Human Observers See Snowflakes Machines Can't Detect

From today's N.Y. Times Weather Report:

"FOCUS: FIRST SNOW SIGHTING Snowflakes were observed for the first time this winter at the official observation site in New York City's Central Park. This is the latest occurrence on record there for the season's first snow.... While an automated system is now responsible for most of the weather data at Central Park, human observers can augment the observations. Yesterday's snow was apparently too light to be detected by the automated system, but the human observers saw it."

The picture above is not of Central Park but rather my front yard on Tuesday, where even a robot would have been able to sense the snowfall.

I mourn the passing of Cosmo Dogood's Urban Almanac, a day by day calendar and almanac filled with observations of nature at all seasons in the city and decorated with apt quotations and pictures. The Almanac, modeled on the Old Farmer's Almanac, showed how nature is everywhere, that all you have to do is to look up and out and around you and notice what's going on in the natural world in which even a busy crowded city exists.