Friday, July 31, 2009

Watches, warnings and advisories

With the "interesting" weather we've had over the past few days, I thought I'd take a moment to give you the inside scoop on watches, warnings, advisories, what they mean, and who does what.

Let's start with watches, when they're issued, it means the condition is POSSIBLE within and close to the watch area. They're issued by the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

If the conditions develop, a Warning is issued, meaning that the severe thunderstorm, tornado, or whatever is imminent or occurring. They're issued by the local National Weather Service Forecast Office. In our case, it's the one in Pueblo, though warnings for Elbert and Lincoln county are issued by the Denver/Boulder office, and for Cheyenne and Kit Carson counties, it's the NWSFO (an abbreviation of the above title) in Goodland, Kansas.

Advisories are for conditions not quite as life and property threatening as a warning, but weather conditions that are intense enough to impact your life. They also come from the local NWSFO. Occasionally, if we get public reports about storm conditions in a given area and nothing has been issued for it, we'll break into programming to let you know.

Interesting to note that there are no "official" watches, warnings or advisories for lightning or heavy rain, though if the rain is heavy enough and persists long enough to cause local flooding, there ARE advisories and warnings for that.

That last note was prompted by a storm that moved across Canon City on the night of July 31st, with (from local reports), LOTS of lightning, and the caller was stunned there was no warning or advisory for it....and the reason is that there IS no official category for that particular weather phenomenon.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Can it really be this cold in July?

After the attention-getting severe weather on Tuesday and Wednesday, the cold settled in on Thursday, July 30th.

The process began with 48 degrees to start the morning in Colorado Springs, shattering the old record of 49, set in 1971....and then it stayed cold.

Colorado Springs went on to set a new record low maximum with a high of 60. The old record was 63 degrees, set in 1936.

Pueblo was close. The official high was 68, and the record low maximum for the date was 67 set in 1925. ("Missed it by that much").

This summer feels a lot like the summer of 1997 did to me (I was bicycle-commuting at the time). It will be interesting to see if the comparison continues into the Winter.

Let's see, other things going on. The Summer semester is winding down at Pikes Peak Community College. 2 finals down, and one to go on Saturday, then a short break before Fall semester kicks in by the middle of August. (Still some openings in my Meteorology and Astronomy 102 classes....BLATANT PLUG).

Monday, July 27, 2009

So just what IS a severe thunderstorm?

With the impressive storms we've seen in southern Colorado over the past few days, including some with heavy enough rain for Flash Flood Warnings in El Paso and a number of other counties, some of you have been wondering "why wasn't there a severe thunderstorm warning in effect for that storm over my house? it was the biggest one I've ever seen!!"

It's a good question, and the answer comes in multiple parts
1) Who issues local watches and warnings? The local National Weather Service Forecast Office. Ours is in Pueblo.
2) What's a severe thunderstorm? To be "severe" a thunderstorm must have any or all of the following..
a) Hail 1" in diameter or greater
b) Winds 58 mph or stronger
c) A tornado (Kind of a slam-dunk on this one).

If the storm doesn't achieve the criteria above, it isn't severe....it's just a really big storm. The weather service can issue advisories and warnings for some of the side-effects, such as flash flooding or urban and small stream flooding, which they did.

One thing to keep in mind is that tornadoes develop from severe thunderstorms, so keep your eyes and ears open during severe weather, it could get even more interesting before it's over.

Keep those questions coming!

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Flooding, Flash Flooding and severe storms

Interesting day on Sunday, July 26th, with lots of water remaining in the air from Saturday's storms, and an upper-level disturbance moving through from the northwest to trigger it.

As a result, Flash Flood warnings reached from El Paso county to Las Animas county during the afternoon and evening...Here are a few rainfall and flooding reports from the event.

.72" - 1 SW of rye
.90: - 1 WSW of Colorado City
.92" - SW of Beulah
1.32" - 1 SE of Fowler
1.40" - 7 E of Colorado Springs; 1 S of Beulah
1.46" - 3 South of La Veta (+ pea size hail as the storm began)
1.50" - 6 NE of Colorado Springs
1.60" - 4 NNE of Colorado Springs
1.61" - 6 ENE of Colorado Springs (in one hour)
1.85"- 5 NE of Colorado springs (in one hour)

Flooding Reports (Courtesy the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Pueblo)
2:53 PM - 8" - 10" of water at the intersection of Tutt and Constitution
2:59 PM - Water from curb to curb on Tutt Blvd. from Constitution to North Carefree
3:07 PM - Significant street flooding 4 ENE of Colorado Springs
3:20 PM - Creek out of its band and flowing across the road at Galley and San Miguel
4:30 PM - Several roads on the south side of Canon City closed due to Flash Flooding.

There were a few Severe Thunderstorm Warnings as well, but no reports of damaging wind or hail at this point.

Another round of showers and thunderstorms will develop on Monday.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

The rains are back in southern Colorado

A weak cold front + more water in the air = buckets of rainfall on Saturday, July 25th.

