Category Archives: Weather/Climate

Wet ahead

Posted on September 9, 2009 | Comments Off on Wet ahead

The ridge of high pressure that kept us really hot all summer is gone. We haven’t hit a triple-digit high in several days. And a nearly-stationary trough of low pressure over West Texas is drawing in moisture from the Gulf. LCRA meteorologist Bob Rose expects we’ll see showers and thunderstorms through the weekend. He doesn’t expect to see a lot of rain, but there’ll be a chance for more into next week. We sure need it, though I would prefer a couple of flash floods back-to-back.

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Posted in Weather/Climate

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Twenty million bats on radar

Posted on September 8, 2009 | Comments Off on Twenty million bats on radar

Accuweather meteorologist Jesse Ferrell has a neat series of augmented radar-capture pix, plus a radar video from the NEXRAD of the Austin-San Antonio weather service office in New Braunfels, showing a cloud of bats exiting Bracken Cave, southwest of Austin. Even if some of them are radar echoes clutter (also called radar bloom), the cloud is pretty impressive.

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Posted in Texana, Weather/Climate

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Big rain

Posted on September 4, 2009 | Comments Off on Big rain

Finally departing west on the radar after coming in from the east about half an hour ago. Ponding all over the Back Forty, and out front. Really poured. Looks like at least an inch. Good show. We needed that.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather/Climate

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Maunder Minimum here we come?

Posted on September 4, 2009 | Comments Off on Maunder Minimum here we come?

This will give the global warmists something to chew on. The ones who are still scientists, at least, not anti-technology pilgrims to a holy environmentalist shrine. The latter will accuse the researchers at the link of trying to change the subject.

But the longer the face of the sun stays clear of magnetic sunspot blemishes, or no better than sunspecks, as it now has pretty much for more than two years, the more it looks like the return of the Maunder Minimum. That was a cooling time, from about the Seventeenth to the mid-Nineteenth centuries. For instance, New York harbor froze over in the winter of 1780.

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Posted in Space, Weather/Climate

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Memorably hot summer

Posted on September 2, 2009 | Comments Off on Memorably hot summer

It was a blistering hot one and, officially, as KVUE’s Mary Murray says, the hottest on record. But the hottest on record isn’t very impressive when you consider that the record only goes back to 1856. I’ll bet it’s been this bad and worse some other summers in the past few billion years. Of course there’s nobody able to contradict me on that.

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Posted in Weather/Climate

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Specious argument

Posted on September 2, 2009 | Comments Off on Specious argument

I have often, foolishly, commented that the climate modeling of anthropogenic global warming can’t be accurate since weather forecasting is so fallible. It’s a poor argument, as Andrew Dessler at Texas A&M shows:

"Predicting the weather is like predicting what the next roll [of the dice] will be. Predicting the climate is like predicting what the average and standard deviation of 1000 rolls will be. The ability to predict the statistics of the next 1000 rolls does not hinge on the ability to predict the next roll. Thus, one should not dismiss climate forecasts simply because weather forecasts are only good for a few days."

On the other hand, it’s a good argument to say that the climate models are too weak to be trusted, because the physics of the atmosphere isn’t fully understood. In other words: garbage in, garbage out.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Science/Engineering, Weather/Climate

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“Hellstorm” Jimena

Posted on September 1, 2009 | Comments Off on “Hellstorm” Jimena

It’s the surge that will get the tourist beaches and fishing villages in Baja California, since the near-Category Five hurricane will lose some of its now-155 mph winds by the time it comes ashore tomorrow.

But, as the meteorologists say, a hurricane is not a point, and Baja is already getting plenty of wind, rain and waves. Meanwhile, we wait to see if we’ll get any of Jimena’s endgame, i.e. good rain. Benefiting from someone else’s tragedy, as usual with these things. Accuweather is still calling for thunderstorms for us, but has pushed them out to Saturday night now. Jim Spencer at KXAN sees a better chance Friday night than Saturday.

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Posted in South of the Border, Texana, Weather/Climate

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