Undercurrent

Assignment 3:Weather Story

Jacket or not? Two UMass students discuss coping with New England weather

George Carlin once noted, “The weather will continue to change, on and off, for a long, long time.” Those were the final words of his character, “The Hippy Dippy Weatherman.” In New England, changes happen rapidly and often – and when least expected.
The blizzard of 1997 dropped almost two feet of snow across the region, staggering numbers for a two-day storm. Residents did not prepare for the snowfall the way they normally would for a storm of this magnitude, many thought it was an elaborate hoax. It became known as the April Fool’s Storm. All of the snow fell between March 31 and April 1, 1997, over a week into spring. Easter fell the day before, with temperatures hitting 63 degrees.
January 6, 2007, the height of winter. Daily Hampshire Gazette reporter Tamara Llosa-Sandor spotted 18-year-old Hannah McQuillan outside of Thornes Marketplace in Northampton, dressed in a tank-top and eating an ice cream sundae. She was no glutton for punishment, nor was she practicing to join the Polar Bear Club for their annual swims in frigid water. It was 63 degrees that day, typical late spring to early summer weather for the region. The normal average temperature on that day would be closer to 23 degrees.
More traditional winter weather did not hit the region until February that year, severely hindering the maple syrup production. Sugarers rely on cold temperatures in December and January for trees to produce enough sap to be boiled down into syrup.
The erratic weather of 2007 had one last surprise. The warmest winter in history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, ended with a storm that dropped 9.5 inches of snow on Amherst overnight between March 16 and 17, just as University of Massachusetts students were preparing to leave for Spring Break.
Snow is not the only winter weather event that New Englanders have to worry about. This past winter began with a massive ice storm in early December, leading to Gov. Deval Patrick declaring a state of emergency across the state. The storm hit hardest in western and central Mass., where over 20,000 homes were without power for days. The storm shattered trees and downed power lines as ice sheeted around them. Goshen residents reported that the ice coating reached over one-inch thick in many cases.
The final storm of the winter fell on March 2, dropping close to a foot of snow in the Pioneer Valley and forcing schools to cancel classes. Some schools in Northern Worcester County had already experienced between eight and ten weather related school cancellations by the second week of January. Because of the state’s strict 180-day requirement for public schools, students must make up for the days that were lost, meaning students will have to attend school at a time when baseball is in full swing and cold days are but a memory.
It did not take long for the storm to be but a memory, either. Warm temperatures in the days following melted most of the winter remnants rapidly. The next weekend, streets of Northampton were crowded with people dressed as Hannah McQuillan was on that January day two years prior.

-With Rosie Walunas

The convoy has arrived

The Viva Palestina aide convoy successfully entered Gaza on Monday. Stay tuned for an analysis of the press coverage the group received as well as a breakdown of Yvonne Ridley’s twitter coverage of the journey.

Assignment 2: Multimedia

On Jan. 17, a few days before the inauguration of Barack Obama, the New York Times ran an interesting time line on its Web site about inaugural addresses. This, to me, was a very well put together and unforgettable piece of multimedia.

The two things that struck me the most about this package were the amount of interactivity involved and the amount of time that obviously went into putting it together. Staffers apparently went through every inaugural address, from George Washington in 1789 through Obama this past January, and compiled a list of key words. They also worked in a bar chart to show who said what word the most.

It is fun to play around with, informative, easy to understand and well thought out. Those qualifications make it very effective.

After selecting a former – or the current – president’s picture off of the time line atop the main graphic, words pop up in the style of a tag cloud. The more often a word was uttered, the larger it appears. After the user clicks on a word, a bar chart appears indicating how often that word was used in previous inaugural addresses.

Clicking on the word “god” shows that Obama used it three times in his address, the same amount of times George Bush used it in both 2001 and 2005. The record belongs to Ronald Regan in 1985.

All of the words can be shown in the context they were delivered, and full text of the addresses are also available via links.

This package must have required many hours of thought, research and design. Even though it isn’t breaking news, it does provide great insight as to what our country’s elected leaders thought were the gravest issues of their day. It also suggests that political rhetoric does not change much over time.

Little fun facts;

The shortest inaugural address of all time was given by Washington upon his swearing in for his second term, a mere 135 words.

The longest was given by William Henry Harrison in 1841. His almost 8,000 words preceded his 31 day tenure as president – cut short by his death in April of 1841.

The Internet provides an excellent opportunity to make learning feel like a game, and that is why this package succeeds.