The Weather

Oh, yes - the weather - everyone talks about it, but no one does anything about it. I suppose that is because what the heck CAN we do about the weather? Whom do we call to complain? Mother Nature? Quick....what is her telephone number so I can be the first in line to call to register a complaint. Alas, I'm afraid that we just have to learn to deal with bad weather. I hope readers enjoy this little page of weather trivia. If not, don't call me - call Mother Nature, instead.

PAGE CONTENTS:

How Cold Can It Get?

Some Weather Factoids
Earth's Greatest Earthquake
Monsoons

How Cold Can It Get?

No matter how cold it gets this winter, old-timers will say it could be worse. And they're right. It could be colder--a lot colder. It could be absolute zero, with no heat at all.

What we call temperature is just an easy way to measure thermal energy. Everything in the universe has thermal energy, which exists in the form of vibrations in atoms and molecules. If you add thermal energy to an object, its atoms and molecules vibrate more, and it warms up. If you remove thermal energy, its atoms and molecules vibrate less, and it gets colder.

How cold can it get? We'll use your car as our experimental chamber (hope you don't mind). We'll start at a nice warm temperature, say 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 degrees Celsius). You only need to wear a shirt and shorts, and you might even want a cold drink. Except that now, you're starting to feel a little chill in the air. The temperature is dropping to 45 degrees F (7 degrees C). You'd better grab a coat and long pants. Don't worry about the heat--we've turned that off.

A few more minutes, and we're at 32 degrees F (0 degrees C). You need a hat and gloves, and you can see your breath in the air as the water vapor from your lungs condenses in the cold, fogging up your windshield. Another moment, and we reach 0 degrees F (-18 degrees C). Your body is shivering, using muscular energy to generate heat to keep you warm. And your cold drink has frozen solid (not that you'd want it now).

A little longer, and we've reached -44 degrees F (-42 degrees C). Time to switch to the Kelvin scale, where it's a balmy 231. Regular thermometers don't work anymore--their mercury has frozen solid. You've probably never felt cold like this. You're numb, and your extremities are frostbitten. As the temperature drops further, substances that were once pliable become brittle. Your leather seat begins to crack and crumble under your weight, and a rubber tire wouldn't bounce on the floor--it would shatter.

Our next stop is 184 K (-129 degrees F or -89 degrees C), the lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth. Now things really get strange. The air itself starts to condense. First, carbon dioxide condenses, forming tiny frost-like crystals. Then, at around 90 K (-298 degrees F or -183 degrees C), oxygen condenses. Pretty soon, the air that once filled your car is a pool of liquid on the floor. But don't worry about that. You're no longer breathing anyway. Even the warmest parka in the world couldn't save you at this temperature.

There is some good news, though. Your car's electric system just improved. Usually, even really conductive materials like copper wire lose energy because of electrical resistance. But at about 133 K (-220 degrees F or -140 degrees C), as vibrating molecules slow down, certain metal-oxide ceramics lose their resistance, becoming superconductive. At even lower temperatures, metals like lead and tin become superconductive, too.

Eventually, the inside of your car reaches the temperature of the darkest parts of space: about 3 K (-454 degrees F or -270 degrees C). This is as cold as the universe gets. There's just enough ambient thermal energy bouncing around to keep us from ever shedding those last three degrees. Naturally, at least. In the lab, scientists have managed to drop the temperature below 3 K--down to just a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero (0 K or -460 degrees F).

--Christopher Call

Some Weather Factoids

In Browning, Montana on January 23, 1916, the temperature dropped exactly 100 degrees, from 44 degrees above zero to 56 degrees below zero. This is the world record for a 24-hour temperature change.

Eventually the sun will burn itself out and Earth will freeze over. When that happens, given the 94 million miles from the Earth to the sun and the speed of light, we will have a little over eight minutes before the daylight goes dark and the temperature plunges precipitously. (Source: HOW A FLY WALKS UPSIDE DOWN)

Soil bacteria are absolutely vital to all land ecosystems.

CARBON DIOXIDE

If the air did not contain carbon dioxide, the planet would be approximately 20 degrees cooler. Without water vapor, it would be a frozen ball of ice.

EARTHQUAKES

The most intense earthquake in the history of the United States occurred December 16, 1811, at about 2:00 P. M., and two further shocks occurred five and seven weeks later. It is estimated the quake would have measured 8.7 on the Richter scale, compared with 8.3 for the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. However, the Missouri area was sparsely populated in 1811, so the San Francisco quake took more lives and damaged more property. It centered in New Madrid, Missouri. One million square miles were shaken, a much greater area than affected by the California quake in 1906. Chimneys were knocked down in Cincinnati, 400 miles away. Shocks were felt 500 miles in New Orleans and in Boston 1,100 miles distant. The course of the Mississippi was changed, some islands disappeared, and new lakes and creeks were created.

