Another frost advisory before Labor Day

25 08 2008

More anecdotal colder than normal weather keeps piling up. This time it’s in Southern Oregon and Northeastern California. Clearly we are having some far earlier than normal frosts and freezes in the USA, and the situation seems to be mirrored in colder than normal weather in parts of UK and Europe as well.

Note that this frost advisory has no connection to the weather pattern that caused frost and freeze in Minnesota and Wisconsin last night, it is a different frontal system.

NORTHEAST SISKIYOU AND NORTHWEST MODOC COUNTIES-KLAMATH BASIN-
NORTHERN AND EASTERN KLAMATH COUNTY AND WESTERN LAKE COUNTY-
CENTRAL AND EASTERN LAKE COUNTY-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF…TULELAKE…DORRIS…ALTAMONT…
KLAMATH FALLS…BEATTY…BLY…CHEMULT…CRESCENT…GILCHRIST…
SPRAGUE RIVER…LAKEVIEW
238 PM PDT MON AUG 25 2008

…FROST ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 2 AM TO 9 AM PDT
   TUESDAY…

CLEARING SKIES BEHIND A COLD FRONT WILL ALLOW TEMPERATURES TO
DROP INTO THE 30S IN MANY AREAS EAST OF THE CASCADES TONIGHT. SOME
ISOLATED LOCATIONS WILL DROP BELOW FREEZING.

A FROST ADVISORY MEANS THAT FROST IS POSSIBLE. SENSITIVE OUTDOOR
PLANTS MAY BE KILLED IF LEFT UNCOVERED.


Map from National Weather Service, Medford Oregon

h/t to Pamela Gray


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Categories : weather

Now what will T. Boone Pickens do?

25 08 2008

Murphy’s Law in Action – Which to choose? Save the bats or save the planet? This presents an environmental quandary. – Anthony

Wind Turbines Give Bats the “Bends,” Study Finds

Brian Handwerk

 

for National Geographic News

August 25, 2008

Wind turbines can kill bats without touching them by causing a bends-like condition due to rapidly dropping air pressure, new research suggests. Scientists aren’t sure why, but bats are attracted to the turbines, which often stand 300 feet (90 meters) high and sport 200-foot (60-meter) blades.

The mammals’ curiosity can result in lethal blows by the rotors, which spin at a rate of about 160 miles (260 kilometers) per hour.

But scientist Erin Baerwald and colleagues report that only about half of the bat corpses they found near Alberta, Canada, turbine bases showed any physical evidence of being hit by a blade.

A surprising 90 percent showed signs of internal hemorrhaging—evidence of a drop in air pressure near the blades that causes fatal damage to the bats’ lungs. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Uncategorized

Greenland Ice Core Reveals History Of Pollution In The Arctic – But there’s a twist, it was worse 100 years ago

25 08 2008

From: ScienceDaily (Aug. 20, 2008)

Coal burning, primarily in North America and Europe, contaminated the Arctic and potentially affected human health and ecosystems in and around Earth’s polar regions, according to new research.

The study was conducted by the Desert Research Institute (DRI), Reno, Nev. and partially funded by the National Science Foundation.

Detailed measurements from a Greenland ice core showed pollutants from burning coal–the toxic heavy metals cadmium, thallium and lead–were much higher than expected. The catch, however, was the pollutants weren’t higher at the times when researchers expected peaks.

“Conventional wisdom held that toxic heavy metals were higher in the 1960s and ‘70s, the peak of industrial activity in Europe and North America and certainly before implementation of Clean Air Act controls in the early 1970s,” said Joe McConnell, lead researcher and director of DRI’s Ultra-Trace Chemistry Laboratory.

“But it turns out pollution in southern Greenland was higher 100 years ago when North American and European economies ran on coal, before the advent of cleaner, more efficient coal burning technologies and the switch to oil and gas-based economies,” McConnell said. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Science, climate_change