JB’s Journal, 10/26/11

This feature (not posted real often) is a collection of notes and short stories about almost anything even remotely akin to weather. Also some stories about earlier years in the US Weather Bureau which eventually became known as the National Weather Service. I was in that organization with the two names for 32 years–all in the Birmingham office. Many, many changes in those 32 years and many great memories.

Warning: Some of the notes or stories may border on silly because that is semi-part of my nature.but I will try to watch that. Here we go with a mixed bag:

BIG EARLY SNOW
And, yes, equal to a mid-winter snow in some areas.

*For example, at mid-morning, Colorado Springs visibility was only 1/4 mile in heavy snow. Not far away the Air Force Academy had 28 degrees and steady snow. Denver, visibility 1/2 mile in snow.
* 7 inches of heavy wet snow already on the ground at Loveland with numerous tree limbs down due to the weight of the snow.
* 12 inches of snow already on the ground at Nederland, Colo., reported by a trained storm spotter.
* at 9:29 am, just SW of Boulder, 9 inches on the ground and 11 inches near Georgetown
* One to two inches forecast for the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandle. Snow is the story in several other western states also.

UNUSUAL WINDS
The East Slope of the Rockies and nearby plains can have a down-slope wind called the Chinook, where the air coming down out of the high country heats by compression. But there is another semi-strange wind in those parts. Here is the story on that:

THE BORA WIND
A STRONG LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM IN COLORADO…COUPLED WITH A HIGH
PRESSURE SYSTEM TO THE WEST…CAN SEND A COLD WIND…KNOWN AS A
BORA…THROUGH THE WESTERN PART OF THE STATE AND DOWN THE SLOPES OF
THE EASTERN MOUNTAINS. THE RESULT CAN BE WIDESPREAD HIGH WINDS FROM
THE WEST OR NORTHWEST INTO THE ADJACENT PLAINS AT SPEEDS WHICH CAN
OCCASIONALLY EXCEED 100 MPH. THE DAMAGE CAUSED BY THIS EVENT CAN
POTENTIALLY BE MUCH MORE WIDESPREAD THAN DAMAGE CAUSED BY A
LOCALIZED SEVERE THUNDERSTORM IN THE WARM SEASON.

CHECK ON ALASKA
Getting colder and colder in that big state and snow is increasing. Examples:
* 8 inches of snow at Barrow on the North Coast
* At Deadhorse, fraction of a mile in blowing snow with NE wind gusting to 46 mph and 22 degrees.

GETTING IN HOT WATER USING TEN EXTRA WORDS
And I was immediately reprimanded. I have always loved to write and while on duty at NWS one morning, I decided to write a story for the Alabama Weather Wire about the bitter cold overspreading the SE states even deep into Florida. I included a short sentence that said, “Even the people of Central Florida are shaking in their boots” I do not know how, but it seems the story was relayed to the Florida weather wire or to some organization like the Associated Press. I never found out.

However, the president of a Chamber of Commerce in one of Florida’s largest cities was a close friend of the head of NOAA (or the Chief of the NWS in Washington). The phones started buzzing, The Chamber of Commerce guy called his friend in Washington demanding that I be stopped from writing anything about Florida weather because Florida was a tourist state and did not need stories like that. (Never mind that news networks were reporting that the Central Florida citrus crop may be wiped out by the cold.) The Chief in Washington, got on the phone to the NWS Southern Regional Director in Fort Worth and told him to take action. The director called the MIC (Meteorologist in Charge) at Birmingham and suggested that I should restrict my weather writing to Alabama. It was the most astonishing thing I ever heard and our MIC thought so also. I wish you could have heard his reaction later. It almost rattled the windowpanes.

PS: I promise future posts of this feature will not be nearly this long.

Category: Alabama's Weather