Many American cities have their founders’ day parades. Read what to wear to don a stylish rain outfit for walking in a parade.
- What I Wore for Walking in the Golden Days Parade
- How to Style a Men’s Yellow Rain Coat
- The Graphic Tee’s Meaning Refers to Cloud Formation
- References
How I Created a Stylish Rain Outfit for Walking in a Parade
If you are a regular reader or already follow my blog for a while, you know that I am not a big fan of college Tees or meant to be funny graphic Tees at all. If you are one of my new readers, you now know too ;). I will blog about the reason another time. As it is obvious, in the above outfit I am wearing a college T, and if you look twice you even see it is an old college T. For my excuse it has a cool science print on the back about which I will talk after the next photos.
But first, why am I wearing it? We had an outreach thing going on, namely to walk in the Fairbanks Golden Days Parade that presented a rocket and college fashion. Everyone was supposed to wear the university’s T-shirts or sweaters and to dress in the corporate colors – gold and blue. This old T-shirt was the only one that met the dress code.
How to Style a Men’s Yellow Rain Coat
Rain was in the forecast. No wonder. The parade was late in July, and August is the start of the rain season. I did not like the idea of running around in a parade without style. Thus, I took my department T-shirt that had the right colors, paired it with a denim skirt – blue is blue, right – and a silk scarf with blue and gold pattern. Since we had to walk nearly 2 miles (3.2 km) on a rainy day, I took my yellow raincoat with me as yellow is a representative for the gold anyhow. I wore a skirt and not jeans as splashes on bare legs dry fast, but on jeans you stay wet. The double HH boots have enough heel (1.5 inch, 3.8cm) so I can walk on them for 2 miles, and look still stylish. How do you like my “parade uniform?”

The Graphic Tee’s Meaning Refers to Cloud Formation
This Tee is a classic college T-shirt designed by the students of the Department for Atmospheric Sciences. The print reads
Studying at one of the few places where homogeneous nucleation occurs naturally.
This student-designed college T-shirt refers to how clouds form. When little droplets form in clouds or fog they need a condensation nuclei to build an initial embryo droplet. This cloud condensation nuclei provides the initial radius and in case of hydrophile materials also lowers the needed water vapor saturation pressure that has to be exceeded for the water vapor to make the phase transition to the liquid phase, i.e. building the embryo droplet. In plain English, the relative humidity must be very high (greater than 85%). This process is called heterogeneous nucleation.
Similar applies for ice nuclei. At temperatures below -40F (-40C), however, the nuclei are no longer needed. The water vapor directly builds the cloud or (ice) fog particle if the relative humidity is high enough. This process is called homogeneous nucleation.
In the Arctic, temperatures below -40F can occur. Thus, homogeneous nucleation occurs. See why 40 below is great for a bikini look for many University of Alaska Fairbanks students and Fairbanksans.
References
Mölders, N., Kramm, G., 2014. Lectures in Meteorology, Springer, New York.
Photos: G. Kramm
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