Sky reflected on Panther Hollow Lake, Schenley Park, 8 Dec 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
9 December 2023
There were just hints of ice floating on Panther Hollow Lake yesterday morning when the water reflected blue sky and whispy clouds.
Yesterday was unusually beautiful after the tumult of hail and thunder during the Steelers game last Sunday 3 December. After the storm a double rainbow glowed in the east.
Double rainbow on 3 Dec 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
The pot of gold seemed to be on Morewood Avenue.
The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is at Morewood Avenue, 3 Dec 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
If you look closely in the double rainbow photo you can see crows flying just above the trees.
Crows have become less reliable in my neighborhood since they moved the roost about a month ago. When they came through after the storm I went out to see them, counted 3,000 and recorded a video.
Crows flying toward the roost at dusk, 3 December 2023, Shadyside, Pittsburgh (video by Kate St .John)
Only 3 WEEKS until Pittsburgh’s Christmas Bird (Crow!) Count. The crows are getting tricky. Keep me posted! Thanks to Carol S for reporting them at North Shore last night.
p.s. If the reflection in the top photo is puzzling, here’s another perspective.
Sky and bridge reflected in Panther Hollow Lake, Schenley Park, 8 Dec 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
Sunrise seems to pierce Central Catholic’s steeple, 28 Nov 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
2 December 2023
Saturday blogs usually show what I’ve “Seen This Week” but I have only one worthy photo, shown above. For the rest I’ve chosen sights that are timely for the season and seen at some point.
This Wednesday the water was low in the Monongahela River at Duck Hollow, just as it is in this photo from Nov 2020. However the sky was not so blue and it was very cold!
Nine Mile Run outflow at Duck Hollow, 29 Nov 2020 (photo by Kate St. John)
Wednesday’s low was 21°F but today will warm to nearly 60°F. No frost today like the bit shown below from Nov 2021.
Frost on the grass, 4 Nov 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)
The trees are bare now and showing off their silhouettes. Here are three typical sights on the cusp of December.
Bare trees at dusk, Schenley Park, 15 Nov 2012 (photo by Kate St. John)
You can identify young American elm trees by their twig arrangement that look like fish skeletons.
Twigs on young American elms look like fish bones, 2 Dec 2012 (photo by Kate St. John)
Black locust trees are always gnarly but this one was made worse when it was trimmed away from the utility wires in 2012.
Black locust tree looks twisted after powerline cutback, 28 Jan 2012 (photo by Kate St. John)
Snow on sweetgum seed balls, 17 Dec 2020 (photo by Kate St. John)
27 November 2023
Last week a friend remarked on the wide variety of winter forecasts being touted for Pittsburgh from “Swamped With Snow” to “No Skis in Our Forecast.” How could the predictions be so different? I think it’s the Beltway effect.
Right now the world is in an El Niño year of warm sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific at the equator and along the coasts of Ecuador and Peru.
According to Wikipedia, this warming causes a shift in the atmospheric circulation with rainfall becoming reduced over Indonesia, India and northern Australia, while rainfall and tropical cyclone formation increases over the tropical Pacific Ocean. El Niño seriously affects South American weather and ripples out to North America as well. The U.S. seasonal outlook, Dec 2023 to Feb 2024, shows higher temperatures in the north and wetter weather in the south this winter.
Of course this affects snowfall. El Niño’s winter history in 1959-2023 shows more snow in some places (blue color) and a lot less in others (brown color). Interestingly, Pittsburgh is in the Less Snow category while Washington, DC has More Snow than usual.
News organizations have a big presence in the DC Beltway area and write stories for the region. Some weather stories originate there and cross the Appalachians but when the news gets to Pittsburgh it might not apply to us. The typical example is when 2 feet of snow are forecast for D.C. and hardly any falls here. I think of this as the (DC) Beltway news effect.
So when we hear dire predictions for Pittsburgh’s winter this year I plan to wait rather then worry. My guess is that we’re likely to have rain.
Raindrops on twig (photo by Kate St. John)
I sure hope the temperature doesn’t hover near freezing when it rains. Fingers crossed that we’ll be fine.
This week is the coldest we’ve had since last March or early April. Squirrels are getting serious about winter in @YardGoneWild‘s North Carolina backyard.
There is more to this nebula than meets the eye. In addition to visible light it’s emitting radio waves, infrared, X-rays and ultraviolet. Here it is in the ultraviolet range.
How heavy is a puffy white cloud? It depends on how big it is.
According to USGS, an average 1 kilometer by 1 kilometer cumulus cloud weighs about 1.1 billion pounds.
Notice that this calculation uses the metric system for the cloud’s dimensions because it’s so much easier to calculate the weight of a cloud using those units.
When the metric system began in France in the 1790s, the units had Earth measurements as their basis. A kilogram was the mass of water in a 10cm x 10cm x 10cm container (a litre). The cloud answer, above, was calculated in metric and expressed in kilograms, then translated to U.S. customary pounds.
