Decoded Winds Aloft

I was using Google to find the Salt Lake AFD and I spotted this enticing link called "Decoded Winds Aloft." WOW, I thought, this might be interesting. Sure enough, here it is from Saturday morning Salt Lake NWS website. It's a real spiff map and makes me wonder if other NWS offices also offer such a whizmo widget. We will be driving south along I-15 to Salt Lake and then to Panguitch before washing ashore in the Old Verde Lakebeds early next week. Posting to this blog will be sporadic since we are not taking out laptop. Nothing much is expected to happen as there's a big honking ridge over the Great Basin right now. Once we get situated in the Land of Red Rocks, we will resume posting.

Sunspot 1008

Well, folks, lots and lots of people around the Planet are waiting for El Sol to wake up and get busy with the next Sun Spot Cycle. It's a big deal with Sun Watchers. be sure to check the Spaceweather link at left. Meanwhile, some guy in Swansea, Wales, sent this pic of Group 1008 off to the Doctor who runs the joint. Here's part of the commentary:

"The sun is waking up and winking at us today," says Wainwright.

The "smile" is a filament of plasma connecting the two magnetic poles of sunspot 1008. Magnetograms of the active region reveal a N-S polarity characteristic of Solar Cycle 24: this is a new-cycle sunspot. The appearance of 1008 continues a recent trend of increasing new-cycle sunspot counts, which began in Oct. 2008. Solar activity is on the rise; if you have a solar telescope, take a look!

Flagstaff NWS getting Alaskan guy

(Edited 12DEC08)I was reading the Anchorage NWS website on 12DEC and stumbled onto a note about one of their staff switching down to the Flagstaff NWS office.

Here is the snippet they wrote about him:

By Renee Wise
Dave Vonderheide, HMT at WFO Anchorage, will be transferring to Flagstaff, AZ in December. Dave has been a part of the Alaska Region since 1990. He worked at WSO St. Paul and WSO Yakutat in the early 1990s. While in Yakutat, Dave built a two mile long foot trail from the Dangerous River road to reach the base of the mountains overlooking Harlequin Lake. This took two summers working on the trail on days off. The trail runs through Tongass National Forest and Russell Fjord Wilderness. The National Forest Service named the trail the Von der Heydt Trail, a misspelling Dave never had corrected.
At the Anchorage WFO, Dave became very involved in the climate program. He studied temperature microclimate patterns across the city, especially those occurring on clear nights. In early 1998, Dave was featured in a Daily News article documenting for the first time the differences in temperature across the city. During the deep cold spell of January 1999, he measured a minimum temperature of -45 degrees F in east Anchorage. Because of his enthusiasm for measuring this effect he was given the nickname “cold pocket hunter”.
Through the years, Dave has been an active member of the American Meteorological Society, National Weather Association, Mount Washington Observatory, American Birding Association, Anchorage Audubon Society, Alaska Geology Society, and the Geological Society of America. His input and enthusiasm will be sorely missed. We wish you all the best in Flagstaff, Dave!

Here's a link to the newsletter that describes him. Sounds like he is going to be a breath of fresh air for Flagstaff! I can hardly wait to see his signatures on the AFD's!

NWS Offices

The above map shows every NWS Office in the Lower 48. Colors indicate the geographic area covered by each office. To go to any NWS office simply type (city) NWS into Google. All NWS websites are very similar.

A key piece of the weather puzzle is found in the AFD's produced by each office. AFD="Area Forecast Discussions." Each shift writes an AFD for incoming staff and also to help neighboring offices understand local thinking. (Or "loco" thinking as the case may be!) We will soon add a webpage on "Understanding AFD's." If you wish to read the AFD's, simply use (city) NWS AFD in Google.

Messy Map--Web kinks--Uncle Rico links

We've added a nice simple USA Weather that's worth watching. It's at the top left. The Veteran's Day edition is pretty messy---lots of stuff going on. Click the little picture to see the larger current daily map.

Due to a stupid HTML coding mistake on my part, none of the graphics have shown up on the website. I am in the process of fixing those glitches. Since today's a holiday, the "fix" was done by early morning.

We hope to receive a lot of weather links from our readers. Some links will be featured here but all links will be placed on Uncle Rico's Hot Link Page.

Ten inch rain? NOT!

This post was removed. The storm totally failed to live up to its excessive hype!

Snow totals

There are many ways to watch snow totals. SLC Friend BTB just sent along a website from KSL TV in Salt Lake. It might be a handy way to watch snow totals by watershed in Utah. I'm not sure right now about what their percentage figures mean. Percentage of what? Normal? Last Year?
Either I or BTB will get this figgered out. Meanwhile, it's a nice new summary to ponder. Thanks, BTB!

Utah Snow

Utah's Snowbird Resort got 46 inches of snow last week and opened 07NOV, the 2nd earliest on record. Expected snow did not materialize last night. The USDA NRCS Snowbird SNOTEL shows the snow is shrinking fast--15.7 inches measured. Even the official Snowbird snow report shows half of the snow is left: 23 inches vs. 46 original. It will be interesting to see if Snowbird can now STAY open! The SLC NWS Area Forecast Discussion has already backed off on snow forecast for today--looks like the bulk of the system is going to hit the Four Corners.

Cold Alaskan Summer

Hum....from The Anchorage Daily News, dateline 13OCT08 but just printed in the Idaho falls paper today (09NOV08)

"Two hundred years of glacial shrinkage in Alaska, and then came the winter and summer of 2007-2008.

Unusually large amounts of winter snow were followed by unusually chill temperatures in June, July and August.

"In mid-June, I was surprised to see snow still at sea level in Prince William Sound," said U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Bruce Molnia. "On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of new snow on the surface of the Taku Glacier in late July. At Bering Glacier, a landslide I am studying, located at about 1,500 feet elevation, did not become snow free until early August.

"In general, the weather this summer was the worst I have seen in at least 20 years."

Click the newspaper link above to read the whole article.

Volcanoes

One of the primary reasons I'm amped about the upcoming Great Winter is volcanoes. There were three decent eruptions in the Aleutians this summer. Okmok on July 12, Cleveland on July 21 and Kasatochi on August 7. The picture shows the SO2 cloud from Kasatochi a few days after the eruption. Gas and ash from these three events was injected into the high stratosphere and are now circling the Arctic latitudes. Ironically, this activity took place very near the 125th Anniversary of the Grand Daddy Explosion of Krakatoa in 1883. Here's a great tidbit from that epic event.

"But the most extraordinary tale, apparently confirmed by the official report into the tragedy, involved a German quarry manager who told how he was swept off the roof of his three-storey office, only to be saved by a passing crocodile. As he cascaded through the jungle propelled by the giant wave, he spotted the croc beside him and leapt on its back. Safely aboard, he dug his thumbs into the creature's eye sockets and was carried along for the next few miles until he was dumped on the jungle floor."

Click here for some awesome webcame views of Alaskan volcanoes. THANKS, Rico!