History
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The recent rains on the West Coast have caused many of the rivers there to flood, threatening many cities as well as cropland. Levees are being overtopped and mudslides and fallen trees are blocking roads through the region. You can read more about the impacts of the storm and view pictures of the conditions at…
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Here’s a very interesting story from Atlas Obscura about Jacob and Vilhelm Bjerknes, a Norwegian father and son who worked together to understand how the atmosphere moves. Before they provided the basic organizing principles we now know describe how fronts and pressure centers work together to move around masses of air from different parts of…
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From my husband John Knox (also a meteorologist) who grew up in Birmingham AL, in a recent Facebook post, including photos from AL.com: “27 years ago Tuesday, a terrible tornado in Huntsville, Alabama. November is the time of a secondary peak in tornado activity in the Southeast, climatologically speaking. This is because the ingredients for…
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In addition to terrible effects on livestock, crops and farmers, floods can affect many other things as well. I was interested to read this story about how a famous painting in Florence, Italy, has been restored and redisplayed at its museum 50 years after it was damaged by a strong flood. You can read about…
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Today is the anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, a large ore-carrying freighter that crossed Lake Superior in a strong mid-latitude cyclone (low pressure center) and foundered just before reaching a safe area. The ship disappeared from radar and was found later at the bottom of the lake. All 29 sailors aboard the…
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While it’s tough to make hay this year in drought-stricken parts of the Southeast, it is still interesting to read about how they make hay in other parts of the world. Here is a fascinating story about wild hay making in the Swiss high valleys from House of Switzerland: https://houseofswitzerland.org/swissstories/history/wild-hay-making-fascinating-swiss-tradition.
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The “This Day in Weather History” Facebook page showed an interesting weather graphic today which lists the number of hurricanes which made landfall in the United States during each president’s term. The graphic is from Colorado State University, which noted that so far, “Barack Obama had the fewest U.S. landfalling hurricanes of any 2-term U.S. president…