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The Weather Around Ushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982190953093465944noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500935395405905691.post-82756076848580083212023-12-16T14:58:00.156-05:002023-12-23T20:24:05.433-05:00The Christmas Blizzard - Anatomy of a Weather Catastrophe<head> <script async="" data-ad-client="pub-3474636928976293" src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/
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<h1 style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"> The Christmas Blizzard</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Buffalo, NY - December 23-26, 2022</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>Anatomy of a Weather Catastrophe</div></h1><h4 style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">by Tom Niziol</span></h4><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv71slnnU4vh2idIyQ04FVRAohITGxD4mzWCvAKSSuMBDHHMLczo2oSD5hGR0M62t0UYHoSmXOVx_vCIM66mbDS3ZZrx1ktFMFbEbG1Cz6RnGml5QWXFsNXO9Tu0Yyd3zifQOftjHzffR-QXousS2IVgCANATDGgbAvKACRxO6E1fEUcj8gjWqT6KPa-nd/s1159/blizzard%20at%20Sheridan%20Drive.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="793" data-original-width="1159" height="438" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv71slnnU4vh2idIyQ04FVRAohITGxD4mzWCvAKSSuMBDHHMLczo2oSD5hGR0M62t0UYHoSmXOVx_vCIM66mbDS3ZZrx1ktFMFbEbG1Cz6RnGml5QWXFsNXO9Tu0Yyd3zifQOftjHzffR-QXousS2IVgCANATDGgbAvKACRxO6E1fEUcj8gjWqT6KPa-nd/w640-h438/blizzard%20at%20Sheridan%20Drive.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td class="tr-caption"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Figure 1: Christmas morning 2022, looking at Transit Rd. from the Sheridan Drive overpass after most of the snow and wind had diminished from 2 full days of whiteout conditions. This lake-effect snow blizzard was a Weather Catastrophe that ended up taking 47 lives. <i>(photo credit NYSDOT)</i></blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><br /></blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>Introduction</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">During the Christmas holiday weekend of 2022, Buffalo, NY was buried by a catastrophic lake-effect snow blizzard. Over the course of nearly 4 days, forty-seven people lost their lives as a direct result of the winter storm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This begs an answer to the question “How could the most winter savvy-city in the world, in the year 2022, backed by sophisticated numerical weather models and exceptional communication networks suffer such a tremendous loss of life?” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It all is part of the process that I describe as a “Weather
Catastrophe”, where several meteorological as well as logistical and societal factors, each
of which produces its own impacts on the public, come together at the wrong
place and the wrong time. The result follows the old saying that “The Whole is
Sometimes MUCH Greater Than the Sum of the Parts”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this presentation I plan to piece together
those parts to highlight how catastrophes like this one happen and hopefully,
how we all can be better prepared when it happens again, because history does
repeat itself.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggDZTpzuBUEu19Srn9qwAK6s-PEHg7Y4g354e2fMikBx_Byvtmz-N7nEJItgUss_59lHoOFkU85gDrTVKb3IcZRmWRhSD0PastutqnB7DvguDIrTnfgf2aTblLRKf4grcwJopQrIqP4z5_aONy4dXCslYPwMdKq9QR_d7CszyVEPQgZ91rifvZuEata6xP/s741/buf%20total%20snow.JPG" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="586" data-original-width="741" height="506" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggDZTpzuBUEu19Srn9qwAK6s-PEHg7Y4g354e2fMikBx_Byvtmz-N7nEJItgUss_59lHoOFkU85gDrTVKb3IcZRmWRhSD0PastutqnB7DvguDIrTnfgf2aTblLRKf4grcwJopQrIqP4z5_aONy4dXCslYPwMdKq9QR_d7CszyVEPQgZ91rifvZuEata6xP/w640-h506/buf%20total%20snow.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 2: Storm total snowfall, December 23-27, 2022. Note 3 narrow strips of heaviest snowfall downwind of Lake Erie, one to the north of Buffalo, one south, and one directly over the city. The greatest snowfall was recorded in North Tonawanda at 59.7", just north of downtown Buffalo, followed closely behind by the Buffalo airport, about 7 miles east of downtown, with 51.9"</blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>Buffalo's Location and Lake-effect Snow</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Buffalo has a well-deserved reputation for snow. With an
annual snowfall just this short of 100”, it regularly deals with impactful
lake-effect snowstorms. Most of them result in lots of travel woes but
fatalities directly attributed to these storms are usually quite low. </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvnqyO0wfvqwObRxn5D3c4lyhjBCMhz8BxYYELdPoU1EoBLui6iMjMXAM0xHqZI9vb7PjFRArgHsCvW_vBy9TL7LB9j3rpMqU9Vanky-z9MABAgy1Pj-aP9TqxkSXn_rG_uByhDS1meoQYFI7dtSzGmvxHjM1tgq1jeoQWoy8kjXMyP95qUHX0CehrhSxX/s946/Buffalo%20annual%20snowfall.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="837" data-original-width="946" height="354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvnqyO0wfvqwObRxn5D3c4lyhjBCMhz8BxYYELdPoU1EoBLui6iMjMXAM0xHqZI9vb7PjFRArgHsCvW_vBy9TL7LB9j3rpMqU9Vanky-z9MABAgy1Pj-aP9TqxkSXn_rG_uByhDS1meoQYFI7dtSzGmvxHjM1tgq1jeoQWoy8kjXMyP95qUHX0CehrhSxX/w400-h354/Buffalo%20annual%20snowfall.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 3: The average annual snowfall, recorded at the Buffalo airport, based on monthly climate normals from 1991-2020. </blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Citizens of Buffalo, NY often have to hear comments like “Buffalo, isn’t that where it snows every day in winter?” or “how do you handle that much snow?”, when they travel anywhere in the world. In fact, Buffalonians wear that badge of honor, noting how they are used to it and except for having to drive in the snow and shovel it, they actually don’t mind it that much.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span>The snowy reputation has everything to do with the location of Buffalo on the eastern tip of 225-mile Lake Erie, one of 5 Great Lakes that are often described more like “inland fresh water seas” because of their massive size. </span>In fact, the Great Lakes overall have a surface area that exceeds that in 39 of the 50 states. The Great Lakes are so large they make weather all their own and the most infamous type of weather are mesoscale (or small scale) lake-effect snowstorms. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdt_xI8eQU0O-03fvafpDtpNRTNGfBHppkBQJ85RkEVZQ33PoOpG7MGCNa1iQKAM0e8LRnwFVDFFVtq5LSlOtbNT9n68Gwi34KWkwlgYRgEOx4KKUhpnIwUw8o352rcliYUkCFVLnX5DfQMf1zEXLwhmDPe7w_Z11L3w4oReySxwkkd4AcwprHt6n_vZAd/s1500/buffalo%20at%20end%20of%20lake%20erie.jpg" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="861" data-original-width="1500" height="368" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdt_xI8eQU0O-03fvafpDtpNRTNGfBHppkBQJ85RkEVZQ33PoOpG7MGCNa1iQKAM0e8LRnwFVDFFVtq5LSlOtbNT9n68Gwi34KWkwlgYRgEOx4KKUhpnIwUw8o352rcliYUkCFVLnX5DfQMf1zEXLwhmDPe7w_Z11L3w4oReySxwkkd4AcwprHt6n_vZAd/w640-h368/buffalo%20at%20end%20of%20lake%20erie.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 4: Lake Erie is over 225 miles long and up to 60 miles wide. It has a surface area nearly 10,000 square miles. It would take over 4 hours of driving to get from one end of the lake to the other. </blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Those high-impact snowstorms occur when cold air from Canada sweeps down across the relatively warm water of the Great Lakes. The water stays warm for a much longer period than the air temperature going into the winter because of water’s ability to hold heat for a longer period of time, and the bigger the body of water, the longer it takes to cool. When that cold air moves across the warmer water, heat and moisture are transferred into the air. The warmed and moistened buoyant air parcels rise, rapidly cool and moisture quickly condenses into snow crystals which build into millions of snowflakes. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghXQvcF74f4GQKZUm8x14EmR_PlkTYYAnrzD07RnuUbFf99KTZbrNh5rFKgxDuBJBFtrwwWNHzzjez_qLtT-6xeEADNZrVtrK_TqTz1i490qooYLd1pSvXBPjRRUC1Zl5gbxesmovqhiZSj8UrANJB0b-syFHVajwCROwVXKqBpzZtY_JvttVsigFLv_8j/s880/LES%20FORM-1.JPG" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="513" data-original-width="880" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghXQvcF74f4GQKZUm8x14EmR_PlkTYYAnrzD07RnuUbFf99KTZbrNh5rFKgxDuBJBFtrwwWNHzzjez_qLtT-6xeEADNZrVtrK_TqTz1i490qooYLd1pSvXBPjRRUC1Zl5gbxesmovqhiZSj8UrANJB0b-syFHVajwCROwVXKqBpzZtY_JvttVsigFLv_8j/w640-h374/LES%20FORM-1.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 5: When cold air from Canada crosses the warmer water of the Great Lakes, heat and moisture rise from the lake. As the air parcels rise into the colder air, moisture is turned into snow crystals that collect into millions of snowflakes in those clouds. The wind aligns and directs those clouds downwind of the lakes across places like Buffalo, NY. </blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The wind direction determines where all of that snow will eventually be deposited downwind of the Great Lakes and the type of snowbands that occur. </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Multiple banded snows occur when winds are directed across the shorter axis of lakes like Lake Erie or wide expanses of irregularly-shaped bodies of water like Lake Superior. Although they may cover a greater area with snowfall, they are generally much weaker than their counterparts. They are formed under horizontal or parallel roll convergence and produce many wind-parallel bands of weak convection.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">When winds are aligned down the long axis of elliptically-shaped lakes like Lake Erie, single "mega-bands" of snow develop. T</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">hat's because winds from those two parallel shores undergo frictional and heat differences that result in convergence over the narrow body of water to produce that one "mega-band" of snow. The prevailing winds within the cloud layer extend the convective snow clouds along that strong convergence zone far inland. The band might only be 10 to 15 miles wide while stretching over 100 miles at time. These are the bands that produce snowfall rates of up to 6" per hour, and often thundersnow as well. </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Lake Erie is designed to take full advantage of the prevailing WSW winds during late Fall and Winter to produce these mega-bands which often set up right over Buffalo and its suburbs. </span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"></p> </div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7O2_VvhZSw7fhYGGJzLmY5E9LK84gdGdK4wViIteyIFmWSqakF1J2sFOOyhw4O1CxKNIH4emLo1uPiKtTVsd7qmTmYoV8rryZg0wx4zWpOu4Lo8WHJeVeivrOHrx1U5_0_GMuDypq6Ke1lKM-1yNgk-_aY32xBJkb7kjF6Ycn1B5xDesOzgEOP-5cYGFr/s1416/LES%20COncept%20Bands.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="1416" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7O2_VvhZSw7fhYGGJzLmY5E9LK84gdGdK4wViIteyIFmWSqakF1J2sFOOyhw4O1CxKNIH4emLo1uPiKtTVsd7qmTmYoV8rryZg0wx4zWpOu4Lo8WHJeVeivrOHrx1U5_0_GMuDypq6Ke1lKM-1yNgk-_aY32xBJkb7kjF6Ycn1B5xDesOzgEOP-5cYGFr/w640-h282/LES%20COncept%20Bands.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 6: Multiple snowbands develop over the shorter fetch of elliptically-shaped lakes or over irregularly shaped bodies of water. Single bands develop along the long axis of elliptically shaped lakes such as Lakes Erie and Ontario</blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In the radar loops below, I compare the multiple-banded snows on Lake Superior (left) with a single mega-band of snow off Lake Erie (right). </span><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;">
<tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-2odslU21p4G7sM1c-jIYQV9O1g_Gtex78iW8Hn0x2pTPdXfkseNm6K78z4cOt4WTg3Xtp7a2pwoHHN5zfkni3qJf_MXFu9qZKXAUiTvyhHb044ZO6mXF-VItFkHXw9nWzexrJgGM4oigG_pXCV2P8_zVHuXyvaWosx-kvb5eB6AlxkjeNj8gAVBgDwy1/s600/ezgif-3-0679d0df4e.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="370" data-original-width="600" height="394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-2odslU21p4G7sM1c-jIYQV9O1g_Gtex78iW8Hn0x2pTPdXfkseNm6K78z4cOt4WTg3Xtp7a2pwoHHN5zfkni3qJf_MXFu9qZKXAUiTvyhHb044ZO6mXF-VItFkHXw9nWzexrJgGM4oigG_pXCV2P8_zVHuXyvaWosx-kvb5eB6AlxkjeNj8gAVBgDwy1/w640-h394/ezgif-3-0679d0df4e.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 7: Two types of lake-effect snow bands. Multiple banded snows, often referred to as horizontal roll convection, develop when winds are directed across wide or irregularly-shaped lakes like Lake Superior (left) or the shorter fetch of elliptically-shaped lakes like Lake Erie. When winds blow down the long axis of narrow, elliptically-shaped lakes like Lake Erie (right), frictional and heat differences between the land and lake cause winds to converge over the middle of that long, narrow body of water. This results in a single, narrow convergence zone over the center of the lake, producing a mega-band of snow falling at rates up to 6" per hour. </blockquote><p><br /></p></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: verdana;">In the heart of that narrow band, snowfall rates can exceed 6 inches per hour and sometimes be accompanied by thundersnow. Ironically, Buffalo, NY positioned at the northeast tip of the SW-NE oriented lake is an almost perfect location to be on the receiving end of these storms. It can be fun but frustrating to live everyday lives when these storms occur. While your neighbors just a few miles north of you are under sunny skies, you may be in the heart of a whiteout blizzard. Several hours later as winds shift just a few degrees, the snowband may migrate up to your neighbor’s place and the entire situation becomes reversed. </span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The image below shows</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> a view of the snowcover a couple days after the November 17-19, 2022 lake-effect snowstorm. It highlights just how small the scale of these storms can be! Below that is a series of radar images showing </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">a 12-hour period during that storm. You can see how that extremely narrow band of heavy snow moved from Buffalo northward to Niagara Falls. At one point the width of the snowband was as little as 12 miles. For residents trying to go about their daily lives, this presents a big challenge. </span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMNsTLMz586IweS4C7z2W6jHl_G80kW2Kn_lJH3K2UAFZD2NJaDfZ9xF4Fr6iRoOyVdWSoUSPZDOG52sFbPWsMUm3U6bwuphatJs5CsScxaRbcREUO1UhkzJsT6sHAYAq7VHkWNxu01RblDUmRQw_GoPflsFWj6W9PqgPnCCXVDbknGbbPS_VbLPj_f5jA/s1500/snow%20footprint%20ex%20sat.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="977" data-original-width="1500" height="416" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMNsTLMz586IweS4C7z2W6jHl_G80kW2Kn_lJH3K2UAFZD2NJaDfZ9xF4Fr6iRoOyVdWSoUSPZDOG52sFbPWsMUm3U6bwuphatJs5CsScxaRbcREUO1UhkzJsT6sHAYAq7VHkWNxu01RblDUmRQw_GoPflsFWj6W9PqgPnCCXVDbknGbbPS_VbLPj_f5jA/w640-h416/snow%20footprint%20ex%20sat.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 8: The November 2022 lake-effect snow event dropped as much as 81" of snow in parts of Western New York. This visible satellite image from a few days after the storm highlights just how narrow the swath of snow can be. Travelling from the Southtowns to Northtowns in Western New York would take you from green grass through deep snow and back to green grass again. </blockquote><p> </p></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixbmlaPWGNeOrYSO-r4N-EoI8-lDZhSBnGqH6R2RH4FQ7nUKPXZJqRIKgrMgfkaBXazY6Eq47eh7e0wyWqXUZh3PGkj_OL27Ettw3PWVFPmX_j8BEJEzMoUmYVW7gIL-q7aepJ9JiMIaC0rq5rupXqWjBXHGHHeXwx3PC_GBIKoZHMMdHWyFPHEqyOyWo1/s1024/Nov%20Storm%20Radar.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="584" data-original-width="1024" height="366" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixbmlaPWGNeOrYSO-r4N-EoI8-lDZhSBnGqH6R2RH4FQ7nUKPXZJqRIKgrMgfkaBXazY6Eq47eh7e0wyWqXUZh3PGkj_OL27Ettw3PWVFPmX_j8BEJEzMoUmYVW7gIL-q7aepJ9JiMIaC0rq5rupXqWjBXHGHHeXwx3PC_GBIKoZHMMdHWyFPHEqyOyWo1/w640-h366/Nov%20Storm%20Radar.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 9: This radar animation from November, 18-19, 2022 is an example of how subtle shifts in the wind direction can move snowbands from one area to the next. In the above radar animation, a gradual wind shift from W (265°) to SW (250°) and eventually SSW (230°) moved the snowband from suburbs south of Buffalo, through the city and eventually to suburbs north of Buffalo over the course of just 12 hours.</blockquote><p> </p></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: verdana;">If you are caught under one of these bands of snow, it can be scary. The image below is from the November 2014 lake-effect snowstorm that hit Buffalo, NY. You are looking toward the south, at the north wall of the snowband. Driving into that wall of snow is surreal. You literally go from clear skies into a whiteout, where you can barely see 10 or 20 feet in front of you. Travel can become impossible because you cannot see the street and the snow comes down at such a rate that it quickly piles up. 4-wheel drive vehicles may become useless because even though they can get through the deep snow, they cannot see anywhere and other vehicles often block the road ahead of them. Fortunately, in most cases these storms don’t last for more than a day or so and temperatures aren’t exceptionally cold so you can survive them if you are caught in your vehicle, as long as you have a full tank of gas and the winter supplies to keep you hydrated, fed and warm until the storm passes. However, there is always the potential that one of these storms will become much worse and that is what happened during Christmas Holiday 2022 in Buffalo.</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOInlOLGag2XUwNDpC5Bm-x7v9eIyCRHdTRAwegbrS8p5FSoc-tItwNSAX-ri8kgkOkm6nYo4rSblchIEWlkF8jAKc_7ahqwIhMn8HVnZCH_8QKvLeXo2JRjOVm_8XN_LaOeTuspiA2b5SzIHDpIP8cVqcUd0gizt79f0u0pWhsdmJ14Y15S3Qnmfu16Hq/s668/2014%20wall%20of%20snow%20shawn%20smith%20NOAA.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="668" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOInlOLGag2XUwNDpC5Bm-x7v9eIyCRHdTRAwegbrS8p5FSoc-tItwNSAX-ri8kgkOkm6nYo4rSblchIEWlkF8jAKc_7ahqwIhMn8HVnZCH_8QKvLeXo2JRjOVm_8XN_LaOeTuspiA2b5SzIHDpIP8cVqcUd0gizt79f0u0pWhsdmJ14Y15S3Qnmfu16Hq/w640-h360/2014%20wall%20of%20snow%20shawn%20smith%20NOAA.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 10: View from downtown Buffalo looking toward the south of the north wall of a lake-effect snowstorm in November 2014. Driving into this band is surreal, going from clear skies into a rgaing whiteout within a few hundred yards of entering the storm. (Photo credit Shawn Smith via NOAA / NOAA)</blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></p></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>Historical Storm - Blizzard of '77</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: normal;">Buffalo’s snowy reputation was cemented into history during the
month of January 1977. That winter of 76-77 was brutal for much of the US. In
fact, January ’77 is the second-coldest month in recorded US history, and for the
Eastern US it was the coldest January on record. In Buffalo, NY, it had been so
cold leading up to the month that Lake Erie had frozen over by mid-December. In
fact, an astonishing snow depth of 51” was reported in Buffalo on the morning
of January 27.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: normal;">That day started out very
serene for January, with a balmy mid-winter temperature of 25 degrees at
mid-morning. However, at 11:30AM an exceptionally strong Arctic front swept
across the region and Buffalo was in the throws of a 5-day blizzard like they
had never seen. Before it was all over, 29 people lost their lives in this
storm, many buried by snow, frozen in the cars. Officials vowed this would
never happen again. But Nature has a mind of its own and history DOES repeat
itself. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYYVXpyudRTX0lu-8TESSme9uD72-OdZ3uPWyQYFQsnzQ0JUTnTbF1rVJ8f-37G0aFnNfadrOiu78zvVOnr3gWYIeI6JGUOpsGUz2f-1YFi2YpVtYFSHHJvmmcYS_bSSBX9XQV9VrYL5ii2C1qkzbbfJMoZYkI2Z98Z7Cg0JXgwwD0Jc6unddlHKpcys9L/s1398/Bliz%2077%20pics.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="1398" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYYVXpyudRTX0lu-8TESSme9uD72-OdZ3uPWyQYFQsnzQ0JUTnTbF1rVJ8f-37G0aFnNfadrOiu78zvVOnr3gWYIeI6JGUOpsGUz2f-1YFi2YpVtYFSHHJvmmcYS_bSSBX9XQV9VrYL5ii2C1qkzbbfJMoZYkI2Z98Z7Cg0JXgwwD0Jc6unddlHKpcys9L/w640-h240/Bliz%2077%20pics.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 11: Photos from the Blizzard of 77'. News reporters (left) are walking across the tops of cars buried in the snow next to the runway at the Buffalo airport. Red Cross workers (right) using snowmobiles to get around check cars by pounding on roofs for survivors. <i>(photo credit Buffalo News: Robert Smith)</i></blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>Pre-Cursor to The Big Event - November 17-19, 2022</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: normal;">Fast-forward to late Fall and early Winter of 2022 which was
topsy-turvy weatherwise for Buffalo residents. An early season lake-effect
snowstorm during November 17-19 (shown in previous images), dropped unbelievable amounts of snow from the
city to the heavily populated suburbs south of the city (known as The
Southtowns). The Buffalo airport recorded 36.6” of snow from this multi-day
storm, and that paled in comparison to the snow that piled up in the Southtowns
where Hamburg, NY, received 81” and Orchard Park, home of the NFL Buffalo Bills
accumulated 80”. The snowfall map below shows the incredible gradient of snowfall as one travelled from south to north through the city of Buffalo. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: normal;">Travel impacts from the event were significant, but there were fortunately only 2 deaths in the Buffalo
area attributed to the storm, both from heart attacks shoveling snow. Yes, there was tremendous snowfall from this storm. However, sustained winds were not that strong during the event, generally below 20 mph. Temperatures were also quite mild, only dropping to 23 degrees. Also, the lake-effect storm fired up during the overnight hours, south of Buffalo, and when it did move north through the city on the 3rd day of the event, that was also during the overnight hours when there was very little traffic on roads. Simply put, very few people were outiside in the elements.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: normal;">Surprisingly, the rest of the month was so warm, that by the 30th, </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">every bit of up to 80" of snow had melted. Even more bizarre, through the first 22
days of December, the high temperature each day exceeded 30 degrees.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJlK8GbE71s92UNm3XxUugzirVJleHM-IJq2svv1WO-YQcNc4W73I-iyGl6Z8kp3kMNnvcHCO4-35_EHQbK4qUwiqbVxVAzae9okcHOGRi3151ykvshd8U8fU9pBYc9Jcd0fsesglud08rkB5GPVzzK2uyXF5hppFZ_MNsOE1cK7DuZZHmEzA1cFmM65Xh/s727/Nov%2017-20%202022%20snowfall%20map.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="582" data-original-width="727" height="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJlK8GbE71s92UNm3XxUugzirVJleHM-IJq2svv1WO-YQcNc4W73I-iyGl6Z8kp3kMNnvcHCO4-35_EHQbK4qUwiqbVxVAzae9okcHOGRi3151ykvshd8U8fU9pBYc9Jcd0fsesglud08rkB5GPVzzK2uyXF5hppFZ_MNsOE1cK7DuZZHmEzA1cFmM65Xh/w640-h512/Nov%2017-20%202022%20snowfall%20map.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 12: Storm total snowfall for the November 16-21, 2022 lake-effect snow event. As much as 81" of snow was measured in the town of Hamburg, just south of the city of Buffalo.</blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>The Big Event - December 23-26, 2022</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: normal;">Five weeks later, in the days leading up to the busy 2022 Christmas Holiday, NWS Buffalo forecasters were looking at very foreboding signs of what was being advertised by the sophisticated computer models as a multi-day, high impact lake-effect snowstorm. In fact, by comparing the model data with past lake-effect snowstorms, a method known as analogs, it was apparent this upcoming storm was no garden variety lake-effect snowstorm that winter savvy citizens of Buffalo are all too familiar with. No, this storm was
going to be much worse. But worse than the 80” lake-effect storm that pummeled the area back in November? Possibly, due to many other factors, and forecasters realized it could be so impactful that they even stated on one of their daily forecast discussions that this could be a ”once in a generation” storm.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: normal;">The large-scale weather pattern setting up to produce this epic storm was textbook. Several thousand feet in the atmosphere, the winter jet stream was buckling to bring exceptionally cold air down from the north
pole, right across the Great Lakes. An Upper Level Low at 500mb was predicted to close off right over James Bay Canada, the perfect spot to set up conditions
in the lower atmosphere to produce an intense, single band snowstorm off Lake Erie. When the jet stream closes off these Lows, they slow down their eastward
