Weather Trivia Question - NEW!

Weather Trivia Question: Why are thunderstorms LESS likely on Cape Cod than in interior Massachusetts, especially at this time of year? Find out the answer later today.

ANSWER: POSTED FRIDAY NIGHT: Thunderstorms grow from warm air near the ground being significantly warmer than the air above. The cooling seabreezes on the Cape stabilize this scenario, so very often when storms move in the interior, they lose steam, so to speak, when entering southeastern Massachusetts.

LAST WEEK'S WEATHER TRIVIA QUESTION:
When and where was the biggest, fastest, temperature rise in the 48 states
In two minutes:  The rise was because of a "downslope" wind off the mountains ---> 49F, Spearfish, S.D., Jan. 22, 1943, from -4F at 7:30 A.M. to +45F at 7:32 A.M. Now that's a rise!

 

Previous week's weather trivia question was :
What year did we "skip" summer?
ANSWER: 1816

Volcanic ash prevented sunlight from reaching the Earth that year, and much of the world cooled, but it hit New England particularly hard, along with Europe.

From Wikipedia:
In May of 1816, however, frost killed off most of the crops that had been planted, and in June two large snowstorms in eastern Canada and New England  Nearly a foot of snow was observed in Quebec City in early June. In July and August, lake and river ice were observed as far south as Pennsylvania. Rapid, dramatic temperature swings were common, with temperatures sometimes reverting from normal or above-normal summer temperatures as high as 95°F (35°C) to near-freezing within hours. Even though farmers south of New England did succeed in bringing some crops to maturity, maize (corn) and other grain prices rose dramatically. Oats, for example, rose from 12¢ a bushel the previous year to 92¢ a bushel.

LOTS MORE LOCAL INFORMATION ON THIS ON RIC WERME'S WEBSITE

Could it happen again? YES! If a strong volcanic eruption spewed high into the atmosphere, we could skip summer all over again, even with all the Global Warming issues you have heard about time and time again.

Comments

[Ric Werme]

I wrote a web page, http://werme.8m.net/1816.html , that has some notes about that year (and 1815) from a New Hampshire point-of-view. I think we have the only granite monument in the world commemorating the event. I created a Geocache for it.

From reading about the most affected areas, it seems to me that the storm track that summer was well to the south and that south of the imputed track conditions were nowhere near as severe.

[Kevin Kuechler]

Early 1800s. Volcano eruption threw up so much ash that it blocked the sun and cooled the planet.