The skies lit up over Russia back in February. It was frightening, and most everyone has seen various videos from Chelyabinsk, in the Ural region of southwestern Russia. But on a recent trip to a junior college in central California, I found many students didn’t know the difference between an event like the one in Russia and a comet. Word of a big comet later this year brought initial trepidation that it might hit them. No doubt, a teachable moment has arrived in 2013 regarding sights we can all see in the skies.
Weather conditions have always been critical to agriculture, transportation and commerce. Through the ages while humanity has engaged to better understanding the atmosphere, college courses in meteorology have appeared only recently. Through its scientific infancy, weather observation and forecasting was conducted by hobbyists with a bent toward general science. US military weather records were compiled by the surgeon corps at remote outposts for much of the 19th century. When the US Weather Bureau was formed in 1890 as a civilian operation within the Agriculture Department, a succession of academics was chosen to lead it. The Bureau’s first chief was Professor Mark W. Harrington from the University of Michigan. He held a Master’s Degree in mathematics and astronomy, continuing to teach after his bureaucratic tenure. Meantime, many of the modern constructs of atmospheric science were being developed by Norwegians early in the 20th century. For the first several decades that followed, these concepts were included in syllabi of several colleges and universities in geology or earth science courses.
February is ending on a dry and mild note. March will come in like a lamb.
The importance of knowing what the weather will be has been a practical necessity of agriculture and transportation for thousands of years. Simply viewing the sky to see what was coming in the next 15-30 minutes pushed the envelope of capability for most of history. But our relentless march toward the computer predictions of today was slow to begin. All the elements of what now makes up a sophisticated suite of models had to first realize a vast infrastructure that included several disparate branches of science and technology.
January has ended on an interesting note. It was more of an extreme month than you might think, even though no records were set.
Meteorology has evolved over the years from a necessary concern in agriculture and a critical element of marine transportation. In today’s modern era, weather is of vital importance for a wide variety of interests. Back at the beginning of human history, weather simply appeared on the horizon and people had no real foresight into what might happen tomorrow. A large part of contemporary atmospheric science is to know what’s out there, as explicitly as possible, and then plug observations in to prediction models. Modern technology has provided great leaps in our ability to “see” the clouds, precipitation, temperature, moisture content, wind flow and many other parameters. This capability to “nowcast” from a stationary platform and sample various ingredients making up the atmosphere is vital to accurately forecast the weather.
This is the age of science and technology. In medicine, information, economics
and many other fields, this modern era has allowed people of the civilized world to avoid daily threats in their lives and to their property ,through enhanced knowledge. Due to the vigilant experimentation of passionate scientists determined to wipe various plagues away, humankind
has been the beneficiary of tremendous improvement in the quality of life. Even the internet has brought about an ability to access any information about anything from nearly anywhere. In some ways, we are rapidly approaching a strange new time in which it may be possible to assess any type of weather whenever we want it. How incredible would it be to not only be able to dial up a rain shower when needed, but also to command the skies if threatening weather was coming and avert conditions that could damage or kill?
Every winter, for at least a short time, the sub-tropical jet stream combines with its northern counterpart, the polar jet stream, to bring a “Pineapple Express” to our state. Extreme rainfall with very high snow levels can deliver either beneficial rains or extreme rainfall resulting in major flooding.
As society evolves and technologies advance, an increasing number of people desire to minimize their impact upon the earth, understanding that everything is finite. Resources are limited. Supply and demand becomes more problematic with additional billions of people on earth to accommodate. So, a more deliberate accounting of what we have and how earth’s citizens can better utilize or re-use our resources has led to an “adjustment in our thinking”. Essentially, it is to be perpetually aware of humanity’s impact on the earth. Many people have altered their life style, placing ecological considerations above mundane routine.
October has ended slightly warmer and decidedly drier than average. This is a pattern we’ve seen since August.
The incredible storm affecting much of the US eastern seaboard and its huge population may have a long lasting impact. And many experts have stated that this so called “Frankenstorm” will have been the strongest storm residents of the east have ever seen- a storm without precedent. It certainly is potentially deadly and will wreak destruction from coastal storm surge, damaging winds and intense rainfall. But without precedent? Let me place this storm in its proper perspective.
Over the past 4 months I have highlighted a wide variety of disruptive weather that affects Americans. Each weather phenomenon is observable and sensed by humans and animals, plants and trees. But today’s topic involves a type of weather that goes mostly unnoticed by people. It is not monitored by rain gauges or thermometers or blowing hair. Today’s topic is Space Weather !
