Clouds can be harbingers of good weather or bad. Their absence can be a good thing after a flooding rain or a bad thing during a drought. They provide relief from the heat of direct sunlight but also act as a blanket to warm the earth. Clouds help water the earth by providing precipitation but […]
Lightning is a sudden electrostatic discharge that occurs typically during a thunderstorm. This discharge occurs between electrically charged regions of a cloud (called intra-cloud lightning or IC), between two clouds (CC lightning), or between a cloud and the ground (CG lightning). The charged regions in the atmosphere temporarily equalize themselves through this discharge referred to […]
April 15 1943: Temperatures plunge into the teens as snowflakes swirl in the arctic winds. Record lows include 16 degrees at Muskegon and 18 degrees at Grand Rapids. 2002: A four day stretch of record warm weather peaks across Lower Michigan with Grand Rapids hitting 86 degrees and Lansing 84. April 16 1961: From 6 […]
Earlier this month Weather Decision Technologies (WDT) released their Window 10 version of Radarscope. Radarscope has been around for quite some time and is used by storm trackers. RadarScope is a specialized display utility for weather enthusiasts and meteorologists that allows you view NEXRAD Level 3 as well as Level 2 Super-resolution radar data along […]
Here we are in mid April and we are still talking about snow. We should be seeing temperatures in the 50s and we will after another cool week though we will see a drier pattern shaping up for the next couple weeks with chances of slightly below normal precipitation. Our slow moving storm system has […]
The Winter Storm Warning is in effect until 5pm today. We have ice accumulating at this time – everything has a glaze of ice on it. We could see up to a half an inch of this nasty stuff before it turns to rain then snow. We had .95 of an inch of rain yesterday […]
My wife and me have to go to the store and pick up some items for not only ourselves but for my wife’s mother who lives in Linwood, Michigan (about 12 miles north of Bay City) her mother lives about a half mile inland from Saginaw Bay. We have been planning a trip up […]
What is hail? Hail is a form of precipitation that occurs when updrafts in thunderstorms carry raindrops upward into extremely cold areas of the atmosphere where they freeze into balls of ice. Hail can damage aircraft, homes and cars, and can be deadly to livestock and people. How does hail form? Hailstones grow by colliding […]
Thunderstorm Types Often called “popcorn” convection, single-cell thunderstorms are small, brief, weak storms that grow and die within an hour or so. They are typically driven by heating on a summer afternoon. Single-cell storms may produce brief heavy rain and lightning. A squall line. [+] A multi-cell storm is a common, garden-variety thunderstorm in which new […]
At 1pm you may hear the sirens go off in your town. This is a test of the state wide tornado drill. The average lead time for tornadoes to develop is 10 to 15 minutes, which means residents need to be ready to react quickly when a warning is issued. To be ready for a […]