A weekend without snow or sleet or nasty cold or rain or some version of all of that, quite the welcome relief here in central Va. While the Great Lakes remain mostly frozen and the northern US snow covered, England flooded and California cooking, government overthrows in Ukraine (get out Putin!), Thailand and Venezuela, here is the Old Dominion we are enjoying warm sunshine and the snow is gone. Could be time for an aftershock!!
Winter will return next week with a little snow and another shot of polar cold but today, on this part of earth, we get a glimmer of hope that winter will end and the heat and humidity and bugs will be back.
Hope you get out and enjoy it. Tomorrow will have a few more clouds around ahead of the next front but will continue the warmth; months have passed since a nice weekend. Almost 3 months since a full week of school!! Pretty crazy here on the third rock out from the nearby star.
The reflection of sunlight off our moon will show a quarter of that orb lit at 12:15 today, the 3rd quarter moon. The moon has had lovely encounters with Mars and Saturn during the wee hours of the last week and will be above brilliant Venus in the morning dawn on Tuesday and just below on Wednesday. A good look at the east and some binocs might let you glimpse a thin crescent with Mercury very low on Thursday morning. The moon will be new 3 hours into March next Saturday. Jupiter, still in the middle of Gemini, dominates the evening sky but has lots of bright company as the stars of winter still dazzle. Spring is on the way: the big dipper is standing on its handle in the east at dark as the great bear begins to stir from its winter slumber below the northern horizon at dark.
Plenty of volcano action although Kelut has settled down a bit after killing 8 and displacing tens of thousands on Java. Sinabung is still going at it on Sumatra and Tungurahua is fired up in Ecuador while Ubinas shakes and belches next country down in Peru. Etna continues on Sicily, lava oozing all about and while the rest of the ring of fire is not quite as eruptive as the aforementioned mountains there is still lots of rumbling and spewing ash going on out there. Visit at your own peril!!
There are, of course, earthquakes but no major shakes or disturbances but in the US activity in Missouri and some shakes at Yellowstone bear watching. Central Va is quiet, a trend I'd like to see continue, today on earth and into the distant future.
Enjoy the respite from winter, today on Earth.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Thursday, February 13, 2014
A Real Snow Storm With an Ice Topping!!
After some cold, messy dustings, the Big Snow set up is perfect and the eastern seaboard, from the deep south to New England, gets hammered with the white stuff...and sleet and freezing rain and just rain on the coast. A serious mess!! Here in the central piedmont of Va. there is about 8 inches of snow with a lovely ice crust on top. The ice is working for the birds as the seed I have thrown out is easy to get to and the little feathered monsters are chowing down. It's a tough day out there on Earth! The wise will tread carefully outside or stay inside; I'm thinking travel outside today will be best accomplished on skis.
The set up: strong high pressure off the Maritimes locking cold, dry air deep into the south, a big low that had hammered the northwest riding the jet stream deep into the south, a stop to slurp some moisture from the gulf and a roll up the east coast riding over the cold air and dropping all that moisture as snow, sleet, freezing rain. The big snow part is done but there will likely be another little dusting on our ice with the wrap around as the storm heads up the east coast. The perfect southern storm. Enjoy!!
In shaking and eruption news: other than a little shake up along the St. Lawrence in southeast Canada the earthquake news is pretty status quo, the Pacific rim and Indo-Asian boundary and nothing in the 6 magnitude range. The volcano list has no real surprises: 2 in the Kurils, 2 on Kamchatka, Indonesia rules with 4 belching mountains with two more nearby on PNG and in India's Andaman Isles. Etna still rumbles on Sicily, Fox Island in the Aleutians and Hawaii keep the US on the list and on the eastern RingOFire: Mexico, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Peru all make the list. It's an active planet, beware if near plate boundaries.
The sky is mostly cloudy but if it clears the near full moon (It's full Valentine's Day @ 6:53pmEST) will make for good lighting for night time snow excursions. Jupiter was above the waxing gibbous moon Tuesday evening and along with the bright stars of winter make for spectacular star gazing. Venus rules the morning sky before dawn, ridiculously bright although Saturn and Mars, while much less bright, are out and lovely. Mercury, zooming around the sun, passes between the Earth and Sun (inferior conjunction) on Saturday and won't be easily visible until March lower left of Venus in the morning sky.
If it's snow adventures you seek, it's your time; get out but bundle up and be careful, today on Earth.
The set up: strong high pressure off the Maritimes locking cold, dry air deep into the south, a big low that had hammered the northwest riding the jet stream deep into the south, a stop to slurp some moisture from the gulf and a roll up the east coast riding over the cold air and dropping all that moisture as snow, sleet, freezing rain. The big snow part is done but there will likely be another little dusting on our ice with the wrap around as the storm heads up the east coast. The perfect southern storm. Enjoy!!
