Weather Watching II - weather stuff...continued

Palomar · 2004-06-03 07:47:02

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/climate- … ml]Maunder minimum

*I book I have discusses this, and I was happy to see spacedaily.com's article about it.

Actually, the painting which accompanies the article is dated 1565 and is called "Hunters in the snow." It was painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. 1565 marked the end of another minimum of sunspots -- this one was called "the Sporer minimum." Also referred to as "a little ice age," with temps in northern Europe much colder than currently.

The Maunder minimum occurred from 1645 - 1715. There were very few sunspots during this time.

I thought I'd post this here, considering it relates more to weather, global warming (or not) issues, etc.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-06-11 06:59:11

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040607.html]Mammatus clouds over Mexico

*Striking pic. I've seen a photo of mammatus clouds (in a book) during sunset, as the storm was breaking in that part of the sky, making them appear reddish-gold. Looked very other-worldly.

First saw mammatus clouds myself in the late 1970s, in my Midwestern hometown. Stepped outdoors with some friends, what a site -- to the SE, much more rounded than in the pic above, looking like jumbo marshmallows stuck onto the underside of the host cloud. Wild.

***

Not sure if Mundaka will read this, but hopefully will get his input (he lives the next city over from me): Earlier this week, a storm blew in from the south-SW, around 7:00 p.m. Driving w/husband, when we spot a huge "embankment" (best adjective I can conjure) of what looked like thick dust or smoke (turns out it was dust) a few miles down-valley, starting to enter the valley. It looked exactly like what a steep river embankment would look like from within a boat on the water. A bit difficult to describe...(trying)...there were wide "ripples" in the dust and there were patches or "blocks" of different color: Deep gray, sooty gray, charcoal-colored. It stretched from the western horizon -- WAY out on the western horizon -- to a chain of mountains 13 miles east of town. It was huge, and at least 1 mile high.

Neither my husband nor I had ever seen anything like it (he's lived in this area all his life).

We continued driving, and headed for home as it continued to advance. Thought I saw a thin bolt of lightning in it, but not sure. Smelled no smoke, so knew it was dust. It moved fast and enveloped the area; a breeze kicked up and visibility dropped to maybe 1/2 mile (we were home by then). We thought we should "batton down the hatches" -- I expected a whopper of a storm -- actually didn't know *what* to expect...it purred over town and next morning was clear and sunny. :-\ I've lived here for 11 years, never seen the likes of it before.

Mundaka, I presume you guys saw some of this dust storm that evening? It kicked up after the 6 o'clock news and I turned in for the night before the 10 o'clock news, so I don't know what El Paso experienced.

--Cindy

Mundaka · 2004-06-12 01:47:14

Palomar · 2004-06-13 10:16:28

Not sure if Mundaka will read this, but hopefully will get his input (he lives the next city over from me): ...
Mundaka, I presume you guys saw some of this dust storm that evening? It kicked up after the 6 o'clock news and I turned in for the night before the 10 o'clock news, so I don't know what El Paso experienced.
--Cindy
Cindy, yeah I saw it, was that wild or what? I had just finished for the day -- alternating between checking up on the board here and actually doing some work -- and looked out my south window, that overlooks the Rio Grande. Got all exited at the prospect of something besides sunshine, but I did run about the place and shut all the windows, etc.
The "wall" that you described came over the Juarez Mountains on the Mexico side -- I'll guesstimate they are about 8000 ft., or roughly 2500 to 2700 meters -- as a complete wall, just as you described, about one mile higher than any underlying terrain (including the mountains.)
It plowed over the city as a wall too, but I don't know if it went over the Franklin Mountain range -- which runs right through the center of my town, 7500 ft to 8000 ft as well -- or got split in two and went down the upper and lower valleys
(from your description it did go down the upper valley, where Las Cruces is.)
As you described it didn't do any damage, but I think my jaw hit the sidewalk watching that thing roar across the Pass where the river is, like a cliff or something (but over here it had a pinkish tint.) I did notice an increase in static, especially over the phone lines, but that was about it.

*Hi Mundaka: Thanks. You know how it is with "run of the mill" dust and sand storms around here; they kick up with gusts up to what, 30 to 50 mph (?) sometimes, visibility reduced. And that's -without- a HUGE embankment phenomenon! I figured there must be tremendous wind behind it, especially as it closed in swiftly. Nope, just a breeze and some haziness. It passed over completely sometime in the night.

The weather down here can be so kooky, huh? It's like that with rain storms as well; sunny and sunny then a few clouds (which look like they're not going to do a thing but float around) then there's a huge shadow over the house and then boom-bam-rumble and a bunch of rain, then it's over in less than an hour. Or there's clouds piling up all over the sky and you think "Wow, we're in for it" -- 45 minutes later they're totally gone with no rain (now how does THAT happen?! Never happens in the Midwest, as best I recall).

It's the same thing with that dust/sandstorm. It -looked- much, much more fearsome than it truly was (understatement). But what a beautiful, unique phenomenon to watch; I wish I'd had a camcorder on me. Won't forget the memory of it anytime soon.

--Cindy

Mundaka · 2004-06-19 20:15:42

Palomar · 2004-06-19 21:35:40

Amazing weather here in El Paso this afternoon, towering thunderheads with lightning -- I'm gonna have to get off the computer here quickly -- and intermittant showers, monstrous horizon to horizon rainbows, patchy dust storms (its clear where I am now, but I can see three small but dense storms within a five mile area. Right overhead the storm is luminous yellow-orange, with pillow-like protrusions bulging down from the cloud base. It looks almost like the sky the night before a hurricane (though that tends to be more orange-red) or in the hours before a tornado (though that tends to be green.)
Blue skys are still managing to squeek through despite everything -- high winds now though -- and in the west it totally blue and clear. Lovely weather, thinking about going for a drive into the mountains. Did you get any of this, Cindy?

*Hi Mundaka -- we shared just some of your weather. This afternoon around 3:30 thunderheads were piling up; pure white and looking like popcorn. A huge cumulonimbus cloud to the west, and fanning out towards the NE. I expected a t-storm but around 5:00 p.m., though the sky to the east (Organ Mtns) was very dark blue, I knew all we were going to get out of it was wind. Yep, that's it. No precipitation (at least not in this part of town and I don't smell rain in the air), no lightning.

Just wind.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-07-22 06:27:07

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/p … html]Curly clouds

*Cool article and pics about von Karman vortices.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-08-12 06:59:50

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s … 716]Should have named them Bonnie & Clyde!

*It's kind of driving me nuts, how the author of the article is referring to predicted near-*future* possible events (with Charley in particular) in the PAST tense. :-\ If that's standard procedure with weather articles, I guess either I'm in a bit of a funk right now and don't recall having noticed that before...or something...

This is all Dr. Marshall's fault!

--Cindy :laugh:

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Re: Weather Watching II - weather stuff...continued

#27 2004-06-11 06:59:11

Re: Weather Watching II - weather stuff...continued

#28 2004-06-12 01:47:14

Re: Weather Watching II - weather stuff...continued

#29 2004-06-13 10:16:28

Re: Weather Watching II - weather stuff...continued

#30 2004-06-19 20:15:42

Re: Weather Watching II - weather stuff...continued

#31 2004-06-19 21:35:40

Re: Weather Watching II - weather stuff...continued

#32 2004-07-22 06:27:07

Re: Weather Watching II - weather stuff...continued

#33 2004-08-12 06:59:50

Re: Weather Watching II - weather stuff...continued

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