(00:00:06) By telephone from his home in st. Paul suburb is mr. Bruce Watson a Consulting meteorologist who has been a guest on this program several times. He will be talking with us today about the weather and one of our most challenging Seasons, which begins officially on Tuesday of next week. We're talking of course about winter Bruce. Good morning. How are you (00:00:29) today? I'm just (00:00:30) fine great before I ask you a little bit about winter what you think may happen. So on. Let me ask you if you had a chance to see any of the Northern Lights show this past (00:00:40) week. Yeah. We saw the lights. Let's see what night was it (00:00:46) probably was a Wednesday or Thursday. (00:00:48) Oh, yeah. It was on the morning of the 10th. (00:00:50) Okay, that would have been (00:00:52) last Friday day we go. (00:00:54) Yeah. Oh, (00:00:56) but I was looking for Northern Lights after the I guess the biggest fired 10 years, but I couldn't see anything in the course it did. Out over that night so I don't love the crude or (00:01:07) not. Yeah, I was looking forward to and I couldn't see it and that's why I wanted to ask you about it because I was sure that if anybody was out looking why you would probably be among them. (00:01:15) Yeah, it seems to me that every time that I look for Northern Lights after solar flare. I never see them and I sometimes wonder if there's anything to it that a solar flare will be followed by Northern Lights. But theoretically it should but you have to remember one thing. I suppose that sometime during the night the night is awfully long. And obviously I'm asleep by at least half the night. This is probably why I mean miss them once in a (00:01:42) while. Well, maybe some of our friends up in the northern part of the state had a chance to see it better than those of us in the Twin Cities area, which is already got a fair amount of light just from ordinary buildings and freeway signs and so on and so (00:01:54) forth. Yeah, you know about interesting lie quite a bit of the theory of Northern Lights has been revised and last year. It was thought to formally be Mostly or entirely due to the Sun the Earth just passively responded but recent evidence indicates that the magnetic field of the earth plays a greater part than was thought. I am not an astronomer and I don't know what exactly but it does turn out that the earlier the Earth itself is really producing the lights in the sun merely induces it rather than being the direct cause so maybe this is why sometimes when we hear about a solar flare that the Earth doesn't just respond blindly. (00:02:38) Well, we do have winter officially coming on next week. What do you think? Is it going to be a bad one? We had a record snowfall in the Twin Cities area last year. We haven't had much so far this year. What's your what's your (00:02:50) thought about basically in this is what we expecting since at least last August is that we're going into a warmer period we tend to go into longtree of the warm and cold that may last for As much as one year 18 months or even two or three years and the arguments already last August were very very strong that we were going into a warm period at least for one year. So on that basis, I forecasted they warm winter and of course, this is what we're seeing. I might say that my outlooks are basically for the period of up to about one year. Hey, I hesitate to go beyond that and of course most people won't even go out that far but the fact is that I do have, you know evidences up to one year of what will happen. Now a lot of these forecasts we heard were calling for extremely cold winter, but I'm afraid that they were really based on some of the long-term trends and people really weren't looking specifically at this say it's an area of the coming 12 months. For instance. We have a lot of volcanic ash in the air from a Kills one in Mexico and one in Indonesia and this in general would call for cooler temperatures. And also we have been in a generally cold period for the last 20 years. In fact while really what really happened is that the warm period began in 1889 ended around 1960. And so therefore the seemingly cold period is really more of a return to normal. So on that basis a lot of people they call for cold winter every year but you really can't do that because the trend of let's say the return to normal for Winters is only a drop of about 1 degree Centigrade which maybe is about 1 or 2 degrees Fahrenheit and also the volcanic ash that would just tend to lower temperatures may be unaware of a half a degree but your month-to-month fluctuations and departure from normal actually among 2456 up to 10 degrees so that clearly overshadows any tendency that The generally cooler period that we're in orally volcanic ash would have (00:05:07) well, I want to follow up on a couple of statements there Bruce, but I also want to give out the phone numbers so that people who are listening and have questions can participate in the discussion those of you who are listening in the Minneapolis st. Paul area and have a question for Bruce Watson are invited to give us a call at 2:00 to 7:00 6000 2276 thousand for those of you living in the Minneapolis st. Paul area in other parts of Minnesota. The toll-free number is 1-866-560-4440 to 9700 and if you're listening in one of the surrounding states or in Ontario, you can call us directly in the Twin Cities area. Area code 612 2276 thousand Bruce when you say we're going to have a warmer winter this year than we did last how much warmer will we? Have no bitterly cold weather are we talking about above freezing temperatures for much of the time give us some some idea of the parameters. (00:06:13) Well, I think we get the idea of it from Lee Winters that we've had not last year with two years previous. We have had record cold January's from 1963 up to 1978. And that spell I think has been broken last winter. I would say was just an aberration. So a you know idea of it from the witness. We have the two years previous and you're you're really talking about a much warmer January than last year last winter. In fact last January on the 10th. We fell down to 20 degrees below zero and I don't think we'll see that probably this year. Whoo-hoo. I don't