Science Fun

Here we are at the start of another weekend and a nice sunny day. Saturday we had a high around 45F and a low around 30F, and this was the warmer of the two weekend days. Sunday brought us more sun in the morning and then clouds in the afternoon. The high for Sunday reached 40F and this was shortly after noon as by around 2:30, it was snowing – a short snow squall that lasted only a few minutes and then it was gone. When it exited, the winds kicked up and the temperature went down – by supper time, it was down to 32F.

Monday, back to work and we started the day with a low 18F and the temperature reached 26F for the high on this sunny day. Old Man Winter wanted to remind us that he is still here and has not exited the stage just yet. Monday night into Tuesday morning, the temperature dropped to the low teens under a cloudless sky. The day on Tuesday brought us another sunny and pleasant day with the temperature reaching 38F.

Wednesday brought us yet another sunny day with a morning low of 22F and we reach 45F for the daily high and it seemed a little cooler due to a light wind. Thursday started out as a sunny day with increasing clouds as day progressed. Temperatures for Thursday was a low of 30F and high of 47F. By supper time, a light rain started to fall and this continued on through the night giving us .19 inches of rain.

The rain from Thursday evening continued on to sometime shortly after 12:30 AM Friday morning with an additional .03 inches of rain. By early morning, the clouds broke and the day became partly sunny by mid day and all of the clouds were gone by evening. Morning low was 35F and we reached a high of 57F for the day. Saturday was another gorgeous day with bright sunshine and a high of just about 60F. Clouds were rolling in by evening in advance of some rain coming in for Sunday.

How was the weather this week where you are?

We hope you have been enjoying our series on the history of the rocket and we welcome you back to this week’s posting.  Last week, we talked about the Gemini program and the objectives of the program as they related to preparing for the Apollo missions to the moon.  Actually, the Apollo program was already in design and prototyping before the Gemini missions.  Gemini even made use of the some of the technologies gleaned from the early stages of Apollo.  This week, we begin our trip to the moon with the Apollo program – First up, let us present some history on the origins of the program and the spacecraft used. 

Apollo began with the historic proclamation from John F. Kennedy before a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961 when he announced: “First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him back safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish”  With this announcement and a bold agenda, NASA set about the task of this massive undertaking – the Race to the Moon has begun! (more…)

On Saturday, March 21^st, Redoubt in Alaska become a little bit more active with venting of steam and some ash, this caused the Alaska Volcano Observatory to raise the level up to orange / watch and to issue some preliminary advisories.  Seismic activity was recorded by summit monitoring stations at the rate of about 26 per 10 minute intervals.

On March 22^nd at 22:38 AKDT the volcano erupted.  The threat level was raised to the highest which is now at: red / warning.  The initial cloud release was up to 50,000 feet above sea level.  Five explosions occurred during the initial eruption period between the evening of March 22^nd and around 5:00 AM AKDT on the 23^rd.  The National Weather Service has reported ash clouds reaching as high as 60,000 feet with the bulk of the ash between the 5,000 and 20,000 foot mark.  This eruption caused melting of the Drift glacier and as a result has caused the water level in Drift River to rise. 

Another round of ash eruption occurred again on the evening of March 23^rd around 7:40 PM ADT.  This could was estimated to reach around 50,000 feet and lasted just under 20 minutes.  Seismic activity has diminished somewhat since the start of the initial eruption event on Saturday.  There was little activity on the 24^th and an over flight as well as satellite images showed steam rising to around 20,000 feet and drifting about 40 miles northwest.  On the 25^th, a small explosion occurred around 5:10 AM AKDT and the event lasted for around 10 minutes. 

Volcano Redoubt has been relatively quiet in recent years, up until the Fall of 2008 when seismic activity started to increase.  This volcanic unrest with the mountain intensified in January and has continued to escalate over the past weeks until the small eruption that occurred earlier last week.  The volcano alert condition remains at red / warning and other eruptions and events can occur at anytime without warning. 

The Alaska Volcano Observatory is staffed 24 hours a day and is continuing to monitor the status of the volcano.  You can get updates via the National Weather Service: http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/volcano.php.  The observatory is also feeding updates by Twitter and you can follow along here: http://twitter.com/alaska_avo.

If you remember, Mount St. Helens went through its period of eruptions, you can read up on it by checking out the book review on “Super Volcano” over at Nonfiction Book Review.