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I am approaching this particular blog post with a bit of consternation and reservation. Most of us are so enthralled by the progression of daily weather that we become amateur weather observers.

Beginning on March 8, 1993, numerical weather prediction (NWP) models consistently predicted a deep winter storm for the eastern United States on March 13. These NWP models gave excellent advance notice and produced accurate forecasts of the storm track location. However, the model runs of March 13 considerably underforecast the deepening of the storm in the northeast Gulf of Mexico.

I tend to go overboard for books. I value my library card more than my driver’s license. But then, I’m a book addict. 

There are so many books on meteorology that it can stagger the mind. You really don’t need to read a ton of books if you are an amateur, but you should get some orientation and familiarity with terms and processes.

From culture to technology, typhoons changed the course of history in Japan. At the time of Genghis Khan’s death in 1227, the Mongolian Empire stretched east to west from The Pacific to the Caspian Sea and from southern Russia to Tibet. In the next 30 odd years, Mongolian leaders expanded the empire in all directions, with periodic contractions back to the capital of Karakorum in order to decide on succession and crown a new great khan. When Kublai Khan consolidated his power in 1264, Japan was squarely in his sights. The only thing that could stop him? The weather.  

Art has an interesting role to play in weather observing. Paintings, sketches, and other media can provide representation of clouds and other meteorological phenomena from before measurements and data collection instruments were standardized and widespread. William Ascroft’s pastel sketches from 1888 are an example of this. These sketches depict observations from Chelsea, London, on 26 November 1883 and show the effects of the eruption of Krakatau. The images capture the impact that aerosols high in the atmosphere have on the color of the sky. 

What do you see when you look up?

Clues to the state of the atmosphere are all around us if we know how and where to look. The rainbow is probably one of the best known signs as its brilliant colors and dramatic appearance make it hard to miss. But there’s more to rainbows than you might guess. If a halo or rainbow is observed in the sky, it is carrying information about the shapes, sizes, and/or composition of airborne particles. Each rainbow and rainbow-esque phenomenon carries its own specific information about the particles that generate it. This information is sometimes difficult to obtain from other sources. 

The streaks of color may not last long, and they occur at unpredictable times. But in cases where the actual state of the atmosphere at a certain moment is of importance, or when one is interested in knowing the composition of particles floating in the air, their observation may help. So remember that every time you see and photograph a rainbow, you’re making important observations about the world around you. 

Forget the rain delays, temperature “is the most important meteorological variable affecting fly ball distances for MLB as a whole.” So concluded a 1995 study by Kraft and Skeeter that looked at temperature, humidity, and wind impacts on fly balls in Major League Baseball games. That study also found that batted fly balls in cool temperatures (at most 50°F) travel on average 16 ft less compared to warm temperatures (at least 90°F).

It's official! We're inviting you to share your love of weather and photography in our very first AMS Weather Band photo contest!

The contest runs from May 31, 2021 to August 20, 2021. We're seeking photos of weather, water, and climate from the subtle to the extreme; think clouds, waves, storms, and other atmospheric, oceanic, or hydrologic conditions. We can't wait to see the weather moments and stories you've captured. 

We had a lot of questions about attribution science during Victor Gensini’s recent webinar on severe storms and their prediction and analysis. He does talk about attribution science in the webinar, but if you’re interested in a few more basics, and the process of attributions, check out this article on attribution science and how it works. 

Here are a few of the news stories from the weather and atmospheric sciences world that we've been following this week. Do you have a story we missed? Share it in the community!

Where Ida got its fuel

As Hurricane Ida headed into the Gulf of Mexico, a team of scientists was monitoring a large pool of warm water that swirled directly in its path. An oceanographer from that team breaks down how the Loop Current helped turn Hurricane Ida into such a gigantic storm, and how he monitors the oceans in order to help with severe weather prediction. 

An in-depth look at the Fennec Automatic Weather Station (AWS) Network: how researchers built a climate monitoring system in one of the harshest environments on earth

As the world’s largest desert, the Sahara is known for climatic extremes—temperature and aridity are the two most obvious. But it’s also known for airborne dust. A lot of dust. The Sahara is the single greatest annual source of airborne mineral dust in the world, blanketing the Caribbean and North America with haze. 

