Winter Q & A's

Winter is just around the corner

So as we fast approach winter, many kids have been asking me questions related to the season. (Must be a class project somewhere...)

Winter is one of the four seasons. Astronomically speaking, it begins on the solstice and ends on the equinox. The start of winter is usually around December 21st. It is the season with the shortest days and the lowest average temperatures. It is accompanied by snow and ice , especially in the higher latitudes . The coldest average temperatures of the season are typically experienced in January for us here in the Northern Hemisphere.

So here is my best at answering most of your questions.

How do winter storms form? Winter storms derive their energy from the clash of two air masses of different temperatures and moisture levels. Winter storms usually form when an air mass of cold, dry, Canadian air moves south and interacts with a warm, moist air mass moving north from the Gulf of Mexico. The point where these two air masses meet is called a front. If cold air advances and pushes away the warm air, it forms a cold front. When warm air advances, it rides up over the denser, cold air mass to form a warm front. If neither air mass advances, it forms a stationary front.

How is snow formed? Snow is commonly formed when water vapor undergoes deposition, which is when water vapor changes directly to ice without first becoming a liquid, high in the atmosphere at a temperature of less than 32°F and then falls to the ground.

How do blizzards form?A blizzard is a long-lasting snowstorm with very strong winds and intense snowfall. You need three things to have a blizzard; cold air at the surface, lots of moisture, and lift. Warm air must rise over cold air.

What are snowflakes? Snowflakes are made of ice crystals. Each snowflake is six-sided and made of as many as 200 ice crystals. Snowflakes form in clouds where the temperature is below freezing. The ice crystals form around tiny bits of dirt that has been carried up into the atmosphere by the wind. As the snow crystals grow, they become heavier and fall toward the ground.

What is sleet? Sleet is just rain drops that freeze into ice pellets before reaching the ground. Sleet usually bounces when hitting a surface and does not stick to objects. However, it can accumulate like snow and cause a hazard to motorists.

What is freezing rain? Freezing rain is just rain that falls onto a surface with a temperature below freezing. This causes it to freeze to surfaces, such as trees, cars, and roads, forming a coating or glaze of ice. Even small accumulations of ice can cause a significant hazard.

What is frost? Frost is white ice crystals that form on a surface, like the ground or leaves of a plant. Frost is created when the air temperature drops below freezing and the water vapor in the air freezes into ice crystals.

How is lake-effect snow formed? As the cold air flows over the warm lake water, the relatively warm water heats the air's bottom layer as lake moisture evaporates into the cold air. Since warm air is lighter or less dense than cold air, the heated air rises and begins to cool. As the air cools, the moisture that evaporated into it condenses and forms clouds and snow begins falling from the cloud if the air is humid enough. Cold air moves over warm water and is warmed from below. Moisture evaporates in the air. Warm moist air rises downwind of lakes and forms heavy snow.

What is a Nor'easter? Nor'easters can occur in the eastern United States any time between October and April, when moisture and cold air are plentiful. A Nor'easter is named for the winds that blow in from the northeast and drive the storm up the east coast along the Gulf Stream, a band of warm water that lies off the Atlantic coast. They are known for dumping heavy amounts of rain and snow, producing hurricane-force winds, and creating high surfs that cause severe beach erosion and coastal flooding.

What is an Alberta Clipper? An Alberta clipper is an area of low pressure that generally forms over Alberta, Canada, east of the Rocky Mountains. They develop east of the Rockies because air flowing eastward over the mountains creates favorable conditions. Once an Alberta Clipper forms it usually moves very rapidly to the southeast across the USA's northern Plains and then to the east off the mid-Atlantic Coast. Clippers usually cause only light precipitation with very few producing major snowstorms. However, if conditions are favorable, some Alberta clippers can rapidly intensify off the East Coast once the storm taps the relatively warm moist air over the Atlantic Ocean. The storms that rapidly intensify sometimes spread heavy snow over New England and southeastern Canada. Generally, the main weather features associated with Alberta clippers are some light snow and a reinforcement of cold air over the USA.

What is Wind Chill? The wind chill is the temperature your body feels when the air temperature is combined with the wind speed. The higher the wind speed the faster exposed areas of your body lose heat and the colder you feel.

Courtesy:NOAA for Kids

Carbon Sniffing Satellite?

Thanks everyone for the Holiday well-wishes, I had a splendid time off with my family ( only gained 2 lbs).

