Whether you knew of it as the APRS station DW3809 or as Wunderground Station KNEBELLE12, this afternoon we disassembled the weather station and will set it up in a couple weeks in Navarre, FL. I’m in the process of deleting our Wunderground tags from this blog and our Vollmer Family homepage.
I hope you enjoyed this window to our world, especially in the winter when we could show off how much snow we got here.
Not sure what kind of webcam view we’ll have from our new house, we’ll see!
Most of this text is stolen from a 21 November 2008 blog post about the crazy weather experiences we’ve had everywhere we’ve lived since we’ve been married. At the end of that blog post, I posed the question: “What will Bellevue, Nebraska bring?”
Now that we’re wrapping up our Nebraska tour and headed toward our 7th home in 15 years, I’m confident that Winter of 2009-2010 in eastern Nebraska was a result of the Vollmers living here. Really. So here’s the summary of the Vollmer “Weather Curse” (1-5 are from the previous blog post), and I’ve added #6 at the end. Enjoy:
1.) Ft. Polk, Leesville, and DeRidder, LA. Ice storm, January 1997.
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| Not sure if this picture is from that exact ice storm, but this is a good example of what Southwestern LA looked like after this storm. |
This was pretty daunting. Louisiana flora and fauna didn’t take to this very well, neither did the 101st Airborne soldiers who were in the field doing training during this ice storm. I remember sliding sideways in my car down the hill towards the base weather station.
2.) Seoul, S. Korea. Monsoon flooding, August 1998. (<– See 5th paragraph of this link) We had a Korean citizen working in our weather unit. Mr. Ko. He told us that folklore said that every 11 years, the annual Korea Monsoon is worse than usual. And every 11th of those 11 years, it’s even worse. And 1998 was predicted to be that 121st year. All of us Americans who’d heard this were like, “Yeah, right, whatever…” Well, the folklore was right. It was the worst flooding in everyone’s memory, bridges that bisected Seoul were flooded out, the military was on the verge of deploying thousands of people into the fields for a major exercise and those plans were disrupted. The building Dave and I lived in flooded on the ground floor, and our Saturn flooded a little, too. But we didn’t have it nearly as badly as some of those stationed closer to the DMZ, whose quonset huts filled to the brim!
3.) Beavercreek (Dayton), OH. Xenia Tornado Redux, September 20, 2000.
Most weather weenies know the story of the April 3, 1974 F5 tornado that plowed through Xenia, Ohio. They still debate to this day whether that was the strongest tornado ever measured.
The September 2000 tornado originated very close to our house, and moved AWAY from our house, following a very similar path to the 1974 one. I had asked for a bicycle for my birthday (which was the day after the tornado). We lived near a nice bike trail network, and Xenia was closed to non-resident motor vehicle traffic for about a week. But Dave and I were able to ride our new bikes all over the town and see the damages up close and personal. It was very eerie to see where the tornado had crossed our local bike trail…
4.) Melbourne, FL. Hurricanes Charley, Frances, and Jeanne, August-October 2004.
By this point in our lives, Dave and I knew that strange weather happens when we live somewhere and I feel it contributed to our decision to NOT to buy a house on the barrier islands. Yes, it’s very superstitious, but I’m grateful every day of the wise choice we made when we bought our first house in Florida 5 miles INLAND.
We moved to Florida in spring 2002. As the hurricane seasons of 2002 and 2003 wound down, we started looking at just how long it had been since a hurricane hit the Florida east coast south of Jacksonville and north of where Hurricane Andrew had hit in 1992. Nearly 100 years, if I remember correctly! As every year since Andrew had passed, Florida was holding its breath for the next “biggie”.
Those storms absolutely decimated houses all over East Central Florida, but our home was spared, except for damaged screens and a blown air conditioner fuse.
5.) Apex (Raleigh), NC. The Apex Chlorine Fire (not really weather), October 2006 and NC’s Worst Drought in over 100 Years, Summer 2007.
We heard the initial explosions from the chlorine storage containers at about 10:30pm, and we saw the glow in the sky from our front porch. It was a pleasant evening, I remember, so we had opened up all the windows in our house, which made it easier to hear the explosions and the emergency vehicles…one after another.
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| The EQ Industries Chlorine Storage Facility Fire occurred about 1/2 mile from our house. We could see the glow of the flames from our front porch. |
We wasted no time packing the boys, the dog and some provisions and then made haste to Dave’s NC State office near downtown Raleigh. After that, we took a breath, and made follow on arrangements in a hotel in North Raleigh. It was warm the night we evacuated, so the boys were in short pajamas, and I remember having to buy warmer PJs at Walmart for the following night…one of the season’s first cold fronts had passed.
