Pam Knox

  • In the past, I have frequently referred to blog postings on the Weather Underground site, but have not explained much about the site itself.  As part of our series on sources of weather and climate data, I would like to introduce you to the rest of the site. It is located at https://www.wunderground.com. Weather Underground…

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  • Sunspots, ice ages and changing climate

    Late last month a story made the rounds of national newspapers about predictions of a new Little Ice Age that would hit the world in about 15 years, based on some solar research done by scientists in the United Kingdom.  One example of the story from AOL.com is available here and a longer-more detailed story at…

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  • Yahoo News reported today that Hong Kong reported its highest temperature ever on Saturday in 130 years of record.  The new high temperature of 36.3 degrees C (97.4 F) came in part due to sinking air outside the circulation of Typhone Soudelor.  Typhoon Soudelor ripped up trees and triggered landslides in Taiwan, and knocked out power…

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  • This week’s 7 day precipitation forecast shows that after a nice dry weekend across most of the area, some rain will return on Monday.  However, the amounts will be light.  The heaviest and most persistent rain will be in central Florida near the remains of a weak front and should last for most of the…

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  • NOAA released their climate summary for July 2015 today.  You can find it at https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/summary-info/national/201507.  The summary shows that July was just above the long-term average in temperature for the contiguous US and that it was somewhat wetter than normal, including a surprisingly wet California, which was impacted by the remains of Hurricane Dolores.  Usually California…

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  • In the last month there have been several stories about bumblebees, a major pollinator, in the media.  Here are a couple of the stories. Science Magazine reported on a story about the aerodynamics of bumblebees carrying pollen compared to nectar.  Researchers studied the stability in flight of bees carrying nectar, which is held close to…

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  • Sooner or later a hurricane will hit

    AOL.com ran an interesting story today about the hurricane drought in the Atlantic and how it may have stymied efforts by emergency managers to prepare for the next one to hit the US coast.  It has been ten years since the last significant hurricane season in 2005, and many people who live along the coast have…

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