Sunday, September 16, 2012
Picoclimate?
Noticed something in my daily walk. When I started out, the sun wasn't visible yet. As I reached the westward end of the usual loop, I noticed that exactly one house had sunlight showing on its gable.
Caught the effect on camera several days later. The stopsign at the end of the street is the western end of the neighborhood.
This struck me as strange until I mentally diagrammed the landscape. This neighborhood sits under a fairly tall ridge on the east, and the sun was just starting to appear above the ridge.
I turned around and started back eastward toward my house, which is close to the bottom of the ridge. This took about 10 minutes. Five minutes later the sun started to illuminate the gables next to my house.
It's an obvious bit of geometry, and I always knew that houses in deep valleys don't get much sun... but I'd never actually observed the house-by-house advance of the sun before.
Specifically, my house gets 15 minutes less sun each day than the house at the west end of the neighborhood. That's a meaningful microclimate difference within a very small area. Or should it be called picoclimate?
Here's a schematic of Polistra and Happystar walking from west to east as the sun rises.....
= = = = =
Graphics note: This little animation turned out nicely, but I had to cheat to make it work. Initially I tied a light to Mr Sun, so it would rise with him... but the shadow persistently moved the wrong way. Poser's rendering software doesn't match reality in this peculiar situation. So I resorted to brute force: placed a directional light overhead and turned it to move the focus of the light.
This struck me as strange until I mentally diagrammed the landscape. This neighborhood sits under a fairly tall ridge on the east, and the sun was just starting to appear above the ridge.
I turned around and started back eastward toward my house, which is close to the bottom of the ridge. This took about 10 minutes. Five minutes later the sun started to illuminate the gables next to my house.
It's an obvious bit of geometry, and I always knew that houses in deep valleys don't get much sun... but I'd never actually observed the house-by-house advance of the sun before.
Specifically, my house gets 15 minutes less sun each day than the house at the west end of the neighborhood. That's a meaningful microclimate difference within a very small area. Or should it be called picoclimate?
Here's a schematic of Polistra and Happystar walking from west to east as the sun rises.....
= = = = =
Graphics note: This little animation turned out nicely, but I had to cheat to make it work. Initially I tied a light to Mr Sun, so it would rise with him... but the shadow persistently moved the wrong way. Poser's rendering software doesn't match reality in this peculiar situation. So I resorted to brute force: placed a directional light overhead and turned it to move the focus of the light.Labels: Heimatkunde
¶ 9:24 AM