I forfeited part of our reimbursement from the evacuation expenses because I refuse to sign a gag order. I had a 4-year-old and an 18-month old! Who knows if something will come along later that might be related to this?
As for the drought, I’m glad it’s now over. All it took was Dave and me moving out of the area…I’m glad we could help.
6.) Bellevue (Omaha), NE. The winter of 2009-2010 certainly packed a punch!
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| From 2009 12 25 Christmas Eve Travel & Christmas Blizzard |
Starting with a Columbus Day-weekend snow event! On October 9-10, 2009, the Omaha Metro area received 3-5″ of snow! The family was planning to go test-driving new vehicles that weekend, and we were pleased that the snow had mostly melted by the evening of the 10th. But still!
After a reprise through about Thanksgiving, December proved to be almost-recording setting, with over 20″ during the month of December alone. The kids had their first snow days on December 9th and 10th, and then when the family was returning from Walt Disney World on December 24th, a major winter storm was taking shape that shut down Dallas-Fort Worth airport just after our flight took off (phew) and we were so proud of the crews at Omaha Eppley Airfield for working so hard on keeping the runways cleared. It was rather scary driving home from the airport in the high winds and blowing snow! This photo album shows some of the weather we had dealt with during that blizzard.
We had several other snow events, with the kids having some 6 snow days this year and several records being broken, mostly related to how long the area had a snowpack (approximately December 19, 2009 to approximately March 23, 2010). But not the absolute snowiest winter in Omaha.
Some pretty crazy side effects of all this snow emerged, too. Enjoy stories of school districts getting in trouble for not schooling their kids enough, and snowmelt revealing mold on lawns.
Well, it looks like my flapping of the gums has once again made it into mainstream media….
For those unaware, I had written a blog post about the USAF’s “Above All” campaign of 2008. It was a positive discussion about it, a little tongue-in-cheek at worst. I think I make mention of videogaming teenagers perhaps being the target of some of the commercials.
Later that week, the Shreveport Times published an article about the ad campaign, and mentioned folks in the blogosphere approving the campaign and citing my blog as an example. I was flattered.
It happened again this week. My pontifications online have found their way into the hands of the media.
This time, it’s regarding some of The Weather Channel’s programming choices. And this time, it was via my Twitter feed. I don’t think this will sink any fleets. In particular, on April 23rd, there was some significant severe weather forecast locally, and TWC proceeded in showing their “Flick and a Forecast” — a weather themed movie, which that night was “The Avengers”. I was really really mad about this. I had a few conversations on Facebook with people about it, discussing how these decisions are purely driven by the wants of the advertisers, who’d prefer to sell time for programs that keep the viewers on The Weather Channel for 30 minutes or more. “Your Local on the 8s” doesn’t sell advertising.
On April 30th, severe weather was predicted again, and this time TWC elected to not show their Flick and a Forecast film in the areas impacted by the storms. Jim Cantore tweeted about this and I had replied that I thought that was smart of them.
Yes, I follow Jim Cantore on Twitter. I’ve always been a fan of his weather-weenie-ness, since I was a teenager.
Here’s the article that came out yesterday. No, it isn’t the New York Times or Huffington Post, and I have to give props to Dave’s friend Britt King who found this…I’m not sure I would have known about it otherwise.
This certainly isn’t a big deal, any more than anything, it’s a reminder to Twitter users that your tweets are VERY public domain. Watch what you say — it could end up in someone’s blog a month later.
Greetings from Norway, I mean, Nebraska!
On Thursday night, after a couple days of melting ice and cold nights, and after a weak cold front moved through, saturated air near the surface brought foggy conditions to our neighborhood. On Friday morning, I saw our trees covered in heavy frost.
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| From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost? |
Pretty isn’t it?
Upon a closer look…
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| From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost? |
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| From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost? |
…I noticed the ice was forming into long needles, all oriented in one direction.
I had to trudge through knee-deep drifts that we still had in our front yard to get these pictures, but they’re definitely worth it.
My first thought was that this is rime icing, or rime-type frost. Defined in Wikipedia as “a type of frost that occurs quickly, often under conditions of heavily saturated air and windy conditions. Ships traveling through Arctic seas may accumulate rime on the rigging. Unlike hoar frost, which has a feathery appearance, rime generally has an icy solid appearance. In contrast to the formation of hoar frost, in which the water vapor condenses slowly and directly into icy feathers, Rime typically goes through a liquid phase where the surface is wet by condensation before freezing.”
