Philosophy Friday: Everything NOW!

My definition of Presentism is this: 

The idea that we want results now--we live in the now--sometimes seeing results before the present has played itself out. Society has evolved into a reality where we want//need results now. In many instances, before the present has drifted into the past. So much information coming at us that we fail to process it all--we have no point of reference anymore. 

 A great quote from Douglas Rushkoff's book "Present Shock" which talks about "Presentism".

"When there is no linear time, how is a person supposed to figure out what is going on. there's no story, no narrative to explain why things are the way they are. Previously distinct causes and effects collapse into one another. No time between doing something and seeing the result. Instead the results begin accumulating and influencing us before we've even completed an action. There is so much information coming in at once from so many different sources, there is simply no way to trace the plot over time."

A little philosophy on this Friday---Thoughts?

Kids Are Back At School...A Look Back At Summer

There's a lot of talk about how cool this summer has been so far in northern Ohio. Many people have commented about how they haven't had a "pool-less" summer like this in a long time. I do my best not to respond with weather records showing the contrary. Numbers can get quiet boring.

The truth is, as I wrote last week, we've had plenty of summers similar to this one in Cleveland. Because of the Recency Effect, we tend to forget those years unless we experienced some big event (wedding, great vacation, etc) during that time that helps solidify the memory.

Here is how this summer has stacked up versus the summers of the past:

The average high temperatures since June 1st since the 1870s for Cleveland seem to follow discernible patterns.  Look at the trend over the last 140 years:  Much cooler average high temperatures from 1870 through the 1920s, a sharp spike in the 1930s through the mid 1950s. Since the late 1950s, the high temperatures have averaged 80.3 over the 3 month period (JUNE, JULY and AUGUST).  Note that the year-to-year variation has increased (graph becomes more jagged) since the early 1980s.

So what about this summer?   The AVERAGE HIGH TEMPERATURE WAS 79.0

 1.3 degrees BELOW AVERAGE since 1956

Using 1956 as the cut-off eliminates the 1800s (temperature station changed several times), the spike in the dust bowl days and the scorcher summer of the early 1950s, this summer ranks as the 14th coolest! In other words, Over the same period, 13 summers have had COOLER HIGH TEMPERATURES.

The most recent summers were 2009, 2004 and 2000

What about overnight lows? The trend since 1956 has shown an increase. This summer, the nights have been running warmer than average but cooler than the last 3 summers.

How about rainfall?

This summer ranks 6th WETTEST since 1956 well above the average of 9.03".  The summers that were COOLER than 2013 (circled in green) match up well to summers with above average rainfall.

In summary, this summer was cooler than past summers but not unprecedented. Rainfall was indeed well above average but not as wet as the summer of 2011.

Will Below Normal Temps Continue into September?

 

My projection for August given the "cooler than normal" July and comparing it to the July summers similar to 2013 yielded this:

TEMPERATURES AVERAGED SLIGHTLY BELOW AVERAGE

So far through the 10th, this is what has ACTUALLY HAPPENED...not a bad match. Red dot is over Ohio.

The years that featured summers with "cooler" high temperatures than this summer through August 10th are:  2009, 2004, 2003, 2000, 1997, 1996, 1992, 1990, 1985, 1972, 1969, 1965, 1960, 1958, 1940, 1938, 1937, 1936, 1935.

I charted the summer average daytime high temperatures since 1933 (81 summers). The summers that were "cooler" than this summer are circled in blue  (20 of the last 31 years). The red line is the average over the 81 summers.This summer is indicated with the red arrow on the right.

How about September?

The most recent "cooler" summers since 2000 don't necessarily mean that September will always be cool.  In fact, September of 2009 was near normal while 2004 (a summer markedly cooler than 2013) was above normal.

Since daytime highs above 80 are considered "above normal" in September (daytime highs start to drop significantly), I plotted the number of days at or above 80 in each September from each year (listed earlier). What does this show?

 Overall, we average about a weeks worth of days above 80 in Septembers that follow cool summers similar or cooler than 2013

Here is what the temperatures looked like for each day in September of 2009. I circled the 80 degree days AND the 60 degree days. Notice how they become more numerous later in the month.