think we're going to see a temperature anywhere near that cold and if it does happen if certainly will not last very long. So I think we're going to see a few days in January where the temperature does rise above freezing. Yeah, and II guess that's about it just isn't going to be Wicked January. We're not going to see the very heavy snow and it's going to really be more like January as were a couple of years ago. (00:07:17) Well, that's that's nice to hear especially with the price of fuel heating fuel going the way it is (00:07:23) babineaux interesting along that line are heating season. This year has been the most normal in many decades. We have been sitting around the warmer than normal and colder than normal season ever since the heating season began in July, theoretically at least but we just weaving in and out. So if anybody ever wants a year where the represents a typical year a normal year the this is it moreover. It's interesting thing also that our total precipitation for the year is almost exactly normal. So this year I would say is the most Nor have normal normal normal year that we've ever seen you he has really stuck to normal a lot of things. We've had 41 thunderstorms this year the average of 38. So we're only off by three there. And so this year is really kind of unique in this makes really normal. (00:08:18) Well, we have some listeners on the line who have questions for you Bruce. So let's let them join the conversation now. Hi, you're on the (00:08:24) air. Hello. I would like to ask our meteorologist. Why do we see such severe cold in this part of North America? You always hear Bemidji and International Falls, every winter having the lowest temperature in the lower 48 states. I wonder if you can explain that for me. Yeah. The reason for that is that we're so far away from the oceans. The closer you are to the see the more moderate your temperature becomes you don't get extreme heat or extreme cold. And if you look at the map, we're almost in the middle of North So this puts Thousand Miles actually from the Atlantic a thousand miles from the Gulf of Mexico and about 800 miles from Hudson Bay. And of course were about 1,500 2,000 miles away from the Pacific by the thing is that the ocean is very very warm. Obviously. It's above or at 32 degrees and when you get this so far away from the ocean as we are our temperatures can become extremely cold. He has the Earth EAS. The land loses heat to space exceptions, of course are right around the Great Lakes. If you go around the Great Lakes, you'll find the temperatures are quite a bit more moderate first. It's Grand Marais. He has a warmer temperature in January actually than we have even though it's Becky on the Canadian border. And of course Michigan is extremely warm for its latitude in the wintertime because it's the surrounded by Lake Michigan on the west and Lake Huron on the East and Lake Superior on the North So it's water that makes the difference in the further you get away from water than work streams become you get your coldest temperatures to Christ and the Northern Hemisphere again the Soviet Union where they get even further away from water than we are. So it's basically a matter of how far you are away from the water. (00:10:19) All right. We have another listener with a question. Go ahead please you're on the air. (00:10:24) I'm calling and they asked the question about what's the percentage of accuracy and meteorological forecasting and particularly. Could you relate it to the geographic area that size of the geographic area and how far into the future you're making your predictions and I'll hang up and do okay, sir. Basically the well, first of all, I should say that the further you go to the fruits of the more General you have to become if you want to forecast for the next three hours you can forecast everything with probably about 95% Precision such as temperature where it's going to rain or not. That nature is he go out 24 hours. You already have to back off on some of the things you can forecast your chance of being able to stay within a half hour or an hour when rain will begin her end drops. Probably somewhere around eighty percent or maybe even 75% in general the 24 hour forecast. You're using the basic criteria is correct about 85% of the time when we go out to five days, you're getting more General and your general accuracy drops the somewhere probably about 75% Is it go out to one month? Your accuracy is again, when you go out to one month, you can basically forecast above or below normal in your accuracy. They're somewhat your somewhere around 70 percent it stays up a little bit because you're getting more General when you go out to three months your your seasonal forecast. Then your accuracy is going to drop off can lead to somewhere around six. 65% and as you go out to one year, of course, you become more General yet. Your accuracy is going to be somewhere around 55% to 60% probably little bit closer to 60% because they're already getting more General but the fact is that your accuracy is a function of how precise you want to be of course and if you want to be very general, let's say for the XP always react to see would probably approach 100% the 99.5 percent or something like that. (00:12:32) So when you said earlier that we are going to have a warmer than or a more average kind of January at least one as compared to last year that's within a month. And so your accuracy would be about 70% Yeah somewhere around there. Yeah. Okay. We have some more telephone lines open in the Minneapolis st. Paul area 2276 thousand is the number to call if you have a question for Bruce Watson about the weather and in other parts of Minnesota by all means use Toll-free line. That number is 1-800-695-1418. We have another caller standing by go ahead (00:13:09) please my understanding that weather forecasting accuracy is limited by the power of today's computers in my question is is that true and if so how much increase in the in the power and speed of computers would be necessary to achieve greater accuracy and how much potential does technology have to improve the accuracy of weather forecasting? Well, it's not so much the computer itself. Although that does help but it's the information