Focus 580; Winter Storm Preparedness

Well we have been here in our part of the state for a while now have been enjoying some warmer than average temperatures and that's really nice at this time of year but the fact of the matter is that you know sooner or later it is going to be winter. And indeed we are now less than two weeks away from the first day of climatological winter which as we all know is the first of December climatological winter is December January and February. And we want people to bear in mind that cold weather is coming and cold weather can indeed be a problem. And in fact here in Illinois and also in Indiana officials have set aside this week as a time for people to think about getting ready for the cold weather to come. How to Be Prepared particularly if you if you travel by car and there's any chance that you might find yourself stranded you want to keep that in mind and maybe have a few basic things in your car to take care of that. Make sure your car is ready to go for the winter. Certainly. And we'll be talking about that kind of stuff. Plus in general terms this morning we can talk a little bit about winter weather and winter storms and how they differ from the

kind that we see in the spring in the summer. And our guest is our chief meteorologist Ed Kieser and questions are welcome all about the weather now. Also I want to make sure that people understand this program that we're doing here this is not talked at. We can't take questions about places that you will be traveling will do that tomorrow at the regular times and then also be some some special additions of this in the run up to the Thanksgiving right before Thanksgiving because we know a lot of people do travel at that time of year so we can do that here this morning. But this is an opportunity for you to indulge. Weather questions the kinds of things that those on the talk tears we don't really don't have time to go into long explanations about the weather but here we got plenty of time so if you have questions about weather and about weather forecasting now you can answer and ask him and I know Ed will do his best. Even at 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Those are the numbers. Well thanks very much for being here. Well it's good to be here. We certainly you know each in

the in the spring in the fall we always have these. Weeks that are set aside for to talk about preparedness and probably it seems like maybe in the springtime it has a little bit more urgency in it because severe thunderstorms and tornadoes that kind of weather it can hit really fast and you want to make sure people have fought out in advance. You know if if there's a tornado warning you should know what you're going to do where you're going to go. That kind of stuff because you might not have a lot of time to think about that. But you know with winter storms like this we don't really don't think about them being that dangerous except they are they they can be or it think about them being dangerous when you're stuck in one if you know that that's when you figure that one out it's when that when your car breaks down or gets stuck in a snowdrift and you're in the middle of nowhere that's that's when that's when folks start to realize yeah this is pretty dangerous. You know this is not a good situation so. That's why there is the winter storm preparedness week. About this time of year as you noted climatological winter starts in about two weeks also the big holiday

driving season starts tomorrow really were. Thanksgiving is a week from today so a lot of folks hit the road and well often there aren't big winter storms over things giving occasionally. We do see them back in 1950 there was a huge winter storm that moved across the Midwest and in just buried a lot of the big cities Chicago and Cleveland and Detroit and the. The temperatures on the backside of that were were quite chilly. We get down to five below zero here in Champaign Urbana around Thanksgiving of 1950 which interestingly 1050 our record high for the entire month of November. Also was established on the first of November 950 it was 80 degrees by the time we got to the thanksgiving. It was 5 below zero we are a record high and the record low happened in the same month or same year for the month. OK well yeah right it was the same year in November we both had the warmest and the cold.

So that gives you an illustration there that the weather can be very changeable at this time of year so if you're going through a period where it's unusually warm that doesn't mean it's going to last in. On the flip side of it's very cold back in 1901 we started the month of November with some low temperatures in the single digits and teens and thought oh boy here comes a really bad winter and then it turned out to not that that was probably the most extreme as far as temperature we had that whole winter season and that occurred in early November so every year is a little different but if you're traveling you really want to know what to do. As far as. Just some of the precautions a lot of a lot of the winter weather precautions over are just using common sense. Although I know sometimes I have to be reminded of a few commonsense items myself so. The first first item would be to avoid all unnecessary travel and if you do have to travel and you get to really consider do you really have to travel because some