In the fall of 1926, the U.S. Weather Bureau announced that radio weather reports were beginning to come in from the northernmost station in the United States: Point Barrow (now Nuvuk), Alaska. But few people would have guessed that the observer at this farthest north weather station was a young woman. Mrs. Beverly A. Morgan and her husband -  the Army Signal Corps radio operator - were two of only a few white inhabitants of the town, which was the coldest and most inaccessible station at that time: 450 miles north of other radio weather outposts. 

September 15, 2021
3:00 to 4:00 PM ET
Register Here

Part of the National Academy of Sciences Climate Conversations

Climate Change: Extreme Events

Note: This is not an AMS Weather Band event, but we identified this as a subject that may be of interest to Weather Band members. If you attend, let us know what you thought in the Weather Band Community!

As a result of climate change, extreme events such as floods, wildfires, storms, and heat waves are already becoming more dangerous and destructive. Marshall Shepherd (University of Georgia) will moderate a conversation with Craig Fugate (former FEMA Administrator) and Marissa Aho (Washington State Department of Natural Resources) about the connections between climate change and extreme events, and about how communities and governments at different scales can plan for and become more resilient to the risks from extreme events today and into the future.

Weather spotters play an important role in the severe weather warning system. Since the 1970s, the National Weather Service (NWS) has trained citizens to collect, confirm, verify, or supplement radar and other data, thus, “serving as the nation’s first line of defense against severe weather.” Today, “SKYWARN,” is a volunteer program with over 350,000 trained spotters. The network includes police and fire personnel, 911 dispatchers, emergency management workers, public utility workers, and other concerned citizens.

“How accurate is your data?” 

This is one of the big, never ending, unresolved questions around using and interpreting atmospheric data. Of course uncertainties have existed and will continue to exist in all forms of environmental data. But in order to understand our weather history, and our weather future, there is a need to define, measure, and understand these uncertainties. 

We are excited to announce the AMS Weather Band's first Community and Citizen Science Symposium!

Please join us as a speaker or a participant for this two day, virtual event, that will showcase citizen and community science projects and programs related to weather and the atmospheric sciences. It will take place on Friday, January 21, and Saturday, January 22 12:00 - 5:00 ET.

Rainbows occupy an important place in mythology, culture, and language all over the world. They also helped inspire advances in physics, mathematics, and understanding the nature of light!

Technically, you can only see a rainbow when the sun is behind your head and drops of water are in the air. The water drops might be from a rain shower, a waterfall, or even the spray from a water gun. Explore the infographic below for more rainbow facts. 

It wasn’t clear when Mary Breed Hawley married Carl Edgar Myers in 1871, that by the end of the century they would be one of the powerhouse couples of early aeronautics and create a revolution in American ballooning. 

Here are a few of the news stories that we've been following in the last week. Do you have a story we missed? Share it in the community!

Superbolts extend extreme lightning impacts into space

A rare type of lightning has had scientists scratching their heads since the late 1970s. “Superbolts” are the most powerful lightning on Earth, with discharges so strong that they cannot be reproduced in the laboratory. The bolts also display geographic and seasonal attributes opposite that of regular lightning, adding to their mystery.

Behind the bloody beaches of D-Day and the deathly bloom of mushroom clouds in the bright desert, behind supercomputers and the weather app on your phone, there is a mainly unrecognized group of young women who wielded the power of math to change the course of history. 

Join Mallory Brooke of Nor'Easter Weather Consulting as she takes us inside the weather and the ski industry to look at teleconnections, forecasting tools, and how forecasts are used for events like the World Cup at Killington. This will also include a deeper dive into different weather issues and their impacts at the World Cup years 2016-2019.

Join Dr. McGovern for an introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and their applications for severe weather. Dr. Amy McGovern is the Lloyd G. and Joyce Austin Presidential Professor at the School of Computer Science and School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. Dr. McGovern is also the director of the NSF AI Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate, and Coastal Oceanography. Her research focuses on developing and applying trustworthy AI and machine learning methods primarily for severe weather phenomena as changes in weather patterns, oceans, sea level rise, and disaster risk amplify the need for accelerated AI research in the environmental sciences.

This webinar explores perhaps one of the least known but most successful windstorm mitigation programs in the United States, the IBHS FORTIFIED Home Program. We will explore the origins of the program and how decades of wind engineer research was applied to create a practical way to build better for both new homes and retrofits.