movement, assuring an extended period of winds that blow out of one particular direction. It also provides a deep column of cold air to allow storms to grow several thousands of feet into the atmosphere. In the world of lake-effect snow, as long as conditions of deep, cold air and the same wind direction remain in place, these narrow intense bands of snow will remain stationary over one particular location, pummeling the area with blizzard conditions at times.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZZ8yY7iL3cS9M_R6GGpy- f7QNRyZKzWddxsABp0NjZpUSFsw2Zh1dPjIuUOpfOJZ8SmFy1smd6lzVpmxnZub2lNEuilmLNuzUdz0GYG8LrEAMDPHw0O8yReatrMdH4JjPkUG3Gkx7XivMQQvT4sEVmJQIIkmW1Fkco2dHIhnGWYfwZ_tdaLkWY7noK2oS/s1024/anigif500.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZZ8yY7iL3cS9M_R6GGpy-f7QNRyZKzWddxsABp0NjZpUSFsw2Zh1dPjIuUOpfOJZ8SmFy1smd6lzVpmxnZub2lNEuilmLNuzUdz0GYG8LrEAMDPHw0O8yReatrMdH4JjPkUG3Gkx7XivMQQvT4sEVmJQIIkmW1Fkco2dHIhnGWYfwZ_tdaLkWY7noK2oS/w640-h480/anigif500.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 13: 500mb analyses from December 21-26, 2023. You can see how the 500mb Low closes off and sets up over James Bay Canada, a perfect location to produce lake-effect snow over Buffalo. Note, the reports from Buffalo, NY were not available from December 24 through 26 because it was not possible to launch a weather balloon in those blizzard conditions. </blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">At the surface, the Low pressure system was set to undergo very rapid deepening, or strengthening. In fact, the central pressure of the Low dropped an astounding 35mb in 24 hours, far surpassing the requirement to label the storm as a "bomb" in meteorological terms, defined as a drop in central pressure of 24mb or more in 24 hours. These "bombs" are more likely to occur in the massive and powerful storms along the east coast in winter, known as Nor'easters. However, they do occur in the Grear Lakes region as well. Once one of these monsters swings through, the storminess is usually replaced by windy, colder and clearing conditions. But in this part of the world during the late Fall through Winter, as Barney Wiggins, the head of the National Weather Service way back over 75 years ago said, "the weather often clears up sotrmy on the Great Lakes". </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjYnYnpWx7Q0fIHjdczxtzTTIwZrTc1jxEx-r9Rk6hqi0OCpLpRwCZLFszEgV4mM6iXc6Np_19eO_GESIZeSiJB2auUb_pw31mFd-0XJggFHGq5zehzBoQnhpuiGPfy9DD7m9nuW8soAHqRSJmD8em3f6EjM-5YZnDKGxiNT3hj0pNzNoJgaaQRs0n6bs_/s748/anigifsfc1.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="748" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjYnYnpWx7Q0fIHjdczxtzTTIwZrTc1jxEx-r9Rk6hqi0OCpLpRwCZLFszEgV4mM6iXc6Np_19eO_GESIZeSiJB2auUb_pw31mFd-0XJggFHGq5zehzBoQnhpuiGPfy9DD7m9nuW8soAHqRSJmD8em3f6EjM-5YZnDKGxiNT3hj0pNzNoJgaaQRs0n6bs_/w640-h480/anigifsfc1.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 14: The Low responsible for the lake-effect blizzard dropped an astounding 35mb in 24 hours from 1005mb on December 23 at 00z to 970mb on December 24 at 00z, undergoing the rapid deepening known as "bombogenesis".</blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The animation shown below is from the NAM model and shows the snowbands in blue at one-hour intervals from Friday evening at 7PM, some 10 hours after the blizzard began and goes for over 48 hours, through Sunday night. Unfortunately, it is the only model run I kept in my archives as I was downloading data in real-time for the event. However, this gives you some idea of what forecasters would have been looking at. Even a couple of days before the storm struck, models were showing these types of solutions. What is striking from the animation is how stationary that band is, remaining over the Buffalo area for the course of 2 days before it was forecast to migrate southward before daybreak on Sunday, Christmas Day. Yes, other bands of lake-effect snow were forecast to occur off all of the Great Lakes, but none would be as intense and stationary as the Lake Erie band, and most importantly, none of the other bands were parked over a metro area with a population greater than one million people. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ7mojkbYPMuc09j2PLX2SZPy-yk3Ncs18IH4EDz0-vdCyzvijcQQZl_KSbGbXYb7067-7CCrxKmdMHEu_MdjlaRyLn5cGeJSrs3zKERpKA1w6UJD1miAfs9rXMPtrAb8QSatBkSmSZ5JONk2RbHK5ZWgqk28D0m3L0DRLnPg4q1nXApHMalkKoH2QUze2/s606/ezgif-3-9950e76c91.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="513" data-original-width="606" height="542" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ7mojkbYPMuc09j2PLX2SZPy-yk3Ncs18IH4EDz0-vdCyzvijcQQZl_KSbGbXYb7067-7CCrxKmdMHEu_MdjlaRyLn5cGeJSrs3zKERpKA1w6UJD1miAfs9rXMPtrAb8QSatBkSmSZ5JONk2RbHK5ZWgqk28D0m3L0DRLnPg4q1nXApHMalkKoH2QUze2/w640-h542/ezgif-3-9950e76c91.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 15: 60-hr NAM model initialized at 18z (1PM EST) on Fri December 23, 2022. Note, the blizzard had already been going for 6 hours when this model started. This is a great example of the "steady-state" nature of these types of lake-effect storms. Once the band sets up, as long as the wind direction does not change, one area could be under the "firehose" of snow for hours to days. </blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Friday, December 23, 2022 in Western New York was going to
be busy. On the last weekday and second last shopping day until Christmas, just
about everyone was going to be out doing something. Even with an ominous forecast for a
lake-effect snowstorm, many people were likely going to take their chances and
get to work, shop a little and get home before the storm got “too bad”. Schools
had already shut down to add one day early for the Christmas Break after
officials had been briefed about the lake-effect storm by the NWS. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: normal;">The morning was eerily similar to a morning almost 45 years
previous to that back in January 1977. The temperature at 6AM was 37 degrees
under a little light rain and wind easterly winds at 5 mph. As people got ready
for work, they might have wondered about the accuracy of the impending winter
warnings for a big storm. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: normal;">As most traffic headed into work at 7AM conditions
were still tranquil with a temperature of 34 degrees and light rain and fog
dropping visibility to 1.5 miles and 9 mph winds. Just as everyone was getting
into work, at 7:43 AM, the cold front slammed into Buffalo as winds howled,
gusting to 40 mph. By 8:00 AM the rain changed over to light snow. Out over the
lake, the Buffalo weather radar was showing the lake-effect snowband rapidly
developing and setting its sights on Buffalo. At 8:06 AM the visibility dropped
to 1/2 mile in moderate snow and winds were now gusting to 60 mph. By 8:39 AM
visibility was down to 1/4 mile in heavy snow and 8 minutes later a full
whiteout was occurring with visibility down to 1/8 mile. Whiteout conditions
meant nobody was going to be going anywhere soon. What transpired over the next 72 hours will
be ever etched into the minds and souls of Buffalo residents as a fierce
blizzard brought the city and its immediate suburbs to a standstill.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib3LgswjDXE8NDb8LAdR6UZ7D8n-0djZ_BnuTBRoLjF77Ur_xyGYGTGYvdKacetTuPTj7XVfbZVYO17ZhV7VJrSc0GUohneU8NinI7qZox1VOTN_KUII4n_jb_LdjsLhB_SpNfSkhi0nN0Utun14eWlv4b2Zveb7M6uSVN79lhzcZEQHNNpUr1pS3s20pW/s974/obs-meso1.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="352" data-original-width="974" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib3LgswjDXE8NDb8LAdR6UZ7D8n-0djZ_BnuTBRoLjF77Ur_xyGYGTGYvdKacetTuPTj7XVfbZVYO17ZhV7VJrSc0GUohneU8NinI7qZox1VOTN_KUII4n_jb_LdjsLhB_SpNfSkhi0nN0Utun14eWlv4b2Zveb7M6uSVN79lhzcZEQHNNpUr1pS3s20pW/w640-h232/obs-meso1.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 16: The table shows the weather observations from the Buffalo airport. Look at how rapidly conditions deteriorated when the storm hit during and just after the height of the Friday morning rush hour. </blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwM0lZ6byWPLzqvQBBe-UdOqNblijYT2Fzwpl0OtrZOtXOMKH6SiTCnal-jZl0K1C5Zf0MUJPXqp5PtBxQ8KQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div></div></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Fig 17: This video was taken on that Friday around 11AM by Reed Timmer near the waterfront in downtown Buffalo. You can hear and feel the raw power of the storm as it ramps up. Visibility was already dropping to zero at times in whiteouts. If you are caught outside in this type of weather, it is almost impossible to get to safety because you cannot see where you are going. </div></div></div></blockquote><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: normal;">By 11 AM on December 23, under whiteout conditions, the
temperature had dropped to 21 degrees with winds gusting to 67 mph and a wind
chill of just one degree above zero. If you were not at home, you had a choice,
either try to brave the elements to go out and get home or hunker down and
wait. Traffic became stuck in its place
in many locations. As the afternoon wore on, conditions got even worse as the
temperature continued to plummet. By 5PM it was 7 degrees and with winds
gusting to 60 mph the wind chill had dropped to a dangerous -20 degrees. By
midnight, some 14 hours after the storm hit, the Buffalo airport had received
22.6” of snow, with other locations close by getting even more. The tremendous
winds piled snow drifts to height of 6 ft. or more, burying vehicles stuck in
their place with potential victims inside.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1dntArFUdrRPuWtz5C70osAeVuffgmnQTokQerFOxaqYvKg1LUa98YA9Q9LwlGmIuP5GOlcbLVUlEYZiaAfWWTOugwsfJWck-rngE4VgoEXf697w-GzbSJwEv_NBx0fW9YDBVRtVFRqxT11lTl6hMoZHxBVCSwVrkis3RDBeSRVRLt-g1OhycDj9_A5Ks/s1094/obs%2023%20dec.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="528" data-original-width="1094" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1dntArFUdrRPuWtz5C70osAeVuffgmnQTokQerFOxaqYvKg1LUa98YA9Q9LwlGmIuP5GOlcbLVUlEYZiaAfWWTOugwsfJWck-rngE4VgoEXf697w-GzbSJwEv_NBx0fW9YDBVRtVFRqxT11lTl6hMoZHxBVCSwVrkis3RDBeSRVRLt-g1OhycDj9_A5Ks/w640-h308/obs%2023%20dec.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 18: The hourly weather observations from the Buffalo airport show that from 9AM through the rest of the day and night, the area was under whiteout conditions in heavy snow and winds gusting over 60 mph at times. </blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The video below is taken by Reed Timmer, who was in Buffalo through the entire storm. It highlights just how deep the snowdrifts got as the storm howled for hours on end. He notes how he is actually standing on top of snow drifts up to 10 ft. tall. You can easily see from this video how cars got stuck in these drifts and how easily they would have been covered completely by snow. If the tailpipe on the car gets blocked with snow, carbon monoxide poisoning can result, the vehicle becomes a death trap. </span></div><div><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dy7OAwq4JlC9ECMT84qBjiCq2-KwiiOTclTkxsh2mt10zaVnFtgNCrz1pzsY1oUMvd1PdsRCPH_pGQOD_kfvQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Fig 19: Reed Timmer is standing on top of snow drifts that were as high as 10 ft. in this video clip. You can see cars almost completely buried under these drifts. Travel is impossible in these conditions. </div></div></blockquote><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: normal;">It’s hard to fathom the fact that the area in and around the
city of Buffalo would remain in a whiteout through the entire night and ALL of
Christmas Eve. Daybreak on December 24<sup>th</sup> brought a temperature of 3
degrees and a wind chill of -22 with zero visibility still being recorded out
at the Buffalo airport. The rest of that
entire day and evening the winds gusted in the 40-50 mph range with wind chills
in the minus teens. Visibility remained near or at zero in the whiteout conditions
that piled snow drifts even higher. Emergency vehicles could not even get out
to conduct operations because it was just too dangerous. Another 17.9” was
officially recorded at the airport by midnight bringing the storm total to
40.5” of heavily drifted, wind-blown snow as the region headed into Christmas
Day. <o:p></o:p></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT66ScjQjBrRod7R___jwV0Wt22BXAjB4f-5SHFhYeHiraKYC6LE_6foxEHoBG3HQ7rnOXhY0fIvwEFAVCYOlvh1elD-rZha29bOAq3x5y1SRGtw5KBeqOYbgrN7_846Til8kzCkMad-E5RAE2W0RrfI0LpPQ1W5-z8kfp9NUKv6sGNWc6S9N7Rip2VShB/s1091/obs%2024%20dec.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="1091" height="366" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT66ScjQjBrRod7R___jwV0Wt22BXAjB4f-5SHFhYeHiraKYC6LE_6foxEHoBG3HQ7rnOXhY0fIvwEFAVCYOlvh1elD-rZha29bOAq3x5y1SRGtw5KBeqOYbgrN7_846Til8kzCkMad-E5RAE2W0RrfI0LpPQ1W5-z8kfp9NUKv6sGNWc6S9N7Rip2VShB/w640-h366/obs%2024%20dec.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 20: Christmas Eve was also one for the record books. It is almost unfathomable to think that the entire 24-hour period featured whiteout conditions in a raging blizzard, and that was an extension of the 21 hours of blizzard conditions from December 2. Winds gusted well over 40 mph for almost that entire time and winds chills bottomed out at -22°. </blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">As dawn broke on Christmas Day the city and surrounding
suburbs looked like an Arctic wasteland. The narrow, intense band of lake-effect snow
had moved south overnight, now impacting the Southtowns. Over the city and
surrounding suburbs, the visibility gradually rose to 1 to 3 miles in blowing
snow. The winds continued to howl with gusts over 30mph and the wind chills in
the single digits. Nobody was going anywhere however, with drifts several feet
tall covering almost all thoroughfares. The Buffalo International Airport, renowned
worldwide for its plow operators’ snow-fighting skills, remained closed, not
opening until 3 days later. There was light however at the end of the tunnel,
as the parent large scale, Upper-Level Low that was parked over James Bay Canada
was showing signs of weakening and beginning to move eastward.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSb0nKbymuoZ0bNWjjoohUJ0LXdPP8A_0-fY9kYaydLuLhQuoZtDHagycaaqJu-dyWkr5ArtAl0dSuBo6z1xm3_Km0hx0Prfeg4qi5RAYZaEKUWOkrggf7DUeJGN28xNYL8HIt53Z_cjcHwmhrPN-8hyphenhyphenaDh1fUGSmuBxN6ObKFDhYkN4QgAZk8JdtqAMOM/s822/christmas%20day%20nydot.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="464" data-original-width="822" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSb0nKbymuoZ0bNWjjoohUJ0LXdPP8A_0-fY9kYaydLuLhQuoZtDHagycaaqJu-dyWkr5ArtAl0dSuBo6z1xm3_Km0hx0Prfeg4qi5RAYZaEKUWOkrggf7DUeJGN28xNYL8HIt53Z_cjcHwmhrPN-8hyphenhyphenaDh1fUGSmuBxN6ObKFDhYkN4QgAZk8JdtqAMOM/w640-h362/christmas%20day%20nydot.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 21: This photo was taken at 9:30AM on Christmas day, looking from the Sheridan Drive overpass at Transit Rd. east of the city of Buffalo. By this time, plows had cleared one lane of traffic but getting your vehicle dug out was another problem altogether. (Photo credit: NYSDOT)</blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana; text-align: left;"></span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><p class="MsoNormal">But Mother Nature had one more punch to throw at Buffalo
that night. In the wee hours of Monday morning, the winds briefly shifted from
westerly to southwest again and the snowband that was well south of Buffalo
began to migrate northward, sweeping through the city before dawn on Monday
December 26. Even though it dumped another 7+ inches of snow across the region,
after all that had happened, it didn’t seem like much, and fortunately it was
still dark when it came through the region, sparing those who were sleeping one
more nightmare of whiteout conditions. </p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">A radar animation through the entire storm history below shows what happens when winds line up down the long fetch of the lake. The snowband persisted for hour upon hour over Buffalo and immediate suburbs, before slight shifts in the winds allowed the band to migrate north, south and then north one more time before finally weakening as the wind direction shifted to SSW and took the band off the long axis of the lake. Note that even when the band had moved north of the city of Buffalo and the airport, located about 7 miles east of the city, the visibility was still near zero in whiteout conditions. That was due to the very strong winds whipping up and drifting the nearly 2 ft. of snow that had already fallen. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGDYrE18Qb-qUB0_JdSMawPGQF5CGgZ20BwW816omaoQJMlyRMio4ESAacmUJ7QkoeeHeBtXYGjKXWTuYV3_rYFa_t6O8bPtYCR19eNqAk3cmRPcDg7BRFe9ukaUwBepcD6gh10_5mGwy8Bjm4AJQ-hGOAspe5iYsEKOyj2FNLB36McCaSefC7rWxpK536/s1024/anigif%20full%20radara%20with%20winds.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="483" data-original-width="1024" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGDYrE18Qb-qUB0_JdSMawPGQF5CGgZ20BwW816omaoQJMlyRMio4ESAacmUJ7QkoeeHeBtXYGjKXWTuYV3_rYFa_t6O8bPtYCR19eNqAk3cmRPcDg7BRFe9ukaUwBepcD6gh10_5mGwy8Bjm4AJQ-hGOAspe5iYsEKOyj2FNLB36McCaSefC7rWxpK536/w640-h302/anigif%20full%20radara%20with%20winds.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 22: Hourly radar animation through the history of the blizzard with the wind speed, direction and wind chill at approximately the time of the radar image. The 3 main metro areas of Buffalo are highlighted here to show how very slight changes in the wind direction positioned the band over an entirely different part of town, You can also see how many times the band oscillated across the region. </blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">By late Monday those tallying up snowfall totals showed over
4 feet of snow (50.6”) had been measured at the Buffalo Airport. Three days of
exceptionally strong winds had piled drifts over 10 ft. tall in some areas. It
would still be a few days before life began to get back to normal. Clearing
snow from streets involved first checking buried vehicles for possible victims
inside, then moving those vehicles before front end loaders could come in and
break through snowdrifts that would allow plows to clear the roads. Residents
had the difficult task of removing snow from their driveways. Once again,
because of the snow drifts, many had to bring in plow operators with heavier
equipment to remove the snow. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In </span>the wake of the catastrophe, harrowing stories emerged of survivors and those who became victims of this wicked storm. My own friend was one of those survivors. I had told he and his wife on the morning of the start of the blizzard to make sure he was hunkered down and set to stay put for at least a couple days. His wife left work early as the storm hit. She brought her friend home with her and the three of them decided to venture out and take her friend home before it got “too rough”. They drove south from the north side of the city right into the teeth of that snowband. After dropping their friend off they turned back to head home. A few miles later, in the heart of the whiteout, they drove their vehicle off the road and into a snowbank. They were now stuck, reality set in. They could not see a thing outside. They had an idea of where they were and checked on their GPS but nobody, AAA, even EMS personnel could go out in the storm by now. They knew a close friend who was a realtor and miraculously, had a house she was showing within a couple blocks of where they were stuck. They called her and she gave them the key code to get into the vacant house. In a harrowing walk through the whiteout, they managed to get to the house, which still had its heat turned on, and survived the night and the next day. Without that Guardian Angel, they may not have survived. So many people caught outside, either walking or in their cars, were not that lucky.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><b>Lessons Learned</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">When the final numbers were tallied, 47 people lost their lives in this storm. According to a post made by Erie County (where Buffalo is located) Executive Mark Poloncarz, the fatalities were listed under the following causes:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbhZmfVIIrwIpriZK_JzMbGGevl3fBtVe1iDd673x7Rf0wztEokZ6uoUSSUXpi_9Nat5h2rgMz6WZ-L0tmsR7syf3tb1hMDJ8fPPOYvoYOE_bFZa4bj5DqWDMjnPTy0B-c2XoqwTpJPTCt_MeE4P5lkvsQwNVilF4Ys-RvHF9-DMiEYfl8N4kzNu-YnTAa/s474/polocarz%20deaths.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="197" data-original-width="474" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbhZmfVIIrwIpriZK_JzMbGGevl3fBtVe1iDd673x7Rf0wztEokZ6uoUSSUXpi_9Nat5h2rgMz6WZ-L0tmsR7syf3tb1hMDJ8fPPOYvoYOE_bFZa4bj5DqWDMjnPTy0B-c2XoqwTpJPTCt_MeE4P5lkvsQwNVilF4Ys-RvHF9-DMiEYfl8N4kzNu-YnTAa/w640-h266/polocarz%20deaths.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 23: Social media post from Erie County Executive, Mark Poloncarz, listing the fatalities. One other fatality was attributed to the storm in Niagara county, just north of Erie county. </blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>National Grid, the company that maintains the power grid in Western New York, noted that there were over 104,000 people without power at one point during the blizzard, and many of those were without power for several days. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">There was a lot of finger-pointing as the storm unfolded and
after the catastrophe began to wind down. City and county officials were
criticized for not acting sooner to impose driving bans. They posted a driving
ban 9AM that Friday morning, but it was after the storm began. The visibility
had dropped to 1/8 mile by that time and winds were already clocked at 68mph. According to the Washington Post "</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">New York's second-largest city has gone for years without an official emergency manager, whose job it is to create "procedures for responding to natural disasters and other emergencies" and lead and help coordinate the response."</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The National Weather Service had been talking for days before the storm hit of
the potential impacts from this storm. They even used the term “once in a
generation”. But what does that term really mean to the public? I refer back
again to the lake-effect storm that occurred just one month previous to this
one, which dropped over 3 feet of snow in Buffalo and as much as 80” in the
Southtowns and only resulted in 2 fatalities. How could this one be any worse?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This is where awareness, from the forecasters, Emergency
Management officials, politicians and the public must be raised to the next
level to communicate the combination of factors that would turn this storm into
a catastrophe. It is my definition of a
Weather Catastrophe, where several factors come together at the wrong place and
time and that combination of factors has much greater impact than any taken
individually. The whole becomes much greater than the sum of the parts. I have
seen this so many times in my career that it begs for better tools to “flag”
when a weather event crosses that line and becomes a catastrophe. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: small;">
</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Let’s look at each factor and how they combined to produce
the catastrophe. I split them into meteorological, logistical and societal
factors in the table below. These are my own opinions and they may not be the
only answers to what led to the catastrophe but I feel they address the most
important aspects of the event.<br /><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbQn0QGtrq7NXNpSKDKBkAdGDSIa1N5s4bFFXkjlFq4-XWHWBaWJSDP1buo__b5hMckQ5B-u1J1JLo23JX974UiDZJSwUT3kku01NyFi-9I1T-I7nUc8hFNjWK0HJ_b_OKmy4aJkFKQHe2Ld11Dy5gCU0gin0PX29aIJNx2H5cM0285cXLEBUjKlYgeEK6/s1149/impact%20table.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="409" data-original-width="1149" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbQn0QGtrq7NXNpSKDKBkAdGDSIa1N5s4bFFXkjlFq4-XWHWBaWJSDP1buo__b5hMckQ5B-u1J1JLo23JX974UiDZJSwUT3kku01NyFi-9I1T-I7nUc8hFNjWK0HJ_b_OKmy4aJkFKQHe2Ld11Dy5gCU0gin0PX29aIJNx2H5cM0285cXLEBUjKlYgeEK6/w640-h228/impact%20table.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 24: Table that shows the author's opinion of the factors that went into creating a weather catastrophe for the lake-effect blizzard of December 23-26, 2023. </blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">From the meteorological standpoint, the flowchart below helps to explain the concept of several impactful weather factors combining to produce much greater overall impacts on the public. The chart identifies the weather factors in gray.</span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxgPuD18xfnHr0JiTHptYQypNrv8p9eazs5UkpSILWovJvUM78jR3fbJF7K943XYNMxWPFLhB9ME3nNh2H6w_jQZOUb32USfvbOgT_Y2m3QIB8sBtih8B7wOLpdUwujm_HKhpLC6IjZCxF-gUjMjopsU1BBI0V6dm0mrwZpNPGiSSbLDlX7VdCUaihXXlG/s1217/weather%20impact%20flow%20chart.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="996" data-original-width="1217" height="524" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxgPuD18xfnHr0JiTHptYQypNrv8p9eazs5UkpSILWovJvUM78jR3fbJF7K943XYNMxWPFLhB9ME3nNh2H6w_jQZOUb32USfvbOgT_Y2m3QIB8sBtih8B7wOLpdUwujm_HKhpLC6IjZCxF-gUjMjopsU1BBI0V6dm0mrwZpNPGiSSbLDlX7VdCUaihXXlG/w640-h524/weather%20impact%20flow%20chart.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 25: Flowchart that shows how the impacts of the combination of meteorological factors can be multiplied many more times compared to each individual factor. The whole is MUCH greater than the sum of the parts. </blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><u>Heavy snow</u> typically causes traffic problems. <u>Strong winds</u> can take down tree
limbs and cause power outages. <u>Arctic temperatures</u> in northern latitudes don’t
necessarily freeze pipes etc. but they can prove impactful to vehicles not
prepared for winter conditions and certainly can be dangerous to anyone
spending a lot of time outside without adequate winter gear.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The impacts notch
up VERY quickly though when you begin to combine these factors. In the chart above, the combination of <u>heavy snow </u>and <u>strong winds</u> produces whiteouts,
making travel VERY dangerous. Snow begins to drift rapidly to block roads. Vehicles get stranded in those drifts, blocking other traffic. <u>Strong winds and
Arctic temperatures </u>combine to produce dangerous wind chills. It greatly
decreases the time one can spend outside without getting frostbite and
hypothermia. When those 3 original factors are combined, the impacts increase
at an even greater rate. To try to travel in any way when the region is
experiencing heavy snow, strong winds and arctic temperatures is impossible.
