Posted on 03/14/2014 6:37:20 PM PDT by PROCON
When the Heck did the weather people quit reporting on the barometer? I remember how important the barometric pressure was to the weather folks, but now they're hardly touching on it, and are reporting it in millabars? I still have a wall thingy that shows the temperature, the humidity AND THE BAROMETRIC PRESSURE starting at about 28 and going to about 32. Low numbers meaning bad weather, higher numbers meaning nicer weather. Am I crazy or has anyone else noticed this too. Sheesh, maybe I have too much time on my hands, but just saying.....
Back in the 1970’s, when President Carter was trying to get us to adopt the metric system, Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene started a movement called We Ain’t Metric. “Why won’t we adopt the metric system?” he asked—”beacause we don’t like it. Why won’t we cooperate with the federal government’s efforts to get us to use it? Because we don’t want to.”
I was, and am in full agreement.
I deal with progressive idiologues in some of my hobbies.
I’ve noticed they throw metric units around in conversation like a social climber drops names - to impress.
A lot of college kids would have that reaction nowadays
kPa, all the way.
Bump
Standard air pressure is 29.92 in Hg or 1013.25Mb of pressure or 1 Bar.
Metric (SI) vs. US customary units.
Neither one is more or less accurate. But SI is a LOT more logical and consistent. Easier to use once you are familiar with it.
When did the toilet paper rolls become much narrower that the holders.
And the cardboard go from thick and sturdy to thin as paper?
Been a long time since I saw a roll of TP that didnt wobble due to the core being deformed.
Just how fast do you get that Sukker to spin up?
Real Cardboard Cereal boxes and toilet paper rolls.
Ah those were the Good Ol Days.
I guess things have to go to pot so us oldsters can use that saying.
Not long after that, you started seeing metric units on cereal boxes and soda cans, etc. But really, apart from one and two liter soda bottles, what metric unit does anyone in the U.S. actually know or care about?
How many kilos do you weigh? How many liters of gas does your car hold? How many kilometers is it to work?
Almost 40 years later, and despite the efforts of the moron education establishment, the answer, with a few exceptions, is, "Who gives a crap?"
Millibars? Please. Give it to me in inches of Hg, Jacques.
LOL. When ya gotta go ya gotta, go.
Did you know that an inch is defined to be 2.54 cm ? Then the mile is exactly 5280 X 12 X 2.54 cm = 1609344 mm, exactly. So hey! How metric can you get?
“Le Système international d’unités”
...always the French.
Millibars are the familiar unit for people in weather forecasting. Weather maps have been issued in 4 or 5 mb contours for at least half a century and probably longer. People in the weather business talk to each other in millibars and not inches or mm of mercury. If you were in any given weather office, private or government, you would hear people talking about for example a 965 low meaning it had a central pressure of 965 millibars.
All you really need to know about millibars is that 1013 is the global average and anything over 1040 is quite high, anything under 960 is quite low. I do have a home barometer that measures in inches so I’m used to making conversions in my head. This has probably been stated earlier in this thread, but 1000 millibars equals 29.53 inches and so 1050 millibars, about the highest pressure most people see in an average winter, would be 5% higher. That would add 5 x .295 inches or 1.48 inches rounded off, so in other words 31.01 inches and I think you’ll find that your home barometer shows this as being fairly high. A very deep low at 950 mbs would then be an equal amount lower, or 28.05 inches.
Sometimes in metric countries you will hear pressure given as kilopascals, these are scaled like millibars but ten times smaller so that 1000 millibars would be 100 kilopascals. So if you ever hear that type of pressure reading just multiply it by 10 to convert to millibars.
That typhoon last November in the Phillipines reached a minimum pressure of about 890 millibars. You can see why weather people prefer it, the relativity aspect is very obvious since the mean is more or less 1000 millibars.
I suspect it’s because, with satellites, the barometer now is far less important as a predictor of storms.
Also, millibars is Metric, so this is a way to promote the values of the French Revolution and Globalism.
I’m so glad somebody posted this question.
My brain is geared to Imperial measure, with the exception of small dimensions, where I’m finding millimeters and 10ths of that preferable to fractions of inches. I like metric bolts sizes better too. But, beyond 2 centimeters, my comprehension flies apart.
I’m trying to get hold of this stuff: inches of mercury and bars and millibars and atmospheres so let me see if I’ve got it right:
1. a bar is more than one thousand millibars (Bartender!)
2. one atmosphere is 1000 millibars
3. one atmosphere or 1000 millibars is just a smidgen shy of thirty inches mercury, or at least it used to be, but
4. a bar without Milli is a little bit more. (Or have I got it bass-ackwards?)
5.These are the atmospheric conditions of your average day at the beach, something only a French scientist could screw up.
My question follows.
I should add that in weather forecasting, all pressures are converted to sea level. If you live some significant elevation above sea level, your actual pressure will be a lot lower than the sea level pressure on the weather map, and your home barometer may or may not be showing that. The best way to check is to wait for a time of slack high pressure when your local TV station pressure (whether given in inches or millibars) will be the same as yours even if you’re some distance away. The same “sea level” pressure, that is. To give some idea, the upper air reports given from radiosonde balloons are given not at standard heights but when the balloon gets to standard pressures of 850, 700, 500, 300 and 250 mbs. The 850 mb maps that are then derived from those observations average about 1,500 metres above sea level which is about 5,000 feet give or take. The 500 mb maps are at an average height of 5,500 metres which is close to 18k feet. So if you live in the plains states you might be at some elevation almost up to 850 mb, which means your actual outside air pressure is really 900 mb when the sea level reading is 1000 mb. If you live in the Great Basin you could be up around 750-800 mb. At the top of the highest peaks in the Rockies you are close to 600 mb and when you’re at cruising altitude in a jet plane the outside pressure is about 200 mb. No wonder they have to pressurize jet aircraft.
I think to be more precise, millibars are neither metric nor Imperial measure. They are arbitrary units chosen so that reporting would be relative to some implied average. When chosen, it was probably not known that the average global pressure was actually 1013 rather than 1000.
The metric measurement of air pressure would be mm of mercury and there, 760 mm is similar to 30 inches.
The use of millibars is not some new thing that has crept into usage recently. Weather maps from the 1940s were drawn up in millibars too.
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