Climate science
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In the Southeast you’ve enjoyed a wonderful warm, sunny and dry week here. But to our west, our neighbors in east Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi have been inundated with heavy rain which is locked in place by the combination of a cut-off low pressure area to their southwest and a strong high pressure area…
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I often get asked if this or that weather event was caused by climate change. In many cases it is impossible to answer the question directly because it depends on a lot of factors. Dr. Marshall Shepherd discusses this question in his latest blog post at Forbes.com here. Some events are easier to attribute to…
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I read an interesting essay this week from July 2015 in Cracked.com describing a first-person experience with an EF5 tornado, in this case the one that hit Moore OK in May 2013. The story really brings home the need to prepare for unexpected disasters and what you can do to prepare for your own bad…
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University of Arizona researchers have shown that the number of hurricanes in the Caribbean Sea was 75% lower during the Maunder Minimum, a time period from roughly 1645-1715 AD. This is called the Maunder Minimum because there were fewer sunspots in that time period, which is also linked to a time of low solar activity. The…
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While we are enjoying beautiful weather across most of the Southeast this week, it’s always good to be aware of severe weather. The National Severe Storms Lab (NSSL) has some great resources on severe weather at their website https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/, including one on hail. For agriculture, hail does not even need to be large to cause big…
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To end the work week, I thought you might enjoy a look at some clouds that are almost “out of this world”! Lenticular clouds are named for their distinctive lens shape, which some people think make them look like flying saucers. Lenticular clouds are formed by condensed water vapor in air that is flowing smoothly…
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When most people think of meteorologists, they think of someone on television cracking jokes about the weather and waving their hands in front of moving weather graphics. Or they think of someone chasing tornadoes, even though many chasers do not have degrees in meteorology and are more thrill-seekers than scientists. But meteorologists do many other…