In shaking and eruption news: other than a little shake up along the St. Lawrence in southeast Canada the earthquake news is pretty status quo, the Pacific rim and Indo-Asian boundary and nothing in the 6 magnitude range. The volcano list has no real surprises: 2 in the Kurils, 2 on Kamchatka, Indonesia rules with 4 belching mountains with two more nearby on PNG and in India's Andaman Isles. Etna still rumbles on Sicily, Fox Island in the Aleutians and Hawaii keep the US on the list and on the eastern RingOFire: Mexico, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Peru all make the list. It's an active planet, beware if near plate boundaries.
The sky is mostly cloudy but if it clears the near full moon (It's full Valentine's Day @ 6:53pmEST) will make for good lighting for night time snow excursions. Jupiter was above the waxing gibbous moon Tuesday evening and along with the bright stars of winter make for spectacular star gazing. Venus rules the morning sky before dawn, ridiculously bright although Saturn and Mars, while much less bright, are out and lovely. Mercury, zooming around the sun, passes between the Earth and Sun (inferior conjunction) on Saturday and won't be easily visible until March lower left of Venus in the morning sky.
If it's snow adventures you seek, it's your time; get out but bundle up and be careful, today on Earth.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
The Ooze of Permafrost Melting
Using the term permafrost in Virginia is a misnomer; there is no permafrost but the ground has been so cold for so long that the recent warm up has created similar conditions to the summer melting of permanently frozen tundra soils. The mid-winter mud season is here and things are oozy and slippery. I'm not sure how far down the (exposed) soil has frozen (it's frozen and hard to dig into!) but it's far enough that the top layer is now thawed and looking to move...when you step on it. It's a muddy, slippery, sliding world and what looks like solid ground is far from solid; be ready to have your feet move and not in a direction you expected. Walk gingerly!!
The moon is back on the evening side of Earth and was a lovely, tiny crescent with earthshine last night low in the southwest. Jupiter sits in the center of the Winter Hexagon in the southeast opposite the moon when gazing southward. Clouds later today and for much of this week will make sky watching an iffy endeavor. Any break in the clouds before dawn will show the brilliant morning star, Venus.
While there are always volcanoes rumbling and spitting here and there around the shaky planet, Sinabung, on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, has erupted; exploded into action and killed people that had begun to move back to their homes after initial evacuation orders. Things change quickly and with often explosive consequences here on the big, wild planet. If you live in Indonesia, you already knew that.
Greece continues to have aftershocks in the 4 and 5 range on the Richter scale, New Zealand (an island off the coast) was rocked today with a 6.5 quake, Peru, Indonesia, California, Alaska; you know the rest of the earthquake list. None in OK or UT, but though there was a little shake along the New Madrid fault zone along the Mississippi late last week; not a sign you want to see...
Warm temps, even with high cloud filtered sunlight, will make for a pleasant Super Bowl Sunday but those clouds foretell of unsettled changes ahead, rain changing over to some snow Monday, more rain Tuesday into Wednesday and the potential for another storm next weekend. The groundhog saw his shadow (and we know this how...) so folk tales tell us, 6 more weeks of winter. Seems to be the way the planet is headed this year: warm and dry on the west coast, cold and wintery on the east. Get out and check out the warm, slippery planet before the big game, today on Earth.
The moon is back on the evening side of Earth and was a lovely, tiny crescent with earthshine last night low in the southwest. Jupiter sits in the center of the Winter Hexagon in the southeast opposite the moon when gazing southward. Clouds later today and for much of this week will make sky watching an iffy endeavor. Any break in the clouds before dawn will show the brilliant morning star, Venus.
While there are always volcanoes rumbling and spitting here and there around the shaky planet, Sinabung, on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, has erupted; exploded into action and killed people that had begun to move back to their homes after initial evacuation orders. Things change quickly and with often explosive consequences here on the big, wild planet. If you live in Indonesia, you already knew that.
Greece continues to have aftershocks in the 4 and 5 range on the Richter scale, New Zealand (an island off the coast) was rocked today with a 6.5 quake, Peru, Indonesia, California, Alaska; you know the rest of the earthquake list. None in OK or UT, but though there was a little shake along the New Madrid fault zone along the Mississippi late last week; not a sign you want to see...
Warm temps, even with high cloud filtered sunlight, will make for a pleasant Super Bowl Sunday but those clouds foretell of unsettled changes ahead, rain changing over to some snow Monday, more rain Tuesday into Wednesday and the potential for another storm next weekend. The groundhog saw his shadow (and we know this how...) so folk tales tell us, 6 more weeks of winter. Seems to be the way the planet is headed this year: warm and dry on the west coast, cold and wintery on the east. Get out and check out the warm, slippery planet before the big game, today on Earth.
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