Tangshan, China, suffered the deadliest earthquake of the 20th century on July 28, 1976. One quarter of the population was killed or seriously injured, with an estimated 242,000 people killed

HUMIDITY

How humid is it?
If all the water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere were condensed to liquid water at the same time, there would be enough water to cover the United States (including Hawaii and Alaska) with a 25-foot-deep layer of water.

How come a hot, humid day is more uncomfortable than a foggy day?

People are often in a fog about high humidity. On a hot, humid day, there's actually more total water vapor in the air than on a cool, foggy day. The reason: hot air can hold more moisture than cold air. High humidity -- but less than 100 percent -- tells us that at a certain temperature the air can still take more water before it condenses, even though it already holds plenty.

In a fog, the humidity is 100 percent because the cool air is saturated and the water vapor is already condensing. But the total amount of water in the air is less than on a sultry summer afternoon.

If fog bothers you, you can put on a jacket. But if its hot and humid, even stripping naked may not help because you can't sweat enough to cool your body. The only solution - no pun intended - is air conditioning. Source: WHY THINGS ARE & WHY THEY AREN'T by Joel Achenbach

Why does it feel hotter when it's more humid?
The relative humidity plays a large role in determining our comfort level. If the relative humidity is 100 percent, it means that water will not evaporate -- the air is already saturated with moisture. Our bodies rely on the evaporation of moisture from our skin for cooling. The lower the relative humidity, the easier it is for moisture to evaporate from our skin and the cooler we feel.

DECREASING AIR PRESSURE AND INCREASING HUMIDITY BEFORE A STORM GIVE OFF WHAT SORTS OF NATURAL SIGNALS?

Geese stay put or fly close to the ground, since the air is turbulent. Air takes on an earthy smell, as aromatic oils are released from the ground. Flowers smell stronger, since water vapor in the air binds to their aromatic molecules. Bubbles form in calm bodies of water as gases are released from decaying plants. Frogs croak more in response to the humidity.

IF THERE WERE NO MOISTURE IN THE AIR, WHICH WOULD TRAVEL FASTER…. LIGHT OR SOUND?

Light always travels faster than sound, and, as surprising as it may be, sound actually moves faster in MOIST air than it does in Dry air - not by much - but none the less, slight faster. So removing the moisture from the air, would actually SLOW DOWN the sound a slight bit. DID YOU KNOW. 1. Speed of light ... 186,000 miles per second 2. Speed of sound in dry air 331.8 meters per second 3. Speed of sound in Saturated air 332.1 meters per second.

HURRICANES

How powerful are hurricanes?

Hurricanes are the largest, most energetic heat engines on the planet. Formed when the sun's heat warms the surface layers of tropical seas, they are powered by the heat released when the rising water vapor condenses.

Most of a hurricane's energy is used to lift the air in the center of the storm. After rising in powerful updrafts, during which most of the water vapor condenses into rain, the uplifted air spreads out as a cold, dry wind across the top of the storm. Only a small fraction of that energy feeds the horizontal motion of the hurricane's winds.

In a typical hurricane, the power expended to lift the air and water is 600,000,000,000,000 Watts, or 200 times the electrical generating capacity of the entire world! Generating the storm's swirling winds uses only 1,500,000,000,000 Watts, or about 1/400 as much power.

There's enough energy in ten minutes of one hurricane to match the nuclear stockpiles of the world.

IF THE ENERGY RELEASED BY A HURRICANE EACH DAY COULD BE CONVERTED TO ELECTRICITY, HOW MUCH ELECTRICAL POWER COULD THIS SUPPLY?

The energy released by a hurricane each day would, if convert- ed to electricity, keep the entire United States supplied with electrical power for up to three years.

LIGHTNING

A lightning bolt embodies as much as 30,000 amps of electricity, reaches a temperature of 54,000 F., give or take a few degrees, and may be anywhere from 300 yards to 4 miles long.

The longest lightning flashes measured have been 20 miles in length. Long flashes occur most often by high clouds. The smallest flashes may measure less than 300 feet.

Lightning travels 90,000 miles a second - almost half the speed of light. (186,000 miles a second).