You almost certainly will get stranded in a vehicle and when you do, you now
are looking the at very real possibility of freezing if you cannot get to
safety. The only hope is that the storm abates soon enough to allow you to get
to safety. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This is where the storm duration comes into play. It raises the
impacts exponentially by making it necessary to survive life-threatening conditions for an
extended period of time. In this case, <u>storm duration</u> was the “straw that broke
the camel's back”. For those who were stranded outside, freezing to death was almost certain. In addition, for those who were inside and lost power, heating their homes became impossible in many cases. Even for those in unheated shketer, the duration of the bitter cold wind chills became life-threatening. This combination of factors is how a weather catastrophe occurs.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The time of day and day of week the storm struck were very important logistical factors in my assesment. Because the weather was calm as most people were waking up and heading into work, there may have been a false sense of security to "go out and get things done before the storm hit". Finally, as with some of the most deadly historical blizzards that have occurred in the U.S., one other factor was extemely important. </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">This storm hit so quickly and conditions deteriorated so rapidly, that nobody had time to respond and get back home or to safety. Remember, the weather essentially went from calm conditions to a raging blizzard in 1 hour, then continued as a full-blown whiteout blizzard for the better part of nearly 3 days. Total up all of these factors and you can easily see how they eventually tip the scales to create a Weather Catastrophe.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIvsyfVgKANKblY_b46WETkNSnt852QsgXBFFCUBZVrKu_E-yNz2PzBzB_JAnIIIrWnDXX6fwQ_mso3qBSaqTVCnEZBzggYUKFBJbXAqOEyS2kx6W8TmbWcuiH6l9WPQUgPbSc5orG5HKlvBZoz34H2SCjVi2e6UN3eu0QL1vVuorJUBZh-1utLXBUxjYZ/s710/anigif-scaletip1.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="710" height="486" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIvsyfVgKANKblY_b46WETkNSnt852QsgXBFFCUBZVrKu_E-yNz2PzBzB_JAnIIIrWnDXX6fwQ_mso3qBSaqTVCnEZBzggYUKFBJbXAqOEyS2kx6W8TmbWcuiH6l9WPQUgPbSc5orG5HKlvBZoz34H2SCjVi2e6UN3eu0QL1vVuorJUBZh-1utLXBUxjYZ/w640-h486/anigif-scaletip1.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 26: The scale shows how each factor plays a role in impacts, and as they pile on, the impacts become greater and greater until that final factors, the duration of the event, tips the scale into a weather catastrophe. </blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Going forward, I believe it is extremely important to tie
together all of the important meteorological, logistical and even societal
factors in assessing the potential, full impacts of catastrophic weather
events. I strongly feel this is one
area where AI-type systems may be a tremendous help. They have the ability to
integrate thousands of parameters from past events, to flag the possibility of
that “one in a million” combination of factors that could lead to a Weather
Catastrophe. Those factors could even be tailored for location, so the
impacts that could lead to a Winter Weather Catastrophe in Atlanta GA would be
different than Buffalo, NY. The ability to integrate so many factors to assess what might become a full-blown weather catastrophe
is very promising.</span></div></div></div></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">For the December 2022 blizzard, was there enough information
available for the forecasters and emergency management to convey the potential
for a catastrophic winter storm? Possibly.
They did know when the storm would hit, that the storm would produce
exceptional snowfall, would last for more than a day, would be accompanied by a
long period of strong winds, and occur with rapidly falling temperatures which
would lead to an extended period of life-threatening wind chills. However, the format in which they communicated the information was a standard template. All of that information is there, <u><b>but much of it appears in most Winter Warnings that are issued. </b></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJebGrfscI52PAXCgP7Tk8QefECDp-eQZxUAc2KCUN8thhaBZ8wL6aXqXzOBblpJ8byaFFBGGbVrBwkL6ZR-cUIyPu4cflD9P2fBpNdLknQQMsJrUg3fEIulsT2cwvhvFL_aQCaz10xqJjOr3Xvg-JDWdOkltfHpoohxH6gJWxOgPHf4T2PhD8gys13txj/s747/WSW%20Dec%2022%20AFternoon.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="747" data-original-width="614" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJebGrfscI52PAXCgP7Tk8QefECDp-eQZxUAc2KCUN8thhaBZ8wL6aXqXzOBblpJ8byaFFBGGbVrBwkL6ZR-cUIyPu4cflD9P2fBpNdLknQQMsJrUg3fEIulsT2cwvhvFL_aQCaz10xqJjOr3Xvg-JDWdOkltfHpoohxH6gJWxOgPHf4T2PhD8gys13txj/w526-h640/WSW%20Dec%2022%20AFternoon.JPG" width="526" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Fig 27: Winter Storm Warning issued by the National Weather Service office in Buffalo, NY on the afternoon before the blizzard struck. </blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">With the
obvious point of playing Monday morning quarterback, would a statement such as
the one below conveyed a better idea of the severity of this storm?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">WHAT…<b>A MAJOR BLIZZARD </b>for at least a 2-day period with up to
3 feet of snow. Winds gust to 70 mph Friday and Friday night and over 40 mph
through all of Saturday creating whiteout conditions. TRAVEL WILL BE
IMPOSSIBLE. Temperatures will become very cold. Along with strong winds this will
create life-threatening wind chills to -20° through the 2-day length of
the storm. <b>IF YOU ARE STRANDED OUTSIDE, YOU COULD DIE. </b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">WHERE…Niagara, Orleans Genesee and Wyoming counties
including Niagara Falls, Medina, Batavia, Buffalo, Orchard Park and Springville<br />
<br />
WHEN…The blizzard will strike between 8AM-9AM Friday. <b>Conditions will get bad very
quickly.</b> Whiteouts will then occur for the better part of the next 2 days, through all
of Saturday <b>MAKING TRAVEL IMPOSSIBLE</b>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">IMPACTS…<b>MAJOR BLIZZARD. TRAVEL WILL BECOME IMPOSSIBLE.</b> Cars
and people will become stranded due to whiteouts and roads drifted over with
snow. There will also be life-threatening wind chills for the course of the
storm. Because this blizzard could last over 2 full days, it will mean if you
are stranded outside, <b>YOU COULD DIE.</b> Emergency personnel may not be able to
rescue you. <b>This will not be a typical lake-effect snow storm. IT WILL BE MUCH WORSE. </b><o:p></o:p></span></p></div></blockquote><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">There will likely be several papers and studies on the impacts of this storm, especially the number of fatalities that occurred. Hopefully this will lead to better communication of the expected impacts that would put a storm like this one well above and beyond the "typical" winter storm. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Until then, I remember something an old WWII forecast told
me when I was training as an intern at the NWS Buffalo office long ago. He said
“that any forecast can be the most accurate prognostication, written by the most
intelligent PhD, but if you cannot communicate its impacts effectively to the
public, it is not worth the piece of paper it’s written on”. There needs to be
a better system to highlight what separates a garden variety storm (a.k.a. November 2022 event that produced 3 to 6 ft. of snow) from the truly
catastrophic storm such as the Christmas Blizzard of 2022 in Buffalo, NY. </span></p></div><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></div>The Weather Around Ushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982190953093465944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500935395405905691.post-1981672044892377392022-02-15T08:06:00.002-05:002022-02-15T08:09:58.154-05:00Ice Pillars - The Light Sabers of the Sky<head> <script async="" data-ad-client="pub-3474636928976293" src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjJItxBGZjG2xake4RxsjtB0ca9b4lAkcP3GwVVEG04g2ujhILo_kgowaWbE_ei1B67fOJdqOvbqFXUZfPvjkveHhIYaVyt0M48ynfgBsm6gqTbejtxV6LMwY195Srv0Dt_bthp1t9l4AZrr7MpZcRQm00JGhigkkDIoklsfyApcqcVJOgLHZj7UgoLMQ=s1500" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="1500" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjJItxBGZjG2xake4RxsjtB0ca9b4lAkcP3GwVVEG04g2ujhILo_kgowaWbE_ei1B67fOJdqOvbqFXUZfPvjkveHhIYaVyt0M48ynfgBsm6gqTbejtxV6LMwY195Srv0Dt_bthp1t9l4AZrr7MpZcRQm00JGhigkkDIoklsfyApcqcVJOgLHZj7UgoLMQ=w640-h480" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The atmosphere is an amazing creation, and some of the things that go on up there are truly “out of this world”. One that I have been treated to only rarely is something right out of Star Wars. Everyone must be familiar with the light sabers that were part of Jedi Order, and that’s what I am reminded of when I see Ice Pillars in the sky. Click on the video below to get a better idea of how they look in real life. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxzofPJyH-mwQ-95gGaaQN1FLyLR6Kfb7mBJmrr2C8uEKTB0KrlJoJrnsyZ7M2irZwghHggc_vyYn3z0IqsIg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Ice pillars, also known as Light Pillars are another one of the amazing optical phenomena that occur in our atmosphere. The are formed under very special conditions and therefore are quite rare. There are a few ingredients necessary for the formation of Ice Pillars. You need very cold air temperatures, usually below 15°F, which allows for the formation of ice crystals, hexagonal plates or dendrites that are necessary for the reflection of light rays from the source. Those kinds of temperatures immediately eliminate most of the populated regions of the globe so that it’s a feature normally seen at the higher latitudes of both hemispheres on earth. Those ice crystals, either fall gently down to the ground or float in the air as you would see in ice fog. In addition, because the crystals need to take on a certain flat configuration in the air and not be jostled about so they can reflect light rays properly, the air needs to be almost still. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgMmYqn4n47YGHRIZB7c6WGz1FHZdETWGdFrbRnziwLhftBoXpLhkBx19nbLP1cBi_fgBPsuUzlAE3-H3mNk1XthfnH8JpVU2-st3XEPoliNXBSxe8VRQBNBijzTlnfXpGIk4s4oClp5_mZ-UZAF1D_s-oKRpdNJhqQErHXWjNKCoYrOSST0J2X5RIqDw=s1044" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="464" data-original-width="1044" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgMmYqn4n47YGHRIZB7c6WGz1FHZdETWGdFrbRnziwLhftBoXpLhkBx19nbLP1cBi_fgBPsuUzlAE3-H3mNk1XthfnH8JpVU2-st3XEPoliNXBSxe8VRQBNBijzTlnfXpGIk4s4oClp5_mZ-UZAF1D_s-oKRpdNJhqQErHXWjNKCoYrOSST0J2X5RIqDw=w400-h178" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Now once you have all of these conditions in place, how in the world do the pillars of light form? That is where the optics of the atmosphere comes in. Light rays that come off a point source, most commonly street lights, are normally directed up into the sky in all directions. All ice crystals present in the atmosphere reflect the light from the source. But only those crystals that are aligned in a common vertical plane will direct the light towards the observer. If a person is lucky enough and is at the right angle looking back toward the light source, their eyes will see light rays that have been reflected off a column of those perfectly aligned ice crystals. The result is that the eye perceives a column of light above the light source. It is not a real column of light, rather an illusion created by the ice crystals reflecting that light. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgClMW0amrIk-H3PLqZ4mfAGbd8ULYYH5jMWr4qgXN-CGNGd8D5x9smXyFpmOJQzrojHFPjjQPGom9behna2M6Uux_dkyJ6gWFQM9hJQCHab2JV3Vekf8UDsrJHN2SHpkI0dG9gh9LFU0u4rVLk89I0TAVSThHiLa6GUrQ0YCvLtrZ6JhgHDJTYWiQdeA=s856" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="856" height="498" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgClMW0amrIk-H3PLqZ4mfAGbd8ULYYH5jMWr4qgXN-CGNGd8D5x9smXyFpmOJQzrojHFPjjQPGom9behna2M6Uux_dkyJ6gWFQM9hJQCHab2JV3Vekf8UDsrJHN2SHpkI0dG9gh9LFU0u4rVLk89I0TAVSThHiLa6GUrQ0YCvLtrZ6JhgHDJTYWiQdeA=w640-h498" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Different colored light sources will result in different colored columns in the air. I have seen red light pillars that came off runway lights at an airport as well as train yards. The pillars I saw in these photos came off sodium lamps and they have that eerie, soft yellow glow to them. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiyHFRg-msm4fZwY9YxhfuhsxboFbq0ScucVUV30JqB2W1pvvI6RlYEtmzFhhSlk4AASESnpGSGU58SRaqlZxms6HgWKBokoEdBRhxMmp7XGbZ2FlLRiske_6eiVPf7aXq8eNzBLALQwJGu-ByDvrwvL-zgqkiYvTPP4UOElKgMNDJxinOQme3zxJ0X2g=s1500"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="1500" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiyHFRg-msm4fZwY9YxhfuhsxboFbq0ScucVUV30JqB2W1pvvI6RlYEtmzFhhSlk4AASESnpGSGU58SRaqlZxms6HgWKBokoEdBRhxMmp7XGbZ2FlLRiske_6eiVPf7aXq8eNzBLALQwJGu-ByDvrwvL-zgqkiYvTPP4UOElKgMNDJxinOQme3zxJ0X2g=w640-h480" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Winter is an amazing season. So much of what we experience outdoors can seem other-worldly at times. From beautiful snowflakes to ice needles and rime ice, ribbon ice, ice pillars to the blanket of white that covers the ground, allows for us to ski, skate on frozen water, it truly is a magical season. Keep your eyes open and you can find some of these hidden gems if you take the time to look and explore. Enjoy!! </div><div><br /></div></div><br /><p><br /></p>The Weather Around Ushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982190953093465944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500935395405905691.post-1306568265512010122021-02-12T16:57:00.004-05:002021-02-13T14:26:47.186-05:00Why Portland, OR and Seattle, WA Get Snow and Ice Storms<head> <script async="" data-ad-client="pub-3474636928976293" src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/
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<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH3eQWCw3i-gzVcKMfciisInK77xCX5tSTE-3tvVHN4abab5mR_4PV_mYB6THYIRGFT5QEHuze_psIB8rkJ5-mXhi5mDJGtN1fnIN2torXQbuCEsqSOhXzo4kmZWjgJfv-QGszmQMCHami/s1346/warn-2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="879" data-original-width="1346" height="418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH3eQWCw3i-gzVcKMfciisInK77xCX5tSTE-3tvVHN4abab5mR_4PV_mYB6THYIRGFT5QEHuze_psIB8rkJ5-mXhi5mDJGtN1fnIN2torXQbuCEsqSOhXzo4kmZWjgJfv-QGszmQMCHami/w640-h418/warn-2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>National Weather Service Winter Alerts Issued Thursday, February 11, 2021 for parts of Washington and Oregon. Note the Blizzard Warning for the tiny area on the map, The Columbia River Gorge.</i></div></blockquote></div><br />Rough winter weather is being forecast for the Pacific Northwest. In fact, Blizzard Warnings were issued, not for the mountains, but the Columbia River Gorge only a few miles from Portland. In Portland and Seattle Winter Storm Warnings were posted. Don't these cities normally just gets clouds and rain in winter? Yes, for the most part they do, however under specific weather patterns, they can get their share of winter weather. <div><br /></div><div>I find mountain weather so very interesting. Combine the largest ocean in the world on one side of these Pacific Northwest cities and some of the tallest and snowiest mountains in North America to the east and you get a wonderful natural laboratory to study the weather!<br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington are located on the
Pacific Northwest Coast in between the warm and moist Pacific Ocean to the west and the
towering Cascade Mountains to the east.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because of
their proximity to the coast and their sea level elevation, both cities receive
very little in the way of winter weather.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In fact, Portland receives only 4.3 inches of snow annually and Seattle
gets just a bit more at 6.8 inches.<o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP-3FFhdew7R9YvwXfeA_1_xFnKb18sXtvtdpQgbpq-V82lBLdorV6RI297VAfMf-zUbBfBH9Z7TTieY8vNNmGBIk5fNl5r5Bwpcfi6bzu7mlbx2tD1XbqgrTWQC3n19obF0phOZGt0SrK/s1094/Pac+NW+Topo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1081" data-original-width="1094" height="632" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP-3FFhdew7R9YvwXfeA_1_xFnKb18sXtvtdpQgbpq-V82lBLdorV6RI297VAfMf-zUbBfBH9Z7TTieY8vNNmGBIk5fNl5r5Bwpcfi6bzu7mlbx2tD1XbqgrTWQC3n19obF0phOZGt0SrK/w640-h632/Pac+NW+Topo.jpg" width="640" /></a></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>You will want to look closely at two features on the map above, The Fraser River Valley in southern British Columbia, Canada up north and the Columbia Rover Gorge in the southern part of the map. These two geographic features play a big role in wintry weather for Seattle and Portland. </i></div></div></blockquote><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal">The biggest reason these two locations do not get much snow
is that it is just too warm long the coast to see much in the way of frozen
precipitation. Essentially, The Cascades act as a gigantic wall to keep the
cold air that comes down out of Canada to the east of the mountains, protecting
the West Coast from frequent outbreaks of really cold air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Down along the coast, at sea-level there aren’t many ways to
get cold enough for snow or ice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just
east of the coast however, it snows “to beat the band” in the Cascades because higher
elevations alone produce a much colder environment, one that is much more favorable
for snow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> The temperature drops a little more than 3 degrees for every 1,000 ft. elevation. If you go up 5-10 thousand feet that's a 15 to 30 degree drop in temperature, more than enough in the winter to make snow. </span>The extra lift created by prevailing westerly onshore winds heading up the slopes of these 10,000+ ft. mountains also wrings out more
precipitation from the moisture-laden air. </p><p class="MsoNormal">It’s crazy when you realize that Seattle is only about 50 miles
as the crow flies from Mt Rainier. The mountain tops out at 14,411 ft. and at
the Paradise Ranger Station, elevation 5400 ft., they average 639 inches of
snow each winter. Back in the winter of 1971-72 they picked up 1,122 inches of
snow, a world record at that time, while Seattle averages 6.8" of snow.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1baVTNSiryGmimjixSHZnJU_Wl1gfnS6uvaqm6pIgZk9B9ptbur3_brpSt7o6UK3nfGD0E5Z1CUEk2is44PZnsfuE1o_PyOuUpmKIrgjzjq_SygAmJCmX_5IviCrW1bcUZ6GQPapfRNo6/s1431/Seattle+topo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="945" data-original-width="1431" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1baVTNSiryGmimjixSHZnJU_Wl1gfnS6uvaqm6pIgZk9B9ptbur3_brpSt7o6UK3nfGD0E5Z1CUEk2is44PZnsfuE1o_PyOuUpmKIrgjzjq_SygAmJCmX_5IviCrW1bcUZ6GQPapfRNo6/w640-h422/Seattle+topo.jpg" width="640" /></a></p></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>Wow!! What a difference 50 miles makes. This may be one of the greatest differences in annual snowfall over such a small distance. </i></p></div></blockquote><div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal">So, what does it take to get snowfall in locations like
Seattle and Portland, its neighbor to the south? Well, you need a way to get
cold air across the Cascades and into those coastal areas. A few times each
winter season, the large-scale weather pattern sets up to provide a way to get
that dense, cold air across the mountains. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those conditions begin with the presence of an
Arctic High Pressure system over western Canada that pushes very cold air down
along the east side of the western mountain ranges.<o:p></o:p></p>
<h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />Seattle</span></h4><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In Seattle and locales around the Olympic Peninsula, that
cold air can come through gaps in the mountains that are to the east.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Under conditions with strong High Pressure
east of the Cascades and Low Pressure just off the Pacific coast, a pressure gradient
develops from east to west. The wind wants to blow from high to low pressure,
like letting air out of a balloon. The really cold and dense air from east of
the Cascades wants to get west, but it’s so dense it is tough to get over the
mountains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, where there are gaps
in the mountains, it offers a perfect gateway for the air to move through, sometimes
all the way to the coast. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt4VDhUuSxdxzw0Q7LsOgTvHOUe1apriapwOJjHF1BC1PbnnkTV4vNlr9yGCs8lSPUHgU_g7_mM-FEMYrDtgNDLv7D2dX0c4vCAMN52Qm4Jye3MImwOh7Y8rQbh9UL3ajZcFFIl1FTblB2/s1592/synoptic+fraser.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="1592" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt4VDhUuSxdxzw0Q7LsOgTvHOUe1apriapwOJjHF1BC1PbnnkTV4vNlr9yGCs8lSPUHgU_g7_mM-FEMYrDtgNDLv7D2dX0c4vCAMN52Qm4Jye3MImwOh7Y8rQbh9UL3ajZcFFIl1FTblB2/w640-h452/synoptic+fraser.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><p class="MsoNormal">The Fraser River Valley, just across the Canadian border in
British Columbia serves as a significant gateway for that arctic air to pass
through and it is often responsible for pre-conditioning the temperature of the
lower atmosphere with cold air to produce snowfall. <o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dya7ywXnC5teb7RCF0Z2BBncmQmwCXkomqzIQVkoruo2YhDxkX9hmtDYyswnUA_-rFyk_ACMdCCIgACJu5fsw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Portland</span></h4><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Portland has some of the same characteristics as
Seattle, but is located about 100 miles south. Instead of getting
cold air through the Fraser River Outflow, Portland is right at the mouth of
the Columbia River, which runs from east to west through the Cascades and down
to the coast. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The gorge is the only near sea level gap through the
Cascades. Its average width is about 3 miles at river level. It stretches 120 miles back to the east and
the western entrance is less than 15 miles from Portland. The crest of the Cascades lies about 45 mi
east of Portland. <o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzcuzxnAcM1I_zSnJQBJ3oRTZFobb-wlA0Qruxw18fhrotsSHc5n47d6GidouI7lFrVYcgJgxAO2AphXZx8YLx0RcCrgoHA8n14Oy8dHuLrWLlDfzWsg4bKROBJt9p7Qnx53wKpie9m7hu/s836/gorge-1.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="622" data-original-width="836" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzcuzxnAcM1I_zSnJQBJ3oRTZFobb-wlA0Qruxw18fhrotsSHc5n47d6GidouI7lFrVYcgJgxAO2AphXZx8YLx0RcCrgoHA8n14Oy8dHuLrWLlDfzWsg4bKROBJt9p7Qnx53wKpie9m7hu/w640-h476/gorge-1.JPG" width="640" /></a></div></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>One of the most beautiful places in the world in my book, The Columbia River Gorge features some amazing weather, including strong winds that allow for some great wind surfing. In winter, maybe not as inviting.</i></div></div></div></blockquote><p> </p><div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwldIIsRRf-jLKtsX3LvVKQIeGKx6wEKmG2oqLr6GOwDyJsOTtINn31GHNemR6vYG4KpveUlLtJrjXXPdoSCg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal">In fact, Portland Oregon gets a majority of its wintry
weather when the winds are out of an easterly direction. On a broad sense of
course, you would be hard pressed to get snow or ice from the westerly winds
coming off that warm ocean. However, similar
to Washington State, a large pressure gradient between arctic air and strong
High Pressure to the east of the Cascades and Low pressure off the Pacific
Coast results in a flow of cold, dense air from east to west through the gorge.