you feed it to the computer. The more points you have in our three-dimensional atmosphere around the entire Globe. The greater accuracy is going to become that is probably the thing that needs to be worked on the most as far as Improvement seeking knowledge ecosystem. Get more observations the satellite the weather satellites, of course have played a tremendous role in fixing the data points around the globe much better. In fact, we have the Conch out of the cell a the stationary satellite over the Civic few weeks ago in this already heard the forecast right away by in fact even heard the 24 hour forecast because the people in the west coast could not see from the satellite the storms moving in so it's really a matter of gathering information to feed into the computer, of course today and a lot of people aren't aware of this. It's really the computer that does all the forecasting the computer can do a much better job than any person can because can assimilate so much information and you'll see the computer printing out Lou forecast map for the next 24 48 72 hours. (00:14:53) I recall the news story about that satellite being out Bruce a few weeks ago. Is it back in service is another one in place? What are they doing about (00:15:00) that? I'm not sure. I don't know exactly what the status is. I know they were going to try to get another one working and I'm not sure if they did or not. I haven't (00:15:07) heard. Okay. Well, we have another listener with a question at any rate. So we'll go on to our caller. Hi, you're on the (00:15:12) air. Oh, I'm calling froze people who help Heat their homes with the Sun as recently as two years ago. We would hear the reports of solar index. We don't hear it anymore. I'm wondering why I Disappeared maybe your guests could explain what precisely it is why we won't hear it again. I believe that one of the television stations was using this. I'm not sure which one I think it was channel for but I'm not positive. It could have been Channel 5. Why it was discontinued. I really don't know II thought it was useful because I myself heat about 1/3 of I would say 1/3 of my bill gives reduced by my solar collector (00:15:59) only. What is the index Bruce? I don't I'm not sure what that is. (00:16:02) Yeah. I really don't know. I don't think that the Weather Service developed as I think it was developed internally within the TV station and it was never clear to me. Just what he exactly how it was derived. I suppose maybe the best thing would be to probably forecast the sword output each day of this was some kind of an index of the sore output and why it isn't getting more attention. I really don't know I would say it definitely does deserve more attention one. Of course, we should pay attention to is the fact that In the New Year rolls around is when you get your great increase in sunshine in Minnesota, November and December actually the tree between about November 12th of December 24 this by far the cloudiest time of the year in the Twin Cities. The reason for that is you don't get variations in atmospheric pressure across North America that are very great in general and this allows the low clouds to form you'll see that there's low cloudiness almost all the time from November 12th to about January 1st all across the entire Midwest and then as soon as the New Year comes, in fact, perhaps a couple days before suddenly you get the onset of your very strong winter storms and this causes the wind to blow all that faster. It wipes away the clouds and our sunshine in January and February which are the two coldest month increases dramatically over November December. So with solar heat you really watch for your Getting energy input after January 1st in November December is when the solar collectors least efficient, but nevertheless, of course those months are as cold as january-february are so for solar energy. Certainly, I would say if we would go into a program in Minnesota of really promoting solar energy. We could probably cut our natural gas and fuel consumption by somewhere around 20 25 percent. And of course this would greatly be of much greater much greater benefit than just your using raw money to pay people's heating's though. There's great potential in Minnesota. It's just great for saving hundreds of millions of dollars every year with solar heat and we are doing it. This is one of the things we should be doing. And of course, I would think that reporting solar index or Net Daily solar radiation would be extremely Variable input to this (00:18:41) are you getting much output from your solar collector (00:18:44) now? I am Bob on a clear day. I'll use only about half as much energy as I do on a cloudy day. (00:18:53) All right, we have more listeners with questions for you Bruce. So we'll move on to our next (00:18:56) caller Billy Bobby might say this though. The total system is only cost me $50. So energy does not have to be expensive (00:19:03) my goodness. Well, maybe we'll get some calls about that too will see our next listener is waiting. Go ahead please you're on the air. (00:19:14) I will find you agree to some climatologists. So we're headed for another Ice Age. No, I don't know. I think that people that they were here for another Ice Age are Really trying to cause well, I don't want to say they're trying to cause panic but I think that they are causing panic among some people there simply is no evidence that our climate is going to get to the point where we can't grow wheat. Let's say in Alberta and Saskatchewan and that the growing season will be significantly shortened in Minnesota and North Dakota. There just isn't any solid evidence for that at all and I would challenge anybody that says that to bring your evidence for forward our climate in the last hundred and sixty-five years that we had observations in the Twin Cities his not it all approach to anything like that would be required for such a drastic change. One thing. Of course, we are in an ice age. There are glaciers yet on Greenland. There's glaciers in Northern Canada, but there just is no evidence that we are headed for a dramatic change in our climate. I would say that anybody else I have today that include people born right now that will be still a lot live