Can you really measure how far away lightning struck from you by counting the time until the thunderclap?
You certainly can. Sound travels through air at "the speed of sound" or 331.3 meters per second (1,087 feet per second) in dry air at 0 degrees C. At a normal temperature like 25 degrees C (82 degrees F) the speed is 346 meters per second. Obviously, the speed sound travels at changes depending on the temperature and the humidity, but a good, general number would be 350 meters per second and 1,200 feet per second. So think of sound travelling a kilometer in around 3 seconds and a mile in around 5 seconds. When you see a lightning flash start counting and then divide to see how far away the lightning struck. If it takes 10 seconds for the thunder to roll in, the lightning struck about 2 miles or 3 kilometers away.

IF YOU HEAR THUNDER 10 SECONDS AFTER YOU SEE LIGHTNING, HOW FAR AWAY WAS THE LIGHTNING?
2 miles away. Sound travels about a mile in 5 seconds.

CAN THUNDER AND LIGHTNING OCCUR DURING A SNOWSTORM?

Yes, thunder and lightning can occur during a snowstorm, although it is very rare. The biggest snowstorms are those marked by thunder and lightning, a phenomenon meteorologists call "thunder snow." It's unusual because snowstorms are cold, and cold air doesn't rise and create thunderclouds as warm air does. But if there is enough energy in the atmosphere and a lot of moisture, thunderclouds can form and drop snow instead of rain when the temperature is just below freezing. Thunder- storms with snow are more likely to occur near the coast be- cause the storm can form over the comparatively warm water of the ocean and move inland, meeting much colder conditions.

Lightning fact and fiction
Fiction: Lightning never strikes the same place twice.
Fact: Lightning has "favorite" sites that it may hit many times during one storm.

Fiction: If it is not raining, then there is no danger from lightning.
Fact: Lightning often strikes outside of heavy rain and may occur as far as 10 miles away from any rainfall.

Fiction: The rubber soles of shoes or rubber tires on a car will protect you from being struck by lightning.
Fact: Rubber-soled shoes and rubber tires provide NO protection from lightning. However, the steel frame of a hard-topped vehicle provides increased protection if you are not touching metal. Although you may be injured if lightning strikes your car, you are much safer inside a vehicle than outside.

Fiction: People struck by lightning carry an electrical charge and should not be touched.
Fact: Lightning-strike victims carry no electrical charge and should be attended to immediately.

Fiction: "Heat lightning" occurs after very hot summer days and poses no threat.
Fact: What is referred to as "heat lightning" is actually lightning from a thunderstorm too far away for thunder to be heard. However, the storm may be moving in your direction.

A lightning bolt generates temperatures five times hotter than the 6,000 degrees centigrade found at the surface of the sun.

Some actual facts about lightning (no fiction) and what you should do if lightning's about to strike
- Most lightning occurs within the cloud or between the cloud and ground

- The air near a lightning strike is heated to 50,000 degrees F, - much hotter than the sun.

- The average flash could light a 100-watt light bulb for more than 3 months.

- In the Western U.S., the largest danger from lightning is fires.

- Your chances of being struck by lightning are estimated to be 1 in 600,000.

- If caught outside during a thunderstorm and your hair feels like it's standing on end, lightning may be about to strike you. Drop immediately to the ground, forming a ball with your body. Stand on the balls of your feet. Duck your head to your knees.
(All facts courtesy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency)

At any given time, there are 1,800 thunderstorms in progress over the Earth's atmosphere. Lightning strikes the Earth 100 times every second.

OZONE

Is ozone good for us or bad for us?

Depends. It helps to precipitate soot and dirt when used as a cleaning agent. It kills germs, and that's good. But it's not so good when it's in the air and it reacts perfectly with car exhaust, dirt particles and the like to make them hang out there for you to breathe as smog.

Ozone is an oxygen molecule with an extra atom. It's most commonly created by a discharge of electricity, such as lightning. The Sun's radiation hitting our atmosphere also creates ozone, which forms a layer in the atmosphere that protects us from the sun's ultraviolet rays. I find it touching that the sun works to protect us from itself, don't you?

Source: THE WORLD BOOK ENCYCLOPEDIA

POLLUTION

The air is so polluted in Cubato, Brazil, no birds or insects remain, most trees are blackened stumps, and its mayor reportedly refuses to live there.

RAIN

What causes the smell of new rain on dry ground?

It's been a warm, dry day but now the rain begins. As the first drops wet the ground, there is a sharp, fresh smell with a peculiar, almost metallic tang. It only lasts a few minutes, until the ground is fully wet. It is especially strong near sun-warmed pavement.

The smell is caused by the spores of a kind of filamentous bacteria called Actinomycetes that grow in warm, moist soil. When the weather dries out, these bacteria release vast numbers of extremely small spores that blow around, landing on everything.