people say Oh yeah because there is I've seen more and more in recent years the attitude of nothing's going to stop me you know and it people getting irate at the airport why isn't this plane taking off. Well because they can't see the runway. Ed well get it cleaned up. I've got to go right now well because I have got to be somewhere. Well sometimes you don't have to be somewhere as quickly as you think you do but if you must travel in the winter try to plan your trip in advance and certainly inform others your intended route of travel. If you do get stuck at least then maybe they can send somebody out to find you. And allow plenty of extra travel time and course when you're going out in winter wear warm clothing and several layers in. If you become stranded you hopefully have the winter garb that you need including a good hat because a lot of the heat. Escapes from your head as well as the gloves and you want as

much of your exposed flesh covered as possible in winter because you can freeze rather quickly your skin can freeze if it's exposed. You know if you want to make sure that if you have to be doing something outside so maybe you get stuck but you could do a little shoveling you could put out some you know they put say cat litter is a good thing to have if if you're under some slippery conditions or if you can be doing anything outside the car you better make sure that you're plenty warm enough and that you do indeed have gloves to wear headstand you got a hat so that if you got to be out there for some period of time you're going to you're going to be OK. And of course there's a lot of things you should be doing that we can talk about during the show. Regarding your car I don't want to focus on cars but make sure your car is ready for winter I heard Rick Karcher on your program in the past week or so mention that he thinks that if your battery for example is 5 years old or older just get a new one and then that's probably. Something that you don't want to do because a lot of batteries die in the extreme cold and you know

that's the time you really don't want to get stuck or you have to change the battery. Absolutely. Well again if people have questions about whether this is an opportunity to call in and ask to talk with our meteorologist it gies are more particular focusing on winter weather because this is winter storm preparedness week both here in winter weather prepared this week both here in Illinois and in Indiana. So 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Maybe you could talk a little bit about MIT might want to talk a little bit about winter storms. You had the big I guess if people think about it the big difference maybe between winter storms and this those that we have in the spring and summer is that winter storms seem to move more slowly. And so we have more notice in the spring. We may in the morning we may get the the Weather Services says this afternoon. We're thinking that there's a possibility of storms in a given

area in the winter time. You may have several days notice whom you may look out to the west because that's where the weather comes from and we may say two three days from now. We think there we're going to have a storm you know what why is it that in the spring it seems to go so fast and pop up with maybe not very much warning. But in the wintertime days in advance we may say OK we know that there's a big storm coming and it's likely going to affect us. Well storms on earth occur in different time and space scales some are very large and last for several days or even weeks and other storms are very small and last on the order of hours or even minutes and the big difference is the scale that you're looking at for a winter storm you're looking at what we call the synoptic scale the larger scale weather systems that move across the country that we track on weather maps when you see the highs and lows and fronts those are synoptic scale systems and. Big winter

storm is a deep low pressure system a strong low pressure system that will influence an area sometimes is that large is run a thousand miles in diameter just a very big area. And of course it takes several days for one of those storms to move across the U.S. So we're able to track that over a longer period of time and winter storms by definition of that big low pressure system cover a large area. Interestingly the severe weather we talk about in the spring is often associated with those large large middle latitudes cyclonic storms or low pressure centers it's just in one quadrant of that whole big thousand mile diameter in which you're in what we call the warm sector or near the warm sector and where you get the thunderstorms to develop which are much smaller storms that last anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours in length and the diameter of a

thunderstorm is usually say 10 miles some lines of thunderstorms obviously extend over 100 miles but. They don't last as long of course than tornadoes that come out of some thunderstorms or on average only about a quarter mile wide if that. So in last on average only a few minutes. So you're looking at different scales of time and space in the winter storm that produces the widespread snow and ice covers. Thousands of square miles and as a result we track it over several days. OK. We have taught someone here to talk with a caller in Urbana. Let's do that. Line number one. Hello. Oh yeah hi. I have family in Traverse City Michigan and that coastline of Michigan is the lake effect snow coastline that's sometimes pretty scary. Yes. You know one of the things I wanted to ask is that how. Capricious are those storms. Would

