Here in Thailand, we await the rains.....

That angry rising sun

Absent rain, the hot season deepens, even dangerously. Here I am driven to indulge in what was once a serious sin in English prose composition, the pathetic fallacy, attributing human feelings to the sun itself. Why should the sun be angry? Because we have messed up its little sister, the earth?

Anyway there are some serious points to be made here.

First, note that the sun is rising not directly to the east, but slightly -- five degrees -- to the north of east. This means that the twin condo tower on the right is not going to protect my bedroom from ascending sun over the next few hours, the way I imagined it might back ten years ago when I bought this place. It will become hot to the point where I will either get up and head out for coffee, or hit the aircon button and flop back into bed. A dollar or two of electricity for the latter course.

Record breaking discomfort in humid Bangkok

Thick haze at dawn in Bangkok with record high dew point at 29 C and daily low of 31 C dry bulb. Must check whether this breaks 60 year records for discomfort extending into the insufferable for the rest of the day. Yesterday 5/12 was the record Thailand aircon power consumption mid afternoon about 2 pm, brownouts abounding, and in the Gulf of Thailand water temps exceeded records at 32 C. In Bangkok many people fanning themselves on the sidewalk. We could be heading into a day of extreme discomfort. Or do the 8 am cloud masses show here signal a merciful break point?

Auspicious signs of rain from today's ploughing ceremony?

Today the famous ploughing ceremony described 200 years ago by a visiting Englishman:

Specimens of all the principal fruits of the earth are collected together in a field, and an ox is turned loose amongst them, and the particular product which he selects to feed upon, is, on the authority of this experiment, to be considered as the scarcest fruit of the ensuing season, and therefore entitled to the especial care of the husbandman.

The idea is that the success of the rains and coming agricultural season can be foretold on this day. The question is whether I can do better with my wonderful database of daily weather since the 1950s.

Reportedly today's ceremony led to promise of a prosperous upcoming 2016 season, but that was true last year and the result has been serious drought.

Auspicious signs of rain from today's ploughing ceremony?

Today the famous ploughing ceremony described 200 years ago by a visiting Englishman:

Specimens of all the principal fruits of the earth are collected together in a field, and an ox is turned loose amongst them, and the particular product which he selects to feed upon, is, on the authority of this experiment, to be considered as the scarcest fruit of the ensuing season, and therefore entitled to the especial care of the husbandman.

The idea is that the success of the rains and coming agricultural season can be foretold on this day. The question is whether I can do better with my wonderful database of daily weather since the 1950s.

Reportedly today's ceremony led to promise of a prosperous upcoming 2016 season, but that was true last year and the result has been serious drought.

People asking to be shot

Yesterday the heat began to seep back into the city, late morning was not nice in Bangkok: 

Ricky Roma: They say that it was so hot in the city today, grown men were walking up to cops on street corners begging them to shoot them. Glengary Glen Ross, David Mamet

but some errant breeze picked up in late afternoon and  I was able to walk from Emporium to Thonglor without sweat. The rains the day before appear to have broken the back of the hot season.

Near death, we thank you Emporium

What I do here is trace the natural history of a cubic meter of Bangkok air which you might find around, say, Benjasiri Park at 6 am when folks are out there doing Tai-Chi and aerobics. The moisture, temperature, dew point, and enthalpy of the air at 6 am on a reasonably cool March morning is shown as the starting point of the day's oddyssey. The wet bulb temp, ie the temperature of all those dewy flowers across the street at Villa supermarket, is about 24 C, and the enthalpy (ie energy) is a little over 70 KJ per cubic meter. With a relative humidity of about 80 percent, those joggers are going to start to sweat pretty quickly.

It always struck me as curious that the Bangkok air does not change its energy content much over the day, i.e. it is isenthalpic, by afternoon it's a lot hotter but a little drier so energy is much the same. But look what happens to that air if it is lucky enough to get sucked up in the Emporium air con engines which blast off at about 10 am. This air will be cooled down to its saturation point (ie the dew point) and then with further cooling dump about half of it's moisture, so that the nice icy feeling you get when you go into the mall is your own dear sweat getting sucked up by this dry hungry air. It's not the air that's so cold, it's your own vaporizing sweat!
Having said that we can look ahead with delicious dread at the daily cycle at the peak of the hot season now at the end of April, shown in red away up on the diagram. Above the red line, it begins to get dangerous. When and it the morning dew point or daily minimum dry bulb hit 35C, we're all dead.

The colored zones on the chart are so-called comfort zones, green where everyone is happy, yellow where some international experts say folks in "undeveloped" tropical countries should be happy (so they don't use so much of that fuel meant to fire up our big SUVs). Everyone is unhappy in the red zone.

Thank you, Emporium, I think we'll all go shopping!