Weather Watching

[Turtle]

____I love all things weather! With varying degrees of intensity & ambition I measure & observe my local weather asiduously. I keep a rain gauge, I video tape clouds, I note trends & extremes, & in general observe weather.

___Currently I live in a rather unique weather region, being on a hiil composed of Missoula flood deposits from 11,000 year ago & banking the Columbia River. Today we have generaly clear weather, the barometer is steady at 30.0 and strong gusty winds.

___Anyway, any of you all weather watchers? Seen any spectacular phenomena? Keep a rain gauge? Have a barometer? ;)

[Queso]

i am fascinated with the clouds, and the sky. i don't know much technical information about weather, other than i think nothing is more amazing than the sky.

i was in florida for those 3 hurricanes last summer, that was a trip.

seeing flashing lights and someone on an intercom telling you to evacuate is not a very nice thing to hear in the middle of the night! i live right on the manatee river so the potential was really dangerous, luckily nothing happened.

 

also, i keep frequent watch of the humidity and rainfall...those two together tells me to not even bother to leave my house at night. i will be eaten alive by mosquitos! horrible beasts.

[C1ay]

I can sit and watch lightning for hours. The light show is better than any man-made show I've ever attended.

[Queso]

YES! another positive thing about florida (i generally hate this place) is the lightning. i can't wait until it's in season again, it can go all night. the thunder is the perfect soundtrack, as loud as a close show of fireworks where i live.

[Turtle]

___Have you recorded it Orby?

____Love the lightening C1ay! If I hadn't dematerialized my photo collection i would post up some Science Gallery photos of lightening I caught. I am on watch now!

___BTW, sunset approaches me here; did you know dusk & dawn are the most adventageous times to work sorcery? :note: :note: :note: :note: :note:

[Queso]

haha i did not know that. and no i've never recorded the lightning, i did take a picture once though...

[Turtle]

___Eery photo Orb! After having the warmest day of the year Friday, we have thunderstorms & rain since. Rather unusual too, as they come from the East & most our weather comes from the other 3 directions.

___Count me cloudy in Cascades

[Turtle]

___Quite the lightning storm here last night! I have a montage of lightning stills from video taken during the storm. I have the shots in the Science Gallery

http://hypography.com/gallery/browseimages.php?c=3&userid=796

___We all sat around the kitchen table overlooking the storm from our bluff & just enjoyed the power of nature. The strange orange sky cast a haunting air before the storm really hit. The lightning lasted about 40 minutes & much of it too distant for us to hear the thunder. The infrared image (last in the montage) however caught a bolt whose thunder shook the house within 3 seconds, making it barely 3/10 kilometer away.

___Following shortly after that bolt, the rain began & lasted just another 40 minutes or so; 3/10 inch of rain in the gauge this morning. Forcasters say a similar, albeit less energetic, system may move in again tonight.

[Turtle]

___As hurricane Dennis approaches the US coast, I just heard them say this is the FIRST ever in recorded history (since 1850's) that a category 4 or higher hurricane has formed in the Gulf of Mexico.

___We too here in the Pacific NW have some strange weather continuing with unusual amounts of rain & low temps for this time of year.

___Interesting weather watching this week. :)

[Chacmool]

I live in Pretoria (near Johannesburg) in South Africa. We also have spectacular thunderstorms in summer, and I love watching the lightning displays (after running around the house to plug out all electrical appliances :) ) Unfortunately, I haven't been able to take any photographs of lightning. Any tips/suggestions?

 

It's winter now, and where I live it's usually cloudless, with the most beautiful blue sky. It's also not very cold (minimum temperatures seldom drop below zero, and daytime highs often reach 20 degrees Celcius or more - I guess many people won't even call it winter).

[Jay-qu]

i love extremes in weather - big lightning storms, wind so strong you can lean on it - oh and they usally produce big waves in the ocean for surfing

[Lilac]

I love blustery days - that meant "winter" where I grew up (Sacramento, California). I love the wind tossing a few drops of rain around and turning umbrellas inside out. I've got no use for umbrellas, they are more of a nuisance than a few old raindrops on my head.

 

Down here in the deep south (southern Georgia, btw), it's no use watching the Weather Channel for the forecast in the summer; every day is exactly the same: highs in the low 90's, lows in the 70's, 30-60% chance of afternoon thunderstorms. Every. Single. Day. from June through September.

