06 December 2009

27-degree Rain?

From the weather forecast for Pocatello at NOAA:


Now, if it does rain on Thurdsay, and the high is only 27° F, I'm pretty sure it would actually come out as "Freezing Rain," not just "Rain." The forecast in words also said merely rain, so it's not a case of a mere typo in the picture coding.

Now I'm trying to think how it would work for it not to be freezing rain... The ground temperature would have to be above freezing, despite having no highs above freezing in the past week, or the rain would have to be saturated with something that would lower the freezing point below 27° F (probably further down than that, since that's the high). That just doesn't seem likely to me.

2 comments:

John said...

That forecast is positively balmy compared to here. It didn't even break zero today. Every winter, I swear that I'm emigrating to New Zealand.

Qalmlea said...

Yeah, I don't think it got above 12 here yesterday, though it started warming up (to 16) after sunset. Presumably there was a "warm" front coming in from somewhere. AFAIK, it hasn't dipped below zero yet, but it came pretty close a few times. On the plus side, all the snow we've been getting has been sticking. If the cold holds out for 16 more days, we'll have a White Christmas for sure! (Possibly I'm the only person in Pocatello to be happy about this)