<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYPRFvg8eoORDeoau7zfKk9jhGfQ-XmcPZJQxerQCC6XbFLbhfS2DD3hg0S_T9Tx7LvXySXhziM-laVKEQv03Qw63qioJXhHesSYU_9Vv9GZmSmlm1AIipbGzg5BPRHAkKHBNiRY-8Fq9N/s1277/synoptic+setup+columbia+river.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1091" data-original-width="1277" height="546" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYPRFvg8eoORDeoau7zfKk9jhGfQ-XmcPZJQxerQCC6XbFLbhfS2DD3hg0S_T9Tx7LvXySXhziM-laVKEQv03Qw63qioJXhHesSYU_9Vv9GZmSmlm1AIipbGzg5BPRHAkKHBNiRY-8Fq9N/w640-h546/synoptic+setup+columbia+river.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal">The graph below shows, without a doubt, the dependence on
wind direction to produce wintry precipitation in Portland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the low-level winds are from the east
and the mid-level flow is from the west, it becomes the “perfect storm” of
sorts for snow or ice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Snow will occur
under conditions when the atmosphere is also cold aloft.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Typically, that comes with closed upper
levels “cold-core” Lows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, if the
air aloft is warm and the easterly gap winds are below freezing, then
precipitation formed way up in the clouds in the form of snow melts as it drops
through the warmer mid-levels then refreezes as it hits the surface where the
temperatures are below the freezing mark. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib7ZMjKDGha63BFpVxu4OlicnX3nG84d9PpBzlBwKZsMTJDCMW-YnZJ9g8Qzf-ZrYNDREwBngwSXYOxFNPWRd4f3owZxfbZ9-XldENtlxTC5-Gnn5fAbMPgjowbVrLa7t8TOCCeVStdutm/s836/snow+and+ice+plot+portland.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="836" height="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib7ZMjKDGha63BFpVxu4OlicnX3nG84d9PpBzlBwKZsMTJDCMW-YnZJ9g8Qzf-ZrYNDREwBngwSXYOxFNPWRd4f3owZxfbZ9-XldENtlxTC5-Gnn5fAbMPgjowbVrLa7t8TOCCeVStdutm/w640-h432/snow+and+ice+plot+portland.JPG" width="640" /></a></div></div></div></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>The distribution of annual snowfall and freezing rain vs. wind direction clearly shows just how important the role of easterly winds is for wintry weather in Portland, Oregon. </i></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal">The soundings below, taken at Salem Oregon, show
the difference in the temperature throughout the atmosphere for snow vs. ice
events in the Lowlands in Oregon to the west of the mountains including
Portland. Notice the above-freezing layer in the sounding on the left, perfect for melting snow which then freezes on contact where surface temperatures are well below freezing. The sounding on the right shows above freezing surface temperatures but the atmosphere quickly cools below freezing a few hundred feet off the ground. That temperature and moisture profile results in heavy, wet snow. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3wK4j-Ibcs1aE9G4A-L4L2Y2oyU9Za4YGVrIy_-kDxefYAIfpoSphz3hxoeF6dzVBF_fTfmzMhvI_R4eiUt9jnmDfHTfbUAFvd-D61wP5llOGSfCVp2vK4UbzX_fYZzwyOupbIcdI3Itf/s1928/portland+snow+ice.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1038" data-original-width="1928" height="344" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3wK4j-Ibcs1aE9G4A-L4L2Y2oyU9Za4YGVrIy_-kDxefYAIfpoSphz3hxoeF6dzVBF_fTfmzMhvI_R4eiUt9jnmDfHTfbUAFvd-D61wP5llOGSfCVp2vK4UbzX_fYZzwyOupbIcdI3Itf/w640-h344/portland+snow+ice.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal">No, they don’t get too many snowstorms or ice storms in the
Pacific Northwest, but they are more common than you might think in places like
Seattle and Portland. You just need the proper ingredients to come together in
the wrong place at the wrong time, and Voila, you have the recipe for winter
weather.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /><br /></p></div></div></div>The Weather Around Ushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982190953093465944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500935395405905691.post-35580215842295182142021-02-04T17:46:00.018-05:002021-02-09T07:44:35.228-05:00Photographing Snow Crystals - On A Budget <head> <script async="" data-ad-client="pub-3474636928976293" src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/
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<p> </p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzJOQn_FAZ6ydmb5Qiyik9aaMVM0d7wXqQKKeN-NqK1P-0WOhbm1o5iy3AHH33nkaRp2lKg7Vs53U8-5NUixvH0JHLjy6pIKUgpY1QDx4VITEkeI6uA38VggZNXNwdFgXAfeqI00GTtCfy/s1266/CARD1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="946" data-original-width="1266" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzJOQn_FAZ6ydmb5Qiyik9aaMVM0d7wXqQKKeN-NqK1P-0WOhbm1o5iy3AHH33nkaRp2lKg7Vs53U8-5NUixvH0JHLjy6pIKUgpY1QDx4VITEkeI6uA38VggZNXNwdFgXAfeqI00GTtCfy/w640-h478/CARD1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">If you have read some of my other blog entries, you know how
interested I am in snow crystals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have
seen some amazing photographs from scientists in many publications, but these
guys all have a couple things in common; they usually are connected to some
sort of university where resources are endless, and they also put thousands of
dollars into sophisticated equipment to get the photos.<o:p></o:p></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOyAf5KEKzV8unzWEGuOjt2W4EVO5QmT498arUlDnkfPQEsvfIsUtVhjDc3dOjwhjol9EP1yGPUmVF1RIGkHmUJvPPlmRZxSwNYCGBEN_zcvK_G7T-bCLHYnerrgWKFc8SQbtOUDTJ4_-5/s986/pic2-TN.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="986" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOyAf5KEKzV8unzWEGuOjt2W4EVO5QmT498arUlDnkfPQEsvfIsUtVhjDc3dOjwhjol9EP1yGPUmVF1RIGkHmUJvPPlmRZxSwNYCGBEN_zcvK_G7T-bCLHYnerrgWKFc8SQbtOUDTJ4_-5/w400-h291/pic2-TN.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal">Now, don’t get me wrong, I wish I could do that too, but I
am on a budget, so I decided to share some of my methods for taking photographs
and enjoying nature without spending an arm and a leg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over the past few years, I have experimented
with much more affordable ways to photograph snow crystals and I think the
results have been pretty good as my blog “<a href="https://itsallweather.blogspot.com/2021/01/mother-natures-snow-crystal-workshop.html">Mother
Nature’s Snow Crystal Workshop</a>” discusses. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I will begin by noting that you need cold weather of course
to photograph with any success. If it’s close to the freezing mark and the sun
is out, those snow crystals will melt as soon as they hit a surface. At a minimum,
I want to outdoor temperature to be at 27<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">°</span>F or colder. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> You also want to be watching for tiny flakes falling from the sky. Those big, fluffy flakes you see com</span>ing down are not individual flakes, they are made up of hundreds of
individual snow crystals. Check out the photo
below. This is what is left of one of those half-dollar sized flakes after it
landed on my back deck.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope this
shows how closely you need to look for those beautiful snow crystals.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB7ff_3W7De49D7ycNgczDOAfr-AF5opvU5kkehMnqDSwDCRVjpwGSdDZTOIEyBpzCI8CkSWNvDtegQ0OoJG2odGOF5M-GHnMVgAURR3NBqrckCBXPDXkSzk0duJ7aPBcQiWKkyO2LJ-tN/s1500/snowflake-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="1500" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB7ff_3W7De49D7ycNgczDOAfr-AF5opvU5kkehMnqDSwDCRVjpwGSdDZTOIEyBpzCI8CkSWNvDtegQ0OoJG2odGOF5M-GHnMVgAURR3NBqrckCBXPDXkSzk0duJ7aPBcQiWKkyO2LJ-tN/w640-h480/snowflake-1.jpg" width="640" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Setting Up Your Workspace - Don’t Breathe On The Snow Crystals!!</span></h4><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal">Before we go further into how to view and photograph snow
crystals, there are some important ground rules to remember. First and foremost, in the excitement of
looking at a snow crystal, remember that one warm breath can melt that beauty
away in an instant. So, be careful to not breathe on them! Below is my typical workspace, a piece of black felt or fleece on my deck railing. It is being held down by a couple pieces of firewood to keep the fleece from blowing off the deck. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuF6S8hnzlpBfCUuXrjeamokpTtH-Wb94yTrOy01-pbXe7tmp5rCz8seWh51NPXUeJyYLVg8MAR4vr1N4UKfTAW3Gpf_iUKgI75sTAHz4q72elsiozXRlQG5SFvoOkDbM9xLkXD-N5LuO2/s2016/IMG_6383.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuF6S8hnzlpBfCUuXrjeamokpTtH-Wb94yTrOy01-pbXe7tmp5rCz8seWh51NPXUeJyYLVg8MAR4vr1N4UKfTAW3Gpf_iUKgI75sTAHz4q72elsiozXRlQG5SFvoOkDbM9xLkXD-N5LuO2/w400-h300/IMG_6383.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Prime Weather Conditions</span></h4><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div>
<p class="MsoNormal">As I noted, I like to work under conditions where the air temperature is
at about 27°F
or colder. If it’s warmer than that,
it’s tough for the snowflakes to hang around long enough before they begin to
melt. I also like to work under calm wind conditions. Brisk winds can easily break the delicate
crystals on their way down to earth, so you end up with a lot of fragments
rather than a nice symmetrical dendrite.
If plates or columns are falling, calm conditions aren’t as critical but
it helps. Try to photograph on a day when it’s not bright sunshine. I like to
get out right after sunrise and sometimes will work at night with the help of a
couple of cheap LED flashlights (less than $2) to keep the sun from melting the snow crystals as I collect them. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Also, be ready to get cold quickly. Dress warmly for the time you will spend outside. You will need a thin set of gloves to help maneuver the crystals and your camera to get the best photos. I can’t tell you how often I step into the house to warm my fingers before heading back out to photograph again. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Photo Setup</span><span style="font-size: large;"> <br /><br /></span></h4><div>For my iPhone and camera photography, I normally want to get
good contrast between the crystal and the background. That is why I use my black fleece
jacket or a piece of black fleece or felt from a fabric store (Walmart less
than $2).</div><p class="MsoNormal">The fleece and felt collects crystals nicely, and since those materials are not perfectly smooth, they can trap the crystals so they do not get easily
blown away by even the slightest winds. I have also taken a piece of smooth,
clear plexiglass and spray painted it black for a background (total cost
~$4). In calm winds you can get some nice photographs off that smoother surface as well. However, dark surfaces absorb even
more solar energy, so be aware that even if its marginally cold outside, solar
insolation, even coming from behind clouds, may quickly melt crystals on those dark
surfaces. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Below are some of the "tools of my trade". I have a little coni/stamp magnifying glass that I can use to look at snow crystals close-up. However, because my face is so close to the crystal, I must hold my breathe while looking at them. Next is my iPhone with the clip-on macro lens, followed by glass slides for collecting specimens to put under a microscope. Finally, there is my Olympus TG-6 camera which I use to get some of my best photos. The image below the setup was taken with an iPhone on my fleece jacket.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIyx60ch2knR6rnKvW8TDoJz-1ltQsfkrPyHLbZ9DgToRBPnmDhjVYmyWqTlaQkQPoj4934lY7soG84YvQ3BZ6laM5zeHHeiEZ0VF1QaYo-RVNIfOeCQHbV2542CnAC4Vn7p6xBn2mvDgR/s1239/Gear-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="694" data-original-width="1239" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIyx60ch2knR6rnKvW8TDoJz-1ltQsfkrPyHLbZ9DgToRBPnmDhjVYmyWqTlaQkQPoj4934lY7soG84YvQ3BZ6laM5zeHHeiEZ0VF1QaYo-RVNIfOeCQHbV2542CnAC4Vn7p6xBn2mvDgR/w640-h358/Gear-1.jpg" width="640" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF6revNjpsTTz-Gw_pXW1EHTDunzs_Zwdmh1-03pwwuHc1zMB304WMHwb1Ss7zF0D8_3EvGOg-3nluEPB0hvum8XfNVN5_VGkDD4zN1X3UjnVsJMCD8DTF0cm3AZm2I_zy839iom-giPjC/s1230/fleece-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1230" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF6revNjpsTTz-Gw_pXW1EHTDunzs_Zwdmh1-03pwwuHc1zMB304WMHwb1Ss7zF0D8_3EvGOg-3nluEPB0hvum8XfNVN5_VGkDD4zN1X3UjnVsJMCD8DTF0cm3AZm2I_zy839iom-giPjC/w400-h220/fleece-1.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />Almost everyone has a smart phone with a nice camera on it these days and with that little phone you can do a lot. Add a cheap macro lens (~$15) and you can see more. You can then go up to an affordable camera that isn't as much as what the professionals use; typically a Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera with macro lenses and extension tubes. The camera I use now is a reasonable option that’s in the price range of about $350 and has some nice innovations to produce quality photos. Finally, there is a section of photos that I took through my borrowed microscope. If you have a scope, you might want to experiment with that.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">iPhone</span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I started out photographing snow crystals with just my iPhone,
then added a cheap plastic macro lens (about $15) to get a better
close-up. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised
by what I could do with a very steady hand and the phone. Steadiness is key to
getting a good close-up photo. I have used a little remote (<a href="https://amzn.to/3ajrNpo">Amazon $5</a>) to shoot with the iPhone so that
I would not be holding (and shaking) the camera when I took the photo. Here’s a photo I took in Buffalo, NY on a very
cold day, with the black painted plexiglass, I tinted it blue with GIMP software to get a better effect. Not bad! </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBLUOULnObbCN76PyDSIR_bkPnHwZtwjCXE1fNe5L0HWNEc56_sVrdZl3St-95iQWzL90EkWWidOvhq7lVTjnBFsXrpB-fQchsLRQHv2KobMXIboN1FLY8jKrZbjn9w6hueHko3GdKdD_R/s1644/Iphone+-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1013" data-original-width="1644" height="394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBLUOULnObbCN76PyDSIR_bkPnHwZtwjCXE1fNe5L0HWNEc56_sVrdZl3St-95iQWzL90EkWWidOvhq7lVTjnBFsXrpB-fQchsLRQHv2KobMXIboN1FLY8jKrZbjn9w6hueHko3GdKdD_R/w640-h394/Iphone+-1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Canon G-12<br /><br /></span></h4></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I love this camera for all it can do in a nice little camera. It not only has full manual capability but it allowed me to get in pretty close for some nice snow crystal photos. Technology has come a long way since this camera was introduced, but I still use it for all sorts of photos. Here is a look at a photo that captured some beautiful snow crystals up in Buffalo, NY.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKsZBchpYvg2o-CS-L_hdZs5hIbZn6qUajC7xJL8EXBSfL1EelMp-DdemBz8d1TmIlMaLy-tA-Il1UiqfsjJjv87IFDK8IchRkjIpxVyXEwyyDGaw0-nm92qtgBUUAJabDJbDV9xPFX8JT/s1500/iphone-2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="1500" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKsZBchpYvg2o-CS-L_hdZs5hIbZn6qUajC7xJL8EXBSfL1EelMp-DdemBz8d1TmIlMaLy-tA-Il1UiqfsjJjv87IFDK8IchRkjIpxVyXEwyyDGaw0-nm92qtgBUUAJabDJbDV9xPFX8JT/w640-h480/iphone-2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <br /><div style="text-align: left;"><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Microscope</span></h4><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">After seeing the beautiful photos from Kenneth Libbrecht on his site <a href="http://snowcrystals.com">snowcrystals.com</a>, and the thousands of dollars of camera and microscope gear he used to get those photos, I was a bit intimidated, but I still wanted to find a way to do more. I was able to
“borrow” a nice, old microscope from a colleague. Now, for professional photographers, this next
idea may sound insane, they would use special extension tubes, connectors,
filters, etc., to attach a camera to the scope. That would add up to a lot of money but also some pretty decent
photographs. I opted for the cheap route. </p><p class="MsoNormal">I used a rubber connector from a
plumbing supply store ($1.68) and mounted my Canon G-12 camera on the
eye-piece. Using the “self-timer” on the camera set at a 2-second delay, I was
able to photograph the crystals I collected on my glass slides without shaking
the camera as I took the photo. I front or back-lit the crystals with 2 small
LED flashlights. Mind you, this is all
being done outside, either in my garage (unheated of course) or out on the
front porch. Below is an actual photo using the microscope at 10x power and the cleaned up version after
I put it into some free photo software (GIMP) and Powerpoint to clean them up and put
them on nice backgrounds.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguvNyrnJSM1uxwaJ96xJStoEQ-bJ1J6rj9U-Y1nq9zYGNmWhYD-WqJP81MXjhQXV2FImB9NbnpOfm_knaRO8HivKrodUzPL5aL4-OQx0sv-B_kqnR2zAI5hOjl2UyLuVJsgKsQpjm0qOmz/s842/scope-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="842" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguvNyrnJSM1uxwaJ96xJStoEQ-bJ1J6rj9U-Y1nq9zYGNmWhYD-WqJP81MXjhQXV2FImB9NbnpOfm_knaRO8HivKrodUzPL5aL4-OQx0sv-B_kqnR2zAI5hOjl2UyLuVJsgKsQpjm0qOmz/w320-h318/scope-1.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFDIOnNRAb6Lq3wp8p0dR6_yBfDUpR49RSsVeKDTzT6Bol6E6q9pUQHLu8ncHFAX-w_A20xhVV5D64UXKpKtb5NY2509Zu281VYikm4-xeEW6Yl2DqpmLbBeROeU_-nImVPZBdMsYnbJ_W/s593/TN_4.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="587" data-original-width="593" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFDIOnNRAb6Lq3wp8p0dR6_yBfDUpR49RSsVeKDTzT6Bol6E6q9pUQHLu8ncHFAX-w_A20xhVV5D64UXKpKtb5NY2509Zu281VYikm4-xeEW6Yl2DqpmLbBeROeU_-nImVPZBdMsYnbJ_W/w320-h317/TN_4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">If I am working with a microscope and camera, I like to set
my slides out in a shallow box to capture falling crystals, minimizing even the
slightest breeze to allow the crystals to land on the smooth slides. I also put a dark material like black felt
inside the box to place the slides on, so it is easier to see the crystals that
land on the clear, glass slides. You
have to very careful lifting them out, warm fingers can melt the crystals, and
any movement might make the prize crystal slide off the slide. Below is part of an extensive collection of
snow crystal photographs I have made with the microscope/camera setup. I was pretty pleased with what I have been
able to do with the resources I had available.</div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfwnGYlu-IMuQECjPj33bm3ti5nfPSlpz3a3JsyO5fDonq4WyUzELt2HYaDkckHQIEh6Ou7AkNAo76UUe4QLwSC4AVS1VW8UQP2TQ3oiDRmzHGBqipq0jeCmyvO7rWY82AS2g3tdd_tpwI/s892/031309a.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="870" data-original-width="892" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfwnGYlu-IMuQECjPj33bm3ti5nfPSlpz3a3JsyO5fDonq4WyUzELt2HYaDkckHQIEh6Ou7AkNAo76UUe4QLwSC4AVS1VW8UQP2TQ3oiDRmzHGBqipq0jeCmyvO7rWY82AS2g3tdd_tpwI/w177-h173/031309a.jpg" width="177" /></a><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="930" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwvyNfgK4amUhl-FbvICZNHYxpT44H5XJmKlM3vsn79ftSik-ow82oZuH5BKD8XE87Me9j2Jy_5PARnnBRzuYFHo_jdVOvF0i8LL2C9cRn8V0IDl3IEgRZVa3OZ31RkP8vnqtlXQLwgTFf/w179-h173/blogphoto-2.jpg" width="179" /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBPLzzQBX_qtH3A9D5-n_RgciCRF_RRdfJlyY5ASRYnYr49HHTPWSqGnz8NmW9vfiD-cyUO2JJM4oUjTic0SlQdLVmvxs8mb0ASc7dt1AOp8pE0t0rYEvSijwaoTurZIvBSrA9zl8SsjM_/s893/Blogphoto-3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="893" data-original-width="892" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBPLzzQBX_qtH3A9D5-n_RgciCRF_RRdfJlyY5ASRYnYr49HHTPWSqGnz8NmW9vfiD-cyUO2JJM4oUjTic0SlQdLVmvxs8mb0ASc7dt1AOp8pE0t0rYEvSijwaoTurZIvBSrA9zl8SsjM_/w172-h172/Blogphoto-3.jpg" width="172" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi3U4__2ltd_UvlghHaIznlATs-s7e08_Ol8hxpgM1WyffHc1GzDsirP5iHWubWg9oyZ2-_JCfkca3skaGjVlH2lqS54K2cEYb_hlCfsSdfCrXHNQpTjpQtD6bJHEWeNyNy3KwijCaU6BN/s885/blogphoto-5.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="885" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi3U4__2ltd_UvlghHaIznlATs-s7e08_Ol8hxpgM1WyffHc1GzDsirP5iHWubWg9oyZ2-_JCfkca3skaGjVlH2lqS54K2cEYb_hlCfsSdfCrXHNQpTjpQtD6bJHEWeNyNy3KwijCaU6BN/w193-h161/blogphoto-5.jpg" width="193" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje3_wYpsIeAmS5x1w_OvS5-EL6xHYgU4BG09YpUb2R9yzjdZ1FwNrdfEuYBjxi8QJTYf_cpdPljPT-2gmA6AgWPrBeV5qUCG8zFFnjkd32t7QmB6XmN_9214XjJGCsYsj13OeuQEeHtmEI/s913/Blogphoto-1.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="913" data-original-width="880" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje3_wYpsIeAmS5x1w_OvS5-EL6xHYgU4BG09YpUb2R9yzjdZ1FwNrdfEuYBjxi8QJTYf_cpdPljPT-2gmA6AgWPrBeV5qUCG8zFFnjkd32t7QmB6XmN_9214XjJGCsYsj13OeuQEeHtmEI/w155-h161/Blogphoto-1.jpg" width="155" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiPTQgx_jP7Pq68LAGRcL6lDLoUaemc3kKkXTcoof-5Nnn6b6BIueShnLyhMjG6oRTg7x0eoIb3wtrFTJ7x5MonXlZE72pYT49eJLh2DdV21dugmoEEhu_ABf6Gqwm8Nxm2KMHpmDSsOaC/s478/011111-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="478" data-original-width="461" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiPTQgx_jP7Pq68LAGRcL6lDLoUaemc3kKkXTcoof-5Nnn6b6BIueShnLyhMjG6oRTg7x0eoIb3wtrFTJ7x5MonXlZE72pYT49eJLh2DdV21dugmoEEhu_ABf6Gqwm8Nxm2KMHpmDSsOaC/w155-h161/011111-1.jpg" width="155" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbbz_ZpJLGlEWqZ6YNyyXC4cDsSZawaij0tqsxx1DRaTJROjEOOIG0VliZk3yCpAnAGPJ_WY-vQl-ItX7EspB9f04F0nsq8hXB0Vwj-FtcHKVHl0CiwmXYF9oJCTd2MCeLJBDh8QVDor5C/s510/010210DX.png" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="510" data-original-width="485" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbbz_ZpJLGlEWqZ6YNyyXC4cDsSZawaij0tqsxx1DRaTJROjEOOIG0VliZk3yCpAnAGPJ_WY-vQl-ItX7EspB9f04F0nsq8hXB0Vwj-FtcHKVHl0CiwmXYF9oJCTd2MCeLJBDh8QVDor5C/w173-h182/010210DX.png" width="173" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4GV6IGPuHkApRAVbfx8kwKq60FE8Xq5MCH6bt8jGy81IENpBqxTVzQR8_jYcatupmJp38pj3sq2gmo2oRDnUoIJ-Rdn2tntj5eyiOUXWKzkffI_kpy6EswGkCjtCUqJH4Cl01R2wYUQoT/s530/010210CX.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="530" data-original-width="483" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4GV6IGPuHkApRAVbfx8kwKq60FE8Xq5MCH6bt8jGy81IENpBqxTVzQR8_jYcatupmJp38pj3sq2gmo2oRDnUoIJ-Rdn2tntj5eyiOUXWKzkffI_kpy6EswGkCjtCUqJH4Cl01R2wYUQoT/w167-h182/010210CX.png" width="167" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8eVZrzxieCDTtuTIE-AFRit7s61-E_CPmJTLgoLZlOYbaOaIalKDGRmnXsOjPderIIEGot_0cNMzgdppGMe3oBuTrFGQlt9sW_8LvpopymuMGNWAhJmx-M1_UWOqMEDFft7utSavImHOg/s535/010210AX.png" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="535" data-original-width="481" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8eVZrzxieCDTtuTIE-AFRit7s61-E_CPmJTLgoLZlOYbaOaIalKDGRmnXsOjPderIIEGot_0cNMzgdppGMe3oBuTrFGQlt9sW_8LvpopymuMGNWAhJmx-M1_UWOqMEDFft7utSavImHOg/w161-h179/010210AX.png" width="161" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Olympus TG-6</span></h4></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">One of the most difficult parts of macro-photography is that when you are shooting really close to a specimen, it’s very difficult to get things in focus. Often, a portion of the 3-dimensional snow crystal will be out of focus. So, photographers use a method called stacking, where they take several photos of the object with tiny adjustments to the focus. With the help of computer software it will combine these images into one, more fully-focused photo. Sounds like a lot of work and it is, but wait!! Olympus, the camera people have just come up with a brilliant idea. They combined that “stacking software” right into their TG-6 camera. When I heard about that, I immediately went out and bought the camera (Olympus TG-6 $350). It was my biggest investment so far, but I think it was well worth it. I have not been disappointed. Below, I have posted several photos of snow crystals I have taken here in the Appalachian Mountains of far Eastern Tennessee with at TG-6 camera. </div></div></div></div></div></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></h4></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizw2wPAyyvbus4NfiXsIU1u_SqCOzBfebjNSCsSIezTR1c-Kfp2BGyfI8IRcwTAv_3TsM73392793IRm0AarGQSZwi4SeerHyJPVc6j5wmlhzQIMkwV2hw1ArZ_AfJ74zmiCD3TgWPeAWT/s990/022720-4.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="895" data-original-width="990" height="361" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizw2wPAyyvbus4NfiXsIU1u_SqCOzBfebjNSCsSIezTR1c-Kfp2BGyfI8IRcwTAv_3TsM73392793IRm0AarGQSZwi4SeerHyJPVc6j5wmlhzQIMkwV2hw1ArZ_AfJ74zmiCD3TgWPeAWT/w400-h361/022720-4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Note
