Take some time this weekend to enjoy a peaceful scene.
You’ll find this one at Moraine State Park.
(photo by Kate St. John)
Peaceful
Category Archives: Weather & Sky
Keep Looking Up
Gavin Pretor-Pinney loves clouds so much that he started the Cloud Appreciation Society in 2005. In this 11 minute video he shows how clouds are fun and fascinating and urges us to slow down and take a look at them.
Keep looking up!
p.s. The embedded video begins at 1:19 minutes in. Click here to see the whole video from the beginning.
(TED video embedded: Gavin Pretor-Pinney presents Cloudy with a chance of joy)
High Tide On The Allegheny
12 July 2019
Yesterday morning heavy rain caused flash floods, road closures, landslides, basement and first floor flooding, and car accidents in Pittsburgh.
The rain gauge at the airport measured 2.32″ for the day. All but .01″ of it fell in just four hours.
There were three huge rain events so thick that you couldn’t see to drive.
- Half an inch (0.53″) in 50 minutes, 7:05a-7:50a
- More than a third of an inch (0.38″) in 25 minutes, 7:55-8:17a
- 1.4 inches in an hour, 10:05a-11:05a
If you want to see what it was like, click here for great footage from WPXI.
Hours later, at 3:30pm, a friend and I made our way from Indiana Township (between Fox Chapel and Cheswick) to Churchill. It took over an hour to get there. The traffic was horrendous and the roads that were open were littered with debris. Nadine, Sandy Creek, and Washington Boulevard were all closed.
But I got two photos of the river in flood.
High tide on the Allegheny!
p.s. This rain didn’t even set a record at the airport though there may have been localized records. My friend Julie had 4″ in her rain gauge in her Squirrel Hill backyard. Sue Vrabel commented below that she had 4.5″ in Churchill.
(photos by Kate St. John, rain graph from the National Weather Service)
Beat The Heat With Trees
3 July 2019
If you were out in the UK today, this will not be hard to work out. Infrared shows the temperature difference between areas with trees, and those without. Thanks to Meg Caffin and the City of Geelong, Australia, for the insight. This is what’s coming and we’re not ready for it! pic.twitter.com/N5PrCvIhYB
— Jeremy Barrell (@JeremyDBarrell) June 29, 2019
It’s been hot in Pittsburgh lately but nothing like the heat wave that’s sweeping Europe with highs above 100 degrees F. @JeremyDBarrell tweeted a long term solution with a compelling image by Meg Caffin.
Meg Caffin is an urban forest consultant from Australia who provides guidance for cities looking to beat the heat. Her image at top used an infrared camera to show the temperature difference between a paved churchyard and the trees behind it. I’ve made a Fahrenheit translation below. Yes, it’s 113oF on the pavement and only 77oF under the trees.
Tree shade is cooler than building shade because buildings merely block the sun while the trees actually lower the temperature.
Trees cool the air by transpiring. They take up water from the ground and release it from the stomata in their leaves. The release doesn’t usually drip from the leaves as shown below. Instead it evaporates and that’s what cools the air.
Evaporation — changing a liquid to a gas — uses energy. According to the Transpiration blog, “Energy is absorbed into liquid water. This reduces the temperature of the surrounding plant tissue and nearby atmosphere. To evaporate 1 gram of water 590 calories of energy is required.”
So more trees mean less heat.
If that isn’t enough reason to like trees, here’s another benefit. Trees increase your property value as shown in the EPA cost-benefit analysis below.
Plan to plant a tree this fall or plan to keep one. It’s cheaper to keep an existing tree than to plant a new one and mature trees increase property value even more.
Meanwhile if you’re feeling hot right now, visit a local park. Beat the heat among the trees.
(embedded Tweet from Jeremy Barrell; infrared heat image by Meg Caffin for the City of Geelong, Australia (Fahrenheit added); transpiring leaf from Wikimedia Commons; photos of Schenley Park by Kate St. John)
In Nome On The Longest Day
Alaska Birding with PIB: Nome Alaska 21 June 2019
Today we’re in Nome, Alaska on the summer solstice. If we were north of the Arctic Circle the sun would never set today but Nome is 143 miles south. The sun does set here, but barely. It never gets completely dark. Instead, twilight lasts for 2.5 hours and then the sun is up again.
The photos above and below were taken at sunrise during the 2013 summer solstice from the Bering Land Bridge Preserve office in Nome. The photo caption says, “Up here in Bering Land Bridge, summer solstice means almost 24 hour days. Sunrise at our office here in Nome on the solstice is around 04:18 am, and the sun won’t set until 01:47 am the next day.”
The sun just skims below the horizon, then circles the town.
Indeed it is the longest day.
(photos from Bering Land Bridge National Preserve on Flickr, Creative Commons license; click on the captions to see the originals)
Dramatic Sky
Last Saturday morning, April 20, the sky was dramatic outside my window.
Meanwhile Dave DiCello was taking photos from the West End. Click the links to see:
(photo by Kate St. John)
Pennsylvania Fire Season
4 April 2019
Spring is fire season in Pennsylvania. 85% of our wildfires occur in March, April and May.
