History
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In the course of answering a question for a friend on Facebook, I noticed that February 4-5, 1917 produced a very cold and widespread Arctic outbreak. Instead of looking at the weather records this time, I took a look at some of the historical newspaper reports of the outbreak. Here are some screen shots from…
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If you’ve ever wondered what the winter was like the year you were born, Stacker has put together a slide show that lists the winter conditions for each year from 1921 on (sorry if you are older than that). I did notice that they are defining winter pretty loosely, since I think of winter as…
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If you like clouds and good stories, you might want to check out this recent podcast from the New York Times which talks about the Cloud Appreciation Society and how they were able crowdsource observations of clouds to get a new type of cloud named. The cloud type is “Asperitas” and was formerly called “Undulatus…
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On January 27, 1940, Georgia’s coldest temperature on record was set in northwestern Georgia in an area known as “The Pocket.” A combination of frigid air, calm conditions, and fresh snow cover along with terrain that trapped the icy air in the region led to the record low, which occurred at CCC camp 17. Since…
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The use of computers in predicting the weather has been around for a long time. As far back as World War 1, scientists envisioned a method for calculating what the weather would be like in the future based on observations and knowledge of atmospheric physical principles. Lewis Fry Richardson, a Quaker who spent his spare…
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I decorated my Christmas tree a couple of weeks ago. On it I put several snowflakes, because after all I am a meteorologist. One of the snowflakes came from a small mill turned into a shop in Jericho, VT, the home of “Snowflake” Bentley, one of the most prolific photographers of snowflakes in the world.…
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Modern life on earth depends on the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere. Now it is about 21 percent of the atmosphere, following nitrogen, which is the most plentiful gas. But there was a time in earth’s history when there was very little oxygen in the atmosphere. How did we get the current oxygen-rich atmosphere…