On Monday I had jury duty, I was not picked but I did manage to get caught up on some movie watching. The Bucket List was very endearing.

While I was sitting waiting to see if my number would be called - I read plenty of science-geeky articles and came up with this one that was pretty interesting.

Hope you like it - its from NASA.

NASA's first spacecraft dedicated to studying carbon dioxide, the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth's climate, has arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., to begin final launch preparations. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory arrived Tues., Nov. 11, at its launch site on California's central coast after completing a cross-country trip by truck from its manufacturer, Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Va. The spacecraft left Orbital on Nov. 8.

After final tests, the spacecraft will be integrated onto an Orbital Sciences Taurus rocket in preparation for its planned January 2009 launch. The observatory will help solve some of the lingering mysteries in our understanding of Earth's carbon cycle and its primary atmospheric component, carbon dioxide, a chemical compound that is produced both naturally and through human activities.

Each year, humans release more than 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels. As much as 5.5 billion tons of additional carbon dioxide are released each year by biomass burning, forest fires and land-use practices such as "slash-and-burn" agriculture. These activities have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by almost 20 percent during the past 50 years. Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide trap the sun's heat within Earth's atmosphere, warming it and keeping it at habitable temperatures. However, scientists have concluded that increases in carbon dioxide resulting from human activities have thrown Earth's natural carbon cycle out of balance, increasing global temperatures and changing the planet's climate.

While scientists have a good understanding of carbon dioxide emissions resulting from burning fossil fuels, their understanding of carbon dioxide from other human-produced and natural sources is relatively poor. They know from ground measurements that only 40 to 50 percent of the carbon humans emit remains in Earth's atmosphere; the other 50 to 60 percent, they believe, is absorbed by Earth's ocean and land plants.

Scientists do not know, however, precisely where the absorbed carbon dioxide from human emissions is stored, what natural processes are absorbing it, or whether those processes will continue to work to limit increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide in the future, as they do now. The observatory's space-based measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide will have the precision, resolution and coverage needed to provide the first complete picture of both human and natural sources of carbon dioxide emissions. It will show the places where they are absorbed, known as "sinks," at regional scales everywhere on Earth. Its data will reduce uncertainties in forecasts of how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere and improve the accuracy of global climate change predictions.

The observatory's science instrument features three first-of-a-kind, high-resolution spectrometers that spread reflected sunlight into its various colors. By analyzing these spectra, scientists can detect what gases are in Earth's atmosphere and determine their amounts. The spectrometers are specifically tuned to measure the amount of reflected sunlight absorbed by carbon dioxide and molecular oxygen. These measurements will be analyzed to yield monthly estimates of atmospheric carbon dioxide over 1,000-square-kilometer (386-square-mile) regions of Earth's surface to an accuracy of 0.3 to 0.5 percent. Scientists will analyze these data using global atmospheric chemical transport models, similar to those used to predict the weather, to locate carbon dioxide sources and sinks.

The observatory will launch into a 705-kilometer (438-mile) near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit inclined 98.2 degrees to Earth's equator, mapping the globe once every 16 days. The mission is designed to last two years. It will fly in formation with the five other NASA missions that are part of the "A-Train," or afternoon constellation, of Earth Observing System satellites that cross the equator each day shortly after noon. This coordinated flight formation will enable researchers to correlate the observatory's data with data from the other NASA spacecraft, including nearly simultaneous carbon dioxide measurements from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory is a NASA Earth System Science Pathfinder Program mission managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Orbital Sciences provides mission operations under JPL's leadership. Hamilton Sundstrand in Pomona, Calif., designed and built the observatory's science instrument. NASA's Launch Services Program at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for launch management. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Small break and Jury Duty

I wish all of you a very happy Thanksgiving. I will be off until Tuesday December 2nd. (Could be longer since I have been summoned for Jury duty Starting on Monday. It is a process I accept with great responsibility.

Have a happy and healthy holiday weekend and see you soon.

Phil

Busiest Travel Day !

I have been getting plenty of calls and e-mails requesting travel info for many sites across the USA. Since airport information changes constantly, here is a great web site that will give you city by city up to the minute traffic delay data.

http://www.fly.faa.gov/flyfaa/usmap.jsp

Here at home you can always check our web site for the latest highway information or dial 511 once you are on the road, and remember whether flying or driving, please take care and come back safe and sound.

I would like to take just a second to tell each and everyone of you who read and participate on the Phil Factor or watch our newscasts, that I am thankful and appreciate your viewership, e-mails and comments. Without you and your support non of this would be possible.

