Unfortunately I didn’t get to the cricket last night – I wasn’t feeling well – and missed Richard Levi’s demonstration of how to hit sixes Would have been fun to see.<\/p>\n
It occurred to me at the weekend that I’ve managed to avoid the rain in the last week. While its poured down in Cambridge, I’ve been at work in Hamilton – and Hamilton has managed to get a soaking outside normal work hours while I’ve been in Cambridge or elsewhere. Sooner or later the thunder is going to catch up with me. In the meantime, I’m not complaining.<\/p>\n
That’s one of the features of this kind of weather pattern – you just don’t know where the storms are going to pop up. The met-service people can tell us that they will pop up, and someplace is going to get drenched, but just where and when is anyone’s guess. The atmosphere is ‘unstable’ – and that word means something very specific in physics. Specifically, the equilibrium state, where the heat, moisture, airflow etc is shared out equally over an area (i.e. everywhere in Waikato, say, is a similar temperature and humidity) isn’t going to stay like that. If we start with the equilibrium state, and change it slightly, it encourages further changes to occur. So we end up with pockets of rising air, leading to rain clouds forming, and pockets of falling air, which give us dry conditions, rather than all the air sitting still. <\/p>\n