Weather
sastyk | February 23, 2010Some of you will remember that I was whining a few weeks ago that I had snow envy - that I was jealous of the snow folks in the mid-Atlantic were getting, while we Northeasterners, who have come to expect snow, go nothing. Even on the day when there was snow in 49 out of 50 states, my neighborhood didn't get a single flake.
Well, I should have realized that hubris is always properly rewarded - we're expecting to get 26 inches of snow, a couple of ice, some rain, some sleet, wind gusts up to 60mph and etcetera and etcetera over the next four or five days.
My kids are ecstatic - sledding!…
sastyk | February 10, 2010A lot of big snowstorms get people who do not grasp the difference between weather and climate all excited. Consider the VA Republican party who claimed in an ad last week that if it snows, we can't have global warming. But it isn't just the skeptics and denialists here - among the believers we routinely see people citing weather, such as the lack of snow in Vancouver for the Olympics. I know that people think this helps, but in the great scheme of things, it doesn't - if people hear people who are trying act against global warming using their weather as an explanation without evidence,…
grrlscientist | February 6, 2010tags: weather, humor, funny, silly, weird, Jim Kosek, meterology, streaming video
AccuWeather.com forecast video for the coming Snowpocalypse in the DC/Baltimore area shows meteorologist Jim Kosek freaking out a little about the storm. Oh boy.
sastyk | February 5, 2010So for those of you getting ready for Snowpocalypse, as the mid-Atlantic faces, gasp - a whole foot of snow, I have to tell you something. I'm jealous. I mean really, really jealous. I want your snow.
A general pattern of winter storms in my area (upstate NY) is that they come down from Canada and across the Great Lakes. We are at the very eastern edge of the snow belt in New York, and we don't usually get the giant lake-effect snows that Buffalo and other areas get, but we can generally expect to spend the winter with a solid several feet on the ground. But not this year.
Somehow, all…
drorzel | February 3, 2010In the wake of recent political developments, there has been a lot of hand-wringing about why Democrats in Congress are so spineless, and have been unable to pass meaningful legislation despite huge majorities. After thinking about my travel plans last night, I think I have the key to the Grand Unified Theory of American politics.
The problem is not that Democratic politicians are uniquely craven, or venal, or anything like that. The problem is Washington, DC.
No, this is not a prelude to some right-wing rant about how the Real America can be found only in states with more livestock than…
jstemwedel | January 20, 20101. The barometric pressure has dropped from what it was last night (when it was raining).
2. The Doppler radar map indicates that this is where the action is.
3. It sounds like squirrels are tap-dancing on the roof.
4. There are no longer any wool socks in my sock drawer.
grrlscientist | January 12, 2010tags: Suomenlinnan Linnoitusta, Helsinki, Finland, nature, image of the day
Suomenlinna Linnoitusta (Suomenlinna Fortress).
Photographed at the ferry terminus on Soumenlinna.
Helsinki, Finland.
Image: GrrlScientist, 19 July 2009 [larger view]. (raw image)
khannula | November 1, 2009Go to Dave's Landslide Blog for full details about this. I don't have access to the paper.
According to Dave Petley, there's a new paper in Nature Geoscience about the Slumgullion landslide. Slumgullion is in my greater neighborhood - it's in Colorado's San Juan Mountains, between Lake City (former home of Alferd Packer) and Creede (former home of Doc Holliday), and I think it's got the coolest name of any landslide (and possibly the coolest name of any geological feature). It's a strange landslide for its slow movement, and it's being monitored in excruciating detail by the US Geological…
scientificactivist | October 6, 2009
I have a bone to pick with The Weather Channel, and it has to do with misuse of statistics. This is something I noticed a long time ago, so it's about time I said something about it. The problem here is fairly obvious, so I'm sure many others have noticed this before. Also, this may not be specific to The Weather Channel, but I'm just using it as an example because that is where I have observed this problem.
To the left, you can see tomorrow's forecast for Austin, Texas, from The Weather Channel. The key piece of information here (for this post) is that there is a 40% chance of…
khannula | September 30, 2009There's an issue of Eos sitting on my desk at work with a front-page article about how to manage outreach. Earth scientists know stuff that's important - this week's huge earthquakes (covered all over the geoblogosphere) are just one example. Water's another. And climate. And volcanoes. And landslides. And... well, you get the picture. So outreach is important.