how nicely focused the photos are.</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">That
stacking technology built into the camera really has helped. I often also use
the camera with a small tripod so I can get right up close to the snow
crystals and also to keep the camera from shaking. Finally, I again employ the
self-timer to keep my finger off the camera while the photo is being taken.</span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikgcNr6PscdLA6uPMw3T-zp5kLb0axDuFnnJ3vbYHpFX7w2oNGk9TPyrMmNBsLHVPNe0BqalFO2dm4edsJ2x7YMSNeLvvVbdn0GoKsN2j2l6-d1IzljSY_XD24aoG0c03cC2EjXmXw2IyB/s1272/01-08-3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="1272" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikgcNr6PscdLA6uPMw3T-zp5kLb0axDuFnnJ3vbYHpFX7w2oNGk9TPyrMmNBsLHVPNe0BqalFO2dm4edsJ2x7YMSNeLvvVbdn0GoKsN2j2l6-d1IzljSY_XD24aoG0c03cC2EjXmXw2IyB/w320-h283/01-08-3.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE5uCEH7-SusaWcwsPShvc_4Tq58G3Aeudxa7fIxGvLCeYNTwiCiJBw516jMN_yYvr2vHc33HqdUBPjPyYOvHCz2Tb1cNHxof0FuUojEORYErSlOMR6HOj5bjfDeHblZtbKRZQ0b1xbiLc/s961/011621-5.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="835" data-original-width="961" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE5uCEH7-SusaWcwsPShvc_4Tq58G3Aeudxa7fIxGvLCeYNTwiCiJBw516jMN_yYvr2vHc33HqdUBPjPyYOvHCz2Tb1cNHxof0FuUojEORYErSlOMR6HOj5bjfDeHblZtbKRZQ0b1xbiLc/w320-h278/011621-5.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The really great part about taking photos with the TG-6 and the fleece background is that is really gives you a 3-D effect for the snow crystals. It allows then to stand up, rather than lying flat and gives an entirely new perspective to the crystals compared to the microscope photos. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">One of my favorite shots I have taken is the snow crystal suspended off the filaments of an artists brush as shown below. </div> <o:p></o:p><p></p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCmT73CyVNYugIaUTOnk2yzrAKTlzB5RhFSzBaWZfYDoRiTYxAb9q5vROvzNyMZX11hCbwIhzQ7B3-jAYBfVyqKAxcGl38IWGDe7eyIcmFxQL2CCPc96crGkc6iIaG8Sy43fMf8cQLhDp3/s1105/022920-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="985" data-original-width="1105" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCmT73CyVNYugIaUTOnk2yzrAKTlzB5RhFSzBaWZfYDoRiTYxAb9q5vROvzNyMZX11hCbwIhzQ7B3-jAYBfVyqKAxcGl38IWGDe7eyIcmFxQL2CCPc96crGkc6iIaG8Sy43fMf8cQLhDp3/w320-h284/022920-1.jpg" width="320" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLp0G-_TSTdnkKbu6K-4twzZSaeBqmD7UQKtqV9f5JCL6rJpb7JPf2hn9gk8UzgXrTR5IESb7O524shEK3ddaaroxm4Gw2QJA-YHmfkDG-GuNlWyGnJSWDbFULRL9pssmqL_ZlKVcUuwNx/s1022/022820-2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1022" data-original-width="883" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLp0G-_TSTdnkKbu6K-4twzZSaeBqmD7UQKtqV9f5JCL6rJpb7JPf2hn9gk8UzgXrTR5IESb7O524shEK3ddaaroxm4Gw2QJA-YHmfkDG-GuNlWyGnJSWDbFULRL9pssmqL_ZlKVcUuwNx/w247-h286/022820-2.jpg" width="247" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Another favorite is this photo taken with the TG-6. I was able to prop the crystal up and the photo looked right through it.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTLs7BgGqWzHjs0m5U5J0g5Pjjb6kGgk9b_l2TFTzuQiHZN32exTGR5ktYg0oxY_er2tnzUeC1FxgrWm9An-wLUABA_sKl7_GY4EEHOB8N80KuV8JkMAQcDKFYr1pw5RO04dSdQFGbSgp1/s1050/022820-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1020" data-original-width="1050" height="622" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTLs7BgGqWzHjs0m5U5J0g5Pjjb6kGgk9b_l2TFTzuQiHZN32exTGR5ktYg0oxY_er2tnzUeC1FxgrWm9An-wLUABA_sKl7_GY4EEHOB8N80KuV8JkMAQcDKFYr1pw5RO04dSdQFGbSgp1/w640-h622/022820-1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div>There are many other innovative ideas for taking close-up photographs like these including reversing the lens on a DSLR, and using extension tubes with those more expensive cameras. I likely will be going that route soon. This hobby can become very addictive and very enjoyable at the same time. I will leave you with an assortment of snow crystals photographed with my microscope, some of them are strange indeed. See if you can find even stranger ones next time you look closely at snow crystals !!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOaRl1jWnSMmxrc9mZuXWMZqebUY-spgiFK6ZVXU8636M3cXisjCor6Z8JyWppI5_1imbgJXUmF1au-kaRdc1iNonswLXFJSHlULVWGqM4LYt6AAhHCWouxVguX4mVDE61cXwrpzYCMcdN/s1270/CAL9.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="948" data-original-width="1270" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOaRl1jWnSMmxrc9mZuXWMZqebUY-spgiFK6ZVXU8636M3cXisjCor6Z8JyWppI5_1imbgJXUmF1au-kaRdc1iNonswLXFJSHlULVWGqM4LYt6AAhHCWouxVguX4mVDE61cXwrpzYCMcdN/w640-h478/CAL9.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWDVwZt-bOvUFkCxCqGpR_qhwGm_gLKMpZVN19j_gOI9K6AdvW_PPu9GxD_91D3EffNe3SscEEU4NiVhNHntOlccy5tifdiKMT485mT5oIq6XD8QyfA2Fe_Gi10PlUulyLdEMWh8qWebRk/s1272/CAL3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="950" data-original-width="1272" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWDVwZt-bOvUFkCxCqGpR_qhwGm_gLKMpZVN19j_gOI9K6AdvW_PPu9GxD_91D3EffNe3SscEEU4NiVhNHntOlccy5tifdiKMT485mT5oIq6XD8QyfA2Fe_Gi10PlUulyLdEMWh8qWebRk/w640-h478/CAL3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihP0JQlmUKOC95g-VV7oBgOQ3joJk7k0DYQEbpJzRkZCsOCGebSPKIDVzPceatH_iLd0Ib5bbyrWCgqYEO_1RJY155_Lz78VjF8Fo3MRwG14VISV49GrLirHhyphenhyphenQPXFSkdiH7FT77VIb1Ke/s1276/CAL6.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="952" data-original-width="1276" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihP0JQlmUKOC95g-VV7oBgOQ3joJk7k0DYQEbpJzRkZCsOCGebSPKIDVzPceatH_iLd0Ib5bbyrWCgqYEO_1RJY155_Lz78VjF8Fo3MRwG14VISV49GrLirHhyphenhyphenQPXFSkdiH7FT77VIb1Ke/w640-h478/CAL6.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgllN1sadtgZeizL3ipCM17ey5ZwUgrd18KAUmQ1rQNEP38owZ1jhbQzCHdoxCBLtahxzHxUq6jTJ9EW_VzrWH4wnB04hinaQQy-VXYiPNPXohJ90aPK-ctSxrUf2qZJ-UjH4XLG2SLEmyb/s1274/CAL4.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="952" data-original-width="1274" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgllN1sadtgZeizL3ipCM17ey5ZwUgrd18KAUmQ1rQNEP38owZ1jhbQzCHdoxCBLtahxzHxUq6jTJ9EW_VzrWH4wnB04hinaQQy-VXYiPNPXohJ90aPK-ctSxrUf2qZJ-UjH4XLG2SLEmyb/w640-h478/CAL4.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div>The Weather Around Ushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982190953093465944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500935395405905691.post-82794154397383547852021-01-19T17:48:00.013-05:002021-02-04T18:14:33.031-05:00The Rime Is Sublime - Nature's Artwork Revealed<meta content="summary_large_image" name="twitter:card"></meta>
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<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: center;"> </p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhleR8d_G4PmOzmz0xXz8LG0FqYbXdlDmTdCSITXovdiBWkrTlhNtC7Po0yfSsiNjNMPVL1MSv1EkOjXaJ7uFnnJ5UongBrvcHMOPSDWhoweCSI4Eh6g4Sf4EpeN3DbOgnZ0pxLreyikkJp/s1413/Roan+Mountain+Rime+Landscape.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="939" data-original-width="1413" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhleR8d_G4PmOzmz0xXz8LG0FqYbXdlDmTdCSITXovdiBWkrTlhNtC7Po0yfSsiNjNMPVL1MSv1EkOjXaJ7uFnnJ5UongBrvcHMOPSDWhoweCSI4Eh6g4Sf4EpeN3DbOgnZ0pxLreyikkJp/w640-h426/Roan+Mountain+Rime+Landscape.jpg" width="640" /></a></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>A look across the Roan Massif from Round Bald, looking out to Little and Big Hump mountains reveals the beauty of the snow and rime ice adorning the landscape. </i></div></div></blockquote><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal">Wintertime is a magical season in the mountains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In addition to a lot of snowfall, there are
all sorts of other atmospheric processes that maximize their effects when you
deal with elevation. One of my favorites is rime ice. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Rime ice forms when super-cooled water droplets freeze upon
contact with surfaces below 32 degrees. It may sound like science fiction, but
tiny water droplets, like you see in fog near the ground or up in the clouds,
will actually remain in their liquid state when the temperature is several
degrees below the freezing mark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also
known as freezing fog, these droplets float along on their merry way in that
sub-freezing air until they contact an object, whereupon they immediately freeze
to it. </p><p class="MsoNormal">If it’s a roadway that has not been treated with salt, especially a bridge
or elevated highway, freezing fog can create very dangerous, icy conditions. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> On an aircraft that flies through a cloud of super-cooled water droplets, rime ice can quickly build up on the wings and potentially weigh down and change its aerodynamics. In fact, rime icing on aircraft has been responsible for some catastrophic accidents. However, i</span>f you are on a walk where rime ice has occurred, whether it’s on a twig or tree or building, you may get to see some
amazing sculptures. On a recent hike, I was treated to just that.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In calm or weak wind conditions, the process of riming will
produce icy spikes as drops accumulate on objects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In stronger wind conditions, the droplets
impact the windward (direction from which the wind is coming) side of the objects and continue to build into awesome billowy, aerodynamic shapes and designs as shown below. The "whitish" appearance to the formation is due to tiny air pockets in between the frozen droplets that help to scatter light waves so it appears white. I encourage you to click on the images below to get a look at the details, it's amazing! <br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVkWRqLXziTXMVDyHMgraLU23ry49sD4-CV6n9urIz3yfrCOFnAmvOYcp7yPQ8j4BGiKO-jwNwaBqD5FBPxvdAemtdiC7Ee93pNuv14hK01fXCrj_WW4QYA7lZH-MxLosj2g7T6z-ua1eR/s1490/rime-7.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1110" data-original-width="1490" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVkWRqLXziTXMVDyHMgraLU23ry49sD4-CV6n9urIz3yfrCOFnAmvOYcp7yPQ8j4BGiKO-jwNwaBqD5FBPxvdAemtdiC7Ee93pNuv14hK01fXCrj_WW4QYA7lZH-MxLosj2g7T6z-ua1eR/w320-h238/rime-7.jpg" width="320" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPGhX4SHJOhxeTmcPW1bebrzZKmveiSxK2gMvyeCr8bj_tD_QtvGk2WJ5ivnxlc_8TuL4Rw3yipL7ETsMn_vhhTVy-BQYsPZBGfBLtGbcJ1WdZwgEVbSywYe0HEz9iEbI7CQXX6Cegzq1c/s1500/rime-8.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="1500" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPGhX4SHJOhxeTmcPW1bebrzZKmveiSxK2gMvyeCr8bj_tD_QtvGk2WJ5ivnxlc_8TuL4Rw3yipL7ETsMn_vhhTVy-BQYsPZBGfBLtGbcJ1WdZwgEVbSywYe0HEz9iEbI7CQXX6Cegzq1c/w320-h240/rime-8.jpg" width="320" /></a><br /></div><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>These two images above are in different locations/perspectives on Round Bald atop The Roan Massif. They are proxies for wind direction, the photo on the left has winds coming from the left side of the image and the one on the right has winds coming from the right. </i></div></div></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The
photos above were from a trip I made up to Roan Mountain, on the North
Carolina-Tennessee border, a perfect place to see these formations. The Roan
Massif is one of the most beautiful and spectacular sections of the Appalachian
Trail. The Trail itself climbs through the clouds to over 6,000 feet and passes
through the largest stand of Catawba rhododendrons in the world. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">When I trekked up to the “The Balds” at <a href="http://carversgap.org/">Carvers Gap</a>, a region of treeless meadows that extend along the ridges at 5,500-6,000 ft., that morning, I was treated to beautiful works of Nature! Because of the lack of dense forests across The Balds, widely spaced trees, dormant fields and even rocks and boulders are open to the prevailing wind. When super-cooled clouds race across the ridges, they paint the vegetation and topography in a beautiful icing of white. <br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie9KO2XnGz-I27jCAgYqDPiRr0qco8ih3tx4su7XZFrv8ICfUZfG8NPRRk6PNmB73bmZQO9fVY0iP2jQA5XEmA17_np_LwZkCcLGwS32_Bgwn021p-mgbHF867uMraOiaDf0TUoK3Uni61/s1502/rime-11.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="1502" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie9KO2XnGz-I27jCAgYqDPiRr0qco8ih3tx4su7XZFrv8ICfUZfG8NPRRk6PNmB73bmZQO9fVY0iP2jQA5XEmA17_np_LwZkCcLGwS32_Bgwn021p-mgbHF867uMraOiaDf0TUoK3Uni61/w320-h240/rime-11.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiowhGx1RvR3-Dt2_gzuEXW97_4kvhY0yGPM54-r1dx19RC4wsyPPnm7H867dfgIvGbAOl0wn47LPXalt_kTLmo2aunoufGXVFGIY9iuwACZb-fiXqEOFcrpKJ1bJgWeig0NbgHHx7RYb-6/s1500/rime-12.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1135" data-original-width="1500" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiowhGx1RvR3-Dt2_gzuEXW97_4kvhY0yGPM54-r1dx19RC4wsyPPnm7H867dfgIvGbAOl0wn47LPXalt_kTLmo2aunoufGXVFGIY9iuwACZb-fiXqEOFcrpKJ1bJgWeig0NbgHHx7RYb-6/w320-h242/rime-12.jpg" width="320" /></a><br /></div></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>This lone pine tree atop Round Bald looked like a nice photo opportunity on this beautiful, sunny day. As we got up close and looked at the tremendous build-up of rime ice on a pine branch, we were in awe!</i></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The park road up to the rhododendron gardens at Carvers Gap is closed in the winter to traffic, but its a perfect place to hike and see some of the more heavily vegetated area adorned with rime ice. In contrast to the open areas, where the evidence of "wind riming" is readily apparent, in sheltered areas the riming is more uniform.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY8-qioepmuaa0KagxO5pVtnP4cX9krb3w8KHhyphenhyphenEMHZMlvbGVquziRVR9iJjBOTDz_dx_RSNd-aGv3EkKFMBp40hAb-10DtWTESDH1em7Iy_Kz6D5j4-DHf7KBTGFXUfsK-75PdnCG81i0/s1499/rime-9.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1499" data-original-width="1124" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY8-qioepmuaa0KagxO5pVtnP4cX9krb3w8KHhyphenhyphenEMHZMlvbGVquziRVR9iJjBOTDz_dx_RSNd-aGv3EkKFMBp40hAb-10DtWTESDH1em7Iy_Kz6D5j4-DHf7KBTGFXUfsK-75PdnCG81i0/w240-h320/rime-9.jpg" width="240" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo-uJBsY6H6h-96TAf2MWOLBlRuMgi4nzpS2LkXzQZZGbEFxy2UHx5VErHonAYtD-4pIR0xTR7-xYCkK1KDx3BfeCpBkJnrOJClLMutdGWlfYxZMvevIvZtMZre8Vme0-OeGFR5rXjCs22/s1499/rime-10.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1499" data-original-width="1126" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo-uJBsY6H6h-96TAf2MWOLBlRuMgi4nzpS2LkXzQZZGbEFxy2UHx5VErHonAYtD-4pIR0xTR7-xYCkK1KDx3BfeCpBkJnrOJClLMutdGWlfYxZMvevIvZtMZre8Vme0-OeGFR5rXjCs22/w240-h320/rime-10.jpg" width="240" /></a><br /></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Even after a few days, a walk up the park road unveiled some beautiful formations of rime ice, still stuck to the sheltered trees. </i></div></div></div></blockquote><p>Every season brings a new palette for Mother Nature to work her miracles. Winter can be especially fascinating, in some cases "other-worldly". From beautifully crafted snow crystals, to the rime ice we have gotten to know in this blog, winter is a great time to see what is out there. With a little effort, you too can uncover these beautiful aspects of the world we live in!</p><p> </p><p></p><p></p>The Weather Around Ushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982190953093465944noreply@blogger.com1Roan Mountain, TN 37687, USA36.1962305 -82.07039997.8859966638211532 -117.2266499 64.506464336178851 -46.9141499tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500935395405905691.post-91009552622508375242021-01-12T11:06:00.006-05:002021-02-01T13:19:59.865-05:00Mother Nature's Snow Crystal Workshop<head> <script async="" data-ad-client="pub-3474636928976293" src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/
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<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"> </p></blockquote><h1 style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Mother Nature’s Snow Crystal Workshop</span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0_QhacQY5XJje5S0dBhQ6pC9EGqvmb5YIhtUqE-pzgNQPf6JnZjA9hgjjczTd_WhfPacaYYHFOkLlscEA_nJY7UgMDrKu0oxoAI5PkfRv9j1zWM-FmbYAFO9qEyD1P3YIryyreJiwkJ_s/s1272/GOBLET1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="874" data-original-width="1272" height="440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0_QhacQY5XJje5S0dBhQ6pC9EGqvmb5YIhtUqE-pzgNQPf6JnZjA9hgjjczTd_WhfPacaYYHFOkLlscEA_nJY7UgMDrKu0oxoAI5PkfRv9j1zWM-FmbYAFO9qEyD1P3YIryyreJiwkJ_s/w640-h440/GOBLET1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Snowflakes have to be one of the most interesting gifts of nature. Whether you watch them fall from the sky from inside your home or get out to enjoy all of the activites that fresh snowfall has to offer, snow is one of those "other-wordly" parts of our daily lives for those who live in "snow country". When you take the time to look closely, I mean really close to a snowflake, or more accurartely a snow crystal, what you will uncover is a whole new world of wonder. I want to share some of the photographs I have taken of snow crystals over the past few years because they are just so beautiful.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Snowflakes have been around of course long before the dawn of man. I can imagine our early ancestors getting a close look at those flakes and wondering how in the world they were formed. According to <a href="http://snowcrystals.com">Kenneth Libbrecht's Snow Crystal Web Site</a> snowflakes first appeared in recorded history when individual snow crystals were identified and described as having that unique 6-sided symmetry. Way back in 135 B.C., the Chinese scholar Han Yin wrote “Flowers of plants and trees are generally five-pointed, but those of snow, which are called ying, are always six-pointed.” Much later, in the 17th century, Renee Decartes gave detailed, naked-eye accounts of snow crystals but it was Johannes Kepler who provided the first scientific theories on snow crystal formation. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibOz5jRyf0ItrBxUCVdmEF-4fVTb1s3gLsTvh0-DhMLaX05uYpDXog-jNHMWbGvNIPk_32jnyGuyQPM3Dnc2nuMblntzyhp4p6qwDPgCSGr02LjLSpGJJcxaGa43fxAOpa4WuJ9bmsbnwR/s394/Kepler.jpg"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibOz5jRyf0ItrBxUCVdmEF-4fVTb1s3gLsTvh0-DhMLaX05uYpDXog-jNHMWbGvNIPk_32jnyGuyQPM3Dnc2nuMblntzyhp4p6qwDPgCSGr02LjLSpGJJcxaGa43fxAOpa4WuJ9bmsbnwR/s320/Kepler.jpg" /></a><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Johannes Kepler gave this gift, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Six-Cornered-Snowflake-Johannes-Kepler/dp/1589880536">The Six-Cornered Snowflake</a>, to the H</i><i>oly Roman Emperor Rudolf II for New Years' back in 1611. </i></div></div></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">As you will see below, in the 1930s Uchikiro Nakaya, a brilliant researcher, developed a classification method for snow cyrstals based on the temperature and humidity profile in the atmosphere. By the way, my snow crystal "hero" is Wilson Bentley, who lived in Jericho Vermont in the 19th century and as an amateur scientist compilied one of the most thorough snow crystal photo catalogues out there. I will write about him and my experience working with his original photo plates and logbooks in a later blog entry, but I digress. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcvfxILVFif2OjItRx1a-vhftA08w3JObR-6U8aTCccMrLRJvS_0h6r_lox_uIrgI4hyphenhyphenrrUoB1m-5WbMQ7LaQT709bJmqr8WwaRGiqXMtEYZbHylu8FQPfkGWsAUP6oA5pNWNA3JVfTMe5/s1170/2020-4.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="1170" height="385" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcvfxILVFif2OjItRx1a-vhftA08w3JObR-6U8aTCccMrLRJvS_0h6r_lox_uIrgI4hyphenhyphenrrUoB1m-5WbMQ7LaQT709bJmqr8WwaRGiqXMtEYZbHylu8FQPfkGWsAUP6oA5pNWNA3JVfTMe5/w400-h385/2020-4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>Stellar dendrite snow crystal, photographed on a piece of black fleece with an Olympus TG-6 camera. This is a great camera for macro-photography, with "stacking" software built in. Focus stacking is a digital image processing technique which combines multiple images taken at different focus distances to give a resulting image with a greater depth of field than any of the individual source images.</i></div></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />That stellar dendrite crystal above is one of my favorite specimens I photographed in the Tennessee Appalachians in February, 2020.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> The term snow </span>“crystal” is a more accurate