There were several severe thunderstorm warnings, but few reports of 1" or larger hail.

In the rainfall department, however, the big winner was Canon City, with .93" in 45 minutes.
Other totals included...
.58" at the Air Force Academy
.52" at Coronado High School
.36" in Woodland Park
.35" in Manitou Springs

There were also reports of a mudslide closing LaVeta Pass.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Another image of the hole in Jupiter's atmosphere

I ran across the best image I've seen yet of that hole punched in Jupiter's outer atmosphere, discovered on 19 July. To see it, try this link..http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/jupiter-hubble.html
Still not a lot of information about the object itself, but it appears it may have been as large as several football fields, and probably a piece of a comet or an icy asteroid.

One of my engineers here at the station keeps me up to date on the latest developments and images, and I'll pass them along to you. (It makes it an exciting time to teach astronomy!!).

Oh, he also brought me this statistic...your odds of being struck by lightning are 576,000:1, but the current odds that a comet or meteoroid will strike the earth and cause global catastrophe in the next 100 years is 5,000:1.

On to other items...I'm not the only mike madson out there. One of the other ones online is my son, Mike Jr. who's fantasy novel, "The Lady in White" is about to be published. His blog is www.michaelmadson.com, for much deeper thoughts than you'll get from me, as he polishes off his undergraduate degree, moves on for his Masters, and heads full-tilt for his PhD.

Final thought..I celebrated another birthday on the 16th and celebrated with a potpourri of my favorite foods...corn dogs, pork rinds, cosmic brownies (the ones from Little Debbies, not the other kind) and Coca Cola bottled in Mexico....Before you bemoan the lack of "organicness" (my own new word, what do you think?), keep in mind that this is the diet that has gotten me to AARP age, and I'll probably outlive you. Yes, it was OUTSTANDING. (Now, all I need to make the celebration complete is a good "all you can eat" Chinese (sort-of) buffet.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Tornado or Landspout?

The National Weather Service issued a Tornado Warning for parts of Kiowa and Prowers counties, and a trained weather spotter reported a "tornado".

I broke into programming, just to be sure viewers in that area knew there was a dangerous storm in the area, but looking at the echo on FirstAlert Doppler, it had the wrong shape and intensity to be a tornadic storm, and there was no shear (winds at different speeds or directions at different levels of the atmosphere...and you need that to get a good rotating tube of air in the updraft of the storm = tornado).

Then it struck me.....I think it was a "landspout". Here's the definition...

Landspout tornadoes are formed by thunderstorms that do not have rotating updrafts (BINGO). Wind shift lines in the lower atmosphere, such as local topography may produce, cause VERY WEAK (caps added by your author) spinning vertical tubes of air.

When a thunderstorm updraft forms over one of the weak spinning tubes of air, the tube is stretched. Stretching a rotating tube causes it to spin faster, forming a short lived and relatively weak tornado.

That seems to meet the criteria, and the bottom line is that it was NOT a "Wizard of Oz" Great Plains tornado, but it was an indicator that a storm strong enough to take notice of was moving across the eastern Plains.

As we're in the season, I'll let you know if anything of note is moving in your direction, and will NOT make the description of every storm sound like "the biggest, baddest storm that's ever hit southern Colorado".

I'll tell you about another variation, the "gustnado" in a future blog.

Landspout tornadoes are most commonly found near coastlines and along the Colorado front range.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Impact on Jupiter

While we're on an astronomical theme (mentioned the solar eclipse visible in Asia yesterday), here's another interesting development...something hit Jupiter...something BIG hit Jupiter, and we missed it.

A few days ago, an amateur astronomer/stargazer in Australia noticed an earth-sized hole in Jupiter's atmosphere near the south pole, then it was confirmed by NASA's infrared telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

There are several interesting things about this discovery...
1) We didn't see an object large enough to make an earth-sized hole?
2) We don't know what the object was
3) This even occurred almost 15 years to the day after pieces of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit the king of the planets in 1994.

Scientists think the impacting object was either a comet, piece of a comet or an icy asteroid.

They'll continue their studies, and I'll let you know what they discover as the story develops.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Chinese Eclipse

While things were exciting at ground level in southern Colorado, they were pretty exciting in the skies over China as well, with a solar eclipse visible to a lucky few.

This is expected to be the longest-lasting eclipse observed in China since 1814, and the record should stand until 2309.

People along the path will be able to observe 4-6 minutes of total eclipse (you thought it would be longer, didn't you...but that's about as long as it gets).

The total process takes about 2 hours.

Besides the stunning sky show, this is an opportunity for scientists to study the sun's corona, which is usually lost in the glare of the sun.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Great app for your iPhone or iPod Touch

To take you back to a MUCH earlier blog, back in the Spring, I decided that I needed some kind of portable game platform for a quick 5 or 6 minutes of mindless diversion in between teaching and broadcast assignments. After lots of suggestions from you, students and fellow NewsFirst5'ers, I picked up an iPod Touch (16 GB model) because of the promise of lots of development in the recreational department...and I haven't been disappointed.

