling cheat grass, and dropping seeds of a native grass into the disturbed soil. In some places, some blades have emerged. I won’t know for a while whether they’re a desirable or undesirable type. I’ve discovered, whenever you plant seeds the first things up are weeds that were waiting to be replanted. Like as not, they look very much like what was planted and so disguise themselves.

Animal sightings: Sounds of small birds, gecko, cabbage butterflies, bumble and small bees, two large red dragonflies, hornets, grasshoppers, sound of crickets, sidewalk ants

Weekly update: Weather follows cycles, and, because I don’t have a great memory, it always seems new. We had rain the morning of June 6, and strong winds in the afternoon. They reached 49 mph in Santa Fé.

The winds continued the next two days, while the humidity fell. It was 5% in Santa Fé on June 8.

The source of the rain was a bit of a mystery. The NOOA satellite picture showed it emerging suddenly from southern Arizona. I know that’s not possible. The area is desert. Mirages do not produce water.

I think a tropical depression, which appeared off the coast of Guatemala on May 31, crossed central American and became Cristobal. As it continued east into the Caribbean, it got stronger and moved north. The last I saw it was in Wisconsin.

The immediate area west of the tropical storm was dry; the moisture was on the east side. But, one thing I’ve learned is that there’s often another band of moisture beyond the dry belt. That might have been what materialized in Arizona.

Smoke from Mexico and dust from Arizona often arrive with wind. And, sure enough, the atmosphere was filled with smoke on June 8. Some came from Mexico and some from fires ignited by the weather in the southwestern part of the state. A small fire erupted in El Rito on June 9.

Because of the intensity of the winds in the first part of June, I though this was some aberration. Well the difference between memory and history is written records. My old files corrected me.

Last year, on May 24, we had smoke and rain. Winds in Santa Fé reached 59 mph. They’d gotten up to 51 the day before. That was about three weeks earlier than this year.

2018 didn’t have the same confluence of elements. Winds reached 62 mph on April 17, and dirty air from fires arrived on June 11. The same extreme events, but in a different configuration.

My notes tell me my perceptions are wrong. The plants second me.

The winds buffeted branches, and lowered them. I have a path between a purple sandcherry on one side and a Dr. Huey rose on the other. Last week I cut a cane that was intruding into my path. Yesterday, branches from both the shrub and the rose were blocking the path. I doubt either grew a foot in two days.

The effects of wind are all about movements that are directed by surface objects. On Monday, the wind blew my neighbor’s emptied trash can across the road, and left mine alone. They were less than 25' apart, but his was in the path of winds that whipped around his house and mine was just enough removed not to be affected.

I’m sure the more horizontal branch of the forsythia is lower, because branches are in a path that I knew was clear before the winds. It’s against a fence, and the wind roars down that alley. It probably blew through the two limbs.

The plants that protested the most were the red hot pokers. The ones in the main bed, sheltered somewhat by the house, remained erect. The one that was farther to the north got blown around. The stems on the west side were moved more than those on the east.

The next day the stems remained at angles, but the flower heads had re-erected themselves. What are normally straight lines had become angles. I don’t remember seeing that before.

Notes on photographs: Red hot pokers (Kniphofia uvaria) taken 8 June 2010.
1. This is what they’re supposed to look like. A plant near the house.

2. This is not what poker’s do. This was the farthest west stem on a plant eight more feet away from the house.

3. Another stem on the same plant as #2.

End notes: NOAA photographs show the United States and large bodies of water. I’m not sure if they bother with internal Mexican weather. The imagination begins when facts end.