- Wouldn't it be great if we
knew exactly
how Global
Warming is influencing the climate of various regions and
various seasons? If we did, I would have a better
answer for Angie. (12/01/06)
- Sometimes snow is very fluffy.
Sometimes it is very wet and sticky. Megan K.
speculates that this is due to
the temperature
profile when the snow forms, and she is exactly correct.
(12/01/06)
- Angie was recently on a
flight, and it got her thinking about whether or not it is
possible to
identify clouds from the air, rather than from the
ground. (12/01/06)
- This semester we are not going
to have time to cover "optical phenomena in the atmosphere"
(stuff like rainbows, mirages, the Northern Lights, etc.),
but Steven H. has a great question about
that shimmering
that you see as heat rises off the ground.
(12/01/06)
- Jenilynn B. wonders
how people
survive being struck by lightning. I wonder, too.
(By the way,
here is the link to the web site I discuss in the audio
file.) (11/21/06)
- I love it when students show
that they have really followed up on a question that they
have had. A great example of this would be Claire's
question about why
tornadoes primarily happen in the spring. Notice
that she pursued the answer in the textbook, which led her
to more questions. Great job! (11/21/06)
- Megan K. wants to know more
about waterspouts,
and so I had to give a rather wordy and long-winded reply.
(11/21/06)
- Angie B. asked a couple of
very interesting questions about
storm surge--how high
it typically is and how far inland it can typically extend.
Sadly, the answer to both of these questions is "It
depends." (11/21/06)
- Samantha H. has another very
insightful question--this time it concerns
why the sky is the color
it is when it is raining. I tried to answer this,
but the right answer involves the fact that there is a lot
of complex "radiative transfer" going on in clouds.
Clouds scatter light at many different wavelengths, but
cloud droplets and raindrop can also absorb some light.
In short, the answer is complex, and I didn't do a very good
job being articulate about this for Samantha's message.
(11/15/06)
- Samantha H. has a very deep
question about why the
general circulation is the way it is. This is one
of the most complex questions in meteorology,
actually--there isn't a single, good answer that I can give
her, but I tried. (11/03/06)
- Is the information that we
learn in ATS 113 all that important? Is it relevant to
your day to day lives? As Steven H. points out, it
certain is if you want to succeed on "Jeopardy".
I couldn't be more proud. :-) (11/03/06)
- Sometimes a teacher wonders
whether or not students are actually able to take the
information learned in the classroom and apply it to their
real world situations. And then something nice
happens, like this call
from Jenilynn B. (10/06/06)
- I was having a really lousy
day, and then Steven H. called in a
funny weather joke.
Thanks Steve! (10/06/06)
- Aaron J. got to thinking about
the Coriolis Force and hurricanes, and he has decided that
the way hurricanes spin is related to the Coriolis Force.
Is here right? Check
here for the answer. (9/22/06)
- One of the big debates going
on in meteorology right now is whether or not the recent
increase in hurricane activity is related to Global Warming.
Christine G. wants to
know what I've heard. (9/18/06)
- Steven H. wants to know
where the names
for hurricanes come from. This is an interesting
and popular question. While he's at it, he wants to
know where the numbers for "probability of precipitation"
come from. (9/11/06)
- Jenilynn B. needs a question
answered about the
difference between in situ and remote sensing
observations. (9/11/06)
|
- Let me tell you why I really
like these two pictures (1
2) of a rainbow,
submitted by Adam B. There's no rain in the picture!
Additionally, in one of the pictures it is clear that the
rainbow is between the viewer and beach! Clearly,
these images do a good job illustrating that (a) rainbows
can be caused by any kind of suspected liquid water droplet
-- in this case, sea spray -- and (b) that the "rainbow" is
in fact a "cone" of water droplets, with the apex of the
cone at the viewers eye. Great work! (12/01/06)
- Getting in right before the
deadline, Aaron submitted a picture of a
tornado vortex signature and
the associated damage
caused by the tornado. (12/01/06)
- Lara K. completely redeemed
her for the strange cloud picture in the previous post by
submitting four great pictures of clouds:
1
2
3
4 It is a little
hard to tell what kinds of clouds these are--probably
stratocumulus. (12/01/06)
- Lara K. cracked me up when she
sent this picture, saying that
"there are some clouds in the background of this picture,
but they are hard to see." Too true! Still, I
like the picture. (12/01/06)
- Megan K. sent in two pictures
of "rime": 1
2. Rime forms when
supercooled water droplets touch an object and freeze on.