I generally find the apps to be well-written, lots less expensive than games for other platforms (say, for example, the Nintendo and Sony PSP offerings), and some are just plain outstanding.

That leads to the suggestion for today. One of my students in Astronomy tipped me off to a gem called "planets"...and it's free.

Load it up, and you can see the position of solar system bodies in the sky at any given moment (as long as you have wifi), pull up a chart showing when the sun, moon and visible planets will rise and set (and where), pull up globes of Earth, the moon and visible planets and use your finger to rotate them to see more features, and more.

This would be a great application if you had to pay for it, and for free, it's tough to beat.

Just go to the app store, search for "planets", and see if you agree.

Friday, July 17, 2009

What a range of weather conditions!

Friday, July 17th was one of the more interesting weather days we've seen in awhile. Colorado Springs, Pueblo, and most cities along the I-25 corridor were sunny to partly cloudy, breezy and close to average in the temperature department.

In contrast. the eastern counties (Kit Carson, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Bent, Baca, Prowers and Las Animas were under a Tornado Watch, and saw everything from funnel clouds to baseball-sized hail. Why the difference? (and those of us closer to the mountains were glad there WAS a difference).

It was mostly a matter of water in the air. There was lots more of it closer to Kansas and Nebraska. Add in a weak cold front to act as a trigger, and the end result was a day eastern Colorado residents will be cleaning up from for a few days, while folks who live in El Paso and Pueblo counties will wonder what all the fuss was about.

Welcome to some of the most interesting weather on earth! (By the way, along those same lines, there's usually more difference in temperature between Colorado Springs and the top of Pikes Peak than between Colorado Springs and Iceland.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

The 40 year anniversary of Apollo 11

It's the 40 year anniversary of a contender for greatest achievement by humans in history...the launch and subsequent landing on the moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts; Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin.

The launch was this date (July 16) in 1969, and the landing and "that's one small step" occurred 4 days later on the 20th.

While we only sent missions to the moon until 1972, it's one of the most significant achievements in history, ever.

Maybe we should celebrate by drinking Tang and eating Space Food sticks, while holding velcro and teflon (all commercialized developments for the space program).

I've been looking back to what I remember about the event. I was 15, just going into 10th grade and scared spitless about the upcoming "initiations" (which weren't illegal at the time).

What I remember most is that on the date of the landing, as far as most people were concerned, there was absolutely nothing else going on in the world. Wherever I went, business, traffic and everything else had come to a standstill with all of us parked in front of a TV wherever we could find it, and when we heard the immortal "that's one small step..." (which I understand omitted one single word..."a"..from the prepared script, and caused Mr. Armstrong untold grief from feminist groups)..we were imprinted forever.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

So just how wet has it been so far this Summer?

A number of you have written in over the past few weeks, and the question is similar, and along the lines of "are we having the wettest summer on record?"


The answer is "no", but it's more than we've seen in awhile. Here are the statistics.

Colorado Springs:

This Month: 2.11"

Normal: 1.07"

Departure: +1.04"

Last Year: .04"


Since June 1: 5.02"

Normal: 3.41"

Departure: +1.61"

Last Year: .56"


Since Jan. 1: 9.51"

Normal: 9.11"

Departure: +.40"

Last Year: 2.90"


Wettest Summers, top 3

16.85" - 1965

14.98" - 2004

14.77" - 1997


Pueblo:

This Month: 1.98"

Normal: .75"

Departure: +1.23"

Last Year: .24"


Since June 1: 3.18"

Normal: 2.08"

Departure: +1.10"

Last Year: 1.13"


Since Jan. 1: 6.59"

Normal: 6.38"

Departure: +.21"

Last Year: 4.12"


Wettest Summers, Top 3:
14.64" - 1921
9.92" - 1895
9.61" - 1923

So, the bottom line is that we're ahead of "normal" for the month and the season, WAY ahead of last year at this time, but far from seasonal records (at this point).

For the year so far, both cities are close to average (normal), as we balance a wet summer with a fairly dry Spring and Winter.

For even more detailed information, you can dig into the climate information at www.crh.noaa.gov/pub


Sunday, July 5, 2009

A tale of two Holidays

After our cool, rainy July 4th this year (where they were still able to launch most of the fireworks), I seemed to remember that last year, I was looking for any relief from the heat.

Looking back in the records showed me that last year, Colorado Springs and Pueblo were 92 and 97 degrees on the 4th.

This year, it was 76 for Colorado Springs and 87 for Pueblo.

The biggest difference was the rainfall. This year, Colorado Springs reported 1.07" at the airport, a new rainfall record for the date, and Pueblo was drenched with .62".

Today's date (July 5th) was even more dramatic. Last year, Colorado Springs had a high of 97 (tied the record high for the date). Pueblo was 101.

This year, it was 70 for Colorado Springs and 81 for Pueblo, which also picked up the rainfall championship of 1.34". (and a new record for rainfall on this date. The old record was .86" in 1925).

Looks like it's going to be an interesting summer.