forecast: flashing blue...

One downtown SLC feature that has me mildly obsessed is the Walker Center tower (right). It predicts the weather. Predicts sounds fancier than forecast...more mystical. I can see it when I drive home every night. The huge tower on top is either blue or red, flashing or not flashing. The trouble is that I can never remember what the flashing or not flashing means, or the red or the blue. So I see flashing blue and I think..."great...the weather is going to be flashing blue."

Even though I can never remember...I check it every day...unless the inversion is too bad and then I can't see anything.

Wait...I'll look it up...here you go...

blue: clear skies

flashing blue: cloudy skies

red: rain

flashing red: snow

Hmmm... flashing blue actually means cloudy skies. I wonder if the inversion smog counts as cloudy? It's probably flashing blue like crazy in the inversion but no one can see it.

Stacey and I had this inane conversation one day (usual) about the time frame in which it predicts the weather. Is it the next day's weather? The next hour? Current weather?... I decided that this wouldn't be useful at all. If you were inside and wanted to know if you needed a jacket outside you could look out the window at the tower..."I can barely see the tower through the snow...it's flashing red...I'd better get a coat!" I'm sure it's future weather, but I have no idea how far in the future. I'm back to square one. Sometime in the future it's going to snow. I'm still wondering about the prediction of clouds vs. inversion smog. Oh, well...good thing I watch the weather every morning.

Another random tidbit...when it was built the Walker Bank Building (as it was called then) was the tallest building between Chicago and San Francisco. How about that!

Comments

[kenna]

love this information packed post. :)

i had always wondered what was up with the flashing lights. now i know!

they should have an inversion light for sure, though. most helpful.