The Smarmy Carny

I found a web page with a list of dozens of meteorological statuses that raised plenty of questions. What's the difference between "ice pellets" and "hail", because they're both listed on there separately. And how do you have a "heavy drizzle" — isn't that an oxymoron or at least an "oxymeteorologist"? Also frightening is that they had "volcanic ash" as a weather condition. Yikes.

• Hail: D Hail itself is fine, really. It's kind of funny to have little ice chunks falling on you. Hail gets a low rating, however, because weathermen are always hyping it up and comparing it to different sized objects. Golf ball sized hail! Baseball sized hail! Softball sized hail! BASKETBALL SIZED HAIL! Hush up, weatherman. We don't need that.
• Rain: B- I don't mind the rain, especially when you've given up trying to keep dry. It's funny to watch people running to their car in the morning when it rains. Just 20 minutes earlier, they were in the shower, subjecting themselves to even worse weather conditions.
• Snow: C+ This grade is a balance between a high grade and a low grade. I have lots of fun playing with my kids in the snow, so it gets a high grade. Driving in snow is lousy and deserves a failing grade. So we'll compromise.
• Sun: B The sun is overrated. It only takes one 2nd degree sunburn to teach you that lesson. I'd prefer any of the other weather types here to an extremely sunny day with a UV Index of 10+. That said, sunny weather doesn't wreak havoc with flooding or snow damage or other stuff like that. It just melts delicious ice cream. One more reason to be anti-sun!
• Thunderstorms: D Thunderstorms will always get a low grade, unless something changes where I don't have to unplug all my favorite machines in the house.
• Wind: A I enjoy nice, breezy days. The problem with my favorite weather is that it's almost always followed by rain.

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why? Which types of weather do you wish were included that I didn't cover here?

Sing along: "Stormy Weather . . . "

My video card bombed out on me earlier this week and I'm currently suffering with a lousy 4MB video card that doesn't even have proper drivers for any current OS. It started storming last night, so I decided I didn't want to lose additional equipment.

Thus, I turned the server off for the morning. Sorry about the downtime. Unless you're a few fries short of a happy meal, you've realized that the site is back up.

Whoops!

For my four loyal readers, I apologize for the down time the past 12 hours or so.

Due to thunderstorms, power surges, power outages, etc., I took the server down overnight. When I brought the server back up early this morning, the server was not working properly for some (then) unknown reason. I was a bit too busy to determine the problem at that time.

Finally, after resetting my equipment several times, I determined that, due to the long outage, I experienced an IP change and had to update the DNS entry. All is well now.

For those that noticed 53's absence in that time, thanks.