Singleton Philly Celebrates Ground Hog Day 2021

Singleton Philly is alive and well, thank you… and looking forward to the Global Holiday on February 2nd. Unlike his Rideau Hall Relatives, there has been no screaming and yelling in the Singleton Burrow although there was a healthy amount of laughter in 2020. The Singleton Sanctuary is governed by the policy that merit is the only thing that matters. Working for and with nature is a way of life. 

The rural internet is slow and there has been no zooming with the outside world. That may be a good thing. In spite of COVID and technological isolation, news has leaked in the burrow that developers intent on making even more money, can pay the government some cash to ravage his provincially significant sanctuary. Sounds like a good idea to the politicians but not to Philly who intends to leave the sanctuary even more natural and healthy than the way he found it. It is the natural thing to do!

The COVID restrictions that were ignored by the political and corporate elite, were strictly enforced in the Singleton Burrow. It was pretty much life as normal for the hermit artist… and Philly expects that to continue for another year. Philly will get the vaccine but will not rush to the front of the line. Health care, teachers and law enforcement need to be first among everyone serving for the common good.  

Now for the Furcast… Unlike those other better known varmits, Singleton Philly relies on more than his shadow to predict the outcome of February 2nd - science!   A strong Nor’Easter will be pounding its way up the New England coast on Ground Hog morning. Watch out Nova Scotia!  No school for you. The deformation zone pattern suggests overcast skies and cool northerly winds for Singleton in the morning. 

But I already know that I won’t see my shadow … and won’t be scared back into my Singleton Burrow, which means that winter will be over. More importantly I will be obeying the COVID restrictions in the first place and still be in my hole in the ground anyway. 

Scientifically the polar vortex has split due to changes in the stratosphere. As well, La Niña—the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation climate pattern—is firmly in place and likely to last at least into the summer. This pattern favours the Nor'Easter that I was mentioning and mild, stormy weather into spring. Maybe even some March low-topped supercell thunderstorms.

For those of you interested in deterministic forecasts, winter is over. It appears that some groundhog got into the computer models with a red crayon. It will be mild though.  But remember that this is a deterministic prediction and thus bound to be flawed - ensembles and probability are betters way to communicate the weather. 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water... looking forward to a greener future...  the winds are changing... 

Singleton Philly

And please stay safe... 

By the way, Singleton Philly is not an albino. He turned gray in his thirties from worrying about getting the forecast right...

Art, Science and Creativity

Isaac Newton and Leonardo da Vinci

Recently I read that artists were rated as the most unimportant people during the COVID-19 Pandemic. I beg to differ. The arts, science and the creativity that make both special and enterwine them together are the most vital... and this is true all of the time. 

A quiet period due to a pandemic worked for Newton. 

On July 25, 1665, a five-year-old boy named John Morley, of the parish of the Holy Trinity in Cambridge, England, was found dead in his home. The young boy was the first known case and death from the bubonic plague in Cambridge that year. London's spring outbreak of the bubonic plague had spread to Cambridge. The Cambridge residents raced to isolate themselves in the countryside. Isaac Newton, a young scholar of Trinity College also evacuated to his home in Lincolnshire. The family farm called Woolsthorpe was sixty miles north of the university and fairly remote from the neighbouring villages. Newton was in a creative solitude for the next two years. He worked on his projects that he wanted to solve. These included the invention of calculus, the mathematics of change, analytical geometry, the science of motion, the force of gravity, and more. 

Leonardo as a young man on the left

Leonardo da Vinci also survived a series of bubonic plagues that struck Milan between 1484 and 1485. That plague outbreak killed about 50,000 people which was a third of Milan's population. Leonardo was always working on his many projects - so much so that most of those projects were never completed. Leonardo must have used some of that quiet plague time to design concepts for a future city. Those plans were completed between 1487 and 1490 and can be found in the Paris Manuscript B.

Medieval cities like Milan were characterized by narrow, dirty and crowded streets. Travel and navigation within any city was difficult. Sewage was part of the street. Diseases like the plague spread easily. Leonardo envisioned a renaissance city with an open and modern design that emphasized aesthetics, cleanliness, and efficiency. Leonardo used a network of canals to move goods to and from market. Sanitation was a key part of his planned city. One of Leonardo's sketches even suggest multiple subways beneath the city to move goods and people. Leonardo was way ahead of his time back in 1484. Most modern cities would benefit even today from his insights. I would highly recommend the biography by Walter Isaacson entitled simply "Leonardo Da Vinci". That book tells the entire story of the renaissance genius.

Others were certainly in the same state of isolation due to the various plagues but did not manage to be quite as creative as da Vinci or Newton. That fact does not stop one from trying though. Maybe we can look at COVID as an opportunity to do something great - or at least try. What we must not do is to denigrate the worth of the artists and the scientists... just sayin'. 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water, 

Phil the Forecaster Chadwick