Sunday School Lessons

It's that time once again for another stirring SUNDAY SCHOOL! Yea, yippee, aren't you excited? So grab your mouse and click it up a notch!

Back during our last Sunday School, January 25 we theorized that La Nina was a "happening reality." Lo and behold, the very next day--January 26-- NOAA & NWS jumped on the La Nina bandwagon. The full story is told in a 30-page document that insanely heavy on jargon, numbers, charts, graphs and lots of little arrows and squiggly lines. If you can hack looking at this mind-numbing piece of science it's located here. We will expand and expound more on this topic later. It's Sunday morning and I need more coffee.

Here's a real fun gift received in this morning's email inbox. It's a perfect little ditty for this morning's weekly Sunday School. One of our Dear Readers and Followers found a 1985 media clipping about some guy who studied weather proverbs such as: “The squeak of the snow will the temperature show.” Thanks to Stephen N. (AKA Stephen S.) we now have these gems preserved for posterity a click over right yonder on our website.

Speaking of Sunday School, it's time for a pop quiz! OK, Class, what, where and when were the most extreme high and low temps recorded for Idaho? Or Arizona? Or whatever? I can hear your groans, class, and I feel your pain. But, trust me, these are trivia well worth remembering. Imagine the bets you can win!

For the record, Idaho's highest temp ever recorded was 118 in Orofino in 1934 and it's lowest was 60 below at Island Park Dam in 1943. Click here to see every stat's extremes and scroll down the page for the actual data.

How's the Sea Ice doing? Not to fear, Class, simply click here.

Class, this is a great one!!!! I'm sure you've been reading that Redoubt ash caused engine failure on a jetliner back in 1989. Well, I've been having trouble finding the details of the story. I finally found them this morning in Russia at KVERT--Russia's science center for watching volcanic activity on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

If you thought those people who surfed down onto the Hudson were worried, imagine what it would be like to free fall 18000 feet with NO engines on a 747 jetliner. Now, we're talking a real "life passing in front of your eyes" experience. Here's the details--it's an amazing story--WOW:

"On December 15, 1989, a Boeing-747 flying from Amsterdam with 231 passengers and 13 crewmen on board started to descend from the cruising altitude in order to land in Anchorage, Alaska, USA. The plane was at a height of 7500 m, and was flying a distance of 240 km from Redoubt volcano, when suddenly it entered an ash cloud from a volcanic eruption. As a result, all four engines died. After eight minutes, and with only 2000 m to land, the pilots finally were able to restart the engines. After the aircraft landed, over 60 kg of volcanic ash was removed from each turbine-engine. All four engines, as well as the navigation system, and electric system had to be completely replaced. The loss to the airline due to this incident was over 80 million dollars."

Talk about pucker factor! By the way, I do a redoubt Rewrite at least twice daily. I added some new links this morning. Check it out. This concludes Sunday School. Now GO PLAY!