History
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A recent study on droughts in the Middle East shows that the recent droughts that have plagued the area are the worst in at least 1100 years, according to a story this week in the American Geophysical Union blog. The scientists in the study collected a stalagmite from a cave in Iraq which contained growth…
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Today marks the anniversary of one of the Southeast’s biggest tornado outbreaks in history. From This Day in Weather History’s Facebook post: “Severe thunderstorms spawned sixty tornadoes in the southeastern U.S., killing between 178 and 1200 people and causing three million dollars damage. Georgia and the Carolinas were the hardest hit by the tornado…
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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…
Posted in: History -
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…