The temperature range was right for rime ice, as were the saturation conditions and winds, which drive the direction of ice formation.
But Dave told me there were discussions as to whether this was a phenomena called “hoar frost”.
No, not “whore frost”. I don’t even want to go there.
Might this be “hoarfrost” or “hoar frost”, which is also mentioned in that Wikipedia link above? When hoar frost conditions have a slight breeze they can orient their formation in one particular direction. But according to the definition and pictures here, I’m less inclined to think so.
I think what we have is actually “soft rime”. What I saw and experienced fit all of these definitions, the thin, milky white needles, and the ease with which is fell off the trees in the slightest breeze.
The winds were from a northerly direction Thursday night, if there was a wind at all. So according to the definition, the needles should be pointing towards the north, and indeed they were.
So I think this is “soft rime”, but take a look at these other pictures and see what you think:
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| From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost? |
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| From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost? |
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| From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost? |
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| From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost? |
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| From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost? |
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| From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost? |
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| From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost? |
UPDATE: On Saturday morning, the same conditions turned out even heavier rime, and I just took a few pictures and will add them momentarily.
A billion years ago, in one of my meteorology classes, I was taught the temperature ranges at which snowflakes will form their different potential shapes. I remember getting tested on the information, too.
“At what temperature ranges will capped columns form?”
Heck if I know now, but I can now find out with the click of a button….
This is from Wikipedia’s entry on snow:
“The shape of the snowflake is determined broadly by the temperature and humidity at which it is formed.[12] The most common snow particles are visibly irregular. Planar crystals (thin and flat) grow in air between 0 °C (32 °F) and ?3 °C (27 °F). Between ?3 °C (27 °F) and ?8 °C (18 °F), the crystals will form needles or hollow columns or prisms (long thin pencil-like shapes). From ?8 °C (18 °F) to ?22 °C (?8 °F) the shape reverts back to plate-like, often with branched or dendritic features. At temperatures below ?22 °C (?8 °F), the crystal development becomes column-like, although many more complex growth patterns also form such as side-planes, bullet-rosettes and also planar types depending on the conditions and ice nuclei.[15][16][17] If a crystal has started forming in a column growth regime, at around ?5 °C (23 °F), and then falls into the warmer plate-like regime, then plate or dendritic crystals sprout at the end of the column, producing so called “capped columns.”[12]”
I found this description of this specific kind of dendrite from CalTech:
“Fernlike Stellar Dendrites. Sometimes the branches of stellar crystals have so many sidebranches they look a bit like ferns, so we call them fernlike stellar dendrites. These are the largest snow crystals, often falling to earth with diameters of 5 mm or more. In spite of their large size, these are single crystals of ice — the water molecules are lined up from one end to the other. Some snowfalls contain almost nothing but stellar dendrites and fernlike stellar dendrites. It can make quite a sight when they collect in vast numbers, covering everything in sight. The best powder snow, where you sink to your knees while skiing, is made of stellar dendrites. These crystals can be extremely thin and light, so they make a low density snowpack.”
Oh…I just found this picture that seems to sum it up pretty well:
Anyway, here are some pictures I took today from when the temperature was around 0F, and these are some of the prettiest dendrites I’ve seen with my own eyes (rather than in a book). I’m posting these pics nice and large so you can see the elaborate detail. Isn’t science beautiful?
Now that I’m home, I’m slowly getting back to normal. One of the things that was on my mind while I was away was setting up one of our webcams (that we used to keep in touch during my deployment) as a weather webcam, that connects to our home weather station.
So here you go. Have some fun and scroll down on the webcam page to the calendar and select “View Video” to see a daily 24-hour loop. This will look better in 2-3 days when we have some steady-state views. I’ve been adjusting the timestamp, viewing angle and resolution so it isn’t perfect at the moment.
You can also look to the right and see the new, improved weather sticker for our weather station. The weather observation is from our backyard, while the webcam is pointing out our front window, aimed towards the north-northwest. It’s supposed to auto-update about once a minute.
If you want a quick look at the past 24-hours’ weather, play the video below. Pardon the quality if you view this before mid-day Thursday:
This is my attempt to share a video I took about 1/2 hour after the first wall of dust and wind hit us here on the 11th. Visibility was about 1/10 of a mile and the winds were from the northwest at 35-40 knots.
