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Is springtime pothole season?
Many drivers probably consider early spring to be pothole season.
A pothole is a structural failure in a road surface.
Potholes result from a combination of traffic and water in the underlying soil. Continue reading
Is there a “State Tournament Snowstorm” legacy?
A persistent anecdotal piece of weather lore around Madison is that the WIAA’s boys state basketball tournament is always accompanied by a snowstorm.
With the help of Edward Hopkins at the State Climatologist’s Office, we looked into this perception with cold, hard data. Continue reading
Is carbon dioxide a major contributor to global warming?
The Earth’s atmosphere is a mixture of many different gases. Several of these gases are known as “greenhouse gases” because they share the characteristic of being excellent absorbers of infra-red radiation.
Such gases absorb radiation emitted by the Earth that would otherwise escape to space and cool the planet. Upon being absorbed, these gases re-emit a fraction of that energy back downward to the surface, keeping the planet warmer than it would otherwise be. In fact, our Earth would have an average temperature of about zero without these greenhouse gases. Continue reading
Category: Climate, Meteorology
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What was Madison’s coldest day?
Today is the 66th anniversary of the coldest day in Madison’s history.
On Jan. 30, 1951, the temperature in the city reached a morning low of minus 37 degrees. That is far below any temperature we have experienced in the city in the last 25 or more years. Continue reading
Why does the morning low temperature sometimes occur after sunrise?
Those who keep a particularly vigilant eye on the weather might have noticed that on certain mornings, in all seasons, the lowest temperature is often recorded just after sunrise.
One of us had a morning paper route as a boy and was puzzled for years about this seemingly counterintuitive phenomena. How could the temperature continue to fall for the few minutes after sunrise on a cold winter morning? Continue reading
Category: Meteorology, Phenomena
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