I be able to get a regular accurate prediction on that lake effect snow problem off of weather channel dot com and various things like that. Or do I have to be extra careful. Well I think when you go to a place such as the Weather Channel's website. Generally speaking they have to broad brush things a little bit so they may alert you to the effect that there will be lake effect in a general large area which is a good thing to know about especially if you're going to travel. But with a lot of lake effect snow there is what we call banding and there will be some areas where the snow comes down intensely in a mile or two away they're not getting much at all and that then comes down to the details which sometimes cannot be forecast very far in advance. And also if you have to then get more localized with the weather forecast as you are trying to get down to the smaller bands of

snow. So if you're just thinking about OK I'm leaving Illinois to drive up to Traverse City Michigan is today a good day or bad day. The broad brush is probably good because that there's lake effect snow forecast it may not be snowing heavily say up the entire length of the Lake Michigan coast but somewhere between here and there chances are very good that there's some heavy snow falling causing some travel problems. Thank you very much hope that helps things forward go in the local National Weather Service office websites might help on some of that. In Michigan the Grand River Grand Rapids office covers most of south western lower Michigan and then I think as you get farther north up toward Traverse City it would be the office out of Gaylord Michigan I believe is where the Northern Michigan offices. OK. Because I know that for example was went to the went to the web page of The National Weather Or maybe I guess I started with the

central Illinois page but what you can do is you can put into your browser National Weather Service and then you'll get their web page and then there's a map of the United States. And then if you click on the state that you're interested in it will then link you to whatever. That the office is for the covers that area and for and of course you can see there are their local radar too and the snow bands that come off of Lake Michigan or any of the other Great Lakes show up very nicely on the radar a bit. I grew up in a lake effect snow area in Ohio and it was just amazing to me how little change in wind direction made a big difference where one town could get over a foot of snow in the next town get none. It could even be sunny. About a town away from where a foot of snow was falling So lake effect is a smaller scale phenomenon and as a result it's very tricky to get precise with the forecast sometimes although lake effect snow forecasting is a lot better now than when I was growing up.

Again other questions welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 1. When we get a really heavy snow storm a lot of snow a lot of wind. We might say that's a blizzard is that you do meteorologist use that term. It doesn't have actually a technical know yeah so you know the blizzards a real thing it's not some made up hokey term in fact there are blizzard watches and warnings issued by the National Weather Service. A blizzard by definition would. There's two components that are necessary one you need to have wind speeds sustained for probably three hours or more of at least 35 miles per hour so you're talking strong winds over a period of time. And to go along with it you need to have either snow falling or snow being picked up from the ground that's blowing around reducing the visibility often to a quarter of a mile or less. So that that's what makes a blizzard so you have

strong winds with with significant blowing snow so that the visibility is very low. And oftentimes as a result it's also quite cold out there especially low wind chills but you do not actually you can have a blizzard without snow falling if there's already snow sitting on the ground and the wind is just whipping it up. So what now. Also in a winter like we do in spring there are watches and warnings that are issued and advisories Khidir all those it just is a nightmare sometimes as well we make our own forecasts here but we pass through official warnings watches and advisories and. There are nine different national weather service offices that cover Illinois and Indiana and they all seem to come out with different types of watches and warnings and advisories and different start and stop times and to try to describe it on the radio is a nightmare it's probably the least favorite part of my job and winter is just that you know just dealing with

all of those. But basically going from the most urgent to least urgent the warning whatever type of warning it is is the most urgent. There are blizzard warnings heavy snow warnings ice storm warnings heavy sleet warnings I've never seen that one but that's a possibility. Or if you're going to have a combination of that weather they'll just issue the generic winter storm warning. And usually that means you're going to get heavy snow and or ice accumulations that will cause a lot of problems not only for travel but it could relate to power outages and the like. A lesser advisories issued if it's going to be a significant nuisance but not up to the warning criteria. For example usually if there is going to be somewhere in the 3 to 6 inch snowfall range they'll issue a snow advisory and if it's going to be six inches or more in 12 hours or 8 inches or more in