When the rain hits the dry soil or pavement, the spores are kicked into the air along with tiny bits of soil. For just a few minutes (until the rain washes them out of the air) we can smell these pungent particles as they land in our olfactory sinuses.

RAINBOWS

Why can't you see a rainbow at high noon?
A rainbow can be seen only in the morning or late afternoon. It is a phenomenon that can occur only when the sun is 40 degrees or less above the horizon.

IS A RAINBOW CIRCULAR IN SHAPE IF ONE LOOKS DOWN ON IT FROM THE SKY?

Rainbows are the reflection of the sun on water droplets in the air. On the ground, you can see only those droplets extending to the horizon, hence the bow. The higher off the ground you are, the more of the horizon, and thus the more of the rainbow, you can see. If you're in an airplane, you do in fact see a circle, with the airplane's shadow in the center.

SNOW

It only snows about 2 inches per year over most of Antarctica. The coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was in Antarctica -128.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Continental snow cover would advance to the equator, and the oceans would eventually freeze, if there was a
permanent drop in just 1.6 to 2.0 percent in energy reaching the Earth.

Dirty snow melts faster than clean.

In the southern part of Japan, it rarely snows to any great amount except for the mountains, but the northern part usually has plenty of snow in the winter. Autumn is by far the best time to visit Japan, as far as the weather goes.

TEMPERATURE

The hottest day ever in Canada was July 5, 1937 when the mercury soared to 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) in Midale and Yellowgrass, Saskatchewan. But that's downright chilly compared to the United States where the temperature hit 56.7 (135 F) degrees Celsius on July 10, 1913 at Death Valley, California, and Al'azizyah, Libya, where thermometers reached 58 C (137 F) on September 13, 1922.

WHERE IS THE WORLD'S GREATEST TEMPERATURE EXTREME?

The world's greatest temperature extreme--the range between record high and low temperature-is found in Verkhoyansk, Siberia: 36.7 degrees C (minus 98 degrees F) to minus 76.8 degrees C (minus 90 degrees F). That is a 113.5 C degree (188 degree F) difference.

The worst climate in the world may be at Yakutsk, in Russia. In winter, the temperature falls to -84 degrees Fahrenheit. In summer, it can reach 102 degrees Fahrenheit.

WHERE IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES IS THE AVERAGE ANNUAL TEMPERATURE THE HIGHEST?

Phoenix, Arizona, has had the highest number of days in a year with temperatures above 90 degrees. For the past 38 years, Phoenix has had 167 days each year with temperatures at least 90 degrees F. Just for the record, the highest temperature ever recorded in the continental United States was 134 degrees F, documented at Greenland Ranch, Death Valley, California, on July 10, 1913.

Coldest place on Earth

The coldest natural outdoor temperature ever recorded (as of January, 2000) was at Russia's Vostock Station in Antarctica. In 1997 the temperature there fell to -91 degrees Celsius (-132 degrees F). At this temperature, steel becomes so brittle it shatters easily.

Vostok Station is located in the middle of a vast expanse of uninterrupted ice, on a high plateau about 780 miles (1260 km) from the South Pole. The ice at Vostok is about 3700 meters thick (12,100 feet) and the surface elevation is 3488 meters (11,444 feet).

Vostok Station is not only the coldest place on Earth, it is also one of the driest. Because the air is so cold, it can hold very little moisture. The air's absolute humidity at Vostok is lower than that of the Sahara Desert.

Was Celsius' scale originally backwards?
Pretty much. At a glance, the Celsius scale makes more sense than the Fahrenheit scale for temperature measuring. But its creator, Anders Celsius, was an oddball scientist. When he first developed his scale, he made freezing 100 degrees and boiling 0 degrees, or upside down. No one dared point this out to him, so fellow scientists waited until Celsius died to change the scale.

WATER

Pigs, dogs, and some other animals can taste water, but people cannot. Humans don't actually taste the water, they taste the chemicals and impurities in the water.

There is about one quarter-pound of salt in every gallon of seawater.

Only about 1.6 percent of the water on Earth is fresh. Most of it is locked — unusable for living things — in snow and the ice at the poles and on the peaks of the highest mountains.

A drop of water may travel thousands of miles between the time it evaporates into the atmosphere and the time it falls to the Earth again as rain, sleet, or snow.

There is the same amount of water on Earth today as there was when the Earth was formed.

How does boiling water correspond to melting ice?
Melting ice absorbs almost as much energy in changing to liquid water as is needed to heat the water from freezing to boiling.