way to describe individual snowflakes. The snow crystals may not be any larger than 2 to 3 millimeters in size. In fact, those big fluffy snow flakes that you may be familiar with are often made up of hundreds of individual branched snow crystals that lock together to make flakes like this quarter-sized beheamoth that crashed onto my deck one winter day.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqBfkTLPagx-SY2n9dfyeUEREuICojSavK4AKuJyRryoh2zxgl9duTYfVssVdOiJDVzwkY3qyrw4-TRE1L1XsVv4yUf3sSFBxrOO90QNurpt93SHuQdRimfhiS8t7OQ7YzzCu7k9d_jypm/s825/measurement-3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqBfkTLPagx-SY2n9dfyeUEREuICojSavK4AKuJyRryoh2zxgl9duTYfVssVdOiJDVzwkY3qyrw4-TRE1L1XsVv4yUf3sSFBxrOO90QNurpt93SHuQdRimfhiS8t7OQ7YzzCu7k9d_jypm/s825/measurement-3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGwIT-cSu8RJsDeBbJ4WaDfIT8ivXQFjJK_yIFFv9DIgRv4L0ycEkkAeyLDabTxljQCB9uJXZ7YIPC-IHvlrGgFFzS7nlgGKHiQV95Hop-CG99myV6v_47ZWTvyEbNRX19lnq5yFcjoIZs/s825/measurement-3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="825" data-original-width="767" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGwIT-cSu8RJsDeBbJ4WaDfIT8ivXQFjJK_yIFFv9DIgRv4L0ycEkkAeyLDabTxljQCB9uJXZ7YIPC-IHvlrGgFFzS7nlgGKHiQV95Hop-CG99myV6v_47ZWTvyEbNRX19lnq5yFcjoIZs/w228-h246/measurement-3.jpg" width="228" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_dUFQNTIPwlfnNGQUKg4mL1lKdcpdTcn3a6zqlNT_8mz60cp15kaKLuiyVu0-Y-Iiku3u6H9vaKmUPmst9XPXMNw558a-0QgulPG05zRcuql5paLTVHet8PADMKxhmL5inj0qsjLmwIlS/s814/conglomerate.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="814" data-original-width="799" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_dUFQNTIPwlfnNGQUKg4mL1lKdcpdTcn3a6zqlNT_8mz60cp15kaKLuiyVu0-Y-Iiku3u6H9vaKmUPmst9XPXMNw558a-0QgulPG05zRcuql5paLTVHet8PADMKxhmL5inj0qsjLmwIlS/w241-h245/conglomerate.jpg" width="241" /></a></div></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;">Take a close look at the snow crystals below and see how they are that specific geometric shape, 6-sided, or hexagonal. That's not a coincidence. All snow crystals are based on the hexagonal shape. This isn’t magic either, although I would say that the way in which nature makes these beautiful, natural sculptures is in some ways so much better than plain old magic. </div></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-xWxNiOgyrKMay65HbQJCOiPO58opzYmgOOXgKvcOwX3ErOqyrMN9GiH1dZVyIT9gEecJ1cbtiywq8MF7ueK7FQNm5S9Lyt3kHprE5xyb4flpPxjZT0yiU9bGboCHHfqTY0DY0tyu7iDS/s790/plate-1.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="790" data-original-width="766" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-xWxNiOgyrKMay65HbQJCOiPO58opzYmgOOXgKvcOwX3ErOqyrMN9GiH1dZVyIT9gEecJ1cbtiywq8MF7ueK7FQNm5S9Lyt3kHprE5xyb4flpPxjZT0yiU9bGboCHHfqTY0DY0tyu7iDS/w310-h320/plate-1.jpg" width="310" /></a><img border="0" data-original-height="478" data-original-width="461" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPv_RBOM8bSj1QKw46FmJV3Mf80Dat56Zl4ylITU3mqOr4yi1qEG_jjcBP80d9Md-8NMw3H2MpPgZQH-oLJJDkge0imdfV_eTiIiwzLxHd7L1f6634RTah9liEYbsraJex_RSeRNa2brLG/w310-h320/21730789_1644833828922574_2469495129405299505_n.jpg" style="text-align: left;" width="310" /></div></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>Hexagonal plate (left) and embryo (right) photographed under a microscope, backlit by a LED flashlights with color filters (pieces of plastic page protectors) attached. Notice the 6-sided theme in every single crystal. </i></p></blockquote><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">How Do They Form</span></h4><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">It all starts with water, a really neat substance of
nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> A</span>s you know, water is a molecule made up of
2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen atoms (H<sub>2</sub>O).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In its solid state, these water molecules lock together into the 6-sided
shape we all know and love as shown in this beautiful animation below. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">In this blog I am not going to get into all of the physics and chemistry associated with the complete processes that produce a snow crystal, but I will touch on some of the basic concepts. </span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-SL4def7WcIh4Kp_8y2NtJBO9fAb6MQid4X-8GTXgkRXUb_yJrjfssnauvlrgOYeI86Qr-ybbnUpZRyzFXUCdqi_huGHuCMjoqBtKMbhV8rRcCRvUakVvd9pTjKhLz2UX3m8YUwrhF5BM/s275/Animation2+%25281%2529.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="239" data-original-width="275" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-SL4def7WcIh4Kp_8y2NtJBO9fAb6MQid4X-8GTXgkRXUb_yJrjfssnauvlrgOYeI86Qr-ybbnUpZRyzFXUCdqi_huGHuCMjoqBtKMbhV8rRcCRvUakVvd9pTjKhLz2UX3m8YUwrhF5BM/w286-h248/Animation2+%25281%2529.gif" width="286" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(courtesy Kenneth Liebreccht, <i><a href="http://snowcrystals.com">snowcrystals.com</a></i>)</td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">You may all be familiar with the traditional snow crystal, that 6-armed Christmas ornament or piece of jewelry like the image below. In reality however there are many, many different types of snow crystals and it wasn't until I started photographing them that I really began to unlock the true miracle of this atmospheric factory that produces so many varieties. There are dendrites, plates, columns, capped-columns, prisms, needles, and other even more exotic designs. </p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSd_r_NkrAe7utZqib2hSXMZo0WLn_J4-ETcOfXUvOJgTG0MBghoslSwXl34dDvTFWDSQeg4UGxmv8ubE4yXYllbhkUm4IxQhxHnsOKZplnGMVR1ByV3JKL25ogCwQSxtAKgjsp9e5NTe_/s1002/snow+flake-1-twc.jpg"><img border="0" data-original-height="947" data-original-width="1002" height="378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSd_r_NkrAe7utZqib2hSXMZo0WLn_J4-ETcOfXUvOJgTG0MBghoslSwXl34dDvTFWDSQeg4UGxmv8ubE4yXYllbhkUm4IxQhxHnsOKZplnGMVR1ByV3JKL25ogCwQSxtAKgjsp9e5NTe_/w400-h378/snow+flake-1-twc.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Traditional 6-sided spatial dendrite that most people are familiar with when you mention the term snowflake. Note the amazing hexagonal symmetry that is maintained in so many designs as you move out from the center, or nucleus, of the crystal.</i></div></div></blockquote><br />Snow crystals begin with a simple hexagonal prism having two basal facets, or sides, and six prism facets. Depending on a host of conditions withint the cloud, the crystal will either grow from the basil facet or the prism facet. If the ice nuclei grow outward in the hexagonal prism, you end up with a flat plate or dendrite crystal. Evetually, legs of the crystal then grow outward from one of the six points in the hexagonal plate, which “stick out” into the moist air just a bit more than the sides. If the crystal grows upward from the prism face, you get a hexagonal column as the crystal grows in a vertical manner as shown below.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0UCfuHEYKhmY6xwwaWnKNqvGA7B5q2up4cJ1hWuD3VceD_wjJlaZ0J8SDgEIN2V_PUctW3vRjnaBKWgAsdDP5jZTa-yXATVyMutw81mUqDIjR6Atiq-_rxu04wYDtSp0dPfcH3u7BnlSB/s848/Prisms.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="565" data-original-width="848" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0UCfuHEYKhmY6xwwaWnKNqvGA7B5q2up4cJ1hWuD3VceD_wjJlaZ0J8SDgEIN2V_PUctW3vRjnaBKWgAsdDP5jZTa-yXATVyMutw81mUqDIjR6Atiq-_rxu04wYDtSp0dPfcH3u7BnlSB/w400-h266/Prisms.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">Ukichiro Nakaya was one of the first scientists to develop a system for snow crystal formation. As a result of his research work back in the 1930s, he developed the Nakaya Diagram, which described the relationships between the humidity and temperature in the clouds and the type of snow crystal that forms. Although the physics behind snow crystal formation is exceptionally complicated, the basic ideas are shown in his chart below. What is so fascinating about the snow crystal is that its shape and design are a direct result of the atmospheric temperature and humidity profile it falls through on its way to earth. Nakaya so eloquently described the snow crystal as "A Letter From The Sky" because you could "read" the meteorological information "written" on the snow crystal. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfovzdun79DGWi4Jp3iVGFwTrAFtjClchJQyrFFD964jKsBgjIqV5dRtK1C_BQYlgt5VBpt5R7nl4FrpfVz9jWHM55W7_-Lw2UvWXuWUlWt8xJNCvwJiEQkjkqU2LvZ9_pJvac0WO9pYJz/s2048/SnowflakeMorphology2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1563" data-original-width="2048" height="381" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfovzdun79DGWi4Jp3iVGFwTrAFtjClchJQyrFFD964jKsBgjIqV5dRtK1C_BQYlgt5VBpt5R7nl4FrpfVz9jWHM55W7_-Lw2UvWXuWUlWt8xJNCvwJiEQkjkqU2LvZ9_pJvac0WO9pYJz/w500-h381/SnowflakeMorphology2.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><h4 style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Observing These Sculptures of Nature</span></h4><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div>Living in Buffalo, NY I didn't have to look far for snow. Even as a kid catching snow crystals on my tongue, they intrigued me. I really discovered their intricate beauty with the help of my Black Labrador Retriever, Smoky. I remember looking at snow crystals falling onto his fur one snowy day. His fur was fully insulated from his body warmth so the snow crystals did not melt. That black fur served as the perfect background to look closely at the snow crystals and what I saw opened a whole new world for me. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKT8PQvlPjS2Qlr8JlNHizndXvEvEdDmNVhXeHjLuZ1FO6CeXn5hvuaaeOA6Bf_XiHAUrmWs_zkNGeOzu0hUqVJif3lFiL8BLR7xbnk_6Pl0Lr3TPrHUvDKeA_48xUAkI2PIL6MNAUhlvr/s1230/fleece-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1230" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKT8PQvlPjS2Qlr8JlNHizndXvEvEdDmNVhXeHjLuZ1FO6CeXn5hvuaaeOA6Bf_XiHAUrmWs_zkNGeOzu0hUqVJif3lFiL8BLR7xbnk_6Pl0Lr3TPrHUvDKeA_48xUAkI2PIL6MNAUhlvr/w400-h220/fleece-1.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Snow crystals on a fleece jacket. This photo was taken with a plain old iPhone 5, in a future bolg I will show you how to get started photographing your own snow crystals.</i></div></div></blockquote></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Through my research work, I eventually obtained an old microscope, and with my little Canon G6 Point&Shoot camera and a couple dollars of plumbing parts to attach the camera to the eyepiece on the scope, I began to see what so many other scientists have discovered. With lots of experimentation I started finding success in documenting these amazing shapes. In anticipation of a snow event, I couldn't contain my excitement when I started capturing the specimens and putting the glass slides under the microscope. More recently, with the improvement in macro-photography cameras like the Olympus TG-6, I was able to capture my photographs without the use of the microscope. In this section of my snow crystal blog, I will share some of those images below. Just click on each one to get an enlarged view and take the time to look at the details, its hard to believe they come naturally form the sky!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhme_iH3v9QwaOvk2NwnUOGg_TE31VJKoXNbCpT4rxYCjL0NHR5x3hWWYhM2NbpnWJkrESUOJ4Pi2uPasPH48dVrnDBqPSX3jYZ3sTxNylspUcgnhVMB1rrQ8kQHf-xSgnRwoilKn7Vt-Zx/s661/1479237_598180126921288_1122814215_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="661" data-original-width="622" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhme_iH3v9QwaOvk2NwnUOGg_TE31VJKoXNbCpT4rxYCjL0NHR5x3hWWYhM2NbpnWJkrESUOJ4Pi2uPasPH48dVrnDBqPSX3jYZ3sTxNylspUcgnhVMB1rrQ8kQHf-xSgnRwoilKn7Vt-Zx/w189-h200/1479237_598180126921288_1122814215_n.jpg" width="189" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNV6t_c2RPiqACYzkrWjlqhAPOaasT70ZFNALSe4frys07FxKp9eG-fjqzkzZ5xc-6OTnDnoYygnYY4nztC-8lDqnaMkb-E0oEY47eSKgVkGkvphlhPr4tUcjOE1LlNN9Q_I1ouzZmYpAi/s588/22730528_1692936647445625_5478596637048869893_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="588" data-original-width="587" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNV6t_c2RPiqACYzkrWjlqhAPOaasT70ZFNALSe4frys07FxKp9eG-fjqzkzZ5xc-6OTnDnoYygnYY4nztC-8lDqnaMkb-E0oEY47eSKgVkGkvphlhPr4tUcjOE1LlNN9Q_I1ouzZmYpAi/w199-h200/22730528_1692936647445625_5478596637048869893_n.jpg" width="199" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM0v2ohFVMbgBbz0_P7JTWOki6iBTC6AW48J7UFwV6LL7fqVOTOFrx8Ix68fVMl2bU9WZJJ0N0XgQTZBrJWJFr0qb8KFwTR_gvbAC4jHhqdDTqaCuArpdOQrLdHaULUnzyQ3EVG3q5WzAg/s592/71601601_3041009752638301_949545431522607104_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="586" data-original-width="592" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM0v2ohFVMbgBbz0_P7JTWOki6iBTC6AW48J7UFwV6LL7fqVOTOFrx8Ix68fVMl2bU9WZJJ0N0XgQTZBrJWJFr0qb8KFwTR_gvbAC4jHhqdDTqaCuArpdOQrLdHaULUnzyQ3EVG3q5WzAg/w200-h198/71601601_3041009752638301_949545431522607104_n.jpg" width="200" /></a> <br /></div></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>These crystal photographs are taken with the old microscope and Canon G-6 camera. They are post-processed to put them on nice backgrounds. The details that you can see in each crystal are truly amazing!</i></div></blockquote></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYG2b3c-iDdcC_mUAHlSAikUOFczohNjn-b_nxvkCBtlGFvcA0JXkV1xNkUKkDNOHR1p5Edy3JTwkJelcJ6IVERXezZMMi1YOmLo_lzs4ZkdUyv9RNDkURCe2UZ_NMxtlRmh4khi9pWG5t/s1125/022820-2a.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="988" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYG2b3c-iDdcC_mUAHlSAikUOFczohNjn-b_nxvkCBtlGFvcA0JXkV1xNkUKkDNOHR1p5Edy3JTwkJelcJ6IVERXezZMMi1YOmLo_lzs4ZkdUyv9RNDkURCe2UZ_NMxtlRmh4khi9pWG5t/w167-h190/022820-2a.jpg" width="167" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3iyLI6nVin5VjUDtRmNkvZDwABb2zWWIyStLJ1A1eVmXBYCgHplty4XodKp9x3K7MiSNyG3QzhYpbpiG5op6KfCatoZPpS0_38HH3M5cj9oHRXlEhmmjRLNXgAfjkczjnlPEjmgBvr7Sx/s1101/022820-4.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="987" data-original-width="1101" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3iyLI6nVin5VjUDtRmNkvZDwABb2zWWIyStLJ1A1eVmXBYCgHplty4XodKp9x3K7MiSNyG3QzhYpbpiG5op6KfCatoZPpS0_38HH3M5cj9oHRXlEhmmjRLNXgAfjkczjnlPEjmgBvr7Sx/w211-h189/022820-4.jpg" width="211" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg17bT-LlrI_kT8k4UiAOCsmWKAm-idErTey8F8k8kEU1qqrlmLBDzWlA9WRQQdw7SCShqldTJbvjjml8eJ6UB2FaCLrAKFVhNr7G1w6eyRQBkKyW-p7LOFSRnKcczn0H7Vd79H0gKNDoe-/s1105/022920-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="985" data-original-width="1105" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg17bT-LlrI_kT8k4UiAOCsmWKAm-idErTey8F8k8kEU1qqrlmLBDzWlA9WRQQdw7SCShqldTJbvjjml8eJ6UB2FaCLrAKFVhNr7G1w6eyRQBkKyW-p7LOFSRnKcczn0H7Vd79H0gKNDoe-/w213-h190/022920-1.jpg" width="213" /></a><br /></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>Spatial dendrite photos taken directly with my Olympus TG-6 camera. With this camera, you can get a much better look at the crystals in 3-D. The crystal on the left is attached to the hairs of an artist's paint brush. The threads in the background of the other images are the black fleece that I use to collect my specimens. </i></div></blockquote></blockquote><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBcBEPuBRibJ-5O1l_oRCca0KCtm_lsMGgZjMexPu1I3RT-qbWyGCmOTwqREhR9OvzS4ilDthIStZypferk2rDeD_7k8lRz61Uz1aZdqJm63gWe7XC-ntfM8tGJDm1Nh1jRJ1fSsdTVvGr/s738/Dendrite-13.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="722" data-original-width="738" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBcBEPuBRibJ-5O1l_oRCca0KCtm_lsMGgZjMexPu1I3RT-qbWyGCmOTwqREhR9OvzS4ilDthIStZypferk2rDeD_7k8lRz61Uz1aZdqJm63gWe7XC-ntfM8tGJDm1Nh1jRJ1fSsdTVvGr/w200-h196/Dendrite-13.jpg" width="200" /></span><span style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> </span><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="729" data-original-width="803" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqu30xxxQix5X_-zMCMho3o-1_9cylDz_NIp8ZaB-at8gJPctTpBRb-ye0TAOg-wexZFqz5O3XzNytJcr4cR9Bj3s4BHsQ77EuaDk-CiCMJ0ULEsdm6ebasSviStn2NaXS9oCoDqoioGCK/w212-h193/120510_1.jpg" width="212" /></span><span style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> </span><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="1180" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimyx6Xgc4f4k5jyakbbnA3nMnA9h9Teuqc38hlwB0CxpUoc69Nz2VCPxvLx0DXkk1A7NsYRL__5bJQ7DAuCY3JxeQcAgeTswVrw16f_Cl73kQnM1RXJ7-hHC4DxmNlphYTdC2F4QwEJh4W/w200-h191/030620-1.jpg" width="200" /></span><br /></a></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><i>These snow crystals all have a few things in common. Each one of them is covered with all of those little frozen droplets. In one of my next blog entries I talk about how this process works. Stay tuned... </i></div></div></blockquote><p>I plan to author a few more blog entries on snow crystals soon. They will include all of my instructions on how to get started photographing snow crystals, a nod to my snow crystal hero, Wilson Bentley, whom I consider the "Father of Snow Crystal Photography", and finally and extensive gallery of some of the hundreds of snow crystals I have photographed, and there are a few that are really "other-worldly. Stay tuned for that and much more!!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"> </p>The Weather Around Ushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982190953093465944noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500935395405905691.post-52449532446365139592020-12-30T18:35:00.012-05:002021-02-01T13:20:30.303-05:00Temperature Sinks - Antero Reservoir, Colorado Hits -50°F <head> <script async="" data-ad-client="pub-3474636928976293" src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/
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<p class="MsoNormal">On the evening of December 29- 30, 2020, Antero Reservoir, deep in the Colorado Rockies, recorded a low temperature of -50°F,
the lowest temperature in the U.S. so far this winter. In fact, it was the coldest temperature in
the U.S. since February of 2019! How in the world can the temperature get so cold? In this blog entry I hope to share the conditions that led up to this frigid night, and also highlight some other locations across he U.S. and worldwide where specific topography and weather conditions can produce wild temperature extremes like this one. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I love to look around the US each day and see where the
coldest weather occurred.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I regularly check
the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>National Weather Service link for
the <a name="_Hlk29642771">“</a><a href="https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/discussions/hpcdiscussions.php?disc=nathilo&version=0&fmt=reg"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk29642771;">National Daily High and Low Temperature</span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk29642771;">” </span>reported across the US.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I have found so interesting is that the
same locations tend to show up from time to time and the minimum temperatures
amaze me!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the way, they are not
always International Falls MN, the reputed “icebox” of the nation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, here’s a question for you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What do Antero Reservoir, Canaan Valley WV,
“The Barrens” outside State College PA and Peter Sinks, UT have in common?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, they all are what are referred to as “temperature
sinks” and they get darn cold compared to locations in close proximity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">What Is A Temperature Sink</span></h4><p class="MsoNormal">A temperature sink, as the name implies, is a location in a natural
sink, sinkhole or bowl, typically found in the mountains, surrounded by higher ridges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without an outlet down a mountain valley,
cold air does not drain from these “sinks” and they can continue to get colder
and colder as the night progresses. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Antero Reservoir is a classic temperature sink. Its topography, along with some fascinating properties of cold air, and select meteorological conditions, led up to this frigid temperature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As you may know, cold
air is more dense than warm air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the
sun begins to set on a clear, calm, dry night, the ground begins to radiate its
heat into the atmosphere and the temperature right near the surface cools. As
the air temperature drops, the cold, dense air acts like molasses, sliding down
mountain sides and pooling in the low-lying areas between slopes as shown below.