It takes a REALLY long time to upload a video to You Tube from here, so this is a Google Picasa attempt.
Click on it and see what happens…also feel free to view the rest of the pictures from this album here. I didn’t take many, conditions weren’t great for the camera.
The wind has died down considerably today, but the dust is still suspended in about the lowest 500 feet. Visibilities are up to about 3 miles, but dust is still getting everywhere, including my laptop as I type this. Don’t fret, Dave sent me plenty of canned air and computer cleansing wipes.
The dust storm continues. It isn’t as windy as yesterday, only gusting up to about 25 instead of 35 knots. But the chalky goodness is still flooding down from Syria and Iraq.
I’m usually the first to admit that I haven’t truly forecast the weather in a really long time and on this trip I tend to leave the serious science to our talented and capable NCOs. I’m a communicator and manager of the weather and weather-resources here.
That being said, today I actually felt pretty strongly that the dust here was going to continue several hours longer than originally forecast and I’m very glad that those of us who felt that way were able to convince those who thought we’d be back to sunny skies by now.
We were right! We’ll experience this dustiness through sunset, most likely. There were some who thought the dust would clear up right after sunrise.
And enjoy that one-and-only time I talk about my work here.
This base has been transformed by the dust. What little color there was on the base, such as vehicles, decorative emblems, etc. are now covered in a sandy film. Every exterior surface, and even many interior surfaces, have a fine dust settled on top.
There’s no point doing anything about it right now, we have about 9 more hours of this…it’ll just get all dustied up again.
It’s a ghost town. We’re advised to remain inside, although there are some hard-core types enduring the weather to take advantage of the lightning speed WiFi access right now.
I’m typing this up on my iPhone, then will come outside just long enough to transmit it.
Back to the gross!
I sorta figured this would happen while I’m here.
“What’s that?”
A shamal.
“What the heck is a shamal?”
Well, let’s define it here. It’s a strong northerly wind that picks up dust from Syria and Jordan and carries it all the way down the Arabian peninsula.
And it’s shamal-ing right now as I type this. The winds are gusting to 40 knots from the northwest, and the dust came down all the way from Syria — we watched it on the satellite! I even saw the wall of dust towards the northwest minutes before the winds started here, but I was in a no-photography area so I wasn’t able to capture it for you.
(Side note: I have to give public kudos to the forecast team in the U.S. and here at my base for the great job they did predicting its onset here. They said it would arrive by noon, and it got here at 11:55am!)
I have a couple pictures of what shamal vs. non-shamal conditions look like here, but they didn’t turn out really well. I won’t include them here, but I wish I could have captured how it looks here better.
It looks like fog. That “you can’t see your hand in front of your face” kind of fog. If you’re standing inside looking out into this stuff out the window it looks like a brownish-yellow fog. But the wind is howling…and if you inhale too deeply, you start coughing. If you breathe the air without a cover over your mouth for too long, you feel the grit on your teeth. It smells sort of like chalkboard chalk. Do you remember clapping together blackboard erasers when you were younger? And inhaling that dust for too long? That’s the sensation.
You feel the grit on your hands, in your hair, and on the surface of your skin. I stood outside for 5 minutes waiting for a bus from my duty location back to my dorms and could feel how dirty my hair was in that short time. Again, remember how chalk dust feels on your hands after you’ve dusted off the excess. A fine grit.
If your eyes aren’t covered, the dust gets into the eyes and it’s difficult to see as your eyes get watery. I have goggles for my eyes and am carrying around a small towel to cover my mouth.
I was talking to a British fighter pilot today right when the storm started and in a typical British no-holds-barred fashion, he gave gory details about where on our person we’d be finding shamal dust remnants for days after the event ends. I can’t wait.
It becomes hazardous to do things outside in these conditions. As if the winds and reduced visibilities aren’t enough of a problem, the respiratory hazards associated with prolonged inhaling of this dust can be a problem too.
Even though I’m inside right now typing this (I am usually outside where the WiFi is stronger), there’s still a layer of dust settling on my keyboard, and the table on which my laptop is sitting.
A shamal event wreaked havoc on the coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003. For you weather weenies, here’s a paper about the meteorology of the shamal that impacted the “march to Baghdad” in late March ’03. There are arguments to this day about the amount of advantage coalition forces were able to gain from the duststorm, but I’m not going there.
So it’ll be interesting to see how I feel when this is all done, and how long before I blow all the dust out of my nose, clean it out of my ears, and wash it out of my hair.
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