I believe that this September will look something like 2009. A handful of 80 degree days, a handful of 60 degree days toward the end with the rest feeling similar to this week!

Tornado Confirmed in Orrville, Ohio

The National Weather Service confirmed that the damage from severe storms Wednesday afternoon in Orrville, Ohio WAS from a tornado. Estimated maximum wind speed: 95 mph; Maximum path width: 50 yards; path length: 1 mile.

There is a misconception that tornado wind speeds are estimated from doppler radar or some other direct measurement. Wind speeds are "reverse engineered" by surveying damage. The estimated wind speed is the--and this is key--AN ESTIMATED THREE-SECOND GUST AT THE POINT OF DAMAGE.

The type of structure/tree is assigned one of the 28 Indicators that describe the type of structure. DEGREES OF DAMAGE (scale of 1 to 9) are assigned to each indicator. After the assessment for all indicators is complete, the estimated three second wind speed is determined. A more detailed EF Powerpoint is provided by the National Weather Service.

Tornado in Orrville...More Storms Today?

A viewer sent this photo of the funnel cloud (more than likely a tornado) in Orrville yesterday afternoon around 3PM. More on this from the NWS later today.

Current radar images of NORTHER OHIO AND THE OHIO VALLEY ARE BELOW!


Will we see redevelopment later today? Yes. However, the conditions are not favorable for severe weather. The front is on our doorstep as of 8AM Thursday.

The front will stall focusing the storms across the southern portions of northern Ohio later today.

Severe Storms Possible Later Today

We're already seeing development in southern Michigan. In fact, this cluster started to develop in Wisconsin at 1AM where it moved west over Lake Michigan, weakened a bit and is not fanning out to the west. CLICK HERE FOR THE NEWEST RADAR LOOP

The dew points are climbing; precipitable water levels will be much higher...

Convective Energy is highest in western Ohio later today and this evening

 Severe thunderstorm watch possible later today in this area

The HRRR model still shows spotty storms developing ahead of the Michigan cluster by midday.....

Here is the HRRR projection for this afternoon and early evening showing more widespread storm coverage.

July is in the books: TEMPERATURE NUMBERS

My last two posts reinforced how common "cooler" Julys like this month are when we look back as recent as the early 2000s. I also mentioned how the RECENCY EFFECT plays a huge role in our skewed perceptions of July temperatures. The last few years of record heat helped us forget about the other "cool" months of July in our recent weather history.

The final NWS numbers are in. I broke down the July temperatures into two categories: AVERAGE MAX TEMPERATURE and OVERALL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE (MAX and MIN). Where does 2013 fit over the last 30 years? VERY NEAR AVERAGE on both measures. (The prior years--2010,11--are circled in red for reference)

How about the final number of days this July below 80 degrees? Believe it or not, the 11 days below 80 degrees was only slightly above the average average since 1980.

ALMOST HALF OF THE YEARS SINCE 1980 HAD MORE DAYS WITH HIGH TEMPERATURES BELOW 80 DEGREES THAN THIS YEAR

Just for fun, here is the 90 degree scorecard comparing this summer to the last 4 summers.

More "Summer Days in the 70s" Fun

When we think of June and July weather in northern Ohio, high humidity and temperatures in the 80s and 90s are at the top of the list. Cooler summer weather like what we are experiencing now tends to mess with our perceptions of summers past.  Consecutive days in the 70s in late July/early August become very uneasy to swallow.

Weather extremes evoke a very powerful cognitive bias we all have called hard wired into our DNA the "RECENCY EFFECT". This effect gives higher importance to events that have occurred more recently and lesser weight to events further back in time.  The last three summers (2012, 2011 and 2010) have all featured some record heat. These memories are more recent in our minds so we give them more credence than a distant memory of a summer in, say the early 1990s or early 2000s.

Viewer Facebook comments all illustrate this bias perfectly.  Most comment that this summer is so unusual. Most say that don't remember a summer like this in a long time. Yet summers like this one have occurred more often than most of us (myself included) realize. Best of all, we don't have to go that far back in time to find them.