You can even feel this effect locally if you live in an area where there are
dips in a road or depression along a trail you might be walking along. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the sun sets, that colder air will pool in
those areas and as you walk down the slope you will feel like you may have even
walked into a fridge or freezer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-hTLmL8PtZAS8_3X7VQtWJlQqlC_D-qb9mCrgA0cueF45q2EBWAAieSJ6MDhOdEfnVZLmd4DgYAYjM9HMhSjdMN5JIii6OMjoTFILYhFIxDuVlZFdmCpns0g6S4VurrmVwux-PViM7V6h/s1956/Cold+Air+Flow.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="842" data-original-width="1956" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-hTLmL8PtZAS8_3X7VQtWJlQqlC_D-qb9mCrgA0cueF45q2EBWAAieSJ6MDhOdEfnVZLmd4DgYAYjM9HMhSjdMN5JIii6OMjoTFILYhFIxDuVlZFdmCpns0g6S4VurrmVwux-PViM7V6h/w640-h276/Cold+Air+Flow.jpg" width="640" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoCaption"><i>Simple schematic showing what happens around
sunset on a clear, calm night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the
ground begins to radiate heat into the atmosphere, the air temperature cools
and the colder, more dense air slides down the mountain slopes into the valley
below.<br /><br /></i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">From a meteorological standpoint, the downslope movement of
air that occurs in an otherwise calm evening with no breeze is known as a katabatic
wind, or drainage wind and it leads to<b> </b>cold air pooling<b> </b>within
mountain valleys. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the cold air pools
in the valleys, the local atmosphere develops a temperature inversion, where
the coldest temperatures are at the surface and there are warmer temperatures
aloft. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<h4 style="text-align: left;"><o:p> <span style="font-size: x-large;">Antero Reservoir and Perfect Frigid Weather Conditions</span></o:p></h4><div><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></o:p></div><div><o:p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibT51aHuuBDVJ80y8G82kiEcAe0I_rhcxt5vKQ0-dnrDgYeePG75nPL6_ZaMwI9n7D0ErME4YHdFqzRfpk0BHl1C93UY7iwNbhRxchLtitAFVErJSDWRL8eeRHxWdq1yvqJjc3Ieyra_ai/s970/Antero-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="619" data-original-width="970" height="408" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibT51aHuuBDVJ80y8G82kiEcAe0I_rhcxt5vKQ0-dnrDgYeePG75nPL6_ZaMwI9n7D0ErME4YHdFqzRfpk0BHl1C93UY7iwNbhRxchLtitAFVErJSDWRL8eeRHxWdq1yvqJjc3Ieyra_ai/w640-h408/Antero-1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>Cross-section of Antero Reservoir in the Colorado Rockies shows the bowl that it is located in with mountain ridges surrounding it in all directions. <br /><br /></i></div><br />That’s exactly what happened at Antero Reservoir on the
night of December 29<sup>th</sup>-30<sup>th</sup>, 2020. The entire region was under a fair-weather High
Pressure system accompanied by clear skies and calm winds. In addition, this region had a deep, fresh
snowpack in place. On a calm, clear night, fresh snow-covered surfaces cool
much more quickly than a bare surface at the same temperature. Snow “radiates”
heat very efficiently, and that increases the rate of heat loss at the surface.
Snow is also a great insulator and that prevents heat from rising through the
snowpack, allowing the surface to cool quickly. In contrast, bare soil conducts
much more heat upward from below, which helps slow down cooling at the surface.</o:p></div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRPYKI6Hwxzkqb81S560oq36xUaqfg3QzJCgajTaSoVDFcOCmtNUaa06MOdmc8JOHQ_Nk7p6skdL_6nsSyN-XSyAhCprgIU74EbT7eBe0NSnmGLhAuXEDhi_-Fo4JM2Fz5uPL9oVjHu83T/s800/CGPsf.fronts.20201230.12.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRPYKI6Hwxzkqb81S560oq36xUaqfg3QzJCgajTaSoVDFcOCmtNUaa06MOdmc8JOHQ_Nk7p6skdL_6nsSyN-XSyAhCprgIU74EbT7eBe0NSnmGLhAuXEDhi_-Fo4JM2Fz5uPL9oVjHu83T/w640-h480/CGPsf.fronts.20201230.12.gif" width="640" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><i>High Pressure was strecthed across the Colorado Rockies and wind conditions were calm in the area around Antero Reservoir.<br /><br /></i></div></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaJlpwZgFn932PzafpI8wq4CJBlKbYilRlj2SeKz3oX8REHMGyEZiW82ybodz2AyMY6z9wQIhpJf7oka7S6VVUp2D-kTZkNbmiMInfJmFA8zsuDVqUCfL9DtxhmXeOAMWPWSrbXP3cmLzh/s1600/Antero+Reservoir+Satellite.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaJlpwZgFn932PzafpI8wq4CJBlKbYilRlj2SeKz3oX8REHMGyEZiW82ybodz2AyMY6z9wQIhpJf7oka7S6VVUp2D-kTZkNbmiMInfJmFA8zsuDVqUCfL9DtxhmXeOAMWPWSrbXP3cmLzh/w640-h360/Antero+Reservoir+Satellite.gif" width="640" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><i>This satellite animation taken during the following daytime on December 30, 2020 shows the fresh snowcover across Colorado and the clear skies. Along with the calm winds, the atmopshere set up for a perfect night to chill down to extremes. <br /><br /></i></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><br /></i>As a result of all of these factors coming together, cold
air then pooled down at the base of the bowl in which Antero Reservoir is
located and the temperature plummeted to the reading of -50°F.</div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Other Locations That Are Temperature Sinks</span></h4><p class="MsoNormal">As I noted above, this is not the only location in the U.S.
where there are weather instruments available to monitor these extremes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the most famous is Peter Sinks, Utah.
According to the <a href="https://climate.usu.edu/PeterSinks/index.php">Utah
Climate Center</a> “On Feb. 1, 1985, the temperature at Peter Sinks location
plummeted to -69.3°F, the second coldest ever recorded in the lower 48 states.
The lowest was -69.7°F at Roger's Pass, Montana in January 1954.” Peter Sinks has been studied a lot by the
meteorological community. In fact, there is weather equipment set up on the rim
of this sink as well as the base of the bowl, only about a 300 ft. difference
in elevation but wow can the temperature differences be extreme. <o:p></o:p>This is the essence of micro-meteorology. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3O6gUMdI6zpBKogCQHegQ-r7GAZXjoohMLcu6-2M1b_SuS93aiCd-Fl_XO-r0P7UNp7dr6MF9zBgQR21nT9n5V26VI2n_cgl-rUR7WeP-NE_PcBl6nS0tKoGNxy9GD8H8XIpTVQOIR7GD/s1764/psinks-2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1071" data-original-width="1764" height="388" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3O6gUMdI6zpBKogCQHegQ-r7GAZXjoohMLcu6-2M1b_SuS93aiCd-Fl_XO-r0P7UNp7dr6MF9zBgQR21nT9n5V26VI2n_cgl-rUR7WeP-NE_PcBl6nS0tKoGNxy9GD8H8XIpTVQOIR7GD/w640-h388/psinks-2.jpg" width="640" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoCaption"><i>Comparison of daily minimum temperature at the
base and rim of Peter Sinks, Utah on several consecutive nights from December 25th through 30th, 2020.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rim of this 1km.
wide sinkhole in the Wasatch Mts of northeastern Utah is less than 300 ft.
above the base, but temperature differences at night can be 50<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">°</span>F
or more. <br /><br /></i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The conditions that were so favorable for Antero Reservoir
on the evening of December 29-30 were similar the
night before in Utah. Check out the temperature profile I plotted from
December 25 through December 30. Notice on the might
of December 29, the temperature at the base of the bowl, or sink,
dropped to -38<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">°</span>F, while less than 300 ft. higher on the rim of this 1km.
wide bowl the temperature was 50 <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">°</span>F higher at 12<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">°</span>F!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, this did not take place on the planet
Mars, rather a remote site in the Wasatch Mountains of northeast Utah. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What’s fascinating about some of these locations where
temperatures get so cold at night is that they share other characteristics of
the micro-climate including the soil type as well as the vegetation or lack
thereof. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why are those factors
important?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, to amswer that question, let's visit a place called “The Barrens”, located in Central Pennsylvania, about 4 miles west
of the Penn State campus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to <a href="http://climate.psu.edu/features/barrens/">The Pennsylvania State
Climatologist</a> this location has similar daytime maximum temperatures each
day to the Penn State Campus, but at night, under conditions described above
there can be as much as a 30<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">°</span>F difference in the minimum
temperature at the 2 locations!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
table below shows the distinct differences between daytime high temperature and
overnight lows at The Barrens vs. its neighbor at State College.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note, that during this study State College
only experienced 1 night with a temperature below 0<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">°</span>F while The Barrens saw
temperatures below 0<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">°</span>F 31 times! <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><o:p style="text-align: left;"> </o:p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcZQYyqDrh5wrIGYX-Io9GnWEGhyD3fdOKIj7EbUxQm5lcVzcKXLBSe2hsU1P27u8jGH7DarXtTxGDYYMdqYT4hoIRH2Vs091OBHe40ajMXlUB6-TTfIBDU0GV4yTzbzEpa4IVt_l09vth/s1130/barrens-compare.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="175" data-original-width="1130" height="99" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcZQYyqDrh5wrIGYX-Io9GnWEGhyD3fdOKIj7EbUxQm5lcVzcKXLBSe2hsU1P27u8jGH7DarXtTxGDYYMdqYT4hoIRH2Vs091OBHe40ajMXlUB6-TTfIBDU0GV4yTzbzEpa4IVt_l09vth/w640-h99/barrens-compare.JPG" width="640" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoCaption"><i>A Frequency
Distribution of Temperatures at the Barrens and State College (1200Z to 1200Z
from December 1977 to November 1978).<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(courtesy: </span><a href="http://climate.psu.edu/features/barrens/"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">The
Pennsylvania State Climatologist</span></a><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">)<br /><br /></span></i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Once again, topography plays a major role in the
micro-climate of The Barrens, but there are also other characteristics of the
site, shared by the other locations around the U.S. mentioned above, that allow
it to cool so rapidly at night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Barrens
has a surface of sandy soil which allows water to be absorbed deep into the
ground, keeping the surface layer dry. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That results in a rapid loss of heat from the
ground after the sun drops below the ridges. The other feature of the Barrens
that contributes to rapid temperature loss is very little vegetation other than
some scrub trees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, in many of
these “sinks” or depressions, there may even be a “vegetation inversion”, with only s few scrub trees and grasses where the temperatures undergo drastic daily changes,
while up on the slopes of the mountain there are more mature trees and more
lush vegetation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Next, let’s stay in the East, and visit a beautiful location
in The Appalachian Mountains at Canaan Valley, WV.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s another great place to study
micro-meteorology, because at this site, maintained by Virginia Tech, there are two weather sensors that measure temperature, one at the base
and one at the ridge of the bowl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Below is a
cross-section I derived off Google Earth to show Canaan Valley.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As you can see, the location sits in a
depression or bowl surrounded by higher ridges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The elevation difference between the weather sensor at Canaan Valley
(elevation 3150 ft.) and the Cabin 2 site on the right-hand ridge (elevation
4035ft.) is just under 1,000 ft.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and a
distance of a little over a mile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
sensor itself is located on a barren piece of ground, with a sandy soil and not much
vegetation. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsFeDPPrnJvXKPE_y0icqE1oL9Fw40zv7MljZpnBEui7LM5l6-IZ90RXVNQ8MkJP6DLUI4hdR56uLVN1EckyTK1fR7o7M2X2jOsaiDDL1uUlEamB8LAJ-2MIYfZS2_OQCSAXqzWO-7sbfD/s1553/canaan+valley.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1023" data-original-width="1553" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsFeDPPrnJvXKPE_y0icqE1oL9Fw40zv7MljZpnBEui7LM5l6-IZ90RXVNQ8MkJP6DLUI4hdR56uLVN1EckyTK1fR7o7M2X2jOsaiDDL1uUlEamB8LAJ-2MIYfZS2_OQCSAXqzWO-7sbfD/w640-h422/canaan+valley.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>Cross-section of Canaan Valley WV, showing the location of the sensor in
relation to the elevation changes from one side of the bowl to the other.<br /><br /></i></div><p class="MsoCaption"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Back on Christmas Day of 2019, under clear skies and calm
winds, Canaan Valley dropped to 10<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">°</span>F while the ridge sensor was reporting
a temperature of 43<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">°</span>F.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That equates to
a 33<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">°</span>F
difference in temperature over a distance of a little over a mile! In fact,
under a fair-weather High Pressure system, with a very dry atmosphere, clear
skies and calm winds, this area saw 3 straight days of extreme temperature
differences. <o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxM7V3BGcr8i5vy-Pol856kQEEcc7LQBhzmNYiv9cjHJvZu_1zU0QmnO7MFFcO_zb3LHihQ5zvYrnja3noP1TV94VptEnWH07OBdpy51MBGueCyhi1VM282pgcA4t41i4wH8ioM5dE0m3M/s1614/canaan-2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1045" data-original-width="1614" height="414" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxM7V3BGcr8i5vy-Pol856kQEEcc7LQBhzmNYiv9cjHJvZu_1zU0QmnO7MFFcO_zb3LHihQ5zvYrnja3noP1TV94VptEnWH07OBdpy51MBGueCyhi1VM282pgcA4t41i4wH8ioM5dE0m3M/w640-h414/canaan-2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>Temperature trace for Canaan Valley WV and Cabin Mtn2 on 3 consecutive days
from December 24th through December 26, 2019 showing the extreme difference in
readings at night, while daytime highs showed very little difference.</i></p><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoCaption"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There are many, many other locations across the U.S. and of
course worldwide, where the phenomenon of “cold air sinks” occurs. In fact, in Central Europe, one of the most
well-known is Gruenloch Sinkhole in Austria, where conditions that created the
sinkhole, including a collapsed limestone rock base, are perfect for the
development of extremely cold temperatures.
I believe the site still holds the record for the coldest minimum
temperature in Central Europe, at -62.7°F (-52.6°C). There has been much research in other parts
of the world including Scandinavia and Japan on these features as well. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Summary</span></h4><p class="MsoNormal">In closing, there are several factors that combine to produce
such cold temperatures. In addition to clear skies and calm winds they include:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Topography -</b> A valley setting with slopes on all
sides that form a bowl, allowing for cold air drainage and with no valleys in the bowl, the cold air becomes trapped to continue to chill throughout the night.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Soil type</b> – Sandy soils or limestone lose heat
to the atmosphere more quickly than other soils, namely because they allow
water to permeate through them and dry soils lose heat more quickly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If there isn’t much ground cover in the form
of trees or other vegetation, that adds to heat loss more quickly.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Snow cover</b> – These mountain valleys will stay
colder, and hold snow longer in winter, and snow cover is a great emitter of
long wave radiation, or heat loss to the atmosphere.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->The development of a temperature inversion over
the valley will prevent turbulent mixing and it effectively “cuts off” the
bubble of cold air from the atmosphere above it, allowing these areas to
continue to cool through the night.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As someone who hikes quite often, I remind myself how important
it is to remember that when you decide to make camp for the night on a clear,
calm evening, especially during the colder times of the year, a decision to
pitch your tent in a little depression or valley could not only result in a
really cold night, it could be life-threatening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Setting up a tent or hammock in a valley
bottom under cold, clear conditions, will expose you to the coldest
temperatures in the area as that cold, dense air slides down the slopes and envelopes your
campsite. In these cases, if at all possible, it’s often better to set your camp
up a little way up the mountainside. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Keep an eye on the “<a href="https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/discussions/hpcdiscussions.php?disc=nathilo&version=0&fmt=reg">National
Daily High and Low Temperature</a>” each day if you get a chance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Check out the locations and see if they share
some of the factors that I have discussed in this article. Don’t get caught
with that “sinking” feeling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>The Weather Around Ushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982190953093465944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500935395405905691.post-68424801669348111272020-12-23T11:51:00.014-05:002021-02-01T13:21:45.971-05:00Blizzards - Notorious Winter Storms<head> <script async="" data-ad-client="pub-3474636928976293" src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/
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<p> </p><h1 style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large; text-align: left;"> </span></div></h1>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnQrQsJ93ubKV0ZGY7uHFXNAZ7-cnkSphu2pDNHQU8GkNrlGHZRPjl8vr0T_0ZMaQuggOhYpn5Ms4e9MEwyEun1CDkLQCow_I5YngmFGNuAuZYWMDxhNPGdFcAoZ72vli0Mw3T-afasBOS/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="590" data-original-width="818" height="441" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnQrQsJ93ubKV0ZGY7uHFXNAZ7-cnkSphu2pDNHQU8GkNrlGHZRPjl8vr0T_0ZMaQuggOhYpn5Ms4e9MEwyEun1CDkLQCow_I5YngmFGNuAuZYWMDxhNPGdFcAoZ72vli0Mw3T-afasBOS/w612-h441/image.png" width="612" /></a></div></div><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">With the impending blizzard that is part of a complicated
storm system crossing the U.S. this Christmas Week, I thought it would be a good
time to talk a little bit more about them. The image above was valid at 9:00AM
Wednesday, December 23, 2020 and shows the states outlined in orange that were
under Blizzard Warnings.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The animation below is from the U.S. GFS model showing the
forecast track of the storm that is responsible for the blizzard conditions
across the Northern Tier of the U.S. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXtZ-BSuEtwIbmLZvLNCJcirfWJCn7By5WLxDf7xaOCW-f5FWVesnE61NK9om_2VQti_AnkjpToLoPZ6u0QDdFocK0hc-3CqkJxjTza66NHjScam8CPkKI5obrvQcSNgQ82PK9JCsJgDi4/s1024/gfs_mslp_pcpn_frzn_us_fh6-66.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="696" data-original-width="1024" height="444" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXtZ-BSuEtwIbmLZvLNCJcirfWJCn7By5WLxDf7xaOCW-f5FWVesnE61NK9om_2VQti_AnkjpToLoPZ6u0QDdFocK0hc-3CqkJxjTza66NHjScam8CPkKI5obrvQcSNgQ82PK9JCsJgDi4/w651-h444/gfs_mslp_pcpn_frzn_us_fh6-66.gif" width="651" /></a></p>
<h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></h4><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">What Are They</span></h4><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>BLIZZARD</b>, that term evokes thoughts of whiteouts, extreme
cold, getting stranded and lost outside. For anyone who has ever experienced
one, it can be scary and certainly dangerous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Most of you have an idea of what a blizzard is, but there is an actual
definition for what it takes for conditions to be considered a blizzard. In the
Glossary of Meteorology, a bible of sorts for weather terms, a blizzard is
defined as:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"></p>-<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span>sustained wind or frequent gusts of 16
m per second (30 kt or 35 mi per hour) or greater,<br />-<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span>accompanied by falling and/or blowing snow,<br />-<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span>frequently reducing visibility to less
than 400 m (0.25 mi) for 3 hours or longer.<br /><!--[if !supportLists]--><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In a nutshell, they produce strong winds, very reduced visibility and lasts for at least
3 hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The timeframe is an important
factor in the definition of a blizzard because often in snowstorms you can get
a short period of those conditions but if they last long enough, they can
strand people, livestock and anything else outside to make conditions life-threatening.
Note, it doesn’t have to be snowing either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Northern Plains are notorious for “ground blizzards”, storms that
whip up loose snow cover into the air to create those same conditions. I have
been in ground blizzards before where at times you could look skyward and see clear
conditions above the shallow storm. <o:p></o:p></p>
<h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></h4><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Where Do They Occur</span></h4><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There are favored locations across the U.S. for blizzards.
