current events

This weekend, the San Francisco Bay Area is having an historic heat wave. In the City, temperatures reached 106°F, while out here in Concord, we have seen 116°. On September 2, Concord was hotter than Bangkok and Death Valley! Since Weather Underground has great data, I thought I’d take a look at the trend.

First, here at our house: We have a weather station in the backyard that reports data to Weather Underground. It tells us the following about the period from Memorial Day through today this year:

• 96° – the average maximum temperature
• 77° – the average of the 24-hour mean temperatures
• 56 – the number days where the maximum temperature exceeded 95°
• 33 – the number days where the maximum temperature exceeded 100°
• 24 – the number of days where the maximum temperature exceeded 105°

Yes, it’s been hot, but has this year been hotter than others? I looked at the historical data for Buchanan Airfield (KCCR) for the past 30 years and I came up with a few interesting charts. (Click on these to see a bigger version.) Traditionally, summer runs from Memorial Day through Labor Day: that’s the period covered in these graphs.

The “mean temperature”, which is the overall temperature in a day, was at an all-time high this year. From 1988-2014, the range was 69° to 72°. 2017 has been higher than that: the average mean temperature has been 75°

More…

Sorry for the very late notice: A historic 1977 performance of Turandot from the San Francisco Opera will be broadcast tonight, 7.December at 8pm PST on KDFC-FM in the SF Bay Area, – 104.9 South Bay & Peninsula, 90.3 San Francisco, 89.9 North & East Bay, 92.5 Ukiah-Lakeport, 90.3 Los Gatos, Saratoga.

The series of performances that season marked the first time that Monsterrat Caballé sang the title role and the first time that Luciano Pavarotti had a go a “Nessun Dorma”. For SF audiences, it was also the first time they saw a very young Ricardo Chailly.

This was well before my time, but colleagues from the orchestra have vivid memories of what must have been a blockbuster experience.

This station has terrible reception over the air where I live, so listening to it online at kdfc.com or through an app like Tune-In Radio is a better option here.