So today, my ride starts with 11 miles into some of the strongest wind of the trip, coming out of the southeast. You might be wondering why I am heading into a southeasterly wind. It’s because my route is closely following the Oahe lakeshore, and while the lake is primarily oriented north to south, the lake is very winding. Sometimes it jogs to the west. Other times to the east. My attitude about the skies was rather cavalier as I had not encountered any severe weather at all on the ride. Very 6 littl rain, and when it rained, just showers. The picture is facing northwest so that southeast wind should blow the storm away from me, right?
Except that I don’t think wind direction really influences storm tracks. The storm was not in the weather forecast. At least no forecast that I had seen. So I turn the corner after 11 miles and head northward - toward the storm, moving along nicely with the now favorable wind. After a few miles it became apparent that I would be getting wet, but I did the same as the other times in ra8n and just kept riding. At last until I hard the first rumble of thunder. At that point I began to look for shelter, and there were no buildings nearby. At first I found a large culvert that went under a side road, and I spent about 15 minutes there. Not a great place because I figured lightning could strike the culvert. The storm seemed to be letting up so I emerged from my spot, and had a chance to talk with a passing motorist. He mentioned there was more on the way and 8 saw on m6 NOAA weather app that he was right. So I decided to look for a better shelter. Within minutes I found it, an old metal shed, out in a field, which I saw I would be able to get inside, because some wall panels were missing. It was perfect, and that is where I waited out the storm. My estimate is that it rained for two hours all told.
When the rain finally abated, I got back on the bike and finished the ride 10miles later at Akaska, a town with a population of 43 people, which includes me,
Miles: 38
North progress: 22.7 miles; Wesr progress negative 7.8
Elevations: max: 2112; min 1782 feet
Max speed 26.3 mph
Math Q2: My answer: The question is how many miles are there in one degree of latitude on earth? First of all, to answer that, we need to realize that meridians are great circles on the surface of the earth, and degrees of latitude are marked out on meridians, just like units marked along the y axis on an XY coordinate diagram. So the key fact we need to know is the number of degrees are there in full circle.
There are 360 degrees in a circle, and one great circle represents 25,000 miles. So we divide 25,000 by 360, and I get an answer of 69.44 miles. Basically, when I am doing a latitude calculation, I round it to 70 miles.
Math Q3: if you liked that question, try this one: how many miles are there in one degree of longitude? You might need a little trigonometry for this one, and let’s assume along with the 25,000 mile circumference, that I am riding my bike at 45 degrees north latitude. Close enough for our purposes.
My shelter from the storm - a metal shed which has seen better days.
No comments:
Post a Comment