In fact, I have often referred to an area I call “Blizzard Alley”, a roughly 5
to 8 state region, from the Northern Plains and parts of the Central Plains and
Upper Midwest. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two most notorious
states are North and South Dakota. Take a look again at the map below and
compare that to the region where Blizzard Warnings are in effect for this week’s
storm. That is why I consider this storm to be a textbook blizzard for
location. <o:p></o:p></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIMnCQJm-5TuVFpa2pmqig4YlGtQaXn9T8gYhJaX__wXKBftjmwoSafTWyrc2I6CWV95yxswkzhV_KExc0WbQXWe64PwGuXWViLG0f8ZXTBmgigWsXZJi0Yco8BUL3UPczETg9NAj6bBoU/s1768/Blizzard+Numbers.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1036" data-original-width="1768" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIMnCQJm-5TuVFpa2pmqig4YlGtQaXn9T8gYhJaX__wXKBftjmwoSafTWyrc2I6CWV95yxswkzhV_KExc0WbQXWe64PwGuXWViLG0f8ZXTBmgigWsXZJi0Yco8BUL3UPczETg9NAj6bBoU/w640-h376/Blizzard+Numbers.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><i>The total number of blizzards recorded by county during 41 winters 1959-60 to 1999-2000.</i></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal">Blizzard Alley has specific features that are conducive to
blizzards. The area is pretty flat, allowing for strong winds to blow unimpeded
through the Alley. It is wide open to Canada, where some of the coldest air in
the continent regularly spills down to the States. The cold air assures that the snow, falling
or on the ground is fluffy enough to be blown around to reduce visibility. Finally, it is in a perfect location for two
particular types of weather systems know to produce blizzards, Colorado Lows and Clippers.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Colorado Lows are storms
that typically develop off the Rocky Mountains in the vicinity of Colorado. They
intensify rapidly and move northeast toward the Great Lakes. They often will pull Gulf of Mexico moisture up with them. To the north and
west of their track they produce very strong winds and very heavy snowfall. Clippers are fast moving storms that typically form off the Canadian
Rockies in places like the province of Alberta, and head east along the northern latitudes of
the U.S. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These storms normally move
faster than Colorado Lows, so they are of shorter duration. They also do not
produce as much snow, they are considered moisture starved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, because they move so fast, they can
catch people unprepared.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Below </span>is a
breakdown of the occurrence by state of these two types of storms in the vicinity of Blizzard Alley. The storm this
week is a hybrid of a Clipper System. It began off the Rockies in British
Columbia and moved very rapidly eastward through the Northern Plains. After
that, it’s Clipper characteristics change as it gets to the Great Lakes Region
and morphs into a major winter system for the East. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnyf6JqrVy7TCZa2DHFDxIGmCBVTG7D6QqyJYklizJm9TyDf-ygY_M_r94la4_K1ux7nl_T3E_zuekbe94XMUCRrVJnevhIr_waLvwqDeJMZXvy3ZkhYFfQ3gsswiRaWs8uys3gZKnyTzG/s774/types+of+blizzards.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="717" data-original-width="774" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnyf6JqrVy7TCZa2DHFDxIGmCBVTG7D6QqyJYklizJm9TyDf-ygY_M_r94la4_K1ux7nl_T3E_zuekbe94XMUCRrVJnevhIr_waLvwqDeJMZXvy3ZkhYFfQ3gsswiRaWs8uys3gZKnyTzG/w426-h395/types+of+blizzards.JPG" width="426" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Although blizzards are most common across Blizzard Alley, they occur
across a large portion of the U.S. in any given winter. A study of the number
of blizzards that have occurred in a 41-year timeframe from 1951-200 is shown
below. As you can see, they have hit most of CONUS, with the exception of 5
states, mainly in the Southeast. <o:p></o:p></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqRMFEyO1ykrBUjRLaDzzTivTLsXr18WcBAulWoFiq2EtnDYrgDxV1VxCIJ1siP9X4u3cMsMvYWlNF5unT0YSaTXyyUC-c2Niy8cW90aXbhOn1r7dlaqsy7lEziXZiWVhYS9EibiBxOa5G/s998/climo-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="643" data-original-width="998" height="412" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqRMFEyO1ykrBUjRLaDzzTivTLsXr18WcBAulWoFiq2EtnDYrgDxV1VxCIJ1siP9X4u3cMsMvYWlNF5unT0YSaTXyyUC-c2Niy8cW90aXbhOn1r7dlaqsy7lEziXZiWVhYS9EibiBxOa5G/w640-h412/climo-1.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>The total number of blizzards recorded by county during 41 winters 1959-60 to 1999-2000.</i></div></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">How Bad Can They Get</span></h4><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHZ17sSkgI1ATbAr2LA9ns-i-EPjDmse2kF-Qu-8KxNZjqxaAQ5iHxYsBK2O03IvOwY3i7Cem072aeUX403NY800W3604H2nW8Q1e_owdfK8qsYelPYsWTe9aZUssx33u0r5aFCsJ_DOAO/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="416" data-original-width="604" height="368" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHZ17sSkgI1ATbAr2LA9ns-i-EPjDmse2kF-Qu-8KxNZjqxaAQ5iHxYsBK2O03IvOwY3i7Cem072aeUX403NY800W3604H2nW8Q1e_owdfK8qsYelPYsWTe9aZUssx33u0r5aFCsJ_DOAO/w535-h368/image.png" width="535" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal">The dangers of being caught in a blizzard unprepared cannot
be overstated. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With visibilities reduced
to just a few yards at times, “whiteouts” on open roads can bring traffic to a
standstill, you literally lose the road in front of your eyes. Often, the only
way to proceed ahead is to watch the brake lights on the vehicle in front of
you. Guess what, if the guy in front of you goes off the road, you will likely
follow him. Once you are stuck, it is often difficult to get help because even
emergency vehicles won’t risk going out in a storm like this to get stuck as well. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Below is</span> a video of someone driving through a
blizzard. Notice that the winds will also drift snow across roadways making them even more difficult to negotiate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s gets pretty scary.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkX4nJeNWbwS2vW2FkScgbIudk9Bw-d39PMLBA5aMD_f2jyzqMPEJXxhqzfwFHKPceMwqDAc6QqPIGAZF6HXvXaTodTcVC8p3feliCU6dx9PRfGsVLidOtCfvpHLKRbXQhQNY7mhzdNH-1/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="405" data-original-width="624" height="369" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkX4nJeNWbwS2vW2FkScgbIudk9Bw-d39PMLBA5aMD_f2jyzqMPEJXxhqzfwFHKPceMwqDAc6QqPIGAZF6HXvXaTodTcVC8p3feliCU6dx9PRfGsVLidOtCfvpHLKRbXQhQNY7mhzdNH-1/w568-h369/image.png" width="568" /></a><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9COsI2cgKk">Click To See Video</a><br /></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal">Historically there have been some terrible tragedies
associated with these winter storms. Back in the 1888, long before there were accurate daily weather forecasts, the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoolhouse_Blizzard">Schoolhouse Blizzard”, also known as “The Children’s Blizzard</a>” hit very quickly after a warm and
sunny day in mid-January across Blizzard Alley. Many were caught outside completely unprepared
for the extreme, and very rapid, change in the weather. As a result, over 200
people died in this storm, many of them children on the way to and from their schoolhouses, which were often several miles from their farms. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">More recently a massive blizzard back in October 2013
resulted in catastrophic consequences for ranchers and livestock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The storm impacted thousands of ranches in
western South Dakota. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over 5 ft. of snow
fell, winds gusted over 70 mph. As a result, livestock herds caught out in the
open ranch land, were scattered for miles and resulted in the deaths of thousands
of cattle due to exhaustion and hypothermia. <o:p></o:p></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxaW_AteBIF2GLSNBr-J9zvdMCURAQFi-LNdsbki492kZgucGpu_E5xvu5xdJI2ZO_J6bUrNNdvcLQRNd5ycmgEYuKZwyGhL1X3xuBTz1DXEF906ekKLthOjfXEUn5rs5cJpvtKV3uzclC/s1122/South+dakota+Livestock.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="647" data-original-width="1122" height="370" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxaW_AteBIF2GLSNBr-J9zvdMCURAQFi-LNdsbki492kZgucGpu_E5xvu5xdJI2ZO_J6bUrNNdvcLQRNd5ycmgEYuKZwyGhL1X3xuBTz1DXEF906ekKLthOjfXEUn5rs5cJpvtKV3uzclC/w640-h370/South+dakota+Livestock.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">How To Prepare</span></h4><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The life-threatening conditions that accompany blizzards are why it is so important to have you and your car
prepared for these conditions. Make certain you have a fully charged battery,
always keep you gas tank filled, I like to say don’t let it get down below ½ a
tank at any time. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Carry extra winter clothes
including a hat, boots, gloves, a blanket, a cell phone charging block, and
extra high energy food like protein bars. I also like to carry some extra
water, although you need to make sure bottles do not crack if they freeze in
your vehicle. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Finally, listen to the local forecasts for your area. It’s
important to adjust any travel plans well ahead of time. The good thing about
surviving a blizzard, if you prepare and hunker down until it has passed, you
can escape most of its impacts. Understand that power outages often accompany
them, so make sure your home is prepared as well, with flashlights, charged cell
phones, and check with other family members to make sure you know where they
will be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Last but not least, in the event of a power outage, I always caution
anyone who has a back-up generator to know the
proper safety for using them. They MUST be put outdoors with adequate
ventilation, away from a building, not under porches, nor in open garages, so
that the deadly and odorless exhaust gas, carbon monoxide, does not overtake
unsuspecting people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are many
deaths every year from improper use of these systems. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Being prepared and knowing the forecast will go a long way in living with these notorious winter storms. In fact, once you and your family are safe at home, getting through the worst winter weather becomes much more manageable. Stay safe. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>The Weather Around Ushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982190953093465944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500935395405905691.post-6948912177406683622020-12-21T11:25:00.051-05:002021-02-01T13:22:07.898-05:00Japan's Epic Snows - December 14-17, 2020<head> <script async="" data-ad-client="pub-3474636928976293" src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/
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<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6e-rjyNh_1ZNqtkgBqTS8z9lcdQ2GsdwbeSslVf8gIaIgUqQO3Mr1XoWXrTKQimnWKxi4IAWvGwYiR8OOq1sfxp-poUHeRdCmWwjxBGHmqjPIJBAmMvjxB9wo0wXbG-jxgNURZvEg7hWg/s987/reuters+snow+photo.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="1,000 Stranded Vehicles in Japan SNowstorm" border="0" data-original-height="620" data-original-width="987" height="344" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6e-rjyNh_1ZNqtkgBqTS8z9lcdQ2GsdwbeSslVf8gIaIgUqQO3Mr1XoWXrTKQimnWKxi4IAWvGwYiR8OOq1sfxp-poUHeRdCmWwjxBGHmqjPIJBAmMvjxB9wo0wXbG-jxgNURZvEg7hWg/w548-h344/reuters+snow+photo.JPG" width="548" /></a></div><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><i style="font-weight: normal;">Above, Reuters reported 1,000 vehicles stuck on
snowbound highways in Japan after a major winter storm dumped as much as
85 inches of snow in some locations.</i></span></h4><p class="MsoCaption"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">While the northeastern U.S. was getting pummeled by a major
Nor’easter last week, halfway around the world, at about the same latitude, residents in parts of Japan were getting their own
epic snowstorm. Over the course of 3 days Fujiwara set an all-time snowfall record with 219 cm. or 86 inches of snow. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55359771"><span style="color: red;">BBC News</span></a> wrote that
1,000 drivers were stranded in their vehicles during and immediately after the
storm. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDSOIYxXxJre9Cyncu127gM_9-F57fJkTQMSEEFPRIUoLqbfposc5oO3rUh97ujQg9yJXeCat14rSDm3G-9Oi5BFuLMU3VkMjqKFzxQXM9sdBavwgXH5UJEdbkk2O8-9vfA0i4phQNEzx7/s732/snowfall.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="732" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDSOIYxXxJre9Cyncu127gM_9-F57fJkTQMSEEFPRIUoLqbfposc5oO3rUh97ujQg9yJXeCat14rSDm3G-9Oi5BFuLMU3VkMjqKFzxQXM9sdBavwgXH5UJEdbkk2O8-9vfA0i4phQNEzx7/w567-h386/snowfall.JPG" width="567" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal">For some, this news may come as a surprise, but snow-savvy
weather geeks as well as skiers know Japan as one of the snowiest places on
earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reason as the old business adage
goes is “location, location, location”. Japan is made up of many islands, its two largest are Honshu and Hokkaido. The nation is situated in the western Pacific
Ocean, separated from the Asian continent by 300-500 miles across the Sea of
Japan. There are several mountain ranges
that stretch down the spine of these main islands, with
several peaks exceeding 10,000 ft.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsb74zCrZIcsZWmmgMJ_An7NqFS6QS1F2vx7lg34aTr95NE-DVj_LLCxeHaoDGC-amavJKepYs8NKUNnk8YwEVk82XL9MYs_6qu3YMR9tF4CF4rZ3-K5cheWCCgY9GtcKU0hrSFfZ_rzc6/s1460/japanmap-4.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="1460" height="408" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsb74zCrZIcsZWmmgMJ_An7NqFS6QS1F2vx7lg34aTr95NE-DVj_LLCxeHaoDGC-amavJKepYs8NKUNnk8YwEVk82XL9MYs_6qu3YMR9tF4CF4rZ3-K5cheWCCgY9GtcKU0hrSFfZ_rzc6/w528-h408/japanmap-4.jpg" width="528" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">So, what does this location have to do with heavy snow? <span>Below is an image from the NASA polar orbiter satellite showing hundreds of cloud streamers forming on northwest winds, a little downwind of the Asian continent, moving across the Sea of Japan and impacting the western Coast and well inland across Japan. A</span>s is often the case with weather
extremes, several ingredients usually come together in the
right place at the right time to maximize their effects. In Japan’s case those ingredients are very cold air over Siberia, transiting the relatively warm Sea of Japan where they pick up heat and moisture, then those winds hit the mountains of Japan perpendicularly, maximizing lift to “squeeze” out
moisture in the form of snow. This type of snow event is often referred to
as “ocean-effect” or “sea-effect” snow. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwLyBw0qXtpPp31FC2FxKJP7o0gsgVH6hZkxcPxOAEqiwCwvCXGAzjArt6PwjOegLeYMIM95OclcD4RwjTYVGVOUGy91rURHlYedDPRkzbxkMmtF7WVKaQnZzqALtRMvozjYjWtHLs-I4f/s1029/j3.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="894" data-original-width="1029" height="461" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwLyBw0qXtpPp31FC2FxKJP7o0gsgVH6hZkxcPxOAEqiwCwvCXGAzjArt6PwjOegLeYMIM95OclcD4RwjTYVGVOUGy91rURHlYedDPRkzbxkMmtF7WVKaQnZzqALtRMvozjYjWtHLs-I4f/w531-h461/j3.JPG" width="531" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;">To illustarte just how much the arctic air is wamred as it crosses the Sea of Japan, I have added the prevailing wind
direction along with the temperature upwind of the Sea of Japan at
Vladivostok, and the temperature downwind at Wajima for December 16th. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Look at</span> how much the air has heated as it crossed the warm waters of the Sea of Japan, 19.8 degrees Celsius or 35.8
degrees Fahrenheit!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWug5X0nLkiHuyp4tKfJv6JtfmL2iws0H9p3payvsUcsEh_beK3sTcy8mxIwTzcFG6mHzBAMNOHqtEKah9X5KITu5iePyHQ1u2QXowsrjtj9WQCAxyErfvDcrYfIyC-Xw-IEm613AtfcoM/s1286/sat-concept-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1117" data-original-width="1286" height="404" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWug5X0nLkiHuyp4tKfJv6JtfmL2iws0H9p3payvsUcsEh_beK3sTcy8mxIwTzcFG6mHzBAMNOHqtEKah9X5KITu5iePyHQ1u2QXowsrjtj9WQCAxyErfvDcrYfIyC-Xw-IEm613AtfcoM/w465-h404/sat-concept-1.jpg" width="465" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In fact, not only does the surface temperature warm, but the
entire column of air warms and moistens considerably through the mid-levels of
the atmosphere, where clouds and snow develop, as it crosses the sea. Below are the atmospheric soundings taken
at both Vladivostok and Wajima on December 16<sup>th</sup> at 00z. The soundings show two lines, temperature on the right and dewpoint on the left. The x-axis denotes temperature and the y-axis shows altitude in millibars (mb.) of pressure. For those not familiar with millibars, the 700mb level is approximately 10,000 ft. in altitude and 500m is about 18,000 ft.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPsoABO6_r-apGxoPFlWVgMhNB-9ef7S7m2QYl1V2fxHpf5hKx1rW-3zDT2rMoyOtX8w6SlghER5nq8cfDCd4_MoAGxkL30Laqmqya3vAi3VP4LMjqOHT1-7Ph2xM5KKhtO_Sqbif5wVWi/s1190/sounding-compare.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="558" data-original-width="1190" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPsoABO6_r-apGxoPFlWVgMhNB-9ef7S7m2QYl1V2fxHpf5hKx1rW-3zDT2rMoyOtX8w6SlghER5nq8cfDCd4_MoAGxkL30Laqmqya3vAi3VP4LMjqOHT1-7Ph2xM5KKhtO_Sqbif5wVWi/w655-h307/sounding-compare.JPG" width="655" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Notice at
Vladivostok the air is very cold, quite dry and there is a very strong
temperature inversion that “caps” the shallow layer of arctic air at a low 1382 m. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> (~4500 ft.). You can't make clouds that produce snow with such a dry and shallow layer of cold air. Hence the clear skies on the satellite image along the Russian Coast. However, by the time the air has crossed the 400-500 mile distance over the Sea of Japan, </span>at Wajima, the column of air has
undergone extensive modification through the mid-levels of the atmosphere as there is a
flux, or flow, of heat and moisture that rises from those warm waters into the overlying
column of cold air. As a result, there is a significant decrease in temperature with height, referred to as the lapse rate, and that allows air parcels to stay buoyant and rise rapidly until they get to the temperature inversion. In fact, the “capping” temperature inversion at Wajima had risen to nearly 4,500 m. (~15,000 ft) and the amount of precipitable water in
the column of air has risen from 1.8 mm. at Vladivostok to a whopping 8.4 mm.
at Wajima (Precipitable water is the depth of water in a column of the atmosphere, if all the water in that column were precipitated as rain). Put this all together and by the time those air parcels get across the Sea of Japan, they have produced clouds that grow up through 15,000 ft. and higher, dumping very heavy snowfall. The little cumulonimbus cloud on the Wajima sounding reflects that deep layer of cold, moist air with a steep lape rate, perfect for growing snow clouds. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The snowfall across the western shore and into the mountains
of Japan continued unabated for a 4-day stretch as the large-scale weather
pattern persisted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Below is a 2-hour radar
animation from December 16, 2020 along the northern portion of the island of
Honshu in the Tohoku Region.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Notice the parallel bands of
snow, aligned with, or longitudinally along, west to northwest winds. As long as the winds stay out of the same direction, the bands of snow will not move, and one area will get huge amounts of snowfall. I liken this to stick one end of a firehose into the water and pointing the other end downwind over a particular spot. As long as I do not move the nozzle (change the wind direction) that area I am pointing at gets "pasted" with snow. </div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgIJglR4GfV_5ocoFTG5Dl4kj3ucWVrsp3560VA6V2i6mep6QsRE1SVXUuRwCP8tF_vNCCECX4zgzEhxfUfpcGPW7fekF3cbNGH2qlSEtLdZpDMLBRw6zDj6ATGvvRC_dTSff1PZBa1sOR/s550/anigif.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="550" height="409" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgIJglR4GfV_5ocoFTG5Dl4kj3ucWVrsp3560VA6V2i6mep6QsRE1SVXUuRwCP8tF_vNCCECX4zgzEhxfUfpcGPW7fekF3cbNGH2qlSEtLdZpDMLBRw6zDj6ATGvvRC_dTSff1PZBa1sOR/w471-h409/anigif.gif" width="471" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">If this sounds familiar to residents of the Great Lakes
Region who experience “lake-effect” snow, it should because the concept is the
same. However, everything occurs on a much larger scale in Japan. To begin
with, the Sea of Japan covers about 12 times the surface area of the
Great Lakes. The average water
temperature of the Great Lakes chills to near the freezing point with
significant ice accumulation on most of the lakes during mid-winter. In contrast, the water temperature of the massive
Sea of Japan in February is much warmer, averaging some 8 to 12 degrees Celsius (46 to 54
degrees Fahrenheit) even in February. That equates toi a tremendous amount of energy to fuel these snowstorms. Finally, the various mountain ranges that stretch along the spine of Honshu
and Hokkaido exceed 3,000 m. in some locations.
Downwind of the Great Lakes, the Allegany Plateau and Tug Hill Plateau
rise less than 1,000 m. MSL. The Japanese mountain ranges add significant lift to the already buoyant air, maximizing the production of snowfall.</div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzbZcyT73_LHqNBO04VMiIZAtGHsNHwi8ESj__yxGlhf3jESHHzHTolZPEEnWeh5vae-7zKmOtRROG5t3iUDj7aDn7Pz5xfgvY4L-lSu23w7dF9Gxj3p5vKPQpssVlzLphvdFnTdsUzaes/s866/stats.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="167" data-original-width="866" height="108" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzbZcyT73_LHqNBO04VMiIZAtGHsNHwi8ESj__yxGlhf3jESHHzHTolZPEEnWeh5vae-7zKmOtRROG5t3iUDj7aDn7Pz5xfgvY4L-lSu23w7dF9Gxj3p5vKPQpssVlzLphvdFnTdsUzaes/w558-h108/stats.JPG" width="558" /></a></div><p class="MsoCaption"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As a result of those characteristics, some locations in Japan,
even at low elevations closer to the west coast, see huge annual snowfall on average. Saporro of Winter
Olympics Fame, averages about 250 inches of snow each season. Higher up in
elevation, some of the mountain locations exceed 500 inches of snow each year
(Japan Meteorological Agency, 1981-2010 Normals). That amount of snow can lead to some amazing
snow depths and one of the most famous snowcover images I have ever seen comes
from one of these areas a few years back. Visitors from around the world flock to the
Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route (Source: Uryah, Wikipedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0) to see the snow corridor that builds each winter
season as a result of a few ingredients coming together at the right time and
right place in Japan. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4ewgf40lgx9dUpIBkbN0w1Kd728DwfJMxrtsWqxg0CY3qMGfFP0k99kWNsOwJ5AqdVKpmwKXoe4oWyVqWOR0VU6vYoZrUpWEALVKEgW-l8trp_rPdPkJA31phxudXhQfr3aB-sFHWMPox/s1281/snowwall.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="962" data-original-width="1281" height="375" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4ewgf40lgx9dUpIBkbN0w1Kd728DwfJMxrtsWqxg0CY3qMGfFP0k99kWNsOwJ5AqdVKpmwKXoe4oWyVqWOR0VU6vYoZrUpWEALVKEgW-l8trp_rPdPkJA31phxudXhQfr3aB-sFHWMPox/w500-h375/snowwall.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">This phenomenon of Mother Nature is just another amazing example of how interesting the atmosphere can be. I often refer to the term “other-worldly” when I see events like this occur. That is why I am so happy to share my curiosity about the weather with you. Enjoy !</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">BTW, the latest long-range forecast for Eastern Asia the last week in December shows a massive push of Arctic air coming across Eastern Asia/Siberia and right over those warm waters of the Sea of Japan. Methinks there will be even more snow to add to those already amazing totals. Here is an animation of the 850 mb. level (about 4500 ft. altitude) temperature departures (blue is colder) from Christmas Eve through New Years Eve. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Ycv6LxORSU6L3x5zcSe5tJAb7UI8CvacFtLtR55EWDnXjP2ydYfYR6fcT6EA_-m375zyExVoBAzCn3M5gqBLoXPYnvIuCja-zE25SnfJ1OZuZTyV0lB0c34Eo0ssU5b8_Z1aKaVkrSBQ/s660/floop-eps-2020122112.850t_anom.as.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="510" data-original-width="660" height="378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Ycv6LxORSU6L3x5zcSe5tJAb7UI8CvacFtLtR55EWDnXjP2ydYfYR6fcT6EA_-m375zyExVoBAzCn3M5gqBLoXPYnvIuCja-zE25SnfJ1OZuZTyV0lB0c34Eo0ssU5b8_Z1aKaVkrSBQ/w490-h378/floop-eps-2020122112.850t_anom.as.gif" width="490" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br /></span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>The Weather Around Ushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982190953093465944noreply@blogger.com0Unnamed Road, Nishikichō Kamihinokinai, Semboku, Akita 014-0601, Japan39.8767921 140.566374210.888398545107833 105.41012420000001 68.865185654892173 175.7226242tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500935395405905691.post-38323307852391059912020-12-20T18:22:00.008-05:002021-02-01T13:22:41.012-05:00The Weather and Nature Blog<head> <script async="" data-ad-client="pub-3474636928976293" src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/
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<h4></h4><h4 style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Fun Facts, Interesting Photos, Great Stories</span></h4><p class="MsoNormal">I am dedicating this blog to share some of the geeky things I have observed and learned about all kinds of weather. I do NOT profess to be an expert on any of these topics. However, with a 40-year career in meteorology, much of it working at the National Weather Service office in Buffalo, NY I do enjoy winter. In addition, working for The Weather Channel as the National Winter Weather Expert for several years, I became very familiar with covering some of the wildest winter weather across the United States. I want to share some of the amazing information about the workings of our atmosphere and answer questions you might have on "things you see in the sky". I will probably get a little too geeky at times sharing my enthusiasm about “all things weather” from around the world, so be pateint with me. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will also touch on other things I see in my daily hikes and saunters through the Appalachian Mountains here in far Eastern Tennessee. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Please sign in on the "Follow By Email" tab so you can get notices for my latest blogs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> You will receive an email and you need to click on the link to activate it so when I post another article, you will get notified. This is also my first attempt at creating a blog, so there will likely be errors in navigating this site. Send me comments and suggestions to make it better. Stay tuned for the next blog, I will give you a hint, it has to do with A LOT of snow !!</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiuTArNgZuzMqvU89299hRx3abAxyeerupalfHrk1fiaBgmxsvxEXY-ds1Zc40QPYLYoL3xYDs6o_XW5JrxTaVvfHT3njCY376zhJMrZWiaALXpWytdMtDzypEt_jLWNnSplqPQbojvIzP/s1500/fog-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1133" data-original-width="1500" height="388" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiuTArNgZuzMqvU89299hRx3abAxyeerupalfHrk1fiaBgmxsvxEXY-ds1Zc40QPYLYoL3xYDs6o_XW5JrxTaVvfHT3njCY376zhJMrZWiaALXpWytdMtDzypEt_jLWNnSplqPQbojvIzP/w514-h388/fog-1.jpg" width="514" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><i>Looking down at the "undercast" from high atop Round Bald on Roan Mountain. elevation 5826 ft. We are looking down at the top of the cloud mass, rather than the normal way you might see it, from below the clouds. We will discuss how and why this cloud pattern develops in future blogs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal">As a meteorologist I have always loved to watch the sky and try to figure out what is going on up there in the clouds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also have always had an unquenchable curiosity about nature in general, whether its bugs and insects, flowers and trees, rivers and streams or mountains and lakes. For the past decade or so I have been photographing everything I see and I plan to share a lot of those photos with you.</p><p class="MsoCaption"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgci_Ututi00DalW4o0oZ57Xm4zivgH95dHkNTWoeJfCcpxAj1btirN1diGIFtwf_hQS6ieQkg3dSMAH0BCpNl_gATnt5F0V8mrcwg5eh4U145j30_bCs9Lnz225NTZQD2tpfEBrpzrDh_c/s2048/IMG_1937.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="392" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgci_Ututi00DalW4o0oZ57Xm4zivgH95dHkNTWoeJfCcpxAj1btirN1diGIFtwf_hQS6ieQkg3dSMAH0BCpNl_gATnt5F0V8mrcwg5eh4U145j30_bCs9Lnz225NTZQD2tpfEBrpzrDh_c/w523-h392/IMG_1937.JPG" width="523" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i style="text-align: left;"><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Rime Ice atop Roan Mountain, what is it and how does it form?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We will check that out too.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">My first article will come right after this introductory blog. I hope that you will spend some time reading through my posts. Please share them with as many people as you like. I look forward to your comments as well as any suggestions you have to make the blog better and I entertain any topics you would like to hear more about.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha39lS4EK4CwbgxupOofjx5jlHbkbClWCNhfr42WEh2QtqKHIk7-tJKgvr-0pA9fkKm6_qyMtxUpJmMijJ1zweqY8my87bo_pYrX9asLjqs-ZKfwGOvkwLRlrTM_zV__-hB7b6-zfpbtu_/s1089/022820-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1033" data-original-width="1089" height="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha39lS4EK4CwbgxupOofjx5jlHbkbClWCNhfr42WEh2QtqKHIk7-tJKgvr-0pA9fkKm6_qyMtxUpJmMijJ1zweqY8my87bo_pYrX9asLjqs-ZKfwGOvkwLRlrTM_zV__-hB7b6-zfpbtu_/w368-h350/022820-1.jpg" width="368" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><i>Ahhh snow crystals, my favorite winter hobby is to photograph them. We will learn how to photograph snow crystals and why they are 6-sided.</i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>The Weather Around Ushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982190953093465944noreply@blogger.com1