Clouds and Rain

A couple of days ago we recorded a Film Bin discussion for the movie 'Outland' and it set me to thinking about what film criticism or reviewing actually is. Then after a few moments it dawned on me that it would make an incredibly dull blog post and so instead I looked out the window and saw weather. I am currently on the coast and we gets lots of weather, varying and shifting on an hour-by-hour basis and it is thrilling if you think about it. Here in Britain we have a bit of a reputation for talking about the weather, but it's understandable because it's always changing, nowhere more so than on the coast, and that is fascinating.

Fascinating is a good word, isn't it?

Some time ago I must have talked about how everything is fascinating once you think about it enough. Think about the weather for a moment, if you will, and then be awed.

<One hour passes>

A little while ago it was sunny. Now it's it pouring down with rain. Probably somewhere up above two huge masses of air have met and rubbed up against each other. One is of a different pressure to the other, and in the mixing we have made weather. The mixing may be nowhere near here but unsettled weather is going to happen here anyway and it is good. And it's because of the air. Now, we all think of air as light but it's not. It's actually quite heavy in the bulk volume we're considering and its little bouncing molecules press down on us all day every day. Air is awesome.

We can't blame air for all of the weather as there is also heat. Different levels of heat in different parts of the air mass cause the pressures partially. Heat comes from two sources. Firstly the sun, an immense fusion reaction at centre of our solar system that's sending out light photons which then partially convert to heat on contact with matter. On top of that, we're living on a giant rocky ball in space, which at its core is full of incredibly hot molten iron and lava. And that core is spinning! Spinning! That's a lot of heat, and it affects the local weather systems in myriads of ways. Now, that is awesome.

Weather formation doesn't end there, oh no, because heat affects the environment, the environment affects the air, and the air and contained clouds affects the amount of sun that reaches us in a vicious cycle. It's an enormous chaotic system which can not be predicted except in the shortest of time scales.

<looks out of window at points at rain>

Sometimes the air masses clash so much they make electrical charges that lightning leaps up to the clouds above in a titanic event to complete a circuit and ground the system, and it works. Visible forks of light illuminating the usually dark world in vivid moments of clarity. Why usually dark? Well, because some types of behaviour are more likely in the night or the day. Even the spinning of the world is important.

Now, all of that was grossly over-simplified and even partially wrong but I can't help but think of all that air high up in the skies, thinning unto the edge of space. They're gaseous continental masses of differing temperatures and densities which conspire and mix to make our favourite default topic: The weather.

O.