There’s no drought in Pennsylvania right now, nor in most of the U.S. — as shown on the map below.
But you don’t need drought to have a fire. All you need are dry conditions, fuel, and a spark. In Pennsylvania we have all three in the spring: low humidity, gusty winds, and lots of old leaf litter drying out in the sun. The spark comes from people.
98% of Pennsylvania’s wildfires are caused by people and most of those are caused by people burning debris. On a sunny windy day those fires blow onto dry grass and escape to the wild. In April 2016 more than 10,000 acres burned in Pennsylvania.
Yesterday the fire danger was high in our state because the weather was so nice — warm and sunny with gusty winds. Across Pennsylvania people were out doing yard work. Some were probably burning piles of debris. I haven’t heard if there were any fires. (The fire danger is lower today, 4 April 2019, because the weather changed.)
If you live in a place that allows outdoor trash burning be careful out there! Spring is Pennsylvania fire season.
(photo of fire from Wikimedia Commons (actually a prescribed burn). Maps from US Drought Monitor and U.S. Forest Service Wildfire Danger Forecast; Click on the captions to see the originals)
Note: Allegheny County does not allow outdoor trash burning.
Is It Spring Yet?
20 March 2019
Today is the astronomical First Day of Spring when the sun crosses the celestial equator at 5:58pm EDT. But is it Spring yet? It depends on where you live.
The USA National Phenology Network tracks spring across the continental U.S. based on first leaf out conditions for honeysuckle (Lonerica) and first bloom conditions for lilacs (Syringa vulgaris). The plants are non-native, and honeysuckle is invasive, but they make good indicators because they’re early responders to springtime warmth.
Monday’s animated Spring Leaf Index (18 March 2019) shows that leaf out was ahead of schedule through late February but fell behind in northern Virginia, the southern Great Plains, and the Pacific Northwest when cold weather hit in early March.
According to the model, spring hasn’t reached Pittsburgh yet but I’m conducting my own Leaf Out Survey in my neighborhood. I took the honeysuckle photos below on 11 March and 16 March 2019. Both were cold days after a spurt of exceptionally warm weather. The tiny leaves on the right show the effect of 77 degrees F on March 14!
Do you have leaves in your neighborhood yet? Is spring on time?
Follow spring’s progress at the USA National Phenology Network. For blooming times click here for the latest Spring Bloom map.
(animated map from the USA National Phenology Network. photos by Kate St. John)
What Will Our Climate Feel Like in 60 Years?
24 February 2019
Links and map updated 30 July 2024
We know our climate is changing compared to 30 years ago because we see obvious signs including:
- Average and peak temperatures are higher.
- Plants bloom and trees leaf out about two weeks earlier than they used to.
- We have more frequent heavy downpours, big rain events and floods.
- Glaciers that seemed stable 50 years ago are melting away.
- Sea level is rising.
Science predicted this more than a generation ago, but most of us couldn’t imagine how it would feel. Now that we’ve seen 30 years of change we’re anxious to know what our climate will be like in the future.
Matt Fitzpatrick and his colleagues at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science have answered this question by visualizing the future on an interactive map. Their study analyzes 540 cities in the U.S. and Canada, mapping their predicted climate in the 2080s to an existing climate today.
I tried out the map for myself at https://fitzlab.shinyapps.io/cityapp/. I looked up Pittsburgh, PA of course and got the answer shown in the screenshot below.
It shows that Pittsburgh’s 2080 climate will feel like McCormick, South Carolina does today. McCormick is 468 miles away from here, somewhat near Athens, Georgia. (Click on the image to see the website. Use website controls to see more complex answers.)
The map bubbles explain: Our winters will be 10.4F warmer and 26.6% wetter. Our summers will be 11.2F warmer and 5.8% wetter. All year long it will be warmer and wetter.
Let’s compare current to future using graphs. Pittsburgh’s current climate averages are shown below from U.S. Climate Data.
Sixty years from now our average winter lows will barely reach freezing. July and August average highs will be 93+ degrees F but watch out for the highest highs. August record temperatures in Jonesboro are all above 103oF!
Our precipitation will be really different. We’ll go from a fairly steady 3 inches of rainfall per month to a intermittent heavy downpours that flood the streets, especially in spring and summer.
Try the app for yourself at https://fitzlab.shinyapps.io/cityapp/.
We’re in for a wild ride.
For more information read about the study here at University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.
(credits: Cloud photo from Flickr, Creative Commons license. Map screenshot from https://tinyurl.com/urbanclimate. Pittsburgh current climate graph from U.S. Climate Data. Graphs of Pittsburgh’s future temperature and rainfall by Kate St. John. Click on the captions to see the originals)
Zooming Past Jupiter
What is it like to get close to Jupiter?
In this NASA video a robotic spacecraft called Juno makes its sixteenth fly-by (Perijove) since arriving in mid-2016. Its closest approach is almost dizzying. I feel better when the spacecraft zooms away and we see the swirling clouds.
Did you notice that Jupiter is on the sound track, too? The fourth movement of Gustav Holst’s The Planets is called Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity. Listen to the entire majestic movement here.
This video was featured on NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day on 5 February 2019.