by Capt. James Lodge
It’s amazing how different realities can be.
During our daily talks with the National Weather Service we give forecasters our take on sea, sky and wind conditions. This info is used by them to compare predictions with actual events.
The Synergy of Weather Forecasting
Recently, we talked with Matt, a forecaster who pointed out to us that geography must be considered before anticipating the weather.Formerly a NOAA forecaster stationed in Erie, NY, on the shores of Lake Erie, he commented on the phenomena of ‘lake effect’ snow which could fall to depths of 20 inches because of cold air passing over the warmer lake waters and yet, just 2 miles away, there would be bright sunshine and no snow. As Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), once said, “if you don’t like our New England weather…wait a minute.” Guess that's true of upstate New York as well.
The Influence Of Cristobal
Last week, the forecast was for southerly light winds, but as hurricane Cristobal came closer to Nantucket than originally anticipated, we had northerly winds, indicative of being in the top left quadrant of a low pressure area, in this case the tropical cyclone.
Summer's Unsettling Storms
The driving force of our offshore Gulf Stream steers the storms in an unpredictable manner. When searching on-line forecasts, the National Weather Service often qualifies predictions by giving potential of rain, thunder storms, etc. and one can notice that these odds increase daily, until a front comes through. Sometimes, if you look up at the right moment, you can see the squall line clearly cutting across the sky.
Predicting the Unpredictable
On the National Hurricane Center’s site, www.nhc.noaa.gov,one can opt for graphic forecasts, and see how each day, there can be a 100 mile difference in predicting future storm tracks: after 3 days, a track could be 300 miles from one side of estimated center.
Information Sources North and South
Local TV stations also use the Weather Services forecasts with interpretive computers, to come to their own best guess. We find the Rhode Island television stations to be more pertinent than Boston stations because our weather generally comes from the west, and Boston is influenced much less by our warmer water. We mentioned previously that Boston, and north of Cape Cod, is influenced less by the Gulf Stream than the Labrador Current coming from the north.
Eyes to the Sky
So much is happening in our sky. We seem to have cooled down from the July heat, and the huge puffy clouds we see are cumulus castellanus, flat on the bottom and having towering white clouds above. These sometimes produce rain, then known cumulonimbus; cumulus being the white puffs, and nimbus meaning rain. These clouds are so breathtakingly impressive because they can be seen from so far away. It almost seems that part of Summer has left us, whereby this drier and cooler air has been the norm for the past couple weeks.
Visibility in our night sky has been excellent, due to the low humidity we’ve been experiencing. One can easily see the Milky Way, our galaxy seen on edge that extends from horizon to horizon, from east to west. On the Vineyard, we are fortunate to be away from light pollution and, when humidity is low, can see the millions of stars that make up our galaxy. Milky Way is both the name of our galaxy and the misty stellar cloud we see above.
Celestial Extravaganza
August 12th is the peak night for viewing the Perseid meteor shower. This annual event occurs as earth passes through a cloud of meteor trail dust from a Comet named Swift-Tuttle. It will be best observed right before dawn after the moon sets. There are expected to be about 60 meteors per hour and should be visible until the last week of August.
Capt. James Lodge owns and operates Atta Boy Charters and is a contributor to MVOL.com
