From work

I’m at work at the moment, sat at a desk working on a computer.

This is true of lots of people.

Many people have things in their work-place that make noises, such as photocopiers, people cleaning or talking loudly, that kind of thing; and telephone calls that disrupt what you’re trying to do. For me, sat at the keyboard 12 hours at a time (less quick breaks), the noises are generally the bombers taking off and the phone calls are usually pilots asking for information on the weather over targets. Also the guys at work are usually refereed to by nicknames, Misty just came in to borrow a disk, Millhouse is the room next door in the mess, Crazy Thom showed me around one of the squadrons and I’ve been refereed to as the “Mitch” or “Met-B!tch”, just because I’m the junior forecaster.

This is not true of lots of people.

I think there’s something different in the jobs that we do so that for each of us there is an amount of individuality. It could be the music that you listen to, your approach to the work that you do or the little extra bit of skill you have in the job that other don’t have or use.
Okay, I’ll admit it, I’m bragging a bit about the jets but come dusk when the light’s fading and the evening flights are taking off, there’s little that can match seeing the aircraft take off with the tongues of fire behind them.
True, getting the weather right more often would be nice. Not that I’m getting it wrong all that often, it’s just inhuman accuracy would be better.
Currently watching the sun set on the satellite images, you can tell because the visible image gets darker from the left and then goes black. There’s also the radar return as the rain comes up towards us and I’m thinking, “damn, should have brought a waterproof.” Oh well, good thing I’ve got the spare in the locker here.
Up here we use a series of webcams from around the country to give the pilots an idea of what’s happening in the areas they might be flying in. For example a picture of Eskdalemuir showing clear blue skies (rare) or one of Loch Glascarnoch showing snow on the hill tops and cloud covering the hills tells them what’s happening much more clearly than our words will. Most of the webcams that we use can be found at the Met Office Site although we’ve got a different page as a guide with some others like the Kyle of Lochalsh store 9-1-4 cam which shows a castle that some may recognise. Try the high res snapshot of the castle view.
Or the Cairngorm mountain cam and the Ben Nevis cam.
I’ve just been told that there used to be a “gnomeometer” based by the Glascarnoch cam that was used to record snow depth by remote monitoring. This highly respected piece of equipment consisted of a garden gnome, securely tied against the elements, with a calibrated measuring rod that could be used to tell how deep the snow was. Brilliant.

Plans for the next few hours/days: Call the mess and book a late meal. Watch the new Bond film before going on a night shift. Climb Cairngorm on Saturday (may be snowing, pack ice-axe). Listen to loud music.