Thursday, December 7, 2017

Posts Written But Not Published

Source: https://sarkaimak.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/unpublished/
I noticed yesterday that sometime in October, the Wasatch Weather Weenies reached 2500 posts.  Unbelievable.  I've written about 99.99% of those and that is an obscene amount of work!

Our top-10 most viewed posts are popular for a mixture of reasons including Google-search happenstance, popular posts for a moment in time, and content that is timeless.

10. Blast from the Past: Ski Magazine February 1978.  Powder and Alta nostalgia.  Always a winner.

9. Powder Explosion. Photo collage from our snow adventures on the Tug Hill Plateau.  Nice to see the eastern US makes an appearance.

8. El Niño Likely for the 2015-16 Winter.  Seasonal outlooks and posts on El Niño/La Niña get huge readership, despite the fact that I almost always conclude that such information has little value for skiers in Utah.

7. Disastrous Heartbreak Ridge to Develop.  Wow.  This one is only a few days old and it has skyrocketed into the top 10.  If it bleeds, it ledes, and Heartbreak Ridge bleeds.

6. Pound for Pound the Snowiest Place in Utah.  I love Ben Lomond Peak and the north Ogden Valley.  Good to see you do too.

5. The "Official 2017/18 Ski Season Outlook.  Another seasonal outlook, although this one was written with tongue firmly in cheek.  The outlook, republished below, looks to be verifying well in California and Nevada, as well as Hawaii, but the "Better than Colorado" for Utah could be in jeopardy if this ridge hangs around.


4. West To Be Tickled by Fabio.  A good example of gaming the system with a frequently googled name.  In this case, Fabio was a former eastern Pacific hurricane with remnants spreading into the western US.

3. Tour de France Weather.  Weather always affects the tour, and this post continues to get a lot of traffic.

2. Outlook for the 2013–2014 Ski Season.  Another seasonal outlook.  This one was popular, because the outlook we issued was basic and honest.  WE HAVE NO IDEA!

1. Let's Rock.  Sort of a shame that this short post is #1, simply because there are so many people Googling Let's Rock.  There's no other reason to go here.

OK, so that's the top 10 based on page views, but there's another top-10 list (technically a top 7 list) that is more interesting, and that is the list of posts never published.  There aren't many of these because I am stubborn as hell.  Typically when I write a post I get an idea, I think it will take 5 or 10 minutes, I start to write it up, and I realize I'm in over my head.  I polish the turd quickly and hit the "publish" button and move on, hoping for the best.

However, every now I realize that there's no polishing the turd.  This typically occurs with politically controversial topics related to climate change, or more philosophical posts about science and weather forecasting.

With that being said, here are the seven posts never published out of 2500+:

7. Science Is Never Settled

6. Air Quality Irony

5. What Tree Rings Tell Us about Utah Climate

4. Obama's Carbon Reduction Plans

3. Climate Change: "Action is Urgently Needed"

2. Do Climate Scientists Really Ignore Natural Climate Forcings?

1. The Future of the Weather Forecaster

These posts were written with good intentions, but haven't yet made it to blog-worthiness.  However,  there's no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.  Perhaps they will appear in the future.

3 comments:

  1. Got an odd ball question essentially unrelated to this post, Jim, no surprise.

    Our heartbreak ridge off the coast of California is causing high pressure in the Western U.S. Why are the Santa Anna winds blowing so strong. Along the same lines, the downslope winds in Washington County.

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  2. The highest pressure is extends along an axis running from SE to NW across northern Utah. This has put those areas in the strong pressure gradient to the SW of the high. There are a few other things going on, but that's the quick and dirty.

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  3. future of the weather forecaster, por favor.

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