24 hours they issue a heavy snow warning or a winter storm warning. So advisories are a little less a little less severe than a warning and then a watch means conditions are looking favorable for a storm to come in within the next day or so that could cause warning conditions. Well again we're almost at our midpoint here and we're certainly up for questions about weather. Our guest is our meteorologist Ed Keizer and if you have questions about what particular we're talking about winter weather 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Let me ask another dumb guy question about sleet. Yes it is technically when when you use that that term to a meteorologist. What is what does that mean what is sleet ice pellets ice pellets raindrops that have frozen on their way down so it's just a little frozen pellets

almost like hail some people confuse sleet with hail actually but hail is made way up high in a thunderstorm several miles up in the cloud where sleet forms closer to the ground a raindrop falls through a significant thick layer below freezing here that the drop actually freezes up so sleet is defined as ice pellets. So that's and that's generally you can feel that you know that when you're being hit by a solid it can almost sting if its rings especially if it's when it blows in your face and if it starts to accumulate It's like walking on sand it's kind of kind of like walking on a beach it's you trudge along. And the difference being that it what happens when an ice storm is that they're they're actually you're getting liquid you're getting rain but what happens is is that if it falls on a surface where it's cold or if the air temperature it's coming down on it it is warm enough at some point for it to be rain.

But then it comes into another area where it's cold enough so that it then yeah I'm going to have and there's just a below freezing layer near the ground and that could be a difference in wind direction you could go up. Only a few hundred feet winds might be out of the south bringing in warm air but near the ground you have a low level northeast wind bringing in cold air. So if there's just a very shallow layer of cold air near the ground raindrops will fall into that cold air but they don't have enough time to freeze so it's actually raining with the temperature below freezing. We call those drop supercooled. That's when the when it's liquid in the temperature is below freezing. But then when those drops hit anything below freezing there's an instant freezing on of that object creating a glaze. And that's the worst weather for driving in. Well if you get a lot of it it causes more problems than that we remember 1990 and Allan times a day and a big ice storm that year and usually about every decade or so we get a big one in this part of the country.

OK well now we have some other callers here and let's go to them. Number one lie number one is someone in Urbana. Hello. Oh hello I had a question about tornadoes. Sure. Not necessarily winter related but you brought it up I thought I would bring up the same question when I had once seen the early formation of a tornado. The sky was greenish. Is that typical And if so then why is there a green cast. Guy thank you. Well that's a that's a very good question yet is typical a lot of severe storms tend to have a greenish hue to them. But I can I can't give you a definitive answer on why there are many that are trying to come up with that theory. The simple answer is a lot of people say it's refraction from hail stones and I've heard people I respect say that but they haven't study that people that I know that do study read the effects of light with different weather phenomena say no it's not because of hail stones. But then the question is what causes the green hue and there's not a definitive answer that I'm

able to explain. There are some that have tried to explain it and not in a clear enough fashion really that I understand it entirely but that that's one of those good questions I even at a conference back in 1900 goes back a few years I was speaking and I had a roomful of meteorologists. I said Well since I got a room full of meteorologists I've got a question for you. And it was that question what causes the green and severe thunderstorms and nobody had an answer. But some will tell you it's hail but others have not just disprove that theory so it's a good question and you know we never have an answer. I'd love to know the true answer will get you. Let's see next is champagne. This is lie number two. Hello. Hi I have a. Sort of a humorous thing. I read the trikes two in the morning for exercise. I'm no longer raid but I have them at us and also I had a stroke. But I always

wear a helmet. And my question is since it's safe to do this I do this for exercise. I feel sort of smug because it doesn't take a gas dose So anyway I'll hang up and listen to your answer it off the air. Thank you. Is it safe to wear a helmet or ride it. Well I mean I wonder if she's thinking about the possibility of maybe. Well first of all on behalf of Dr Robert Bo check and all the other doctors I think they would say if you're where riding a bicycle no matter what kind of bicycle it is you should wear a helmet. This is good. Yeah that's what I would say says get based on what they say so it may be that the second I don't know maybe maybe it's it has to do with with if there's snow or ice because you know I see particularly around the campus. People riding bicycles where when there is snow and ice and I guess I kind of wonder gee is that such a good idea I guess that's you know.

Well first I would think a trike would be. Better signal belike because you have better stability. Most definitely. I think some of that has to come down to thinking through a few things one is the practical to trudge through because once snow gets that enough the pedaling is just going to be very difficult but if you can handle that there's no problem. The other thing you've got to think about is can others see you and can you avoid others hitting you. If they are driving say a car way too fast for conditions so I'd say the safety issue is you've got to consider the other drivers always and where you are but just going out on a bicycle with a little snow I don't think it's. Or trice a cold you know and I'd say a trike safer than a bike. And and I do agree with her too she said she feels smug not using gasoline I wish that that we could all do that you know because that definitely is a good thing too.

