We have one more relatively warm day on Thursday before another dry cold front moves through the region early Friday, dropping our temperatures from the low 80s Thursday to the upper 60s Friday. The low pressure center that will bring that Friday cooling will drop into the central part of Nevada over the weekend, and will destabilize the region to bring in a chance of showers or even thunderstorms Saturday through early next week.

Years ago, Dr. David Schultz of the National Severe Storms Laboratory wrote a tongue in cheek research paper asking if it really did rain more on the weekends than during the weekday. The fact that Dr. Schultz is employed by the NSSL just reinforces what life-saving information can be gleaned from a study like this, but I decided to look beyond that.

He sought to perform a statistical analysis (using a formula that only a statistician could love) taking precipitation data from nearly 200 stations across the United States over a 40 year period.

But if anyone thought that the study was serious (and if there are those who do, I have some land I’d like to show you), one has but to look a little closer at some of the figures used. I’ll do that next time.