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Category Archives: History
What can happen to hurricanes when they move into the mid-latitudes?
Hurricanes are large-scale, organized storms that form in the tropical latitudes.
They are fueled by the enormous amount of heat released when water vapor, evaporated off the warm tropical ocean surface, changes phase to liquid and ice in the thunderstorm clouds of the hurricane.
They are smaller in areal extent than the storms that commonly affect us in the mid-latitudes here in Madison. Continue reading
Category: History, Meteorology, Severe Weather
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Has this been an unusually hot start to summer?
The recent stretch of warm, humid weather has got some people wondering if we have gotten off to an unusually hot start to summer this year in Madison.
There are a couple of ways one could approach that question. One way is to consider the departure from average for our daily high temperatures since May 1. From that perspective, we have been consistently warmer than normal with May daily highs averaging 3.2 degrees above normal and, June (through Friday) averaging 1.9 degrees above normal. Continue reading
Did weather forecasting play a role in D-Day?
Last week was the 78th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Europe that began with the landings on the beaches at Normandy. The combined land, air and sea assault of June 6, 1944, remains the largest such event in history.
The success of the invasion was extraordinarily dependent on weather conditions. More than three months before the invasion, a combined British and American forecasting team began rigorous forecast exercises designed to iron out the physical and logistical kinks of such a coordinated effort. Continue reading
How does the recent humidity stack up against prior Mays?
The dramatic shift in our weather that took place over the last week will likely be memorable for a number of reasons.
First, on Tuesday Madison reached 90 degrees for the first time this year, the fourth earliest first 90-degree day in Madison’s history. Continue reading
Category: History, Meteorology, Seasons
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Why is May 6 such a special day in weather science history?
Immediately after World War II, it became fashionable to imagine technologies that might allow human beings to control the weather.
In fact, one goal advanced by influential scientists was actually to explode nuclear bombs in the right locations and in the right quantity so as to alter the weather in favorable ways. Such an enterprise would require accurate forecasts of the weather thought possible by using the brand new computer technology to make the millions of requisite calculations. Continue reading
Category: History, Meteorology
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