 

You want to know if it will rain? Look at the sky!! I've gotten pretty darn good at identifying which clouds actually have rain in them - I think I'm at about 95% accuracy of predicting wet or dry hair. The only time I've been wrong lately was when I tried to outrace a storm to the local supermarket. It beat me there, and I had to sit in the parking lot for 10 minutes - it was a real gully-washer. (A bit more wet than I'm prepared to deal with - I like to be able to SEE the store door I'm racing for through the rain.) :wave:

[Turtle]

___Lilac...? :rolleyes: The blustery winds have taken her away. :naughty: Today in the lap of volcanos we have our hottest day of the season at 37 deg C. I have chosen to cool my heels with a St. Paulina Girl yellow German bier; much too hot for a dark Arrogant Bastard.

[Cedars]

Thunderstorms are my favorite. The big ones. 50,000 to 60,000 feet high to the top of the anvil. The lines that form and come thru during daylight hours so I can see the clouds form and change. The foreboding shelf cloud ahead of the rain that just screams DANGER, the green skies, which may or may not signal that hail cometh soon. I don’t know that I have a favorite position to storm watch, in that a storm that passes barely north of me (or I get the glancing south edge of the storm) allows for the greatest potential to see rotation (and possibly a tornado). Or the ones than pass right over, which allow me to stand out in the winds that pass thru right before the rain hits. The sky getting dark as night. The seeming calm right before the winds start. When you can hear the roar of the winds so loud aloft, yet around you the air is surprisingly calm. The huge power of it all. The crackle of a bolt of lightning passing so close by. Then the BOOM and shake of the house after it hits the ground. And of course how lightning looks. And then to go outside afterwards, and find the air temperature has fallen 20 degrees in this time. Ah the cold front has moved in...

 

Has anyone here noticed the big water birds moving off the lakes right before a big one hits. By moving off the lakes I mean, they do not roost in trees along the lakes, rather they seem to move to trees away from water. I have noticed this a few times. The egrets moving by groups, their white wings flashing so brilliantly against the blue gray clouds. The eagles and herons seem to do this too.

 

I sometimes keep the weather radar animations as a record of a particularly strong storm.

[Cedars]

Blizzards are cool too. Much rarer than the big thunderstorm, at least for my area. Not fun to be driving around in but the prep routine for those of us who have such events are kinda fun. The rush to stock up on supplies (food mostly). Everyone chatting excitedly in the stores as they wonder how bad it will get. Watching the birds come in to get that last big meal before it hits. Daytime storms are the best as you watch the snow pile up. It gets so quiet. All you hear is the rustling of these dead leaves in the wind, and sometimes, you hear the snow hitting the dead leaves. Lots of snow piling up. Then the big winds hit. Where the snow swirls around into drifts. Snow is a much better insight into how winds swirl. Rain is too heavy to show the real wind movement on the smaller scale like how trees and buildings affect its flow.

 

And blizzards are at a slower pace than the thunderstorms. It seems its seldom that a blizzard starts and ends entirely in the daylight hours. You go to bed at night and wake up and its over. And then you go outside and wander familiar paths in your yard to see how deep the drifts got. And you marvel at how low the branches hang on the pine trees without breaking. Watching squirrels break paths thru the deep snow. Or you mutter unhappily as you see the front of your car is below the top of the drift that formed in front of it. And all is so quiet for a bit. Until others wake and begin to fire up their plow trucks or snow blowers. The longest we were snowed in due to a blizzard was 5 days. That was back in the early 70s.

[Turtle]

___What kind of snows did you have this past Winter? What kind of Spring & Summer have you there?

___In my area (Pacific Northwest US) the weather is out of wack this year. A mild Winter has produced a bumper crop of mice which continue eating crops in the field & a wet Spring kept the Honey Bees from pollinating the orchards & we have a dismal harvest of fruit as well. (I haven't heard how the Hazel Nuts(we call them Filberts here) have faired?)

___The last week or so we have first one hot, then cloudy, then hot, then... The weather forcasters have to wish for new software I think.

[Skippy]

___What kind of snows did you have this past Winter? What kind of Spring & Summer have you there?

___In my area (Pacific Northwest US) the weather is out of wack this year. A mild Winter has produced a bumper crop of mice which continue eating crops in the field & a wet Spring kept the Honey Bees from pollinating the orchards & we have a dismal harvest of fruit as well. (I haven't heard how the Hazel Nuts(we call them Filberts here) have faired?)

___The last week or so we have first one hot, then cloudy, then hot, then... The weather forcasters have to wish for new software I think.

We had snow here for the first time in years, on Christmas Eve. I live outside of Houston, TX. A friend sent me a sattelite photo showing the Lower Gulf Coast of Texas covered in snow. It was great, my 15 and 13 year olds had never been in snow.