Category: Meteorology

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Tsunami Warning? No, only a test

Recently browsing the web site, I saw that warnings had been posted for the Portsmouth and Rockingham areas and clicked for more details. The most unbelievable warning popped up — Tsunami Warning! Really? Immediately, the HUGE list of affected areas, starting with “Laguna Madre From the Port of Brownsville to the Arroyo Colorado” had me suspect someone accidentally spilled coffee on the Big Red Button or something. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling finally got to the actual text, which started out: THIS_MESSAGE_IS_FOR_TEST_PURPOSES_ONLY. Whew! You coulda lead with that…

The alert was gone a moment later.

NWS Tsunami Warning, just a test. Lists every location with ocean access, apparently.
Terrifying Tsunami Warning, just a test
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Hot enuf for ya?

Concord broke an all-time record for this date by an enormous margin of 5°F:

Concord, NH high temperature for 6-Nov-2024 is 5 degree Fahrenheit over the previous record.

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Pine Pollen Clouds

Not strictly a meteorological issue, but certainly an air quality issue! The slightest breezes were launching clouds of yellow pollen out of the pine trees, and the air was so hazy I was looking for a fire. Take precautions if you, like me, suffer spring allergies.

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Weather Band webinar: Winter Lake-Effect Systems: Scientific and Educational Adventures to Further Our Knowledge and Prediction of Lake-Effect StormsWeather Band webinar:

On the 17th of this month, I attended a webinar on Lake Effect Systems and the studies going on. A number of distinguished meteorologists taked about the team effort to study LES on Lake Ontario a few years ago. The PhDs gave great credit to their hard-working undergrads who braved difficult winter conditions to set up and manage all of the tools and instruments and trucks and vehicles to gather all of the data. While the technical details were beyond my current understanding, the core ideas were quite accessible and interesting.

A screenshot of a Zoom meeting featuring 7 PhD meteroologists on the right, and a screen showing a slide labeled Entraining CAPE with formula resembling every high schoolers' math nightmare: radicals, integrals, greek letters and a legend decoding the greek letters into other indesipherable acronyms
Scientists explain the current model for entraining CAPE that occurs with lake effect systems.

Hosted by the Weather Band, a group of “weather enthusiasts,” mostly non-meteorologists, run by the American Meteorological Society.