History
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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…
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Proxy indicators of past climates are usually things like tree rings, ice cores, and lake and ocean sediments. Here’s a new one–piles of bat excrement that show how their eating patterns have changed over time due to changes in climate as well as agricultural practices. These piles are found in a series of caves in…
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Two years ago today, Hurricane Florence made landfall in North Carolina. It was a very slow-moving storm and dropped a tremendous amount of rainfall on coastal North Carolina. The North Carolina Climate Office released a 2-year retrospective today which summarizes the storm, including the wind, surge and rainfall. You can read it at https://climate.ncsu.edu/climateblog?id=324&h=5666e5c1.