The 14th.

2010-03-14 22:15:44.000 – Ryan Knapp,  Staff Meteorologist

13 nails balanced on 1.

March 14th has a few things going for it. If you live in the northeast, you are either cleaning up or experiencing a fairly strong Nor’easter that is moving up along the coast from the Mid-Atlantic. This storm brought a large bought of rain to everyone except for the elevations above 3000 feet. The deluge of rain meant flooding for some or the lost of snow packs for others. And along with the torrential rains, high winds brought downed trees damaging cars, houses or anything else in their paths including power lines. So it might be a day or two until these affected regions will even be able to power up and read this comment. But there is hope as high pressure is expected to build in behind the exiting low returning sunny skies and warming temperatures for New England for the coming week.

March 14th for 2010 also marked daylight savings time to most of America. I say most because Arizona, Hawaii, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and parts of other states don’t recognize the jump. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot, parts of Mt. Washington don’t recognize the change as well. The summit now has three time zones to mess around with. If you are visiting the living quarters of Mount Washington State Park, you are seeing clocks using Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). As soon as you cross the double doors to the Mount Washington Observatory, time jumps back an hour to Eastern Standard Time (EST). And when submitting observations, time jumps back four hours from EDT (EDT-4) to observe Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). We stay on EST to keep our weather forms and, as Mike said yesterday, our servers on one uniform time so we don’t have to worry about gaps in recording our weather. GMT is used since it is the time standard used by weather observing stations and systems around the world to take the guess work out of time standards simplifying it for research purposes. It sounds confusing but most of us working here don’t even bat an eye at the time differences.

March 14th also is known as Pi day to some since the date reads 3/14 or 3.14. But if you are extra nerdy (like me), just before the jump at 2 am for daylight savings on my watch, the calendar and clock read: 3/14 1:59:26, or the first eight digits of Pi: 3.1415926. Now, I am going to really nerd out. Imagine if it were 1592 at 6:53:58, then it all would have come together to create the first 12 digits of Pi: 3/14/1592 6:53:58 or 3.14159265358. But looking at how far we have come since 1592, I think that would be the only highlight for me to be living in that time period.

Lastly, March 14th is the date marking the birthdays of a few people. The most well known is Albert Einstein who contributed greatly to the field of physics. And since meteorology has a large connection to the field of phsyics, most of us weather nerds studied one or two of his findings on the road to get our degrees. But other famous names that are tied to this date with their birthdates are Michael Caine (The Cider House Rules, etc), Billy Crystal (SNL, etc), and Taylor Hanson (“Mmmbop” anyone?). And lastly, two people working at the observatory share this date for a birth date. The first is Cara Rudio from our valley staff who, like most valley staffers, is like a Swiss Army Knife of job rolls for us. And lastly, as much as I hate making this public knowledge, I am turning another year older today. We aren’t planning much though since we celebrated Friday before our intern Nick headed down for a bit of vacation time. So there you have it, the day that is March 14th; a date that brought a storm, a day for clean up, a time change, a day to celebrate pi, and a few birthdays.

PS – The thumbnail picture is of 13 nails balance on the head of one nail. I thought it looked cooler than my other option showing the weather radar, the clocks, the symbol Pi and a calendar of March marking the B-days. Instead, I went with the “13 on 1” picture I took since together there are 14 nails for the 14th day, it is a lesson on physics (where I first was presented with this puzzle) for Einstein’s B-day, Pi because each nail is round and that’s what Pi is all about, the people weathering the current storm in the northeast are tough as nails, and to get this balanced with an edited picture took time. But you can interpret the work of art however you see fit, that’s the beauty of it.

Ryan Knapp,  Staff Meteorologist