Ever since May’s dry weather, Marianne Atkinson and I have kept up a lively email conversation about drought and rain in our respective hometowns, Dubois and Pittsburgh.

Dubois has been short-changed on rainfall this year despite June’s excessive wet weather.  Most months have been so dry that June’s 3.36″ above normal could not overcome the drought.

Even their “good” rainfall statistics are misleading because most of it falls in a single heavy downpour event.  As of today, Dubois received 1.3 inches of rain in August but 98% of it fell in one 24 hour period — August 10-11.

We shouldn’t be surprised.  Climatologists predict that as the climate heats up western Pennsylvania’s weather will change from gentle rains to frequent heavy downpours.

Meanwhile Marianne watches the weather radar closely.  When rain is predicted will her garden get any of it?  No. As the storm clouds approach they usually part north and south, missing Dubois completely.  She sent me this screenshot of a recent “rainy” day from Accuweather.

I’ve seen this phenomenon, too.  On Monday night Pittsburgh got a trace while Youngstown and West Virginia were slammed.

Is your town suffering from localized drought?  Have you noticed this parting-of-the-clouds phenomenon?

It reminds me of Arizona’s monsoon.

(photo by Kate St. John)

Throw Back Thursday (TBT):

If you’ve seen me outdoors when a thunderstorm’s approaching you know that I take lightning safety so seriously that I go inside before everyone else.  I like to think it’s because I know too much.

Some of that knowledge was collected in 2011 when I researched the facts for this article on Lightning.  Once you start looking there are plenty of harrowing stories.

U.S. lightning safety has changed since 2011.  Back then I wrote about the Lightning Crouch but it’s been discredited unless you’re stuck outdoors very far from shelter.  The new motto says run for shelter: When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors.

Yet I wonder … is my level of concern about lightning borne out by statistics?  It depends on what’s about to hit you.  Here are some death/injury facts from 2012 when the U.S. population was 314,100,000 (314.1 million puts the numbers in perspective).

Clearly lightning is much less likely to kill you than a motor vehicle.  On the other hand, there are far more vehicles than there are lightning bolts and far more hours spent in vehicles than outdoors during storms.

So drive safely, don’t drink and drive (alcohol accounts for 1/3 of the deaths), look both ways when you cross the street, and … when thunder roars I’m still going indoors.

(Thunderhead with lightning, photo by jcpjr from Shutterstock)

p.s. I’ve included trains in the list because Westinghouse Bridge peregrine fans are no longer allowed near the railroad tracks.  Trains are the most deadly of all the dangers.

The ground was parched and cracked in my backyard yesterday morning, so I looked forward to the thunderstorms predicted in the afternoon.

It rained north and west of here but only a trace in my backyard and at Pittsburgh International Airport.

The real rain missed us again.

(image composite from the National Weather Service /FAA)

21 March 2015

The word Analemma sounds like a girl’s name or perhaps an exotic fruit but in fact it’s the name for that figure 8 hanging in the sky above.  You won’t see it in Nature but you may have seen it as a symbol printed on an old-fashioned globe of the world.

Technically speaking an analemma is the location of one celestial body as viewed from another for one complete orbit.  Practically speaking it’s the Sun’s position throughout the year at the same location and time of day on Earth.   I was surprised to learn it’s a figure 8 but that’s because the Earth’s orbit is elliptical and tilted.

This photo took a whole year to create.  Every other week in 1998-1999, Jack Fishburn took a photograph of the sun’s position from his office window at Bell Labs.  He was careful to place the camera in the exact same position and snap the photo at the same time of day (correcting back to Standard Time during Daylight Savings).  After collecting a year of photographs he overlaid them to create the analemma.

Tunc Tezel did the same thing at Baku, Azerbaijan and made it a movie here.

You can create your own analemma if you’re persistent (one whole year) and precise (same camera location and time of day for every photo) and have access to Photoshop.

When you’re done you’ll know that the top of the 8 is the summer (northern) solstice, the bottom is the winter (southern) solstice, and the crossover point is both equinoxes.  Today, one day after the Northern Equinox, the sun is very near the center of the analemma.

(photo by Jack Fishburn via Wikipedia GNU Free License. Click on the image to see the original)

Mountains in Alaska?  No, my icy sidewalk.

Yesterday more than three inches of wet snow fell across Pittsburgh.  Sometimes it changed to rain.  Overnight it froze.

Expecting dangerous footing, I put on my ice cleats and went out to see.

Under light snow on the sidewalk … Viola, a glacier!

That’s not all.  Last night I noticed that my car, parked on the street, was standing in three inches of water because ice dams prevented the water from draining.  In the dark I heaved snow and water to the storm drain, hoping to prevent my tires from being locked in ice this morning.  What do you think? Am I stuck?

I spread salt and came indoors, feeling a little smug that my ice cleats worked so well.

But the ice has one more trick up its sleeve.

Heads up!

(all photos by Kate St. John, except the ice warning sign in Montreal is by Paul Joseph via Wikimedia Commons. Click on the sign to see its original)

With temperatures as much as 33 degrees below normal, western Pennsylvania is swamped in ice and long overdue for a warm spell.  When the weather breaks, so will the ice.

In some places we’ve already seen some flooding.  On Tuesday February 24 The Weather Channel wrote:

In western Pennsylvania, flood warnings have been issued for Armstrong and Clarion counties due to an ice jam that is blocking the Allegheny River, creating a backflow of water into Parker, according to an AP report. The warning is in effect until 7 a.m. Thursday. State Route 268 has been flooded and at least two people have been rescued from the floodwaters in Parker.

In February 2009 I was hiking at Raccoon Creek Wildflower Reserve when the ice broke and jammed in front of me.  Click here or on the gray-brown ice photo for my in-person (Throw Back Thursday) report.

(photos by Kate St. John: Ice and gulls on the Monongahela River at Duck Hollow, 25 Feb 2015.  Ice on Raccoon Creek, 8 Feb 2009)