So good thing all around Wear your helmet. That's good and do in particular I think it's a really good point that you need to make sure that any time you need to make sure that you can be seen by the drivers but particularly in the winter time you know the visibility might not be good or you might say. Maybe somebody is coming up to a stop sign and even if they decide they want to stop you know it can be sorta difficult so you know it might be you know. Maybe a little a little bit more challenging in the winter time. And when I once there's been enough snow that's plowed that then it probably becomes impractical if there's just big drifts that every driveway and your big piles of snow in every driveway and the sidewalks are blocked and all that but it amazes me though I see a lot of people out riding bicycles in this in snowy and icy conditions and I'd say you know you have to say well you know good for you if you think you can do it you're dressed warmly and you know you're careful I guess that's OK. It can be can be pretty challenging it can be like you know imagine riding a bicycle on a on a beach

on a sandy beach you just get an attraction is going to crash and very tough and then you start getting my experience when I've tried it and it's been many many years you just start to get some of that ice and slush caught between the wheel and oh yeah the rest of the bike is just it's very hard to pedal. That's been my experience but alright let's start with somebody in Saybrook. In line three yellow color there line number three. There we got you. Go ahead. Yeah my question lies in the fact that I think we have noticed there were other belts across Illinois and in the. Wintertime snows many times follow those belts like either south or north of Champaign Urbana. Is there any statistical evidence that the rain patterns of the summer follow those same weather belts of the winter. Well I think the well the one way I can

answer this is this. As far as belts go every storm will produce a swath of heaviest precipitation generally with the bigger storms from southwest to northeast. So that's the first thing every storm will do that. And then with winter storms you'll as you go from southeast to Northwest you'll get progressively colder so you'll go from where the precipitation is predominantly rain to freezing rain sleet and then eventually snow. So every storm will produce swaths of say there will be a swath of heavy snows and many will have a little thin swath of freezing rain or ice and it correlates to the presupposition panda pattern in the long in the in the long view in that the farther south you go in say Illinois the higher the average annual precipitation the driest area of Illinois on average would be in northwest Illinois the wettest area would be in far southern

Illinois so. A lot of that has to do with the moisture source for storms being the Gulf of Mexico so if you drew a map with the average annual precipitation across Illinois you would find tracks similar to I guess belts of how the storms travel because there's just more rain to the south southeast than to the north northwest. But it but every storm is different. Every year it's different. For example here in Champaign Urbana we usually get a mix just because we get enough warm air into most storms but sometimes we get heavy snow such as we did in 1999 right after New Year's Day. Sometimes we get the heavy ice here which was the case on Valentine's Day 1990. And oftentimes it just rains and then that's not newsworthy. Now where you are in Seabrook sometimes when there's freezing rain

here you will get snow sometimes when there's rain here you get a mix there. Just because you're a little bit farther north. Thank you to all of that helps Erica and let's go on to another caller and this person is in our COLA line for Hello. I didn't either. Yeah my question is I was born in the Devon and it seemed like looking back through pictures of a really strong winter storm that blew through and then it seemed like I had on the 80s or so it just kind of petered out and they haven't been there always been and I just wondered are there any indications or anything exactly like a pattern where they're not as strong now days as they used to be or is it just the fact that I was a kid and everything looks bigger and worse not doing that now. I think there are there has been a pattern some of it which can be explained and some of it can't but I could tell you the average annual snow fall has

gradually declined a little bit here over the last couple decades and that's because in most years snowfalls come up short of the average usually for a climatological purposes a 30 year average is used for temperature and precipitation and every 10 years that's updated and I would say I'd have to look at exactly how many years but over the last two decades probably somewhere in the order of 12 to 15 of those winters have been below average on snowfall. There's been a couple that there's been a there have been a couple of winters close to average snowfall and very few above average in the last couple decades and we've been in a quiet trend. One theory which has not proven yet is because there's a lot of things that influence the climate but there's what's called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation which changes every few decades and it's just a tendency from

