Today most of northeast Georgia is experiencing what natives often call “the wedge,” a shallow layer of cold air that moves down into the state along the east side of the Appalachian Mountains. The official description of this phenomenon is “cold air damming” because the mountains act as a natural…
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Atlantic magazine had an interesting entry in their CityLab blog on temperature extremes in the US this week. The article pointed out that in most year, extremes of cold or warm dominate the country as a whole. However, this year there have been a nearly equal number of record…
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Two new interactive viewers from NOAA’s Coastal Services Center are available online and provide a detailed look at coastal areas across the US. The C-CAP viewer allows you to look at changes in land use from 1996 to 2010 in many areas of the Southeast, although only counties relatively near…
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Today marks the 75th anniversary of the national release of “The Wizard of Oz,” one of the most first movies to depict tornadoes and still one of the best, in my opinion. Not bad for a moving tube of fabric! The tornado looks just as realistic as many created by…
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I was in Jekyll Island last week attending the Georgia Environmental Conference and saw this beautiful scene outside my hotel window one morning: The rays which appear to be stretching out from the horizon are called crepuscular rays, and are actually beams of sunlight shining through breaks in clouds below…
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This map of satellite-based temperature anomalies from July 27 to August 3 shows the strong temperature gradients that have occurred across North America due to the large ridge of high pressure on the west coast of the US and the deep trough of low pressure in the east. Areas in…
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The New York Times has an interesting map which shows the changing drought across the US. You can see the growth and decay of drought in the Texas panhandle as well as the increasing severity of drought in California. Access it here. The text indicates the drought is increasing as…
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