Tag: weather

COVID-19 & humidity

Folks, this is huge because it shows that a simple remedy (indoor humidification in temperate areas in winter months) can cut COVID-19 mortality by almost an order of magnitude.

Humidity from masks may lessen severity of COVID-19:

High levels of humidity can limit the spread of a virus to the lungs by promoting mucociliary clearance (MCC), a defense mechanism that removes mucus − and potentially harmful particles within the mucus − from the lungs. High levels of humidity can also bolster the immune system by producing interferons, a process known as the interferon response. Low levels of humidity have been shown to impair both MCC and the interferon response, which may be 1 reason why people are likelier to get respiratory infections in cold weather.

Cordoba Thunderstorms

From what the team could gather, each of the storms had generated such large, powerful updrafts that they’d eventually merged together and begun to spawn other, smaller updrafts, creating what’s called a “mesoscale convective system” — in short, a giant, organized complex of perhaps 50 or more updrafts, which becomes self-sustaining as it germinates more and more offspring.

2022-02-01:

 The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has established 2 new world records for megaflashes of lightning.

  • The longest single flash that covered a horizontal distance of 768 ± 8 km across parts of the southern United States on 29 April 2020.
  • The greatest duration for a single lightning flash of 17.102 ± 0.002 seconds from the flash that developed continuously through a thunderstorm over Uruguay and northern Argentina on 18 June 2020.

Radio Occultation Weather

the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate (or COSMIC-2), the mission takes advantage of a weird property of GPS radio signals: They actually bend and slow down slightly as they travel through the atmosphere. This bending doesn’t affect the accuracy of navigation on the ground; it’s only visible from the side by something else in orbit. radio occultation, as it’s known, is akin to launching 5000 additional weather balloons every day—that’s how many more measurements the 6 COSMIC-2 satellites will be able to gather.

Dressing for cold

The system is best used in varying combinations and is not meant to be layered sequentially, meaning one garment on top of another, on top of another, until you’re wearing all 7 levels. The conditions of your operating environment and the requirements of your mission will determine not only what you wear, but also what you stow in your pack for later use. The wind shirt (Level 4), in particular, is a very versatile garment meant to be sandwiched between your various layers. It allows for a more stable internal temperature to be managed, as well as reducing friction between insulation layers.

Hurricane Matthew

with hurricane matthew, another october surprise is here:

This is like no storm in the record books. We are concerned about reports of people deciding to stay in areas under mandatory evacuation orders. This is a mistake. This is not hype. This is not hyperbole, and I am not kidding. I cannot overstate the danger of this storm.

Asperitas

that’s some rad-looking clouds

As the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, saw these submissions trickle in, he realized his group had collectively stumbled onto something interesting: A new type of cloud. This formation wasn’t listed in the International Cloud Atlas, published by the World Meteorological Organization since 1896. So Pretor-Pinney devised a name for this cloud — “Asperitas”, derived from “a passage in Virgil describing a roughened sea”. He’s been working for years to get it accepted into the next edition of the Atlas.