WEATHER BY THE NUMBERS 1/23/07
* 68 is how many minutes of daylight residents of Barrow, Alaska will enjoy today. It is the first sunlight since the old sun ball sank below the horizon late last year for a long cold winter. Residents will probably enjoy seeing their 10-inch snow cover in daylight.
* 33 is the number of minutes of extra sunlight for Birmingham and Central Alabama today when compared to our shortest day of the year. 30 of those 33 minutes were gained in the afternoon because of a later sunset.
* 5:09 p.m. is our time of sunset today–30 minutes later than our shortest afternoon.
* 26 below zero was the coldest in Alaska this morning at Northway and Ft. Yukon.
* 75 is the number of inches of snow on the ground at Whittier, Alaska. We seem compelled to check out that little town every day.
* 53% is how much of the lower 48 states is covered by snow or ice today. 33% was the coverage last month at this time. Today the snow cover extends all the way down to the Mexican border joining New Mexico and SE Arizona.
* 24 inches is how much new snow fell 18 miles SW of Alpine, Arizona yesterday. Little Miss Molly’s majority owner’s aunt and uncle used to live there in summer and we visited that community. Alpine is way over on the east side of the state in the Sitgraves National Forest in the midst of the White Mountains. Very pretty.
* 11 inches of snow on the ground at Sunset Crater National Monument just north of Flagstaff.
* 62.50 inches is the water equivalent of the huge snowpack on Martin Ridge in Washington State. That means if all the snow were to melt quickly, it would be like getting over 62 inches of rain and that is not even the deepest snow in the Mountain West. But remember, those locations are in remote high country locations where no one lives and the measurements are from automated snow centers.
* 200 inches is the snow depth on Windy Peak, Washington today–again, see note above.
* 2007 hurricane season does not begin until June. The first two names will be Andrea and Barry.
* 24 feet was the storm surge at Ft. Walton Beach when Hurricane Opal made landfall in 1995 as a Category 3. Amazingly, that is a lot higher than the 8 to 15 storm surge that killed over 6,000 people on Galveston Island in 1900.
* 61 degrees is the normal high temperature for Birmingham exactly one month from today. 53 is the normal today. Normals are already gradually on the rise.
* 15 is how many days the temperature dropped to freezing or lower in Birmingham during the winter of 1931-1932–a very warm period.
* 100-knot wind gust is the equivalent to 115 mph.
* 0 is how many doughnuts I have had so far in 2007. When we go to Starkville, Mississippi in March for the Annual SE States Severe Weather Symposium, it will be open season on doughnuts. James Spann will see to that.
* 86 was the warmest temperature in the lower 48 yesterday at Melbourne and Vero Beach, Florida.
* 16 below zero was the coldest this morning at Rangley, Colorado. It was also cold in the NE with 15 below zero at Presque Isle at the north tip of Maine.
* 10 inches is how much snow was on the ground this morning on Mt. Lemmon near Tucson. Even the cactus around Tucson were snow covered when they got about 3 inches.
* 32 inches is how deep the snow is this morning at Hannagan Meadow at an elevation of 9,160 feet in the White Mountains of Eastern Arizona. I have visited that area also and that tiny community is in an open meadow surrounded by blue spruce and ponderosa forest.
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