Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle visit the Cloudsdale Weather Factory seeking to understand the extreme cold weather across Equestria. Town weather ponies are tired of receiving complaints, and frustrated by the lack of answers from higher up. Rumours circulate that a mysterious monster—a polar vortex—has seized control of the North and threatens Equestria. They get passed from office to office, as each branch of the Weather Factory denies responsibility, as they pursue their quest to understand the mechanisms controlling the Equestrian climate.
Chapters (1)
Oh hey, that was pretty cool, man.
9535801
Thank you for the warm comment.
"Lightning Strike"...
Fun story, and quite effective as scicom goes!
Well put together with a solid layman's description of science and quite relatable to anyone who has worked in a large organisation where butt-covering/buckpassing/obscurification/ignorance has been elevated to the status of standard practice.
(my team is like Coriolis' department, the ones who try to look at the whole picture while knowing that nobody truly wants to deal with the whole picture).
9536101
Who doesn't love angular momentum?
9536133
Thanks. I aim to provide a suitable discharge to relieve the high tension.
9536566
Thanks. I've worked in big national labs in the US, France and Italy, and at a British university. Despite large cultural differences, some things are the same everywhere.
That Weather Forecasting office deserves Twilight as a royal sponsor.
I love the bit about moving the clouds. It's roughly as insulting as asking for a reboot or making sure it's plugged in. And strangely, it still probably results in most of the solutions!
9536973
And with weather forecasts approved by the Princess of Friendship, those weather ponies had better deliver the prediction.
Indeed.
9537063
Whether it's your desktop PC, a helium liquefaction plant, or the Equestrian climate, the joy of talking to a telephone help desk is the same.
Doing the survey.
Nice story!
Hmm... So, if there were more pegasi, there could be monitoring and control and these problems wouldn't happen?
Typo:
Do none of these ponies really know
9537387
Thanks. Typo fixed.
More pegasi could improve things if they were properly organised... Or they might just create even more chaos.
In other words, Dash only has herself to blame for the extra bureaucracy.
Dash, you only have yourself to blame for this really.
Plot twist: The polar vortex incident was caused by the repercussions of the "terrorist incident" from last winter.
9537488
She was never very good at thinking through the consequences before rushing into things
The story mentions ponies in charge of the mesosphere, the thermosphere, and ionosphere, and the exosphere. Only the troposphere and the stratosphere because it is in contact with the troposphere influence ground whether. The other layers are too far above the troposphere to have an effect. Interestingly enough, the mesosphere and thermosphere is in the news lately:
The edge of space is set arbitrarily at 100 KM. That is about right. Some figure that arbitrary is not good enough and want to set it to the mesopause where the atmosphere is at its coldest and the mesosphere and the thermosphere meet at about 80 KM. That is as good an height as any for the edge of space.*
The layers are defined by temperature. As one rises the temperature gets colder to the tropopause, warmer to the stratopause, colder to the mesopause, and then warmer. Jupiter gets colder to the tropopause, is pretty much the same at all levels in the stratosphere, and then rises above the stratopause. That means that technically, Jupiter lack a mesosphere.†
* Edge of Space
† Atmosphere of Jupiter
9537842
Indeed. There are plenty of opportunities for further divisions of the weather factory. The sky's the limit. We could speculate whether there should be a separate Space Weather Factory? Which would handle ionospheric affairs and report directly to Celestia?
Lightning Strike is a fantastic name for a weather workers' union rep.
This may be one of your best stories in terms of intergrating narrative and information. Plus, it's a fun read in general. Thank you for it.
9545284
Thanks. My first draft of this was a much more straightforward explanation of the science. Somehow the narrative just grew around it.
That was alot of science jargon that went over my heard but still enjoyable
Nice irony.
Bold word is misspelled.
Looks like Rainbow isn't immune to that inter-departmental hatred either. How high can a Pegasus actually survive, anyway?
Something tells me it will be Rainbow's fault in the end.
Nice Brick joke at the very end.
This. Lmao.
Great story, but there are a good few grammar flubs and a couple punctuation inconsistencies. Did you type this on mobile?
10630576
Type a 4600 word story on a mobile? No. I don't have enough fingers for that.
Twilight could likely bring the sun closer to the planet and cook it a little bit.
This is a funny fic bureaucracy and the chaos of life with a happish. ending
Nice story!
18.