History
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I’ve gotten some questions about how the snowstorm along the Gulf Coast this past week has compared to previous storms, especially the large snow event of 1895. This post in The Eyewall provides some great historical context and visuals from previous snowstorms and compares them to the event that just happened. Some parts of the…
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Did you know that onions have been used in the past to predict the next year’s weather? Neither did I. Gastro Obscura has a very interesting article this week describing how twelve layers from a freshly-cut onion were salted and left overnight to see how they reacted to predict what the climate would be for…
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If you have ever watched The Wizard of Oz, you will probably remember the surprisingly lifelike tornado that occurs near the beginning of the movie, transporting Dorothy and Toto to Oz. In the days before computer generated imagery was available, the filmmakers had to use some visual tricks to make the tornado so lifelike. Weather.com…
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Did you know that fall is a period of enhanced severe weather in the Southeast? While the main season occurs in spring, we get a second active season in the fall when the jet stream moves from northern parts of the country back to the central and southern latitudes, bringing energy and wind shear that…
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I enjoy reading stories describing the climate of different periods. This story from Smithsonian magazine discusses the types of plants that were present during the age of dinosaurs. It was interesting to me to read about how the asteroid impact that led to the end of the dinosaurs eventually led to the development of the…
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Many one-day high temperature records were set in the 1930s in the United States. There is no doubt that there was very hot weather during that time in the central US, and a lot of that can be linked to land use changes caused by misuse of farmland as well as some shifts in ocean…
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Ferocious storms can churn up a lot of coastal terrain, and sometimes very strange things are found, like buried forests from the asteroid that caused the end of the age of dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Another of these events occurred in New Zealand with Cyclone Gabrielle, which hit the North Island along with Vanuatu…