snow observer ❄️ @cryospheroid@scholar.social

#introduction
Hello everyone! I’m a PhD student studying atmospheric physics; Arctic snow, at the moment, to be more specific. Most of my work is of the computational/data analysis variety, though I’m working both with data from remote sensing observations and from models. I spend much of my time wrangling large datasets with Python, but thankfully, I enjoy doing it (most of the time)!

I can’t believe I once thought my impostor syndrome would go away once I published something

Hahahahaha it did not (sigh)

Hmm, there really aren’t a lot of ice pokémon, are there. Articuno looks friendlier, so I’ll stick with that one for my avatar instead. (Glaceon would be another one I would go for, but I’m partial to birds.)

Wanted to change my avatar to something a bit friendlier than a random sea ice diagram, so I’ve settled on one of my favourite pokémon for now (Cryogonal, which looks like a stylized snowflake).

Might have to change it again, though, because it looks a bit grumpy? It’s a bit hard for me to tell. (I’m wary of using my face online, but maybe I’ll use my face at some point)

I feel a bit conflicted sometimes about just how much I need my ADHD medication to be able to work on my PhD.

I mean, I know that I need it because I literally have ADHD, and it also helps me in non-PhD areas of my life (eg. “simple” household chores). Still, though, I feel like I’m getting “unfair” help, sometimes, even though I clearly need my medication.

I never used the word “logistics” very often until I started grad school; now, I find myself having to use it all the time

I don’t know what to make of that

No, I don’t want to quit my PhD, I’m not tired of my PhD, I’m just sick of people constantly asking how many years I have left of it, as if the only thing that matters about my work is when I’ll get out of it

I tried searching “how to deal with people asking you how many years left of your PhD” and all the results that came up were about quitting your PhD, which is a bit alarming

Mind, they got some neat results anyway

A recurring theme in this midlatitude predictability paper is “we didn’t have the computational resources to run as many of the simulations as we would’ve liked” which is so typical of this field and also so unfortunate

Getting some excellent rain right now!

I should really actually read Lorenz, 1969 sometime

(I’ve downloaded it before, but it’s 18 pages, which I do not enjoy)

Oh, ironic, I’ve been tasked to read a paper on midlatitude weather predictability

This thunderstorm which seems like it’s indeed going to actually happen should be the perfect backdrop for reading this

(Actually, though, this is so cheesy that I kind of love it)

Realizing I’ve never read the full text of thunderstorm watch messages; turns out I’ve missed such great rhymes as “when thunder roars, go indoors!”

(Obligatory caveat that I’m not a meteorologist, (my work focuses more on long-term climate stuff,) but I talk to meteorologists and/or watch talks by them sometimes, so I’ve managed to pick some stuff up)

Simple tip for getting more out of your weather app: use the weather radar. At least in the midlatitudes, the clouds that may or may not rain on you often first formed somewhere else. If that big blip on the radar seems to be moving towards you, the you’ve probably got some precip approaching. You can also guesstimate how long the precip will last based on how large the storm is (in terms of surface area covered) and how fast it’s moving across the map.

Okay, to be fair, the weather radar is showing a system that seems to be slowly advecting in the direction of my current location

There’s been a severe thunderstorm watch up for hours, yet nothing has come of it, and I can’t help but feel a bit underwhelmed