in the year 2080 will not see any greater significant differences in the weather than we've seen in the last 100 years (00:20:42) another listener with a question for Bruce Watson. Go ahead please you're (00:20:46) next my question to you was the one you just got but recently ksjn have on a its program a call in with a combined volcanologist astronomer at cetera given us the Doomsday forecasts about the return to a much colder type climate than we have now and you covered some of that but the growth cycle being Well seasoned not having been cut as short as this man has said but he also pointed out that there is the volcanic dust in the atmosphere. I'm wondering about another part of this prediction that apparently we would be swamped by precipitation as a result of the volcanic dust and he's looking forward to a another point when the tidal effect pull of gravity on the earth's surface is going to Bring forth new eruptions of volcanoes much bigger than we've seen. Well if he's a volcanologist perhaps he may have a point. I'm not a geologist. I'm not an astronomer and if people are I think and they're competent. I think we should listen to him. I'm a meteorologist and what I pay attention to is the atmosphere now if these outside conditions come forth course, then these things could happen, but it's too bad that some of these people don't communicate to the rest of us in the scientific literature and I don't believe that this other person has to my knowledge. I haven't seen any Rags of his among young Science magazine or any of the other journals and I would think that instead of going around the country and talking to groups that he would offer his evidence in the scientific literature now if I could be wrong maybe but if you did I missed it, (00:22:53) okay. I'm not sure where that came from. But little beeping we will move onto another listener of the question now, go ahead please you're on the air. (00:23:01) I'm calling regarding the discussion of volcanic ash and it's interaction with their weather. Could you just elucidate a little bit as to does it produce drier weather warmer weather and more importantly, I guess what I'm really interested in how long from when you get saying eruption before it produces changes in our weather. Kate basically, there is no really solid evidence that volcanic gas produces anything more than the drop of a few tenths of a degree in the mean temperature or is induces a added precipitation. In fact one researcher or one team of researchers did a study of they they took all the data that's available about climate and all the data is available at mechanic eruptions and they found in general it over the last 200 years cool weather preceded the eruption of volcanoes and they even I was tongue-in-cheek perhaps often suggested perhaps changes in temperature and do some volcanoes to erupt rather than vice versa. So the thing is it's very small the other changes that occur due to basically do the ocean temperature distribution. Mike stronger than volcanic ash and I would say with all the Assets in the air right now. You really not talking about more than one degree Fahrenheit drop in temperature. Of course, our muscle month variations are in order magnitude greater than that. So league in general. It doesn't really cool Earth are very much at least on a skillet. We've seen him the time since man has been able to read and write (00:24:53) 12:30 is the time Bruce Watson is our guest today Consulting meteorologist who is on the phone with us from his home in Suburban st. Paul and we invite your questions. I see that we do have one or perhaps two open lines right now in Minneapolis. St. Paul. The phone number is two two seven six thousand 2276 thousand jotted down and if you get a busy signal try later in the program because the Lions do clear out from time to time in other parts of Minnesota. The toll-free number is 1-800-695-1418. And we'd be happy to hear from those of you in the surrounding states or Ontario. You can reach us by dialing area codes 612 2276 thousand. Okay, another listener with a question for Bruce Watson. Go ahead, (00:25:41) please. Thunderstorms. I'm wondering why they're so rare in the winter. Okay, basically what you need to produce thunderstorms is heat. You have to have a lot of heat in the Loire region of the atmosphere. And of course this heat is produced by water when water goes from the invisible Vapor forming to liquid water which Cloud cause I mean, I love it releases a tremendous amount of heat. And the more water you have in the ER the more he can release in the more severe thunderstorms can become in the wintertime. There's very little water in the air. In fact, there's about only one-tenth the 120th as much as there is in the summertime. So as a result, you cannot produce clouds that will give off a lot of heat whereas in June and July when the earth is or when the air is very full of water. You can produce great big clouds that go up to 50 60 thousand seat some cases. And of course, this is where we get our very severe weather from the big thunderheads, but in the wintertime with the lack of water you Simply cannot generate big thunderstorms as a result the time of the year we get most of our thunderstorms corresponds roughly to the time when we have most of the water in the air (00:26:55) is that associated with the with lightning as well water is associated with (00:27:00) lightning. Yes. Great. Yeah why Lightnings result of putting all this heat in here at the lower levels and producing clouds and the air Rising very rapidly several miles high in the atmosphere. (00:27:16) I think we did have a little lightning in conjunction with that one of those big snowstorms. We had last January. I'm not I'm not absolutely certain about that. But I that was that was quite an experience those two storms and I think that there may have been some lightning with those. (00:27:31) All right? Yeah. We actually I right here at my place. I did not record any thunderstorm until night March 19th, but in the wintertime, you typically do get When you get a big snowstorm, there are places where some storms will form. (00:27:47) Hmm. All right, we have more listeners with questions. So we'll move on to our next caller. Go