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Does NOAA conduct fire weather forecasting?
Wildfire outbreaks require the alignment of several factors, including temperature, humidity, winds and the lack of moisture in fuels such as trees, shrubs and grasses. These factors have strong direct or indirect ties to current weather, climate variability and climate change. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration supports weather forecasting throughout a wildfire’s lifecycle: before, during and after the wildfire.
Drought conditions can set the stage for wildfires. Continue reading
Category: Seasons, Severe Weather, Weather Dangers
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What is a “wake low”?
Wake lows are short-lived mesoscale phenomena. Mesoscale weather ranges from about 5 kilometers to 1,000 kilometers in size.
Wake lows are relatively uncommon. They produce strong winds after a storm moves out. The term “wake low” was defined by Ted Fujita, the same meteorologist who came up with the F-scale ranking of tornadoes. These areas of low-pressure form on the backside of heavy rain, causing winds to surge in at fast speeds. Continue reading
Was this spring milder than normal?
With only a few exceptions, it seems as if this year’s run-up to summer, which arrived at 3:24 a.m. Sunday, June 21, was relatively mild. By that we mean very few really oppressively hot and humid days.
Naturally, we wondered if this were actually a true impression and also how this year’s spring stacked up against others that have visited Madison over the years. One way (but not the only way) to make such an assessment is to consider how many days in the interval from April 1 to June 21 have had a daily high temperature greater than or equal to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Continue reading
What causes a thunderstorm?
Thunderstorm development requires three basic ingredients: moisture, unstable air and upward motion.
Moisture comes from regions like oceans, lakes and vegetation that provide the water vapor necessary for cloud formation and precipitation. Continue reading
Are daily weather forecasts affected by climate change?
A friend of ours recently asked whether the accuracy of day-to-day forecasts of weather is affected by climate change. This is a very interesting question whose answer helps to further elucidate the difference between climate and weather.
As it turns out, predictions of the coming weather are nearly exclusively dependent on the observed conditions of the atmosphere in the day (or days) prior to the forecast period. These conditions are known formally as initial conditions. Continue reading
Category: Climate, Meteorology, Uncategorized
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