22 November 2011
Spooky: Today’s Weather Is Amazingly Similar To 22 Nov. 1963
Posted by Dan Satterfield
The map below is the 500 millibar chart for 22 Nov. 1963.
Winds and pressure at 500 mb on 22 Nov. 1963. NOAA Daily weather map archive.
The new chart uses a different scale with fewer lines but this does not change the shape of the flow. A lifting short wave trough from Kansas City to Shreveport, with a weak ridge over the Southeast U.S. is apparent. Now look at the 500 mb flow for today, exactly 48 years later.
500 mb chart 22 Nov. 2011. Image ctsy. College of Dupage Meteorology Dept.
Below are the surface charts from 1963 and today. The cold front is very nearly in the same place as it was at 1 PM on that afternoon in 1963. A band of rain and thunder moved through Dallas in the early morning hours of Friday Nov. 22nd. The rain ended around midnight this morning at DFW.
Surface map from 1963 at Noon. Just 30 minutes before President Kennedy was assassinated.
Surface map at Noon CST today. From NOAA
The weather does indeed repeat itself. Update: Before any conspiracy theorists try to make something out of nothing, watch this off the NY Times website.
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.
Fascinating stuff, Dan.