I have always watched the skies, learned their ways and been excited to know as much as I could learn about all the parameters of climate. This probably got a huge push to a more scientific understanding because of Mr. Paul Hayes, my science teacher for the brief time I was at Fort Howard School. He got the help of the janitor to mount a weather station on the roof of the school, along with a pair of mirrors so we could observe the station from the classroom. It was pretty ingenious. We would take measurements with the sling psychrometer and got to know the feeling of moist and dry air at a range of temperatures. As far back as the late Sixties, I began to get a clear picture of how different storm fronts would move and what winds from different directions typically brought with them. Even the cloud formations, in my mind could help show what to expect in the coming hours or days. One of the most important things I learned, so important in fact, that it was taught all the way through college, is that high and low pressure cells were RELATIVE pressure. Highs did not mean, necessarily a numerically high number, just that compared to the surrounding atmosphere, it is relatively high pressure. You could have low pressure, surrounded for the most part by very low pressure, and it would still be designated a high pressure "cell".
By the time I learned the science of this, there was also great focus on the fact that these cells typically follow patterns, rarely would pressure cells stall for great lengths of time, nor would they ever gain enough strength to cross the Equator. Much of what we thought we knew about our planet has changed to the point of being wrong now-a-days. The old weather maps showed a series of highs and lows that would be, for lack of better words, slow, relatively steady and somewhat predictable, because the cells would alternate, high, low, high, low. Today, there can be a three lobed cell of ultra low pressure that covers the country from the Continental Divide at the Rocky Mountains, all the way through the Piedmont and into the Northeast. Three super low pressure areas, combined into one huge "relatively" low pressure cell. This would have been incomprehensible in previous centuries. We have already had more than twenty years to begin grappling with the "new normal" and so little was made of the first cohesive pressure cell crossing the Equator, a few years ago, it seems that most meteorologists were not paying attention in class or asleep on the job. I get it, now some conspiracy theorists might say, "Or, they were told not to talk about it." I'm nearly positive that this is not it. Think about it, if your job is to come into everyone's home every day and tell them what to expect, reporting on what may prove to be climatically catastrophic might not be the best way to remain on good terms with them. Not everyone has to be told not to bite the hand that feeds them either, so even if there was some sort of conspiracy to keep it quiet, it was ineffectual. Science documents this sort of thing and there is not a cover up, just lack of attention being paid to the planet and her processes.
This brings me to the title of this post, the weather observation I made this morning, looking at nearby radar, 09-07-2020 between Sheboygan and Manitowoc. Storms had been traveling from Northwest to Southeast overnight and just before sun up, they were tapering out, near Lake Michigan. Just North of Sheboygan, they seemed to hit a wall, stack up and intensify greatly. At that point, the entire storm front stopped (from a speed of about 30 MPH) and remained stationary for about an hour, then began to very slowly drift back to the Northeast. What had been slowly moving, spotty cells overnight not only got stronger just before the heating of the day began, but also, grew in size and intensity, poured down heavy rain as it did this little stutter step before heading back up the coast. This back and forth movement is peculiar. We have seen more and more of what is being called "training" storms (ones that, like a freight train develop over a location and continue develop and "run" over it for hours. We have also seen extremely intense storms stall and create record downpours, but this combination of forward, stationary and then, nearly opposite direction movement is something I have not seen. The first time I saw a massive thunderstorm remain stationary overnight, it was eerie, as if the end of all I had learned had come and All I could do is blink, like a deer in headlights. A week later I got to see first-hand the damage that was done to Wyalusing State Park by that massive downpour that parked over the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers. That night, in July of 2007 I had a clear view to the horizon upstream of Portage and could see the top of that thunderhead stationary all night long. It truly felt like the end of meteorology as I had come to know it.
All of these new oddities we are seeing are due to climate destabilization, nothing more. The atmosphere is like a giant rubber band, or gelatin surrounding the planet. Long, long ago, the largest source of energy was the Sun. Now we routinely burn fossil energy to power our machine slaves. All this energy has to go somewhere, there is no away. The majority flows into this weather producing atmosphere. What dance step that energy fuels next is anyone's guess.
By the time I learned the science of this, there was also great focus on the fact that these cells typically follow patterns, rarely would pressure cells stall for great lengths of time, nor would they ever gain enough strength to cross the Equator. Much of what we thought we knew about our planet has changed to the point of being wrong now-a-days. The old weather maps showed a series of highs and lows that would be, for lack of better words, slow, relatively steady and somewhat predictable, because the cells would alternate, high, low, high, low. Today, there can be a three lobed cell of ultra low pressure that covers the country from the Continental Divide at the Rocky Mountains, all the way through the Piedmont and into the Northeast. Three super low pressure areas, combined into one huge "relatively" low pressure cell. This would have been incomprehensible in previous centuries. We have already had more than twenty years to begin grappling with the "new normal" and so little was made of the first cohesive pressure cell crossing the Equator, a few years ago, it seems that most meteorologists were not paying attention in class or asleep on the job. I get it, now some conspiracy theorists might say, "Or, they were told not to talk about it." I'm nearly positive that this is not it. Think about it, if your job is to come into everyone's home every day and tell them what to expect, reporting on what may prove to be climatically catastrophic might not be the best way to remain on good terms with them. Not everyone has to be told not to bite the hand that feeds them either, so even if there was some sort of conspiracy to keep it quiet, it was ineffectual. Science documents this sort of thing and there is not a cover up, just lack of attention being paid to the planet and her processes.
This brings me to the title of this post, the weather observation I made this morning, looking at nearby radar, 09-07-2020 between Sheboygan and Manitowoc. Storms had been traveling from Northwest to Southeast overnight and just before sun up, they were tapering out, near Lake Michigan. Just North of Sheboygan, they seemed to hit a wall, stack up and intensify greatly. At that point, the entire storm front stopped (from a speed of about 30 MPH) and remained stationary for about an hour, then began to very slowly drift back to the Northeast. What had been slowly moving, spotty cells overnight not only got stronger just before the heating of the day began, but also, grew in size and intensity, poured down heavy rain as it did this little stutter step before heading back up the coast. This back and forth movement is peculiar. We have seen more and more of what is being called "training" storms (ones that, like a freight train develop over a location and continue develop and "run" over it for hours. We have also seen extremely intense storms stall and create record downpours, but this combination of forward, stationary and then, nearly opposite direction movement is something I have not seen. The first time I saw a massive thunderstorm remain stationary overnight, it was eerie, as if the end of all I had learned had come and All I could do is blink, like a deer in headlights. A week later I got to see first-hand the damage that was done to Wyalusing State Park by that massive downpour that parked over the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers. That night, in July of 2007 I had a clear view to the horizon upstream of Portage and could see the top of that thunderhead stationary all night long. It truly felt like the end of meteorology as I had come to know it.
All of these new oddities we are seeing are due to climate destabilization, nothing more. The atmosphere is like a giant rubber band, or gelatin surrounding the planet. Long, long ago, the largest source of energy was the Sun. Now we routinely burn fossil energy to power our machine slaves. All this energy has to go somewhere, there is no away. The majority flows into this weather producing atmosphere. What dance step that energy fuels next is anyone's guess.
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