This will often happen when it is foggy in the winter--the
TV meteorologist will often call this "freezing fog".
(12/01/06)
- Millicent sent in three nice
pictures: Thanks for sending those! (12/01/06)
- A nice picture of an
ice storm,
from Anne S. This picture is actually sort of
famous--it is from a set of pictures after a big wind storm.
I'm not certain, but I seem to remember that this was NOT
freezing rain--this ice was water that blew off the lake as
huge waves crashed onto the shore. The "sea spray"
from the waves froze on the trees and cars near the
lake.(12/01/06)
- Here's a stumper. Aaron
J. wrote that this picture,
"is from the BWCA storm the blew down thousands of trees due
to straight line winds quite a few years back. Since I'm
from MN, I heard a lot about that one." It's
absolutely awesome, but I have no idea what "the BWCA storm"
is--help me out here, Aaron! (12/01/06)
- These nice pictures of what
appear to be altocumulus clouds (1
2
3) were submitted by Bard. (11/30/06)
- Pictures of hail, illustrating
the rings of clear and milky ice, have come in from Kelsey,
Anne S. Megan K. and Aaron J.:
1 2
3
4 (11/30/06)
- Megan K. has also contributed
a Microsoft Word document that contains some images of the
October 1997
icestorm in Nebraska. (11/30/06)
- Megan K. sent in a beautiful
picture of snowdrifts.
Looks like a Christmas card! (11/30/06)
- Samantha has contributed two
pictures of clouds, one from
South Dakota and one from
Kansas. (11/29/06)
- John M. sent in a couple of
pictures (1
2) of a sunset near
Denver. In the message, he speculated that the strange
clouds are associated with the mountains in the area, and he
is right. "Mountain meteorology" is a fascinating
discipline within the Atmospheric Sciences. There are
many interesting and unusual types of clouds that can be
created as air flows over mountains under different regimes
of stability and shear. Great stuff! (11/29/06)
- I have received pictures of
ice crystals and snowflakes from Joe, Carlie and Claire:
1
2
3
4
5
6.
Picture 5 is a particularly nice image of a habit of ice
known as the "capped column". (11/29/06)
- Pictures of graupel have been
flooding in from Jenilynn, Carlie T., Joe, and Caleb:
1
2
3
4
5
6.
(11/29/06)
- Joe has an interesting story
to tell about tornadoes in North Dakota: "We don't get
many severe tornadoes in North Dakota and hardly ever around
Bismarck. However, in 2000, when I was in 7th grade we had
five tornadoes spotted in and around Bismarck. We were
taken to tornado shelters in our school. Here's some
pictures taken by people from Bismarck. The first two links
(1
2)
have some cool pictures and stages of tornadoes. The
third link I stumbled upon was from a hail storm in
Bismarck on June 10, 2001. It was crazy it looked like
winter in some parts of the city." (11/28/06)
- Claire has contributed a nice
pictures of
a
classic dust storm in Spearman, TX. Dust storms
are cool--I wish that we had time in ATS 113 to learn more
about them. (11/28/06)
- Another nice set of pictures
sent in by Rae: (1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8) I'll
add 2 points to a quiz score for anyone who can tell me what
kind of clouds these are. Offer expires December 1.
(11/28/06)
- Wow, another great question
and picture of fog,
this time from Jenilynn, who wrote, "It was taken in
Washington D.C. back when I was a freshman in high school.
I guess a question I have is, how can there be fog in the
upper troposphere but the fog has cleared at the surface?"
Okay, let's sort out a couple of quick things.