Hope you have a happy and healthy Thanksgiving.

Phil Ferro

Thanksgiving Chill

A cold front is expected to move in Tuesday Night and cool us down for Thanksgiving.

Notice the blue line moving east. This is the leading edge of the cold air mass being pushed south by a low pressure system sitting over the Great Lakes.

The models are forecasting the front to move here either Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.

Morning lows both Wednesday and Thursday should be in the mid to upper 50's.

Enjoy this cool weather because models are hinting and highs to be back in the low 80's by the weekend.

Weird Weather

Its been wonderful here in South Florida over the last few days... cool mornings giving way to pleasant afternoon highs. We've seen very little sweat due to the lack of humidity and that should be the pattern through the weekend. This is our reward for enduring and living through hurricane season. This kind of weather reminds me of fall in the upper Midwest where I lived for many years. It got me thinking of friends that still live there and so I checked out their weather reports . I was surprised to find the following blurb on a Midwest local TV station and I thought you'd enjoy it !

Cheyenne resident Linda Reid tries to walk out the front door of her home Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008 in northern Cheyenne, Wy.

The high winds from Wednesday night and Thursday morning blocked the entrance with hundreds of tumbleweeds.

Reid said she walked out of her home at 8:30 a.m. to get the newspaper and was surprised by 5 foot plus high pile of tumbleweeds.

(AP Photo/Michael Smith, Wyoming Tribune Eagle)




May I suggest Tumbleweed Panels !!!

The Sun Shows Signs of Life

All the weather on earth is due to the sun. We watch it closely to hopefully determine what we can expect as far as long range models are concerned. I found this article from NASA to be very interesting as it seems to indicate the sun is roaring back to life after a period of calm.

Courtesy NASA

After two-plus years of few sunspots, even fewer solar flares, and a generally eerie calm, the sun is finally showing signs of life. "I think solar minimum is behind us," says sunspot forecaster David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. His statement is prompted by an October flurry of sunspots. "Last month we counted five sunspot groups," he says. That may not sound like much, but in a year with record-low numbers of sunspots and long stretches of utter spotlessness, five is significant. "This represents a real increase in solar activity."

Above: New-cycle sunspot group 1007 emerges on Halloween and marches across the face of the sun over a four-day period in early November 2008. Credit: the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).
Even more significant is the fact that four of the five sunspot groups belonged to Solar Cycle 24, the long-awaited next installment of the sun's 11-year solar cycle. "October was the first time we've seen sunspots from new Solar Cycle 24 outnumbering spots from old Solar Cycle 23. It's a good sign that the new cycle is taking off."

Old Solar Cycle 23 peaked in 2000 and has since decayed to low levels. Meanwhile, new Solar Cycle 24 has struggled to get started. 2008 is a year of overlap with both cycles weakly active at the same time. From January to September, the sun produced a total of 22 sunspot groups; 82% of them belonged to old Cycle 23. October added five more; but this time 80% belonged to Cycle 24. The tables have turned.

At first glance, old- and new-cycle sunspots look the same, but they are not. To tell the difference, solar physicists check two things: a sunspot's heliographic latitude and its magnetic polarity. (1) New-cycle sunspots always appear at high latitude, while old-cycle spots cluster around the sun's equator. (2) The magnetic polarity of new-cycle spots is reversed compared to old-cycle spots. Four of October's five sunspot groups satisfied these two criteria for membership in Solar Cycle 24.
The biggest of the new-cycle spots emerged at the end of the month on Halloween. Numbered 1007, or "double-oh seven" for short, the sunspot had two dark cores each wider than Earth connected by active magnetic filaments thousands of kilometers long. Amateur astronomer Alan Friedman took this picture from his backyard observatory in Buffalo, New York:

On Nov. 3rd and again on Nov. 4th, double-oh seven unleashed a series of B-class solar flares. Although B-flares are considered minor, the explosions made themselves felt on Earth. X-rays bathed the day side of our planet and sent waves of ionization rippling through the atmosphere over Europe. Hams monitoring VLF radio beacons noticed strange "fades" and "surges" caused by the sudden ionospheric disturbances.

Hathaway tamps down the excitement: "We're still years away from solar maximum and, in the meantime, the sun is going to have some more quiet stretches." Even with its flurry of sunspots, the October sun was mostly blank, with zero sunspots on 20 of the month's 31 days.
But it's a start. Stay tuned for solar activity.