Weather trivia from MY readings, not the almanac

 

 

by Pat Laster

             January is a good time to study/deal with/ wish-it-were-different weather. The following are facts I've jotted down while reading during the past couple of years.

* The ozone season typically runs from Memorial Day Weekend through September (OTHER DAYS feature, 2002)

* In January, 2010, the United Kingdom was the coldest in thirty years. The lowest temperature was minus 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit. Norway was the coldest in two decades at minus 44 degrees, F.  [Understatement: “It’s cold. It’s just cold.” ––John Lewis, National Weather Service meteorologist, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, hereafter known as ADG] --article by K. Heard.

* The “Acqua Alta” phenomenon denotes exceptionally high tides that often flood most of Venice in the winter.

* The 2010 earthquake in Haiti at 7.1 on the Richter scale was the worst in 200 years. [Joe Downey, New York fire battalion chief, describes the earthquake in Haiti as of “a magnitude at least 100 times worse than Katrina. Leonard Pitts, in an ADG column January 16, 2010, said, “Sometimes, the earth is cruel.”]

* “I’m not going to miss the sight and sound of rain and thunder in February to sit inside a church building and wish I were outside.” – Pat Laster, on a Sunday morning after retirement as music director.

* Any time the earth moves under one’s feet, it’s scary.” – Scott Ausbrooks, on Guy, Arkansas’s earthquake swarm, October 2010. About 100 earthquakes were recorded since September in Faulkner County—all near the community of Guy.]

* Any earthquake less than 43 miles deep is considered shallow.” – Ibid [That seemed unfathomable to me until I looked it up.]

* “We took on Mother Nature. She threw everything at us but the kitchen sink, from timber, to boats that were sunk, to tree branches,” said George Pavlou, acting regional

administrator for the EPA. “We prevailed in the end.” (ADG, October 12 2009)[Did we?]

            * Two phenomena caused the extremes of weather during winter 2011: La Nina and a large high pressure system over Greenland.

            *How can I tell without looking which direction the wind blows? By placing the folded newspaper so that it doesn’t flutter or blow open.

            * On February 28, 2011, I actually felt the 4.7 magnitude earthquake, one of the Greenbrier-Guy swarm. First, my recliner shivered, then the strangest sound began, centered in the dining room. By the time I arose, the sound was dying, and I could see the gentle shaking of the dishes in the china cabinets. It was over in an eye blink.

            *April 2011 was the deadliest tornado outbreak since March 1932 that killed 332.

*The Mississippi River crested at 59.2 feet in Arkansas City on April 21, 1927 and in Helena, 60.2 feet on February 21, 1937.

            * Sand boils . . . can cause cavities to form in levees, especially if the pressure on both sides is not the same. Sand boils with sediment seeping is NOT good. Clear seepage is OK.

            *One definition of tornado: “indifferent destruction of the wind.” – S. McCrummen