History

  • NOAA has a great discussion of a frigid outbreak of cold air that occurred in 1899, culminating in bitterly cold conditions on February 10.  Here is how their discussion starts: “Over 115 years ago, a cold wave that would become known as the “Great Arctic Outbreak” took the United States by storm. People across the…

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  • This Day in History posted a story this week on an article published in the Sacramento Bee back on February 11, 1921, describing a terrible tornado which hit the Gardner Settlement near Toomsboro, east of Macon, Georgia on February 10.  The tornado track was described as five miles long and half a mile wide and…

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  • This Day in Weather History posted an interesting story today on Facebook on the terrible freeze of February 2-9, 1835.  The cold was so intense that it froze the St. Johns River for “several rods from the shore” and killed off entire groves of citrus trees.  You can read more about it at https://www.weather.gov/media/tbw/paig/PresAmFreeze1835.pdf.  A list of…

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  • Happy National Weatherperson’s Day, held on the birthday of John Jeffries, who started taking daily weather measurements in 1774 and is recognized as one of the first weather observers. Sending our best wishes to our meteorology friends at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), American Meteorological Society, U.S. National Weather Service (NWS), and all the…

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  • Earlier in January I was fortunate to see “Hidden Figures”, a movie about brilliant African-American women mathematicians who helped NASA successfully launch astronauts into space.  If you haven’t seen it yet, you should, and take your kids with you.  This week Dr. Marshall Shepherd discusses some of the hidden women in atmospheric sciences in his…

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  • You may have heard arguments from time to time that in the 1960s scientists were talking about the coming Ice Age and cooling and not global warming.  While it is true that one magazine article during that period noted that we are headed into the next Ice Age in the next 10,000 years or so,…

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  • My heart goes out to the folks around the Southeast that have been hit by severe weather the past few days and the families that have lost loved ones.  While the threat of the worst weather is mostly over, sooner or later another round will come.  Here is an article from US Tornadoes which describes…

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