Speaking of weather, Yahoo weather says “Unknown Precipitation” is falling from the sky in NYC.
WeatherDock opts for the phrase “Wintry Mix,” which makes the precip sound more like a cocktail or lounge music compilation.
And then there’s the icon that accompanies it: every crappy weather icon you can think of layered on top of each other. I think if you look really close at it, you can see locusts.
Matt Oakes
on 14 Feb 07Ha, good finds :P
Steve Bissonnette
on 14 Feb 07Funny -
“Wintery Mix” is the term ski mountains use when they receive rain mixed in with snow / or turning to snow. No ski industry marketing person ever wants to use the term “rain” in any snow report as it’s a guarantee for losing customers.
I’ve also seen other words that they substitute in lieu of rain, “scrappy stuff”, “crud”, “precip” and the awesome sounding “funk”.
atotic
on 14 Feb 07The mystery deepens http://www.wunderground.com/US/NY/New_York
26° F | 14° F Ice Pellets 100% chance of precipitation
Ice Pellets?
DanMac
on 15 Feb 07a mix is exactly what we got. every time I looked outside it had switched from snow to freezing rain or back again. getting the car out today was a project, I still have some numbness in my fingers…
carlivar
on 15 Feb 07A sunny 70 degrees here in Los Angeles today!
Daniel
on 15 Feb 07Isn’t a “wintry mix” just called “sleet”? I mean, isn’t that why that word exists?
English is not my native tongue but the word “sleet” I know all too well since it’s pretty much all we get each winter here in Denmark. Actual snow is cause for celebration (followed closely by annoyance at the incovenience.)
Leith @ Birth of a Startup
on 15 Feb 07Here in Sydney, a ‘wintry mix’ would just be a bit of rain and coldness warranting a thick jumper (or ‘sweater’ as its called in the Northern Hemisphere, right?!). I used to live in London, and although I did used to winge madly at the persistent cold, there were those lovely days spent on a dark leather couch in a cosy pub with a fire not far away… I loved the ‘wintry mix’ on those days :-)
Fred Sampson
on 15 Feb 07I don’t know much about winter weather terminology—I’m a native Californian, we don’t get that much variety. But my all time favorite weather forecast I read on the front page of the daily newspaper in Suva, Fiji, which said: “Mainly fine.”
That’s how I want my weather every day, mainly fine.
Matt Turner
on 15 Feb 07Yep, here in the UK we’d call that ‘sleet’
sleet |slēt| noun a form of precipitation consisting of ice pellets, often mixed with rain or snow.
• a thin coating of ice formed by sleet or rain freezing on contact with a cold surface.
Daniel
on 15 Feb 07Thanks, Matt. I did check my dictionary, but still I was starting to think that I might have been imagining the word “sleet.”
And had I looked closer in my dictionary (the same as yours I can tell, i.e. Oxford’s in Tiger), I probably would have noticed the “ice pellets” term in the definition. As atotic succinctly puts it: “Ice pellets?” I’m inclined to agree; that is a strange way of describing it. Makes it sound mechanically mass-produced.
Peter Fitzgibbons
on 21 Feb 07“I think if you look really close at it, you can see locusts.”
I laughed, I cried, that was better than Cats and Dogs living together.
:)
This discussion is closed.