Firstly, the roof of this building is not in the "upper
troposphere"--the building is at most a couple hundred feet
tall, whereas the upper troposphere (i.e., near the
tropopause) is perhaps 7 miles up. That being said,
however, I understand the question--Jenilynn wants to know
why it is foggy away from the surface and clear at the
surface. What's happening here is that the fog is
"lifting". Even though it is foggy, some sunlight is
reaching the ground and warming the ground. The ground
warms the air that touches the ground (by conduction).
As the temperature of the air very near the surface
increases, the "saturation vapor pressure" of the air
increases (remember your Claussius-Clapeyron Equation).
Since the total amount of water vapor in the air is NOT
changing, but the amount of water vapor the air COULD HOLD
is increasing, the relative humidity of the air DECREASING,
and the fog near the surface evaporates. Pretty cool
stuff! (11/28/06)
- Sam sent in three great
pictures (1
2
3) and an explanation:
"I'm attaching 3 of the best pictures I took of the tail of
a thunderstorm in Washington County on June 24 this past
summer. I was in the area in my car, so I checked it out.
There was marble-sized hail and a drenching downpour.
Afterward, there was a striking rainbow and steam rose from
the roads. What causes the steam phenomenon? I've
seen it a couple times and it seems to be due to the hail."
(Here are a couple of unrelated pictures of the phenomenon
that I found online:
1
2) I like this
question so much
that I have recorded a short video about it, and you ARE
responsible for the content of this video. Please let
me know if you have any questions. (11/27/06)
- Carlisle wrote that these
pictures (1
2) were "both
taken in Honolulu following the October earthquake around
715am. We already had a flash flood watch in effect for the
island, so you can barely make out Diamond Head because of
the heavy rain." You guys go on better vacations that
I do! :-) (11/27/06)
- Bard was amazed by this
high-resolution image of
a storm on Saturn.
The meteorology of the "gas giant" planets (such as Jupiter
and Saturn) is astonishingly complex, as the planets have an
enormous atmosphere and winds of up to 1000 MPH!
(11/27/06)
- Lara K. sent in two nice
pictures of cloudy skies:
1
2 The funny part is that she
wrote, "When I took this picture, I believe the sun was
setting and I thought 'hey, cool color!' The clouds in the
background are also nice looking, but I'm not going to guess
as to what they are." (11/15/06)
- Jenilynn wrote, "Here is a
pretty good picture of
cirrus clouds. I took it in Sydney Australia in the
summer of 2004 near the Sydney Opera House. I thought it
was a defent picture of cirrus clouds and it is unique since
it was taken in Australia." Very cool--I love pictures
of clouds taken overseas! International weather!
Whoo-hoo! (11/15/06)
- Anne S. wrote, "I know
pictures of clouds are not that interesting, but I thought
the clouds in the background of
this particular picture looked cool." What do you
might, "pictures of clouds are not that interesting"?!???!?
:-) I think it's great! (11/15/06)
- Rae submitted the following
two pictures: 1
2 She writes: "I dug up some
pics of a trip into Kansas of some drippy, cold, weather
that was going on. I take it that it was a cold front going
through; the one picture shows some cold-front type clouds,
but I'm not the one with the PhD to verify that! Enjoy 'em"
I always enjoy these pictures--you guys have no idea how
good it is to see that you are thinking about the weather
outside of the classroom! As for her interpretation of
the clouds, she is probably on track. For reasons
beyond the scope of this class, I would guess that these
pictures were actually taken a little bit BEHIND a cold
front, in the cold air mass. Cool stuff!
(11/15/06)
- Bard wants to know why the sky
is brown in this picture
from New York. Well, that could happen for a number of
reasons, some of which might have to do with the
camera--digital cameras in particular respond to light
strangely when the sun-angles are low, as was the case
when I took these pictures in Cologne, Germany around sunset.
