Arcus Clouds The second full week of June produced some extreme weather across the United States. Yellowstone National Park endured a 200-500 year flooding event that swept away homes in the overfull rivers and might keep the area closed to visitors for months. A heat dome covered much of the country, producing triple-digit Fahrenheit temperatures. And that heat […]
The Kentucky Meat Shower 3 March 1876. Olympia Springs, Bath County, northeast Kentucky. The farm of Allen Crouch. Just before noon. The farmer’s wife sat on the front porch, making soap. The late-Reconstruction-era day veered from normal into the macabre horror of Edgar Allan Poe as it began to rain. Instead of crop-nourishing water,
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Light Pillars, 22° Halos, Tangent Arcs, Bottlinger’s rings, Parry Arcs, and Circumzenithal Arcs, and More! In our two previous articles, we discovered diamond dust and sun dogs. While these phenomena are righteous on their own, they are singular manifestations of a larger class of optical splendors. They both arise thanks to ice crystals in the
Sun Dogs “two mock suns rose with the sun and followed it all through the day until sunset.” – Aristotle, Meteorology In our previous examination, we learned how it’s possible for snowfall to occur on cloudless days in the form of diamond dust. This precipitation transpires when water vapor turns into ice crystals near the
Diamond Dust Have you ever found yourself outside on a cold, clear, still day and noticed a snowfall? No clouds above to produce the precipitation; no gusts to blow up fallen snow. If so, you might have experienced a phenomenon known as diamond dust. If you’ve never seen this strange happening, you’re not alone. Diamond
Xiaohaituo Mountain and the Beauty of Snow The 2022 Olympic Winter Games are underway in Beijing, China. The cold iteration of the Olympics evokes the natural world a bit more to my imagination than the summer version. Mountains, snow, ice, skiing. If you’re familiar with the skyline of Beijing, you know the horizon is not
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Atmospheric Rivers It’s an understatement to say November 2021 did not treat British Columbia and parts of Washington well. Catastrophic rain and subsequent flooding ravaged the landscapes, crippled infrastructure, and killed at least five people. Parts of the Canadian province received 11 inches of rain in two days. Dikes and levees were inundated and overcome.
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How do we collect data inside the tempests of the sea?
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Sprites, Elves, Trolls, Pixies, Ghosts, Gnomes, and Blue Jets No, we’re not traveling today to Middle-earth or into the belly of a dungeon crawler. Instead, we’ll take to the skies. All the fantastical characters of today’s title are real phenomena in the upper atmosphere! Lightning strikes – photo by Mircea Madau Most of us
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Thundersnow The other day I watched Thunderball, the fourth James Bond film, which released in 1965 and stars the recently-departed Sean Connery as 007. In the film, Thunderball is a code name; sadly, the flick really has no elements of thunder (or, for that matter, balls). If you’re a fan of the series, youtube currently offers 22