A weather or sounding balloon is a balloon (specifically a type of high-altitude balloon) that carries instruments aloft to send back information on atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed by means of a small, expendable measuring device called a radiosonde. To obtain wind data, they can be tracked by radar, radio direction finding, or […]
Have you noticed that sometimes the weather will repeat itself several days in a row. For example, the weather could be cold and rainy for several days in a row. Another example is a month of repeating hot and dry weather. Meteorologists refer to repeating weather as a weather pattern. It is common for the […]
Hope you enjoyed the brief return to winter with last nights snowfall. We had an inch on the ground at 10pm which is already melting. It snowed quite hard and had a large liquid content so any measurements of actual snow will be hard to make especially with the rain which fell before changing to […]
In my opinion May is the nicest of the spring months and on average along with September are the best months weather wise in west Michigan (September is the better of the two IMO) May like the other spring months can have big day to day and year to year swings in both precipitation and […]
I have a new high resolution webcam here at the weather center up and running – I hope to have the images here on the site soon. This is from my backyard looking north towards the Kalamazoo River. We have a wind advisory in place for today for winds gusting to 45mph. We will more […]
This next topic may seem fundamental to high school science, however, reeducation of these things seem appropriate from time to time. Earth’s atmosphere is divided into five main layers: the exosphere, the thermosphere, the mesosphere, the stratosphere and the troposphere. The atmosphere thins out in each higher layer until the gases dissipate in space. There […]
April 21 1923: A tornado struck three miles west of Scottville in Mason County. It destroyed an unoccupied home and carried pieces of it over a mile. 1967: A tornado outbreak hits from Missouri to Michigan, killing 58 people. The worst of the damage was in northern Illinois, where dozens of people were killed in […]
A heat burst is a meteorological phenomenon in which air descending from a decaying thunderstorm causes a rapid temperature increase and strong straight-line winds at the surface. A heat burst typically begins with a dying thunderstorm, which often takes on a “serpentine” shape on radar. As in many decaying thunderstorms, air high in the storm […]
Couldn’t ask for a better weekend, a sure sign we have broken through the winter doldrums and can now venture outside to enjoy the great outdoors without having to bundle up. All my lawns are mowed and fertilized and my wife is whipping our flower beds into shape. Who can stay inside when it is […]
After reading Slims post yesterday I thought I would bring forth the weather events of August 25, 1814 which turned back the British from Washington DC during the war of 1812. During the summer of 1814, British warships sailed into the Chesapeake Bay and headed towards Washington. The warships sailed up the Patuxent River and […]