On the other hand, it is quite likely that the color brown
in this picture has more to do with aerosols in the
atmoshere--perhaps dust, perhaps pollution, it's a bit hard
to say. (11/15/06)
- Rae sent in two nice pictures
of clouds at sunrise:
1
2 Rae, did you
take these pictures? (11/15/06)
- Adam B. is right on the money
when he says that this picture of a thunderstorm shows "a
little too much wind shear". (11/15/06)
- Jim S. took a bunch of nice
pictures of stratocumulus clouds-- here are three of them:
1
2
3 (11/03/06)
- Christine G. sent me two great
pictures of clouds, but the files were just huge and I
wasn't able to download them. (11/03/06)
- Aaron J. took a great picture
of some clouds, and I could see it on his screen, but I
don't have the file. That's okay-- I know he tried to
get it to me. (11/03/06)
- Millicent snapped three nice
pictures of clouds at sunset from her dorm room with her
cell phone: 1
2 3.
Good stuff! (11/03/06)
- Adam B. took a trip to Hawaii
and got to "drive up to the top of Mauna Kea where some of
the most famous telescopes are in the world. And it is
also, if I am not mistaken the highest place on earth that
you can drive up that is paved, well partially. Here are
some pictures of watching the sunset above the clouds. The
elevation on the mountain is 13,796 feet. It is also
interesting because the temperature change is so drastic.
Its like 30 degrees on the top and like 85 down on the
beach. Also we get to drive through the clouds on the way
up." This stuff is great! Here are the pictures:
1
2
3. (11/03/06)
- Megan C. submitted four great
pictures of clouds (1
2
3
4) that she took with
her digital camera. While all of the pictures are
beautiful, I want to call your attention to the fourth
picture. That's a thunderstorm in the "developing"
stage--what a meteorologist would call a cumulus
congestus cloud. (11/03/06)
- Lara K. sent in two great
pictures of weather events at her home. The first
features mammatus
clouds, and the second is a nice
rainbow.
(11/03/06)
- I'm always weak for a nice
picture of the sunset, especially when it is taken by a
student. These pictures were sent in by Rae (1
2), who notes, "I love
taking photos, and the sunsets were too irresistible to let
go. Note the great cloud formations beyond the paddock."
I love taking pictures like this, too-- I've got whole
hard-drives full of this stuff, and I take more all the
time! (11/03/06)
- Joe C. also submitted three
pictures given to him by Dan Pojar, a "licensed storm
chaser". There are some descriptions of what we are
seeing on these pictures. (1
2) (11/03/06)
- Joe C. sent in a couple of
pictures from his trip to Europe this summer. The
pictures (1
2) were taken when he
was with his class in the Alps. See the snow? I
was in Europe this summer, and let me tell you that it was
ONE HOT SUMMER there-- maybe this was taken early in the
summer, before it got so hot. (11/03/06)
- I don't normally like to post
images at "full resolution" on this web site--they take up a
lot of space, and they take forever to download. On
the other hand, who could say no to
this picture,
sent in by Jenilynn? At full resolution, the ice on each
little branch of the tree is just amazing. Jenilynn
writes that she "took this pic w/ my digital camera after an
ice storm when all the trees were covered with about
one-half an inch of ice. Happened in Northwest Iowa at my
home and surrounding areas." (11/03/06)
- Claire C. found an interesting
picture of a cyclone
on the NASA website. (Note: how about a BIGGER
version?) She included NASA's corny caption: "A
large low-pressure system swirls off the southwestern coast
of Iceland, illustrating the maxim that "nature abhors a
vacuum." The vacuum in this case is a region of low
atmospheric pressure. In order to fill this void, air from a
nearby high-pressure system moves in, pulling in clouds
along for the ride. And because this low-pressure system
occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, the winds spun in
toward the center of the low-pressure system in a
counter-clockwise direction; a phenomenon known as the
Coriolis effect (in the Southern
Hemisphere, the Coriolis effect would be manifested in a
clockwise direction of movement)." (10/25/06)
- Lara K. sent in some pictures
of the sky, taken while she was on a canoe trip.
1
2 In the first picture,
Lara says that she sees a cumulonimbus cloud--what do you
think? (10/25/06)
- Samantha H. is on a roll,
sending in several more dramatic cloud pictures from Utah:
1
2
3
4
5
(10/25/06)
- Samantha H. is apparently
already tired of winter, as she has sent us a couple of
pictures from the beach in, of all places, Bali. Check
out the cool, tropical clouds in the background!