ahead, please. Hello. (00:27:55) Yes. I'm calling from pequod Lake. Okay, I read in the farm journal in North Dakota a magazine by I can't remember the name of the man but he's about 90% right in his prediction and he says we're going to have very little snow this winter and 30 to 40 degrees below zero weather. for this northern part of the The state well, I there are I write for the farmer magazine which is distributed throughout Minnesota and The Dakotas ha ha. I am not sure it was me. I wouldn't claim to be $91. You weren't the one. Okay, honey, but well that forecast sounds just about like mine. I think that we I mean the northern part of Minnesota and North Dakota is it's really easy to fall in 40 below, you know normal January so I certainly would be surprised to hear that up there. And as far as the light snowfall goes this what I believe we're forecasting so I can't disagree with that at all. (00:28:58) All right. Well, let's move on to another listener than with a question. Hi, you're on the air. (00:29:02) Yes. I'd like some information about the frost level. What's the average frost level 4 January? What is it now? And if it goes above freezing in January, we'll the first level diminish or if it snows will it's diminished. Okay. Well in general the frost will go down to about 2 or 3 feet in or during winter. Now if you have open winter without the much snow on the ground then Price will go down as much as four five or even six feet in some January in some years when you get a snow cover in early November say around the 10th, which does happen in the snow cover stays heavy the entire winter the ground me not freeze at all. In fact is did happen that too many years ago in the Twin Cities. We didn't have any Frost the ground at all. And when Springtime came though, the what I went right into the ground there just wasn't any fry any frosted also, you can go anywhere from 0 to 6 feet depending on more in the snow distribution than on the actual air temperature because if you get a couple of feet of snow on the ground, even that cold air is going to have difficulty freezing the ground very deep and all but gets a functionable snow cover and temperature (00:30:12) snow acts as insulation then doesn't it. It really does. Yeah. All right. We have another listener with a question. Go ahead, (00:30:17) please. Okay. Well, mr. Watson. I live in Washington County. Generally east of White Bear Lake and contrary to the statement you made earlier in your broadcast about this being a year of normal rainfall. We had very scanty rainfall through July or June July and August here, right? Why should we kind was the driest place in the state? Yeah. I know because we were trying to make a and so on and got practically none, but do you have any Theory as to why we had this band of extremely dry weather in Washington County particularly in the Lake Elmo area where they didn't get as much rain as we did to the north of Stillwater right after it was even worse keep the reason for this is that thunderstorms Move Along tracks and generally a thunderstorm will make track perhaps they somewhere between fifty and a hundred miles long and if we take the tracks and we plot them it's a lot like throwing when I was a kid, we had these pick up sticks and we used to throw them down. And in some spots you might have 10 sticks on top of each other and other places you can see clear through to the carpet. Well, this is all some storms move the go along these long narrow tracks. The tracks are only few miles wide and so as a result some areas always get missed even in the wettest of years. There are always some spots that get very little rain. It's just like throwing the Pickup Sticks down because Leo movement actually could be described from random statistics. So even wet years somebody's going to get missing after really got Miss this year, of course quite a bit of Washington County then (00:32:05) All right, shall we move on to a next listener? Go ahead, please you're on the (00:32:08) air. Oh, yes. Mr. Watson. You alluded a little while ago to ocean temperature affecting our climate and When we talk about how the temperature of the North Pacific affects our climate here. Okay. First of all, I should say that we have to there's a lot to be learned yet some of the exact relationships, but the thing is that the atmosphere gets most of its energy from the all of the oceans the water is warm and the water goes into the air and this represents a tremendous amount of stored heat. Now the as the air circulates around its going to move this heat northward and Southward and this in turn affects the way that the entire wind system around the Northern Hemisphere blows and that the course the way the wind blows in turn drives cold water South and drives one water North in other words when the winds blowing it's not only not only moving around is moving water around and what you have here is a classic example the feedback effect that the ocean feeds energy into the air and the air in turn reacts with Whooshing to change the distribution of service temperature the oceans I would say as a rough cut basically control about 80% of the way that the air moves around you do get some contributions from the upper atmosphere where you have the ozone layer and heating occurs of the ozone and this causes the upper winds at very high altitudes slow differently and this in turn has an effect on the Lorry atmosphere. But that is a small term compared to the very large stream of the contribution of the ocean temperatures. Basically, one of the key things involved in is what I said before when water vapor condenses into liquid water drops and clouds are made of liquid water drops. Then you get some modest amount of energy released and when you look at these things on the large scale this effects vary greatly the way that the big west wind belt moves around the Earth in the way that Small group of severe that we have what we call our storm systems move. (00:34:23) Will it take another listener with a question for Bruce Watson? Go ahead, please. (00:34:27) Hello. Are you the same Bruce Watson who served as a task force chairman of the Minnesota environmental control citizens Association 10 years ago. I was I was just a member