Monday, December 29, 2014

The Missing Today

I think I see what's happening.  It's 2:30 am Monday and the low expected in the next 12 hours is 34F, around 6am, according to the projected temperature graph (and yesterday's forecast of "today", as of 11pm).

But you wouldn't know that looking at the "Today" projections at Weather Underground.  It predicts a low of 41F.  Which is what the graph says it will be at around 6am on Tuesday.

OK, so that fits the intuitive notion of "today" (though I don't see that spelled out) meaning that the low is in the night following the day. But what about the projected low in the next 3 hours, that was "Today" until 11 am.  Then at midnight, Today became Yesterday, but Yesterday seems to show a low of 36, which may have been the low on Saturday morning at 6am.

So in my view it's OK to have an intuitive notion of day, and in fact I'd start each day at 6am.  But if you start doing that sort of thing, you ought to be consistent or else "Today" disappears within a certain range of hours, as it has right now.

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