Even the word “forecasts” is a misnomer here in Phoenix. Anyone who pays close attention can easily see that what the weather boffins are up to is attempting to tell us what is actually happening, and frequently they get even that wrong. Oh, we do get “predictions” for weather for a week or 10 days in the future, but anyone who takes that sort of thing seriously is in for a lot of weather trouble.

A good number of times in my lifetime (in other states too) I have seen the weather forecast of “fair and clear for the next several days”, and a large storm strike from just out of “nowhere”. Many times just a couple of hours or less after the “fair and clear” forecast was made.

Now the weather forecasters do update these forecasts on a regular basis, which is in essence, watching closely what is actually happening weather wise or temperature wise, and changing from a wrong forecast yesterday to what is happening now.

[i]Sounds cold. Remind me again what percentage of the atmosphere on Mars is CO2?[/i]

As a non-scientist, I have experienced first hand the effects of atmospheric compression. In northern california, the Redding/Shasta Lake area gets hotter than hades during the summer months. The cause? low elevation, surrounded by mountains. The mountain air drops down into the valley, compressing and heating up the whole time. The result is a super hot pressure pit.

As I understand it, venus is the same way. The atmostpheric pressure is so high (more than 90 times that of earth), that it is much hotter on venus than can be explained solely by it’s closer proximity to the sun.

Mars is the opposite, almost no atmospheric pressure compared to earth, and very very cold. The implication? Atmospheric pressure has as much or more effect on temperature than composition.

You couldn’t make it up, could you?
OH! You’re my new favorite blogger fyi

You couldn’t make it up, could you?

Mars’ gravity is only 38% of Earth’s, so the high winds don’t have any trouble lifting the dust.

How do you get the high winds in a near vacuum? Will the thermal effects of solar radiation provide enough energy for the storms, which engulf the planet and last for months?

“So the question is, with such a thin atmosphere, how do you get dust devils the size of Mt Everest? There could not be enough charge generated by the dust. Rather, the dust devils are raising the dust storms. Please read the holoscience article for a fuller sense.”

Keep in mind that Mars gravity is 1/3 that of Earth, and with less atmo, this has allowed meteorites to pulverise things quite finely, without much water to hold things down. Most dust on Earth is heavier because it is simply wetter. Dust devils form here where it is dryest, not where the wind is highest. Same on Mars. Those big storms are not powerful, they are just big.

and out-of-this-world dust storms

I certainly hope so!