of the board. I certainly was not the type osition or your member of the board of you, but you were wondering who was involved in mechelen, right? Yes, that's correct. Okay there that's good. There's been a lot of concern lately about acid rain damaging lakes or force and crops or would it be feasible or meaningful for Weather Service has to report the pH of precipitation as a matter, of course along with the amount so that the public can kind of keep track of how our acid rain is a changing from week to week. Well, I suppose they could yeah, you would be useful course. They do have budgetary constraints the weather sir. He has not been generously endowed with funds in the last few years and the result that he would have to come back to cut back some of their programs. I might say though that work in essence rate is being done in Minnesota and also in some of the states to the East and certainly in the Canadian provinces. The Deep Portage group up in Cass County is currently running a project which covers about 1/4 of the northern part of the state where they're measuring a strain from all the storms that fall both of us of the summer and the winter and also the University of Minnesota has been running a various research projects on this but yeah certainly would be very helpful if the Weather Service would do this, but of course that does take money and of course measuring acid rain is not a simple thing. It's not like just putting out rain gauges because you have to make sure that the container does not contaminate your Your sample so that makes things a little bit more expensive as far as collecting data is concerned (00:36:22) about 18 minutes before one o'clock Bruce Watson is with us and we're taking your calls. Hi, you're (00:36:28) next. Hi. I'm calling from Fargo North Dakota. And we read that by the year 2000. There may be as many as eight or nine coal gasification plants in the Missouri Basin and North Dakota Montana. I'm wondering if you can speculate on whether the pollutants are product of these plants might have any kind of effect on our precipitation whether in any way thank you. Well the coal-fired plants I doubt if they're going to actually increase precipitation the main thing that cold us. Yes unlock the carbon dioxide that is locked into the ground. If you think back millions of years ago, we had a great Yo of ferns and plants that grew in the very warm Earth and these fell into the ground when they died and they got buried in the mud. And so what happened is that we locked up most of the carbon dioxide that used to be in the air which made the earth warm as we locked up more and more. Of course, they are cooled off. So would we do burn fossil fuel? What we're doing is unlocking that carbon dioxide and we're putting it back into the air and this must necessarily cause the temperature of the air to increase. So the more coal that you burn more coal gasification. You have the more carbon dioxide that will go back into the atmosphere in the warmer will become this could be extremely significant. Of course this I must say that it's very possible when I said before that we won't see any great change the next hundred years as far as temperature goes. I would have to knock the whole thing. Out yes, we're going to just burn coal in unlimited quantities because you just this be major tampering in the atmosphere. So we should be very very careful before we burn cloth and a wholesale level because we're essentially doing is unlocking that which has been locked in to the Earth. (00:38:34) All right. We'll take another caller with a question. Go ahead please. (00:38:37) I'm calling from Duluth. We get a daily example of how warm water affects the water but I really wanted to call up and ask about jet streams how they're formed how they move around. What can you tell me about it? I was just listening and hear what you got. Okay, it's really pretty easy to understand the jet stream. All you have to do is take a cup of coffee or a cup of tea or a pan of water and spin it around and what you're doing is creating a Whirlpool. Now one thing that I do when I give talks is use pepper and I dump a little bit cream and what this does is show that the way that the whirlpool circulates one thing will find is that it's just like a skating rink in Act if your ice skating and you're in the center, so to speak of the circulation is it was as you skate around you can go the fastest if you're in the middle of the rink everybody standing around you and you can just sort of just twirl around a little bit. You have to go real slow. Now. If you're out at the edge of the skating rink, you have to go kind of slow to because it might bang into the yet. Well, this is just how a Whirlpool works. And of course the storm system is a Whirlpool of are that turns counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere. Now, we have one Whirlpool blows all the time. And as long as the Sun Shines on Earth spins, we're going to have this big Westwind Whirlpool the blows around the port regions in the blows over the United States and Canada and when you get off in the into the Arctic, you'll find that the whirlpool is gone. You just get if you're up near the North Pole you don't get creepy storms like you do or the candy United States and we go too far south. Of course, we're To the edge of the whole thing down in the tropics where you have your high pressure systems. So at some point the air has to blow the fastest and if you look in your cup of tea or a cup of coffee a dumb little cream cream and you'll see that you get a little spiral mate in the reason for that spiral is that the coffee is not flowing the fast as the middle of copper at the edge of the cup, but somewhere in the middle now with the jet stream the jet stream is where that West Wind of this big Whirlpool the blows over the US and Canada is going the fastest in general. This is around the latitude of Washington DC that Washington DC as the highest upper Winds of a place the United States and if you go west from Washington DC and that's of course to the south of us is where you get a even faster ones we have here and the Jetstream really is the place where the west wind is moving the fastest now one thing of course, we