August ended on a slightly cooler note. However, the month has turned out to be the abnormally warm, the 5th hottest August since 1889 (124 years of records) and tied for the 22nd hottest month of all for Bakersfield. Heat Wave #4 lasted 17 days marking the second longest heat wave in the past 20 years.
“Moderation in all things”, is a famous quote. And it is certainly applicable to everything we do- from our balance of work and play, our balance of food and exercise, the balance of each person’s blood chemistry, etc. “Too much of a good thing is bad”- also a proverb we’ve all heard. I believe that everyday parts of normal lifewhen taken to excess will pervert their original intent. Be it anything from food to sex- what is consumed in proper proportions is good, but if consumed to excess it usually brings about unintended consequences.
Lammas Day is upon us- the halfway point of summer. Lammas Day, the warm season equivalent of Groundhog Day, is the symbolic start of harvest. Lammas means “Loaf Mass”, indicative of grain harvest that results in bread to eat. The first half of summer has been cooler than normal, with only 14 triple digit days (normal is 20). So what does the second half our of historically infamous summer season look like? Regardless of what Lammas the dog says, it doesn’t look excessively hot for central California.
2012 has been one of the hottest years on record with thousands of new high temperature records both this summer and also back in March. July therefore provides a perfect opportunity to investigate dangerously cold and violent winter storms- to balance out all this heat, of course.
America is a strong country populated by people who take risks. It is the underpinning of what has made us great. But the landform we live on is equally unique and rugged, featuring every ingredient that the severe storm recipe requires. Our US mainland is located at an average latitude of about 40 degrees north, placing it squarely in the “mid-latitudes”. We are not exclusively in the tropics nor are we exclusively polar. In fact, the most potent aspects of both tropical heat and humidity are often composed with polar jet stream dynamics in the active spring and early summer. These drivers of weather meet in the mid-latitudes. Add to this the Gulf of Mexico source region of thermal instability and the semi-arid western high plains providing critical mid-altitude dry air, and you find the American Heartland resembles an almost idyllic laboratory setting for the genesis of strong to violent thunderstorms. It becomes a textbook example of the Perfect Storm script many times throughout the year.
It isn’t every day that the moon blots out the sun. But this year there will be two solar eclipses, one on the 13th of November in the South Pacific which very few people will see and an annular solar eclipse in less than 3 weeks which many people will get to witness from China and Japan to most of the United State. In fact, you will participate in a brotherhood of mankind becoming eyewitness to one of nature’s most spectacular treats.
How important is the weather? From earliest civilization, farming has been completely dependent upon adequate amounts of rainfall and sunshine, a lack of freezing temperatures together with conditions that limited pests. Travel across great oceans from ancient time has also depended upon favorable winds and a minimum of storminess to guarantee success. Agriculture and commerce have indeed bowed to the whims of weather at every step of the way from the start.
This weekend marks that point where we flip our calendars from March to April. As the phrase goes, “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb”. But it is also understood that if the month comes in quietly it will go out strongly- so “in like a lamb, out like a lion”. These are just sayings we’ve come to learn in grade school, sayings that often prove correct.
The first substantive change to the Saffir-Simpson scale, which rates potential hurricane damage, is coming to the world beginning May 15. This should not be an earth shattering amendment to the current category 1 through 5 assessment of hurricane strength. But it does represent the first time such a change has taken place in the 40 year history of this scale. In the early 1970s, Bob Simpson was the director of the National Hurricane Center. He and an engineer by the name of Herbert Saffir worked on the task of developing an easy to understand scale, like the Richter Scale for earthquakes, that would provide an intensity guide to potential destructive power of tropical cyclones. At the time, Saffir had been working for several years on a study commissioned by the United Nations regarding poor housing along coastlines frequented by hurricanes. By 1972 the Saffir-Simpson scale was introduced and became well known by the public at large in 1973.
February has ended- with an eye to March. Will March comes in like a lion or a lamb? How will it go out? But most importantly, is there any hope for salvaging this rainy season?
Here comes another presidential election and thus a leap year. Every 4 years February grows by one day. But why?
January has ended drier than normal, missing the mark by .72" and adding to our growing hydrological concerns. Upstream weather systems seem to keep avoiding central and southern California as February dawns, typically the wettest month of the year.
From ancient times, farmers have looked to the skies for rain in due season. They have also noted patterns in nature that portend changes in the weather. The way animal’s coasts thicken or then, the peculiarities of flowering trees, wooly-worm characteristics, etc. A connection would be made between events seen in nature and the weather they experienced. They would become accustomed to them and expect repeated results in the future.
Year of the Comet: completely unique type of cosmic entity (Video)