warmer than average to colder than average water over the whole Pacific Ocean. And it was in a phase a positive phase which would tend to give us milder winters if nothing else was influencing our weather. And. We'll know in the next couple decades whether that works because it's supposedly going back into the negative phase which would mean that more often than not over the next decade or two we'd have cold or stormy or winters. We'll see the jury's out on that. Then there's the question about global warming and then even with the global average temperature increasing that doesn't mean that all of a sudden winter goes away. It may in some areas and it may become more intense than others. So there might be some climate change going on. But it but we've had cycles in the past too where we've gone through many decade periods where most winters have been rather quiet and decade periods where winters were incredible. David I know you probably remember your early

days at The View while well you had to work the early mornings and then you in the late 70s. Yeah I'm sure you really enjoyed January of 1979 you know. Yes that was I do I do indeed remember that. We had much it was much colder and much you know you must know your days when the wind chills were and you know it was was minus 40 or course we changed the windchill table so maybe that maybe it wasn't quite that bad but yeah we had some really serious winters back then the lakes are there are there are any indication that this year they'll be more snow. Fall or not there's no good indication on that yet. I think it's going to be a lot of times around here we don't get many huge snowfalls Anyhow it's usually if it's a question of do you get one or two big storms a year or four or five. They make the difference whether you're below or above average on snowfall and and then that just comes down to

conditions that will form over the next few months. There's no real good indication of that. The Climate Prediction Center in Washington D.C. does tilt the odds to slightly below average precipitation for this winter over our area and equal chances of above near or below average temperature. OK thank you. I have had only a little. It does seem that particular over the last few years that we have had periods in January of pretty serious cold which would make sense because that's the on average that's when we get the coldest temperatures in January. But that for the rest of the winter's not too bad and not too bad. Usually there's a few other cold periods as I mentioned at the top of the show in 1901 we had a couple weeks of just unusually cold air in early November and you can go back in there a couple years in the 80s where late December temperatures were dropping well below zero. But then there's other years we haven't even gone below zero at all until sometime in January or

February so every year is a little different. And it's also interesting when I look back through the records again because one or two storms a year make up most of the snowfall that often there's one month that tends to be the month you never know going into winter which month it is but some years January is the big snow snow month and other years it's March casually it's December when that happens you think oh boy you were really in for it and you may or may not be in for it for the rest of the winter. Every every year is different in that regard. Next caller is in Champaign line one. Hello good morning. I like to look at the radar displays usually the one from the Department of that. Says the central but I know what's coming but go ahead now. First of all is there any good reference or sources for interpret in what I see on the map. I'd have to think about

it I just do a google search. There might be good to do a Google search I could tell you that the the radar is called the Ws are eighty eight D. It's a National Weather Service radar that they're showing and that actually wasn't what I thought I was going to hear I know the atmospheric sciences department shows the raw image which comes out of Lincoln Illinois remapped a little bit more centered on Champaign Urbana and sometimes at night you just get this big blob in a looks like the end of the world on the radar and it's in it's fine clear air mode or even sometimes in the summertime with an inversion the radar beam bends down toward the ground and you're picking up a lot of what's called anomalous propagation. And I know we've had some complaints here Ed. First off I'm glad you noted that. Even though we have links to it from our website we don't control that part of the website and what the Atmospheric Sciences Department is showing is the actual raw

radar data. A lot of companies will will clean up the data they'll actually have computer algorithms or humans actually take out some of the anomalous propagation to make it look nicer but I know that that's a complaint we sometimes get as there's only one with quite the same as the one directly out of the I O X website. But you said earlier something about varying air currents and what I've been noticing this morning is some strange looking returns look like earlier there was a very small high rotating clockwise Ovis with some particular precipitation around the edge and now it looks like that's due. What they did in there is a fairly fast moving Nero band of precipitation heading towards us from the south west but right behind it. The other precept is moving to the north east. And so I was wondering if I could find some source to interpret these things. Well probably some of that what if you put it looping at some of it would just have to do

with the wind at the level of the presupposition but returns that are the falling end. And usually the presupposition moves with the cloud level of where the presupposition is falling out of. One thing to keep in mind too with all radars individual radar sites not the composites where they put it all together. The farther out from the radar site you go the higher up into the cloud. The radar beam is looking says sometimes you'll you'll be shooting up into a layer where winds are coming from another direction and that might make it look like there's a change in direction of the presupposition. So the farther out you go the is the Earth of course curves in the radar beam goes out rather straight. OK thank you very much for a very low keep on here. Next caller in line is over in Belgium. One two. Hello. Yeah I am still scratching my head about setting fire to your ear.