1
2 (10/25/06)
- As Jenilynn notes, "Fall
is coming fast." (10/25/06)
- Millicent W. contributed two
nice pictures of the Omaha skyline, highlighted by some nice
stratocumulus clouds.
1
2 But what's with
the UFO in picture number 1? :-) (10/25/06)
- Wow, I didn't realize that it
had been so long since I added pictures to the Storm Cellar
web site. Well, Samantha H. has sent in several nice
pictures in the last few weeks, starting with these three
images of cumulus clouds in Utah:
1
2
3 (10/25/06)
- Millicent W. sent me three
very nice pictures of clouds: 1
2
3 I love stuff like
this. (10/03/06)
- Raesha S. sent in more nice
pictures--this time of some cumulus clouds near Fremont, NE:
1
2
3 As she mentioned in
the email, however, you cannot "see a bunny" in any of
these! :-) (10/3/06)
- Good pictures of the tornadic
thunderstorms from a couple of weeks ago just keep rolling
in, such as this nice one
from Sarah McI. (10/3/06)
- Jim S., you do good work.
These are some nice pictures of clouds take Jim took:
1
2
3
4
(09/29/06)
- Carlisle sent in some nice
pictures and descriptions from Hawaii:
-
This one shows rain falling in Manoa valley.
-
This
one features some nice pretty clouds that aren't big
enough to produce rain over Honolulu.
-
This
shows a beautiful rainbow over Manoa valley.
Good work! (09/29/06)
- Raesha S. sent in... well,
I'll let her explain it: "I wanted to share these
photos that I took at an Iowa Pinto Horse Show this summer.
I remember it was a great day (for both the weather and for
my horse, Brego, who is the pictured equine). And yes,
that's my dad in the background in the Creighton cap."
Here are the nice pictures:
1
2 (9/29/06)
- Ashley L.W. took a couple of
pictures of lightning during the storms a couple of days
ago: 1
2. (9/29/06)
- Jenilynn snapped
this picture of the
storms last weekend with her cell phone. I like this
stuff a lot! (9/22/06)
- Steven H. was in Kansas City
on the weekend before coming to Creighton, and he took a
number of really interesting pictures. Firstly, there
is a very cool picture of
the last
rays of sunlight shining on a building. This is
followed by two nice pictures of the sunset itself:
1
2.
Finally, there are a couple of very nice pictures of a
double rainbow:
1
2.
Steven wants to know about the conditions under which double
rainbows form. Well, it's a bit complicated; we'll
learn more about rainbows and double rainbows in the fifth
unit of the course. For now, it's enough to know that
both rainbows and double rainbows are caused by sunlight
that is reflected inside of small droplets of water that are
suspended in the atmosphere, typically after a rain shower.
The two types of rainbow are created by two different ways
in which the light moves through each raindrop.
(9/20/06)
- Millicent W. sent in two
pictures of lightning that she took due the storms last
weeks. The cool thing: one picture turned out
really blue, and the
other is really green.
Okay, before I get a lot of messages about this, the color
in the lightning is not "real"-- it probably is just an
effect of the camera in the intense light of the flash.
Perhaps Millicent could send in more information about how
and where she snapped these pictures. Great stuff.
(9/20/06)
- Last weekend's severe weather
reminded Joe C. of some storm that occurred outside of his
hometown of Bismarck, ND. He sent a link to the
story and a
photo
collection about the storm. By the way, he
mentioned that there has already been some snow and freezing
in North Dakota! (9/20/06)
- All right, now THIS is what
I'm TALKING about! Jim S. sent in a whole bunch of
nice pictures that he snapped from his dorm room during the
severe weather on Saturday night! Here are nine of
them:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9 I think that I'm going to make photo number 3 the new
desktop wallpaper on my computer! Great work!
(9/18/06)
- Jeff H. submitted
a series of images about a snowstorm in Denver.
