A Weather Review

Sabrina - Editor       Shay - Reporter

Tabatha - Human Interest
Bowen - Historian

Weather: Weather is the condition or state of the atmosphere at a particular place and time. Some factors that affect the weather are temperature, dew point, relative humidity, barometric pressure, wind/direction, and your latitude. Relative humidity is the amount of moisture in the air compared to how much the air can hold at a given temperature. When the relative humidity is at 100% that means the air is saturated it is holding all of the water vapor it can at that temperature. Dew point temperature is the point at which the air is saturated and water drops begin to condense. Barometric pressure is the weight of the atmosphere on the earth. Where there is high pressure the weather is generally very nice but where there is low pressure the weather is more gloomy with a lot of clouds and storms. These pictures each represent some kind of weather sunny, cloudy, rain, storms, snow, hail, and windy.

Fronts:

A Front is a boundary separating two air masses. There are many different fronts, including a Cold Front, a Warm Front, a Stationary Front, and an Occluded Front. A Cold Front occurs when a cold air mass replaces a warm air mass. Cold fronts move quickly and often have violent weather such as thunderstorms, high winds, hail, tornadoes, and heavy rain. A Warm Front occurs when a warm air mass meets and replaces a cold air mass. Warm fronts move slowly, compared to a cold front that moves quickly. A Stationary Front occurs when a warm or cold front stops moving. When a Stationary Front occurs, temperature doesn’t change as much and they could be a light rain or drizzle. An Occluded Front occurs when a cold front catches and lifts a warm front. The weather that occurs is similar to the weather of a Cold Front. There is also something called a Polar Front. A Polar Front is the boundary between cold northern air and temperate air.  

Weather Folktales: In ancient times, people had no idea what was causing rain, thunder, or any type of weather. The result was they would create stories that would explain what they had no understanding of. In Kenya, Mkunga Mburu is the god of thunder and he was believed to travel across the sky on a huge black bull. Mkunga Mburu holds a spear in each hand and he throws them at clouds to create loud noises, creating thunder. The Yoruba people believed that lightning was magic made by the storm spirit who shot bolts of light from his mouth. The damage these bolts did was considered a punishment for wrong things people did in their everyday life. Raijin is the Japanese god of fire and lightning. He is normally shawn as a red demon surrounded by golden drums that represents thunder.

Information and picture comes from here.

Weather History:

Recording weather by hand or by machine has been around for centuries. Our founding fathers were some of the first people to track the weather. This means the earliest we know of weather being recorded is the 1700’s. Weather stations and news reports didn’t come around till august 1st, 1861. The news prediction was actually pretty accurate for the time in history, and the development of the telegraph got news and weather around faster.

Info. comes from here, and here