But the best outreach might be the stuff that goes on every day in schools. My kid's lucky - he lives in a college town, with all sorts of students and professors providing opportunities to learn cool stuff. But a lot of kids don't…
grrlscientist | June 26, 2009tags: Rainstorm, weather, nature, Manhattan
Hiding from the rain under the eaves.
Photographed on Columbus Avenue, between West 81st and 82nd streets.
Image: GrrlScientist, 26 June 2009 [larger view].
This rainstorm was so severe that it even drenched people with umbrellas .. and flooded the streets.
khannula | April 30, 2009I should have finished designing the new version of my disasters class. I've been thinking about it forever. But then I was trying to get a paper written, and then I went to a conference, and then there were senior thesis presentations and end-of-semester grading and a six-year-old's birthday, and, well...
Yes, I am frantically trying to get a syllabus ready for class on Monday.
I've got three more days (though they include a discussion with my soon-to-graduate thesis student, graduation, and a birthday party, so it can't be non-stop syllabus work). That means that, although I should be…
grrlscientist | April 13, 2009tags: Lantinen Pukkisaari, nature, Helsinki, Finland, image of the day
Lantinen Pukkisaari.
Walking on the Water on Lantinen Pukkisaari near Helsinki, Finland.
Image: GrrlScientist, 22 February 2009 [larger view].
grrlscientist | April 8, 2009tags: Hietaniemi Hautausmaa, Hietaniemi Cemetery, nature, Helsinki, Finland, image of the day
A huge gravestone in Hietaniemi Hautausmaa (Hietaniemi Cemetery).
Image: GrrlScientist, 19 February 2009 [larger view].
grrlscientist | April 6, 2009tags: Greenland, image of the day
Grønland fra luften (Greenland from roughly 38,000 feet up).
Image: GrrlScientist, 10 March 2009 [larger view].
khannula | March 18, 2009I've been blogging my way throug the redesign of my upper-level general education course, "The Control of Nature," using a course design tutorial from SERC. I've talked about what's gone wrong in the past, about who my students are and what they need from the class, and about my tentative goals for the class. I've been mulling over the problem (and also going back to classes after spring break), and I've finally worked through the next part... the course plan.
When it comes time to put a course together, I've got some bad habits. For instance, when I don't have any good ideas, I start by…
cmooney | March 18, 2009My latest Science Progress column contemplates this question, in the wake of a spot of news that doesn't seem to have caused any uproar (yet)--namely, that DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is apparently holding an event to discuss the prospect of geoengineering the climate.
As I write in the column:
This is newsworthy for at least two reasons: The U.S. government has, thus far, kept the subject of geoengineering at a relative arm's-length; and one reason for that shyness is the extremely checkered past history of U.S. military ventures in weather modification, including…
gregladen | March 14, 2009Spring is an ecological phenomenon of weather and biota linked to orbital geometry. More importantly, spring is here, as of this very moment, in Anoka County, Minnesota.
The parts of Anoka County, Minnesota that are not built on consist of scrubland, prairie, and marsh. So there is a lot of grass. For the last several weeks it has been unseasonably cold. So the soil beneath the grass is frozen solid. This frozen-state is facilitated by the fact that we have not had much snow, which otherwise might have insulated the ground and kept it warmer. And, this lack of snow means that when we…
khannula | March 10, 2009Spring has sprung in the geoblogosphere! In Virginia, Callan has been hiking on the Billy Goat Trail. In Colorado, Geology Happens has crocuses. And spring fever has even hit the New York Times - Andy Revkin is posting Youtube videos of Pete Seeger singing about maple syrup.
Hey, I can play, too. Look - I've got violets (pictures under the fold):
Actually, I took that photo on Sunday. If I go out this morning, maybe I'll be able to pick 148 more, and then I'll be able to start making that yummy-sounding violet custard pie that Janet made for pi day.
Oops.
cmooney | March 3, 2009We can if we're Fox News. Or Matt Drudge.
These people use any snowstorm as reason to cast doubt on global warming. It's as predictable as...well, no, it's a lot more predictable than the weather.
I really regret that important global warming protests and actions always seem to be timed so that they coincide with winter weather. Mostly, the activists can't help it; it's just rotten luck. But I'll say it again: Having the U.N. Copenhagen meeting in Denmark in December is just asking for this kind of stuff.
That doesn't, of course, excuse the dishonesty from right-wingers who continually try to…