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22 February 2018
Astounding Warmth In the Eastern U.S. and Across the Arctic
The big weather story in February has not been snow, but the astounding heat. The Danish Meteorological Institute has a station on the Arctic Ocean in Northern Greenland. While in total darkness, and just 400 miles from the North Pole, the temperature there climbed above freezing Tuesday! Look at the records across the Eastern U.S. Tuesday afternoon. Boston hit 70° F Tuesday, which is only the third 70-degree temperature recorded in February …
26 September 2017
Satellites Show the Lack of Power In Puerto Rico as a Catastrophe Unfolds.
The images and pleas for help coming from Puerto Rico are heartbreaking and increasingly alarming. Media reports this evening are saying that 80% of the island’s crops have been destroyed. Only those with generators have power and mobile signals are sparse and intermittent. Up to 60% of people have no reliable access to clean water, and frankly, I can see no signs that much is being done about it! I …
13 May 2017
Our Past Climate Is A Warning For the Future
There are some excellent books for non-scientists about our climate, but some of the best are written by Brian Fagan- an Archaeologist! His book The Long Summer is superb, and I am currently listening to a series of lectures he made for The Great Courses. Any story of human history is incomplete without looking at the role of climate, and in The Long Summer, Fagan points out that all of written …
28 February 2017
Meteorological Winter Ends With Record Warmth and Storms
It has been an amazing if not astonishing February across the U.S. Very little snow and record highs falling by the thousands! So far in February, we have recorded 5857 record highs and only 97 record lows. There were 408 stations that had the warmest temperature on record for any day in February and only one station saw the coldest temp. on record for February! Look at the monthly temperature …
10 January 2017
NOAA- 2016 Second Hottest on Record in U.S.
Only 2012 was hotter than 2016 in the U.S., by .5 degrees F. It will not be official for a few more days but 2016 will be the hottest year globally as well for the third consecutive year. NASA will have their data out first and then NOAA. and the Arctic Sea ice looks to be in a free fall…. via GIPHY
21 December 2016
Science Books Make Great Holiday Gifts – Especially These!
There are few gifts better than books, so here’s a list of great science books for ages 13 and up, along with a brand new entry that is rapidly becoming a best seller. First, is Carl Sagan’s 1997 classic The Demon Haunted World. I frequently quote from it, and every true science geek will tell you they love this book. If it were up to me, it would be required …
15 November 2016
Winter is Coming. It May be a Memorable One.
This is a guest post from my weather intern Andrew McCormick (Senior at Salisbury University here in Maryland). We’ve been looking at what the winter may bring for a month or so now, and Andrew has a good track record of past winter forecasts. This is a good summary of the techniques we use to make long range forecasts, and in case you’re wondering, I see nothing to disagree with …
9 November 2016
Record Low Temperatures Are Dissapearing
Guy Walton is the former lead forecaster for the Weather Channel, but most of us meteorologists know him these days as the person who keeps track of the “ratio of record highs vs record lows”. As the planet warms, we should expect to see more record highs and fewer record lows, and the data is indeed showing just that. It’s actually impossible to miss, because the ratio itself is in …
24 July 2016
The Heat, the Floods, and the Danger of Underestimating How to Handle it.
The NASA Terra satellite measurements of ground temps. in the early afternoon clearly show the heat, and the extra heat added by the urban concrete (and road systems) was clearly visible. On a day like today, large cities can be much hotter than the rural areas. Also, notice how the temps near the Delaware coast are hotter than inland in Delaware (and here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland). A …
28 June 2016
Up to 8 Inches of Rain Fall on the Eastern Shore of Maryland
I live here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and we had a severe flood event last night. Nearly 6 inches of rain fell at my house. This comes after my post yesterday about the difficulty in forecasting extreme events like floods. Look below and read what I posted to my local viewers about the event. This area is flat, so we did not have any loss of life, but …