Beautiful danger

I used to really obsess about the weather. When I first moved to Victoria I found it so bizzarre that it was, more often than anything else, 11 degrees, summer, winter and in between. I started using the weather network maps and resources, following the jet stream and checking weather and temperature patterns. It is obvious probably to most people, like it is obvious to me now that being surrounded by the ocean ends up having a regulating effect on temperature and other weather anomolies. Living where we are on the tip of the island, we are in between a few different major weather patterns, and so end up having much nicer weather than the rest of the island a lot of the time. Of course it could also be related to the ley lines running through Victoria, but maybe I'll talk about that another time.

Anyhow, we were ejoying the weekend of sunshine being offered to us, but after only a short time in the sun someone remarked of my friend i was hanging out with "Wow your face is really sunburned." We were only outside about 15 minutes.

This prompted me to go back to my beloved weather website, this time checking out the UV report. The index, which is dynamically updated, was resting at 6. And while 6 doesn't sound like much, after studying the scale this was considered "high"...although the scale goes all the way to 11+, EXTREME, which I would assume would cook us all inside our houses whether we're wearing sunscreen or not. Yes thats right, summer hasn't even started and we are getting astronomical UV ratings.

Take another look at the pictures at the start of this post. On the left is ozone averages from 2000, and on the right is the most recent ozone map. Most of Canada is right now in the 425-450 Dobson Units (units for measuring ozone concentration), except for southern BC (including Victoria), Ontario, Quebec and some maritimes. The other interesting anomole is over iceland/greenland, which I can only assume is due to the volcanic activity. According to the 2000 map the area is usually in the range of 475-500 DU, but is currently in the 300-325 DU range. And according to this website volcanoes create holes in ozone and can destroy ozone.

The good news seems to be that the ozone layer seems to be in better shape than it was in 2000, unless ozone just becomes more concentrated in summer perhaps. At any rate, I may need to invest in some sunscreen instead of just ducking indoors when my skin starts to sizzle.