Meteorology
Keith C. Heidorn
Latest Articles
Often in the weather reports we hear of tropical lows, subtropical lows, extratropical lows, and thermal lows. What distinguishes these various flavours of "lows" from one another?
Why Are Lightning Bolts Not Straight?
If you've ever watched a spark of static electricity jump from an object like a doorknob to your finger, you perhaps noted that mini-bolt followed a fairly straight-line path from the object to your finger. Lightning bolts are essentially the granddaddy version of that static spark, so why do lightning bolts ...
A frequent question we meteorologists get is: "If water drops are heavier than air, why do clouds float?" With lovely forms of cumulus clouds popping up all around me on this summer's day, that is the question I will tackle this month.
Large water bodies have major influences on the weather,impacting the weather and climate of their shoreline regions. But unless we are involved with the maritime industry or sport sailing, we tend to overlook the weather and climate over the water body itself. Herein, we look specifically at one aspect: on-lake condensation ...
For those who love weather in all its varied forms, extreme or rare weather events often hold great allure. Spawned by our love of statistics, one extreme event that catches our attention is the breaking of daily temperature records. Whether a record hot day or record cold day, it is sure ...
A common adage expresses the belief that it is coldest just before dawn and begins to warm with the appearance of dawn's first light, but observations and physical theory show us that the coldest hour of the day is not before dawn but often an hour or so after sunrise. Why ...
Cumulus Humilis: A Fair Weather Cloudscape
The dawn brought clear sky But, in a few hours, the warm sun would break the morning chill, and by mid-morning the perfectly clear sky would begin to lose its fair complexion as small buds of whiteness pop up hither and yon. So started a day when cumulus humilis, the most ...
The snows of winter bring many hazards to humans and wildlife. In urban areas, these hazards are usually manifested as transportation- or power-transmission-related hazards. But in mountainous terrain, another danger arises: the avalanche.
Arctic Outbreaks. They happen in all months of the year and can rate headlines during spring, summer, or early autumn if they bring extreme drops in temperature or killing frost. But it is during the winter that they receive the most attention because arctic outbreaks can drop air temperatures to hazardous ...
Neither rain nor snow, nor freezing rain, for that matter. That is how one must often characterize winter precipitation. Rain and snow are just the most common members of the winter precipitation congregation, but not the only ones. Others include: ice pellets, snow grains, graupel, ice crystals and ice needles and ...