The Weather Machine

I spend a lot of time writing about the weather, which makes sense because pilots spend a lot of time worrying about the weather. Two of the most popular posts I've written so far have been about the weather, and two of the most popular of my YouTube videos are plain weather charts showing the gears of the weather machine in motion.

While the weather is a deadly serious topic for pilots, it can be a lot of fun, too. One of the things I like best about flying is being up in the sky where the weather happens, watching the gears of the weather machine churn (from a safe distance, of course).

The residents of Portland, Oregon have their own fun with the weather, and their very own "Weather Machine" too. It's not a weather machine like we're accustomed to, with its fronts and pressure centers and how they clash and mesh to create the weather. Instead, their weather machine has metal gears, lights, and even trumpets, as this moderately-short Wikipedia article sums up.

Photo by Cacophony.