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Did someone predict the recent Wisconsin tornado?
We cannot yet forecast tornado occurrence with any accuracy. One problem is the small size of a tornado, which is a narrow column of strong winds that rotate around a center of low pressure.
Over the last 60 years, forecasts of the development of large-scale low-pressure systems, which often organize the ingredients needed to form a tornado, have steadily improved. Because of these advances, meteorologists are better able to predict those conditions a few days in advance, enabling forecasters to identify counties where there is a threat of severe weather sometimes as many as three days in advance. Two days in advance of the recent EF-2 tornado that hit southeastern Polk County, the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center’s convective outlook issued a slight-risk for the area. Continue reading
Category: Meteorology, Severe Weather
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When does tornado season start?
Wisconsin has had tornadoes in every month of the year except February.
We can have tornadoes almost anytime, although the chances of having one in winter are pretty small. Continue reading
Do Major League games get canceled due to snow?
In this country, Opening Day of the Major League Baseball season is more likely to be considered the start of spring than the vernal equinox that precedes it by two weeks each year.
However, as committed baseball fans surely know, the start of the season does not mandate the start of the warm season. In fact, though no definitive record of the total number of Major League games postponed by snow exists, quite a number of opening weeks have experienced widespread disruption as a result of early season snow. Most recently, opening weeks in 2007 and 2013 were plagued by numerous cancellations across both leagues. 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
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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