Did you know that we use two measuring systems in the U.S.? Everyday things are described in U.S. customary measures (inches, feet, pounds) but, as described in Wikipedia, science, medicine, electronics, the military, automobile production and repair, and international affairs all use the metric system. Also, most packaged consumer goods in the U.S. have to be labeled in both customary and metric units.
All birds are measured in grams and centimeters. I can tell this common yellowthroat is being banded in the U.S. because there are inches on that ruler. But his tail is about 4.5cm.
Why haven’t we completely adopted the metric system?
It comes down to three things: Time, Money and Congress. The change will cost time and money for U.S. industry, and designating an official measurement system requires an act of Congress. Whenever the subject comes up, lobbyists convince Congress to say “No.”
So for now we use two measuring systems.
p.s. Grams and pounds do not measure the same thing at all. Grams are a measure of mass (a fundamental property of matter). Pounds are a measure of force (the force of gravity on a mass).
If your mass is 68 kilograms, you are … 68 kg in Europe 150 pounds in the U.S., 25 pounds on the Moon and still 68 kg, 0 pounds in outer space and still 68 kg Your mass is 68 kg everywhere you go.
In Pittsburgh the winter solstice invariably arrives on 21 December, but the 21st never works for the autumnal equinox.
As an astronomical event, the equinox arrives everywhere on Earth at exactly the same moment but is expressed as different dates and times because of longitude and time zones. Hawaii’s equinox is on the 22nd while Paris and Johannesburg have the same date and time because of time zones.
Universal Time
23 Sep, 6:50AM UTC
Pittsburgh
23 Sep, 2:50AM EDT
Honolulu, HI
22 Sep, 8:49PM HST
Tokyo
23 Sep 22, 3:49PM JST
Paris
23 Sep, 8:49AM CET
Johannesburg, SA
23 Sep, 8:49AM SAST
For most of the Earth this month’s equinox will occur on the 23rd. When it does everyone’s sunset will be exactly west, just like the photo above.
Turtleheads blooming in Schenley Park, 3 Sept 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
9 September 2023
Seen this week:
Turtleheads and late boneset flowers at Schenley Park. Do you see the honeybee?
Honeybee flies to late boneset, Schenley Park, 4 Sept 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
A rainbow with crows over Oakland.
Rainbow over Shadyside on 7 Sept 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
Fiery sunset on 7 September.
Fiery sunset on 7 Sept 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
Six deer in Schenley Park — only 5 made it into the photo.
Five of six does in Schenley Park along the Bridle Trail, 4 Sept 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
But there’s a photo of deer I wish I’d been able to take: Friday morning 8 September along 5th Ave between the Cathedral of Learning and Clapp Hall I saw 3 deer — 2 does and 1 fawn — standing on the pavement at Clapp Hall. They were close to the curb of 5th Ave at Tennyson as they tried to figure out how to cross 5th Ave during rush hour.
When we watch the sky at night, we see the stars and planets wheel above us as they rise and set.
But what if we were standing among the stars? What if the stars stood still and we could tell that the Earth was moving?
Astrophotographer Bartosz Wojczynski set up his camera on a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer mount that automatically canceled out the Earth’s rotation. In his video the stars stand still.
Except for a few rare sightings in Florida, flamingos seen in the U.S. are not from the wild, they’re escapees from a zoo. Then suddenly last week, after Hurricane Idalia, flamingos have been popping up all over.
At top, 16 flamingos visited Fred Howard County Park near Tarpon Springs, FL. Below, 6 flamingos stopped by St. Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge, 30 miles south of Tallahassee.
The groups have often been a mix of pink adults and gray youngsters.
As of Saturday evening the totals were:
100+ in Florida
11 at Pea Island, North Carolina
2 in South Carolina
2 in Virginia
3 in Alabama
5 in Tennessee
UPDATE on 4 Sep 2023: 1 in Kentucky
and 2 in OHIO! at Caesar Creek State Park. These were seen for only a day and then gone.
American flamingos (Phoenicopterus ruber) are native to the northern shore of South America, the Caribbean islands, Cuba, and the Yucatan in Mexico. Hurricane Idalia plowed through a few of those locations.
This WKRG video on 27 August shows Hurricane Idalia gaining strength as it spans the Caribbean, overlaying part of the Yucatan and all of Cuba. The flamingos would have felt it coming and flown north and northeast to get out of its way. Notice the lower speed winds (shades of green) on the edge of the weather map. The green wind track is where most of the flamingos have been found.
Considering the storm track, the flamingos are probably from Cuba and the Yucatan including at least one banded bird.
Given all the discussion about the flamingos now appearing all over Florida (and farther north), this eBird list from Amy Grimm is especially relevant. This afternoon, Grimm documented 8 flamingos at Marathon, in the Florida Keys, and noted that “One has large yellow band on the right leg code DXCL, small silver band on left leg.” Do the bands mean it’s escaped from captivity? No. This combination — yellow PVC band on one leg with 4-letter code in black letters, ordinary band on other leg — has been used for years in the ongoing project to band American Flamingos in the big colony at Rio Lagartos, on the north coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
