National Weather Service fun facts

if I have been blogging a lot, it is because I redirected facebook to localhost on my computer via /etc/hosts, so here we go

1) THEY TYPE IN ALL CAPS…EVEN THOUGHT IT IS 2014… Their forecasts are often broadcast on radio for seafolks or airfolks using voice synthesizers. The ellipses are equivalent to a comma, but in the super early days they only had periods and ALL CAPS. The NWS keeps it this way to comply with global standards which include countries with old equipment. Their are proposals to adopt crazy new features like mixed caps and more punctuation signs.

2) There are three voices since 2002, two male and one female voices (and a male Spanish voice). You can listen to the here: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/info/newvoice.html

3) Metereologists have a sense of humor, and that’s sometimes sprinkled into the official forecasts, like below:

http://xkcd.com/1126/
http://xkcd.com/1126/
(from: http://xkcd.com/1126/)

(I have two examples from this year’s Boston snow craziness here: http://www.orangenarwhals.com/?p=1593)