The pictures were taken in his backyard. (You'll have
best luck using Internet Explorer as your browser for this
link, as it points to an MSN Slide Show.) (9/18/06)
- Adam B. sent in... well...
here it is in his own words: "Just wanted to send you
some pictures of snow in Scottsdale, AZ. It snowed there
the beginning of this year. It is recorded that it only
snows in Scottsdale once in about every ten year. I
don't no why, but it is pretty interesting. There is more
pictures if you want them. The one picture is the
snowman we made on a
golf course. The
mountains you see are more like hills there only about a
1000 feet high, and before it snowed they were just desert
rock without much vegetation. It was very cool to see a
saguaro cactus covered in snow because the saguaro only
grows at certain low elevations, where it doesn't usually
snow." I love this stuff! (9/14/06)
- Claire sent in
an
interesting picture, and she wrote, "the photo, captured
in Enschede, Netherlands, is a magnificent example of a
"rolling thunder cloud". The magnitude alone of this thing
is impressive, to say nothing of how dark and ominous it is!
(I'm not sure that a "roll cloud"--as Aguado calls it--is
any more destructive than its average counterpart, but it
does look mighty.)" Interesting. Claire, did you
take this picture, or did you find it online?
(9/14/06)
- Jenilynn and her cell phone
camera strike again, with a
nice picture of clouds during last weekend's rain.
(9/14/06)
- I'm a sucker for pictures like
this. Christine G. writes "I went to a park on Tuesday
afternoon and saw these cool clouds with this nice blue sky
as a backdrop! They're almost perfectly formed!" Here
they are: 1
2. See, I like
stuff like this--and it shows that Christine is thinking
about the class. Great work! (9/14/06)
- Samantha H. took a couple of
pictures when she was in Hong Kong, and the sky is blue in
one and white in the other. In the picture with the
blue sky, notice
that the sky's color has a gradient, with the sky becoming a
lighter shade of blue near the horizon. Samantha
wanted to know why. Well, that's a bit complicated--
it gets into that whole business of "Mie and Rayleigh
scattering" that you saw in the book. The short
version of the story is that light that you see coming from
directly above your head has passed through a relatively
short path through the atmosphere. There has been
relatively little opportunity for scattering, and only the
blue light has scattered. Nearer the horizon, the
light passes through much more atmosphere, which means that
there has been many more opportunities for light to scatter,
irregardless of the wavelength (i.e. color), resulted in a
scattering of "white light". Okay, that's all a bit
beyond the scope of the course, but I really like the
picture. In her picture of the
white sky, it's a
little hard to tell if the sky is cloudy or if this is just
a problem with the picture-- maybe it is a bit overexposed.
I don't know. (9/14/06)
- Ken H. is on a roll! He
has sent in lots of great pictures in the first few weeks of
the semester. These pictures come from his trip to a
theme park; the trip was interrupted by a huge thunderstorm.
1
2
3 (9/11/06)
- Ken H. sent in
a picture of nice cumulus clouds
and crepuscular rays. The catch--the pictures were
taking in Japan. Nice work! (9/11/06)
- Bard H. found a great picture
of an analemma--in the sky!
I don't think that I mentioned this in class, but the shape
of the analemma is not a coincidence. Rather, if you
use a camera and take a picture of the sky at exactly the
same angle at exactly the same time of day over the course
of a year, you get an "analemma in the sky". Cool!
(9/11/06)
- Jenilynn B. caught
an interesting picture of a
strange cloud with her cell phone. It really
really really looks like a tornado, but it isn't-- it's just
a strangely shaped cloud.(9/11/06)
- Steven H. sent in a nice
picture of cirrocumulus
clouds. (9/11/06)
- Ken H. has a sister who lives
in Florida, and he sent in some pictures from her.
According to the message, these pictures are "just an
evening in Florida". Picture
1
2
3
4
5
6
7.
(9/11/06)
- On the first day of class,
Caleb V. got a jump on the competition by sending in a
classic picture of
a tornado
illuminated by lightning.
- Images of
colored lightning
such as this one are always faked. The image was
produced by exposing the film for a long time, placing colored gels in front of the lens at different
intervals.
- Here is a nice picture of
multiple waterspouts. Waterspouts are not a severe
weather phenomenon--they form under ordinary cumulus clouds
under the right conditions.
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