#uvic

I met Harold Joe, a #Cowichan based #Indigenous knowledge keeper/teacher, actor & film producer, in 2015. He had come to Victoria to audition for a lead role in the Telus Optik webseries that I worked on for a few years. We casted him. He's now co-owner & producer at Orca Cove Media with my old film production executive producer, Leslie Bland. There's two #IndigenousFilm screenings at #UVIC in March with 2 films from Ocra Cove. https://events.uvic.ca/finearts/event/106012-film-screening-the-great-salish-heist https://events.uvic.ca/finearts/event/106018-film-screening-sweet-summer-pow-wow Check out these public #FilmScreenings if you're interested in watching more #NativeFilms & you can meet the producers at the screenings too. #YYJFilm #IndigenousBC #IndigenousCanada #FirstNations #FilmDiversity #InclusionInFilm #VictoriaBC #Saanich #Wsanec #VancouverIsland #VanIsle #CoastSalish #IndigenousActors #IndigenousMovies

The first image shows all of the observed Januaries, plotted separately. What's immediately obvious is that January always has sunny days. This past month wasn't unusually sunny. And, the sunny days are often grouped in clusters, due to the cause being lingering high-pressure systems. The final pair of charts is here to illustrate the difference between a cloudy day and a sunny one in January. The light shaded region shows the insolation we expect. The dark is what was observed. The sunny day chart shows incoming energy was blocked in the morning and late afternoon. This is due a trees that shade the sensor at those times. Trees that were much smaller when the site was selected. #UVic #Saanich #VictoriaBC 6/6

The last bit of data I found interesting has month has to do with mistaken perception and recollection of weather data. It is very well known in meteorological science [OK, citation clearly needed here] that human beings are poor observational data storage devices. This past month I demonstrated that to myself. When I sat down to write all of this up I had in mind that January was exceptionally sunny. It was not. I think what happened was that following a December that was a bit more dreary than usual, dreariness that continued to mid-January, the sunshine we did see then fell really, really good. What I recalled, and what is commonly recalled, is the sensation of experience, not any kind of realistic set of observations. In the plot, I'm showing all daily average January observations of insolation (incoming short-wave radiation). 2026 is shown with filled circles. The diamonds show the 'theoretical' maximum amount for each day. 5/ #UVic #Saanich #VictoriaBC

Rain at #UVic in January was a bit above average 114 mm versus 95 mm. We observed some activity at the rain gauge on 22 days (versus 19 days). However, a number of the single rain gauge tips, about 0.25 mm were due to dew and frost, and collection from some heavy fogs. By coincidence, on the last three days of the month, we recorded the same amount of rain, 3.8 mm. There was no snow observed last month. 4/ #Saanich #VictoriaBC

Consider the histogram shown here. it includes all daily average January temperatures observed at #UVic (2002–2026). Extreme events are rare events, by definition. Notice that that while there are a small number of extremely cold days in the record, much farther out than 3 standard deviations (-8 °C is about 3 standard deviations from the mean) there are no similarly exceptionally warm days. This is because the rare really cold days are caused by so-called arctic outbursts, very cold air flowing south and west from the continent. There is not similar mechanism for hot days, yet. 3/ #Saanich #VictoriaBC