give storm systems that form in this we get little whirlpools and when I say little I'm talking about maybe a thousand miles across And the net effect of these whirlpools us to make the jet stream to appear to move in a snake like fashion across the Northern Hemisphere and with the forecaster looks at the particular configuration of the snake like faction as relates to him, then he can forecast whether it's going to be colder or warmer. It's a big tip off the big clue as to what the weather is going to be. So the jet stream is essentially just where the air is moving the fastest in this big are of Whirlpool blows around the Northern (00:41:44) Hemisphere. How high up is the jet (00:41:46) stream? Well the jet stream you're taking when you say jet stream you're saying where the West winds blowing the fastest is showing up around about 25,000 (00:41:55) feet. Okay. We have more listeners with questions. Let's move on to our next caller. Go ahead, (00:42:00) please if they could tell me if the weather projects any kind of a pattern or you know, the bad weather storms and the volcanoes and so forth if it can predict earthquakes I've about eight weeks or so. I read an article where they said that horrendous earthquakes were going to happen. Well they have but now I'm wondering about you know, like the east coast and the West Coast California if there's anything you know in the near future for those well again, you're getting it to geology here and I'm not a geologist and I really haven't studied any of these interrelationships. I guess. I probably should just back off that question. Okay. Thank (00:42:42) you. All right. Thank you for calling will take another listener then go ahead please you're next. (00:42:46) I'd like to know why most meteorologists on radio and TV generally assumed that clear days are better than cloudy days and warm days better than cooler. No precipitation better than days with rain or snow. That's easy because the city's legal (00:42:59) because they're what 30 feet long City people write (00:43:04) whatever the person City like to see I think is pretty much what they reflect and if we had a farmer meteorologist giving whether I think we see Smiles on entirely different days. (00:43:15) That's a good answer. We have another listener with a question. Go ahead please. (00:43:19) Mr. Watson have there been any books written about the history of whether Pat weather patterns in the Midwest? And do you have any other books or periodicals that you would suggest for reading about current weather problems? Well, it's the off top of my head. I can't think of anything what I might suggest. Why don't you give me a call afterwards at my house for a drug drop me a line and I'll suggest some things off. Not only had I probably missed some of the good ones might give you some of the bad ones so bunch of Kali after the program. (00:43:58) All right, you are listed in the phone book, right? Yeah. Okay. (00:44:01) I I'm under meteorologist and underwater research. (00:44:04) Okay, 11 minutes before one o'clock Bruce Watson is with us and we have time for some more calls. Hi, you're (00:44:10) next. Hi. I'm from st. Paul and for a long time I've turned on my radio till Public Service band was the weather band and now I turn that on to get a little weather in I can't get a signal anymore and I was wondering have they cut the program a lot. What are the hours stuff like that? Yeah again, I ask you a question. I do you find is it at this time of the year or are you talking about having Luis Andres himself several years ago as a problem. Well, I haven't ever been a real regular everyday listener. But I know I like this summer. I was painting houses that I wanted the weather bad and I wasn't on it all and I kept turning it on a different times. I know sometimes they cut back and different seasons, but I never knew the full schedule and I was wondering if maybe you did know the schedule that they operate on. Well, it's supposed to be continuous broadcast. I might say there could be a problem with your receiver. I haven't necessarily really noted any great problem in general once in a while. We'll have two things on it once or sometimes it will be. On for a while, but in general I haven't had any problem myself. Okay here it could be your Siri might want to check that. All right. Thanks. (00:45:23) Okay, good luck picking up Weather Radio and we have another listener with a call. Go ahead (00:45:28) please I have a question concerning whether a record-keeping information. I'd received the weather bureau indicated that the average high temperature for a particular day was calculated on a 30-year moving average and every decade that was altered or changed to reflect as the most recent 30 years, right? That's how it was. There was does is that but yet you see it seems like between some radio stations. There is a difference in what they when they give an average temperature but the weather bureau you say does have the 30 year. Yeah, there's probably okay. I can think of the possibility of getting three averages sometimes people will use the old 30-year average and sometimes they're using the new one there jelly is a transition period in there thirdly some of the radio stations TV stations use my averages which are calculated over 160 years. Yes, and that years reflect the records from the Fort Snelling death Greg. I had this question what about the accuracy of their instruments? And did they have that on a real regular basis the record-keeping I would say generally accuracy of the weather instruments at Fort Snelling is better than we get now from our electronic instrumentation you it was better back now because actually now your temperature is read off of electronics and of course this has to be calibrated so and you calibrated off the old-fashioned type of liquid mercury alcohol so monitors which you know are more accurate. That's why they're the the Stanford calibration. So yeah in generally records from for selling probably are better than in general what we see nowadays. Okay. Well, thank you sir. (00:47:02) It's about eight minutes before one o'clock. We have time for some more calls and we have an open line or two now in the Twin Cities area 2276 thousand is the phone