Science Fun

On April 29, 1968, a dust devil with a loud “jet plane” roar damaged trailers, carports, and TV antennas in Pepprell, MA, and plywood sheets sailed away.  In Franklin, MA, a dust devil (height of two telephone poles in height) lifted a 500 lb boat and parked it in a tree.

On April 30, 1898, a tragedy occurred when the lives of two children and their dad was snuffed out by an F4 Tornado in Hosper, IA.  The dad grabbed the two kids, one under each arm and headed to the outside storm shelter.  The home was anialated and the children were found dead in arms of the dad.

Tornado and severe winds can be very deadly and destructive.  Watches and Warnings are issued by the local weather services when the threat of these storms exist.  Know the watch and warning terminology and know what to do if one is issued for your area - it good save a life.

At 3:55 AM EDT on April 23, 2009; NASA recorded a “Blast from the Past”! A gamma-ray burst was detected by NASA’s Swift Satellite has smashed any previous record for the most powerful explosion in the universe. Researchers are calling it “an incredible find” and a “blast from the past”.

The Swift Satellite with the aid of a team of international astronomers, the discovery was made that this gamma-ray burst was from a star that died when the universe was only 630 million years old. When the burst occurred, the Swift Satellite immediately was able to pinpoint its location so astronomers on the ground could aim their telescopes to view the explosion before its afterglow died off.

Gamma-ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the universe. They most often represent the period in the life of a star when it runs out of fuel, and then the core of the star implodes into a black hole. Jets of matter and debris leave the star and head outward, going though gases that were previously shed by the star, and thus, creating heat which generates the short afterglows in many wavelengths.

For images and continuing coverage of the discovery of this event, please visit http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/28apr_grbsmash.htm and www.spaceweather.com.  Image from NASA.

With the unusual warm weather we have had in the past few days here in New England, I thought that a good topic for today would be cooling and heating degree days – what are they? Here is a short explanation from the archives of the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

Each degree of a day’s average temperature above 65F is considered on cooling degree day, an attempt to measure the need for air-conditioning. If the average of day’s high and low temperature is 75F, then that is ten cooling degree days.

Similarly, each degree of a day’s average temperature below 65F is considered one heating degree day and is an attempt to measure the need for fuel consumption. Using the above example, this time using the average of the day’s high and low temperature is 45F, then the heating degree days would be 20.

On this day, April 27, 1995, the United States Air Force Space Command declares that the Global Positioning Satellite NAVSTAR constellation is now fully functional. In these early days, the GPS systems were primarily used for military applications and provided very precise accuracy for military missions.

GPS or Global Positioning System is a precision navigation system designed and developed by the Unites States Department of Defense and operated by the 50th Space Wing of the United States Air Force. The GPS system is free to all to use and is often used by civilians for navigational purposes, either for boating, aviation, hiking, or for commuting.

The GPS constellation consists of 24 and 32 medium Earth orbit satellites. These satellites transmit a precise radio signal that is picked up the GPS receiver. The GPS receiver is then able to use the information gathered from multiple signals that it receives from the satellites that are in ‘view’ to determine latitude, longitude, elevation (altitude), and speed. The GPS transmits a time signal to keep the receiver on the same time as the satellite constellation. Each satellite has an atomic clock on board to keep its time functions accurate.

Today’s post was primarily aimed at introducing you to GPS and this important day in the life of the GPS system. There is some math and history to go along with how GPS works and how it got to where it is today – we will save these goodies for another lesson.

This week ended up being a mixed bag week in the weather department and in the geocaching department. As far as the weather, we were going from one extreme to the other. This past Sunday was sunny and cool, Monday was nice in the day and then showers at night, and some snow. By the end of the week, we headed to the 80s and sunny.

In the geocaching realm, I had one ‘find’ and one ‘did not find’. The ‘find’ was last Sunday when I did the Rails Trails cache – a nice ¾ mile walk each way along an old abandoned railroad bed, that has been turned into hiking trails and a community park with baseball field at the beginning. The trail is well maintained and locating the cache was easy – the coordinates from the GPS were right on. From the surrounding marshlands, I see this is going to be a ‘buggy’ walk once all of the creepy crawling creatures start buzzing around (black flies, mosquitoes, deer flies).

The ‘did not find’ adventure was my second attempt for a cache called ‘Cache and Carrie’. The original version of the cache, I found, then it was muggled and the owner replaced it. Several weeks ago, I headed off to find the new hide and was not able to locate it. There were five of us doing the search. In recent weeks, there were activities in the log, so, my friend and I headed off again to attempt it – after continued searching, we ended up with a ‘did not find’! What makes this cache worth going after (and we will do it again) is the walk through an enchanted or haunted forest – tall, eerie looking pines that are planted in rows – it is a neat place to explore. It is dark and cool in this forest and nothing grows on the floor of the forest due to all of the pine needles. The thick canopy of the pines, keeps it cool and dark – makes for a nice place in the summer and would make for a great haunted place during Halloween.

The weekend weather turned out be OK and was not a wash-out as some were forecasting. Saturday started out with sun in the early morning hours, by noon, it had clouded over and by 3:00PM, spotty showers began. The temperature only held in the mid 50s and slid to the low 40s by evening. There was only .03 inches of rain deposited in the rain cup and that was at midnight, after about 9 hours of very light – on and off showers. Sunday turned out to be a great day with a high temperature of 58F and a low of 37F – the day was sunny and very little wind.

The sun began our work week on Monday morning with a warm up from the low of 28F to the high of 51F for the day. By evening, the clouds rolled in and when I got home, it was spitting big soggy white things – called SNOW flakes, then some sleet started to fall. By midnight, the old rain cup had reported .04 inches of precipitation. The rains continued through the night and on into and out of Tuesday and by midnight Tuesday, nearly an inch of rain was recorded – 0.95 was the amount. It remained on the cool side with a high of 46F and the low 37F.

Wednesday – Happy Earth Day! Today began as a sunny day with the morning low of 43F and we had a high of 58F with a maximum wind gust of 7 miles per hour. By evening, the clouds had rolled on in and light rain was falling by 7:00 PM, we received 0.18 inches. Thursday was a mixed bag day with some sun, clouds, a little shower and a pretty rainbow! We had a low temperature of 38F and a high for the day of 50F and 0.03 inches of rain fell from the tiny little shower.

Friday was a very nice spring day with the temperature topping out at 69F from a morning low of 37F. There were gusts up to 12 miles per hour and we had no precipitation for this day. Saturday was just like Friday, only our temperature reached into the upper 70s. A great spring day for the start of the new race season at the local NASCAR race track.

How was you weather? How much rain did you get out of this weeks storms?