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.