number two two seven six thousand four Minneapolis st. Paul. Area listeners those of you listening in the surrounding states or in Ontario put a 612 in front of that and we can answer your question. If you're living outside the Minneapolis st. Paul area, but within the state of Minnesota one 865 to 9700 we may not have time to get to everyone but we have time for a few more calls that last call Bruce perhaps me to ask this question. I know that of course next week next Saturday is Christmas morning and lots of people are going to be opening up Christmas packages and they may find themselves the recipient of a new thermometer or a wind gauge or a humidity measure or something of that nature. Can you offer any general advice on where to mount these and how to how to get them so that they will be the most accurate indications (00:48:02) are quite clear amateur you can you leave that inside the house because the pressure in the house and save as it is outside. The only exception is in summertime. If you have a real tight air conditioning you might run into a small problem. Album but in general it's pretty acceptable for an ordinary house to leave a browser inside. So you don't put them outside your hygrometer and some amateur the best place to put that would be of course in some kind of a shelter if anybody wants to know about shelters. I can I'll be glad to talk to them about it if you're interested in making one. Okay, if you don't make a shelter, then you're best off to put your thermometer and hydrometer which measures relative humidity got in a shaded location. And of course the north side of a building is pretty good. And if you have a configuration where you can sell to the thermometer against the northern sun in the summertime because in the summertime quite a few hours a day or start losing sizes and more than half the sky you wants to shelter from that (00:49:06) to get a false reading if it's right out in the (00:49:08) sun if the sun is shining right on it, right? You raise the temperature a little (00:49:12) bit. Well, we have more listeners with questions of How many we can fit in in the five minutes? Go ahead please you're (00:49:17) next. Hello. I perhaps my question is a very simple one, but I wish mr. Watson would explain the importance of a barometer. And what does the barometer readings actually mean? And what does it mean in terms of the temperature and I'll hang up? Okay around is just like when you weigh yourself on a skill you get on a scale to see how much you weigh a barometer ways the weight of the overlying air in other words all the air between you and I'll order space here amateur measures that and the higher the remedy reading the more areas above you will or the reading the less errors above you. It really doesn't tell you anything about the temperature at all. (00:49:57) So does it does it help you predict what the weather is going to (00:50:00) be? Okay. Yeah. Here's the thing is that if you take barometer readings from thousands of points as the Weather Service does you can drop a map which sold exactly where the whirlpools are these whirlpools of are and of course that is the basis of your entire wedding. Up. (00:50:16) All right, we have another listener with a question. Go ahead please (00:50:20) then cast County and a lot of landowners up here in northern Minnesota and I suppose it elsewhere are draining their lowlands and swamp lands to create Farmland makes it more valuable. I suppose. I wonder what kind of overall effect might this have on our weather eventually. Okay. I suppose one thing you don't want to do is measure the temperature over swampland and find that it has a good climate that's frost-free and then drag because they're going to alter the microclimate. In other words. When you drain the swamp that area generally will be cooler than it was when all the water was there because we talked before about water hand is warming effect. Now as far as changing the climate of the state or changing the climate a large scale, it really will have very little effect because most of the water that is fed into the Work on some of the oceans and what we do on land really doesn't make much difference except on a local basis. If you're talking about the microclimate, if you're talking about in some cases where there are reservoirs large reservoirs built by dams, then you can have alteration of the climate probably for a couple of Miles Inland. It can become quite important that but in general it's a pretty small term, but it can be serious people you're too far north either hand swamp. You may find yourself is by froster me here. Where was you weren't before simply because you've taken away all that heat Supply. (00:51:50) Well, we're nearly down to the end of the hour, but I think we can fit in one more call. Maybe two if their brief. Go ahead. You're (00:51:55) next. Okay on there. Yes, sir. Okay, just a brief question a comment. I wonder if we don't take our weather reports and weathermen a little bit too. Seriously. Sometimes there is no cause and effect relationship between the weather report and whether by that I mean the weather is what the weather is independent of how its reported. Are predicted to be as well together with then opinions of what kind of weather you like are almost immaterial to because the weather will be what it will be independent of what you like as my as my mother always says what you see is what you get, right? All right, but you know is it should we Neurosis over what we'd like when there's nothing new about it? And there must be better things to neuro silver. Well, I guess what you see is what you (00:52:38) get. Yeah. Yeah Bruce, I think that about does it we don't have time for another call from a listener. But I want to ask you quickly what your seat of the pants guest you think we're going to have a white Christmas (00:52:50) boy. That is the toughest question. I've been throwing I really wouldn't put any money on having a white Christmas this year. (00:52:56) You wouldn't well we shall see one week from today what we see is what we get, I guess. All right, Bruce Watson. Thank you very much for joining us today Bruce Watson Consulting meteorologist visiting with us from his home in Suburban st. Paul.