Below is a chart that summarizes ALL of the summers (JUNE and JULY) over the last 30 summers COOLER than this summer. I only averaged the HIGH TEMPERATURES as most of us really don't remember nighttime lows. I listed each year from WARMEST to COOLEST. 

 I'm a stat guy so there is a lot of numbers here. The points that stand out are as follows: 

*  19 OF THE LAST 30 SUMMERS HAVE BEEN JUST AS "COOL" OR COOLER THAN THIS SUMMER. (SEE MY LAST POST)

*   7 SUMMERS (DAYTIME TEMPS) SINCE 2000 (2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2009) HAVE BEEN "COOLER" THAN 2013

*  THE MAJORITY OF THESE "COOLER" SUMMERS HAD MORE DAYS IN THE 60s AND 70s THAN THIS SUMMER

* MOST OF THE "COOLER" SUMMERS SINCE 2000 ALL HAD STRETCHES OF "70 DEGREE TEMPS IN JULY" COMPARABLE TO THIS SUMMER

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The moral of the story is we all perceive this summer to be so earth-shatteringly COOL.  Yet even some of our more recent summers contrary to what our memories tell us have been just as cool.

July '13 Temperatures vs. July of 2012

July is coming to a close so I checked the high temperatures nationwide and compared them to July of last summer. First, the last 7 days (July 21 thru 27th)

POLAR OPPOSITES FOR SURE!

Now the last 30 days (June 28th thru July 27th). This takes into account the week of 90s in mid July for Ohio.

2012 WAS STILL A BLAST FURNACE COMPARED TO 2013

How does this summer stack up compared to the most recent summers? Here are the temperatures plotted over the last 30 years for Cleveland. I circled the years that parallel this summer. The most recent summer was not 2009 (as I initially thought) but 2008.

This summer compared to ALL SUMMERS since 1871? This summer circled in red on the right side.

It seems as if we've had "cooler" and "warmer" periods since the 1870s. This summer fits nicely inside our "warmer" trend since the late 1980s.

WILL WE SEE ANOTHER 90 THIS SUMMER? The pattern over the next two weeks will give us insight into the answer of that question.

Does the Homerun Derby REALLY mess up players swings?

I love posts that dispel myths of all sorts. After reading about the psychology of our love with fanciful stories (narratives) fueled by information that fits our preconceived notions versus solid data driven evidence (especially concerning economics and science) versus solid data driven evidence (especially concerning economics and science), its not hard to see how our worldly observations are heavily biased. We hate feeling conflicted; we hate to be wrong.

The baseball Home Run Derby is no different.

The myth goes like this: Most players who participate in the Home Run Derby will have their swings irrevocably altered the rest of the season resulting in a huge drop in home runs. 


A great post on Fan Graphs examines the data and found some interesting results that helps dispel this myth:  FANGRAPHS POST

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The Home Run Derby is kind of counter-intuitive to many MLB managers. Old-schoolers like Mike Scioscia would rather his players did not participate, saying, “I haven’t seen somebody come away from that derby and be a better player for it.”¹ The Home Run Derby turns the team game into an individual competition. Players exhaust themselves and risk tweaking their swings, but has the derby really affected the second-half performance of its participants?

To answer this question I looked at what goes into a player’s stats. There is a lot of luck involved in baseball, so I took a look at the differences in the way players hit the ball before the derby compared to after the derby. Looking at the past five derbies, I calculated the average batted-ball flight for players that were healthy for both halves of the season

The HR to FB ratio drops considerably, and could explain a decrease in batting average and slugging percentage, as well as on-base percentage. It seems that players hit the ball the same way, just with slightly less power.

The large drop is ISO shows that indeed power does decrease for derby participants in the second half, and the overall line shows that players do perform worse. It’s not merely a function of hitting the ball to the wrong place, as the .oo6 drop in Bating Average of Balls in Play (BABIP) is not really significant. Players strike out a little bit more, but the notion that players change their swings and have trouble hitting the ball the same way after participating in the derby seems misguided when considering the small change in K% along with the consistent batted-ball percentages outlined in the first table.

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So, NO CHANGE IN TYPES OF BALLS HIT. I speculate that (all other factors being equal) given the small 1% increase in strikeouts, the drop in power (home runs) in the second half of the season could be the result of fatigue.