I have vague memories about a meteorologist that found some correlation between weather patters and day of the week.
This was significant because day of the week is a purely cultural construct and not related in any way with nature.
He stumbled on this by chance while studying landfall of hurricanes.
The tentative conclusion he reached is that water usage in suburban America followed a weekly pattern and was enough of a factor to make a difference on the weather.
I don’t remember much else and there is no guarantee that what I am remembering is correct, although I do feel very confident of it.
Does anyone remember this and/or know if there was any follow through on it?
I might be mistaken, but think I remember this. If it’s the same guy, I think he also mentioned a theory about why it rained more (according to him) on the weekends. Something about there are more cars on the road during the week because of people driving to work, which causes more particles in the air, which leads to cloud formation. It builds up over the week, and then it rains on the weekend, and the cycle reboots. Apparently his assumption was that people don’t drive as much on the weekends; they prefer to hang out at home and relax.
I find it hard to believe that the number of hurricanes which have made landfall during the period for which records exist is statistically significant.
I love statistics. One day of the week will have more hurricane landfalls if you could even find accurate enough records.
It would be very unlikely that the distribution between all seven days would be even. That’d be shocking. And given that we have a century of data out of hundreds of thousands of years…
I think this is the guy. I do remember something about “why does it rain on weekends?” at some point.
His findings were not about landfall week days. He was studying hurricane landfall when he noticed the patterns on other forms of weather, which lead to his “discovery”.
The whole thing didn’t sound extremely outrageous. He was very tentative about his results and just presented them as seed for future studies. This was not a bona fide wacko just spouting crap.
Just how does he define “landfall” for a hurricane?
I frequently hear of a hurricane that hits the Bahamas or Caribbean Islands, then a day or two later hits Cuba, then on to the coast of Florida, and then either northward onto the eastern seacost of the US, or westward onto the gulf cost of the US.
Which of those do you count as the day of ‘landfall’ for that hurricane?
I don’t know. But then again, that is only trivia for the purposes of the research I was hoping to find. Hurricane landfalls was what he was studying when he was sidetracked by this apparent pattern of weather and days of the week. After that it had nothing to do with landfalls.