Earth's Greatest Earthquake
A bigger earthquake than the one that shook Chile in 1960 might have happened once. But Chile's is the biggest ever measured by modern equipment. At magnitude 9.5, the Chilean quake of 1960 shook the earth with the force of more than 100 billion tons of TNT.

Chile has been quaking for ages. It's located on the "Ring of Fire," a zone of dangerous volcanic and seismic activity that curves up from New Zealand along the east coast of Asia and down the west coast of the Americas. Collisions between the South American and Nazca tectonic plates created Chile's Andes Mountains and still cause quakes today.

The granddaddy of them all happened on the afternoon of May 22, 1960. A series of large tremors had hit the day before, destroying property and causing numerous casualties. About 30 minutes before the main quake, a number of smaller "foreshocks" drove many people out of their houses and toward shelter. Those warnings kept the final death toll from the "mainshock" from being even higher than it was.

The quake started 100 miles (160 km) off Chile's coast, about 200 feet (60 meters) below the floor of the Pacific Ocean. When it hit Chile, the altitude of several hundred miles of Chilean coastline shifted. Farms were plunged underwater. Docks and ports were raised or lowered by several feet.

Landslides were widespread. A tsunami generated by the quake smashed into the coast. The waves reportedly reached heights of 80 feet (24 meters). In fact, the tsunami was one of the largest ever recorded in the Pacific. Roaring across the ocean, it struck California, Hawaii, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. At least 138 people died in Japan. In Hawaii, the tsunami devastated the city of Hilo, but killed only 61, thanks to an effective warning system.

The quake laid waste to a huge part of southern Chile. Exact totals vary according to the source, but more than 2,000 people were killed, 3,000 were injured, and some 2 million were left homeless. Many villages were completely wiped out, and larger cities like Concepcion, Puerto Montt, and Valdivia were flooded and severely damaged.

Some people thought they were experiencing the effects of a nuclear war. May 1960 was a time of tension between the United States and Soviet Union. On May 7, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev had revealed to the world that an American pilot, Gary Powers, had been captured after his U-2 spy plane was shot down over the USSR. When the earthquake hit, some Chileans assumed that World War III had begun.

It wasn't a war, but the quake's effects really were global. According to seismologists, it made the entire planet vibrate like a bell for days afterward, a phenomenon called "free oscillation," which occurs only with enormous earthquakes. And this quake was only the beginning. A series of at least nine big quakes hit Chile from May through December that year. Chileans hope they never see another such string.

--Jeffery Vail

Monsoons

What Is a Monsoon?
Say "monsoon," and most people think "rain." But monsoons aren't rainstorms. They're wind systems that reverse direction when the seasons change, bringing dry weather as well as wet. In fact, the word "monsoon" comes from the Arabic "mausim" ("season"), which ancient Arab mariners used to refer to seasonal shifts in sea breezes.

Many countries have monsoonal climates, with strong seasonal winds, wet summers, and dry winters. Even the southwestern United States has a small-scale monsoon. But the Asiatic monsoon that washes over the Indian subcontinent every year is the mother of them all.

If you've been to the beach on a hot day and hung around past sunset, you've likely experienced a mini-monsoon effect. During the day, the air over the beach heats up quickly, while the air over the water stays cooler (because water absorbs and retains more solar radiation than land). As the hot air over the land rises, cooler air from over the water rushes in to take its place, and you get a refreshing sea breeze.

After the sun sets, the air over the land cools off more quickly than the air over the water (again, because the water has absorbed more heat from the sun and can hold it longer). As the air over the water gets warmer than the air over the land, the breeze shifts. Now the warmer ocean air rises, while the cooler land air heads out to sea.

The same thing happens in and around the Indian subcontinent every year, but on a much larger scale. As March gives way to April and May, temperatures in India rise. By late spring, it's sweltering, with highs regularly above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius).

But the mercury rises much more quickly above the land than it does above the Indian Ocean. Soon the cooler air moves inland, blowing in across the ocean and picking up moisture that falls to earth in torrential monsoon rains. Every year, those rains wreak havoc on the Indian subcontinent, even as they provide the water it needs to survive.

Monsoon systems bring dry weather as surely as wet. In India, as summer gives way to autumn, temperatures fall, and they fall more quickly over the land than they do over the water. By October, India's winds generally blow out to sea, and they stay that way throughout winter and early spring.

When land winds prevail, India generally stays dry. Nothing wrong with dry weather, of course, as long as the wet season has been wet enough. When it hasn't, India's people face another of nature's killers: drought.

--Steve Sampson

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