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Category Archives: Meteorology
When was the National Weather Service created?
While successfully prosecuting the Civil War against the Confederacy, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had learned that weather information — even if not in the form of a forecast — was extremely valuable for operations.
Then, in the years after the war, Dr. Increase Lapham, a Milwaukee scientist, lobbied Milwaukee’s congressman, Gen. Halbert Paine, to push for the establishment of a storm warning service for the Great Lakes. On Feb. 2, 1870, Paine introduced a Joint Congressional Resolution requiring the Secretary of War “to provide for taking meteorological observations at the military stations in the interior of the continent, and at other points in the States and Territories … and for giving notice on the northern lakes and on the seacoast, by magnetic telegraph and marine signals, of the approach and force of storms.” Continue reading
Why does my home seem so dry in cold weather?
The amount of moisture in the air, which is the humidity, is a very important aspect of weather.
There are a few ways to express the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. Each way has advantages and disadvantages. Two of the more common are the dew point and the relative humidity. Continue reading
How does this winter measure up so far?
Two of the more popular (and telling) measures of the severity of a winter are extremes of cold and the presence of snow.
One reasonable way to consider extremes of cold might be to count the number of mornings on which the temperature drops below zero. So far this winter (defined as beginning on Dec. 1), we have had just five such mornings here in Madison. Continue reading
How common are extreme winds in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains?
This winter has already delivered some notable disasters, and it is important to carefully consider the anatomy of such high impact weather events in order to, as accurately as possible, understand to what degree an event is attributable to the … Continue reading
Category: Meteorology, Phenomena, Weather Dangers
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What is the winter solstice?
The winter solstice (In Latin, sol, “sun,” and stice, “come to a stop”) is the day of the year with the fewest hours of daylight in the Northern Hemisphere.
In 2021, this occurs for the Northern Hemisphere on Dec. 21 at 9:59 a.m.
As Earth orbits the sun, its axis of rotation is tilted at an angle of 23.5 degrees from its orbital plane. Because Earth’s axis of spin always points in the same direction — toward the North Star — the orientation of Earth’s axis to the sun is always changing as Earth orbits around the sun. Continue reading
