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Category Archives: Meteorology
How good are the groundhog predictions?
For well over 100 years, the emergence of the groundhog in early February has stirred the imaginations of shivering, winter-stressed humans across the United States. Of course, no reasonable person harbors the expectation a rodent could best a human … Continue reading
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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Did the notion of numerical weather prediction turn out as originally expected?
The urgency to defeat fascism in World War II resulted in an explosion of technological innovations. A good number of the resulting inventions have had direct application to weather forecasting, including radar and the rise of the computer.
It isn’t well known that the first efforts to harness this emerging computing power to the problem of weather prediction, launched in the United States and Great Britain, were driven primarily by a desire to control the weather. Continue reading
Category: Meteorology, Severe Weather
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Comments Off on Did the notion of numerical weather prediction turn out as originally expected?
What is the status of the Arctic sea ice?
The year 2016 will go down as one with below-normal Arctic sea ice coverage.
While not quite a record-setting year like 2012, throughout much of 2016 the extent of sea ice was more than two standard deviations below the average. At the end of October the Arctic sea ice was at its lowest coverage for the month since satellite-based data records started in 1978. Continue reading