But that's another story. Yeah really. Add to that was the last I'll tell you about that later Ed's giving me this look like what are you talking about. That was that was last hour. You know what I'd like to talk to you about is regularly you talk about El Nino and what effects it has or does not have in the Midwest. But here recently in the most recent article of the Scientific American they they had a discussion about that conveyor which takes a lot of heat from the equitorial area of the Atlantic and causes that in Cleveland and thereby affecting northern Europe's weather northeast United States weather and by that affecting our weather. There because of the decrease in the ice levels in the in agreement that this abductor could actually slow. Down because of fresh water causing the whole thing not to work because of water drops. What if you heard about that.

Well I've heard of the Atlantic Conveyor in the North Atlantic Oscillation and there are a lot of things that are out there other than El Nino that can influence the weather patterns around the entire northern hemisphere. Of course there's other other parameters affecting the southern hemisphere but usually split the two hemispheres apart and that's partly why a long range weather forecasting is rather difficult at best because. A lot a lot a lot of weather systems come and go more quickly than what's influenced by El Nino and most of what happens in the Atlantic Ocean from what I've read so far. It happens seasonally and changes sometimes within seasons so it's not as well predicted in advance and then then you brought up the other issue about the the ice melting and Greenland and

the differences between fresh and salt water and I could tell you that that's not an area I've studied heavily but that's something that climatologists are looking at closely and and those that are studying climate change and I know the Atlantic ocean is becoming an area that many scientists are starting to look at more because it's not as well understood as the Pacific Ocean the Pacific Ocean is where you have your your best a long term signals influencing the atmosphere because it is the biggest water body. And but but it's good to note that what happens in the Atlantic Ocean has an impact on weather systems moving around the northern hemisphere and is part of the puzzle that influences our weather as well as El Nino in the Pacific. Thank you very much. I think you and El Nino by the way there is a weak El Nino and and I have mentioned in the past the only good direct correlation between El Nino and Midwestern weather is if there is a strong El Nino there's a rather good

correlation to above average winter temperatures and about half the average snowfall in a given winter. Outside of that it's just one of the players in our weather but when El Nino is strong which It's not into is supposed to be this year then that's a pretty good correlation outside of that. Use caution. Anyway it says El Nino means is there an El El Nino means that in the Midwest I would I would just take that with a lot of skepticism. OK and we have about seven eight minutes left in this part of focus. Our guest is our meteorologist Keizer and we're talking about the weather winter weather in particular if you have questions call us. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Urbana is the next call in line 3 0 0 0 0 0 I heard to focus them. One was already many say it was the life and when the wind is from the weather is not fit for man or beast or some phraseology.

Is there any substance to that missile can you tell me the mechanisms going on. Thank you. OK. Usually there's all of the folklore. Well I shouldn't say all of some of the folklore does have some basis to it from observations but none of the folklore is 100 percent accurate. The Red Sky at Night sailors delight. Usually that means you're seeing the sunset in the West and weather systems move west east I mean the clouds are starting to move away from the west. So fair weather is coming in and the other the other half to that one that I've heard in the past is red sky in the morning. Sailor take warning that means the clouds are moving in from the west to the east and you're getting there red with the scattering of light with the clouds out there and all as far. And then the red reflecting off the clouds the red sun actually the red

orange sun. The other one win from the east but not fit for man or beast. They often when you get a strong east wind around here that means there's a low pressure to your south because there's the counter clockwise flow around a low pressure system would bring in an east wind and often that means the low is going to track body or south and east and you get on the side of the low with the heaviest precipitation So when we get a strong east wind around here it's usually a stormy situation that we're dealing with. OK. And Indiana on 4. Hello. Yeah I'm interested in line of sight you know making everything equal you're standing outside your house or or maybe on a butte from the farmland it is. And you see the clouds approaching from the west. Is there any good estimate just how far away those clouds are. It's hard to it's hard to say. I could tell you that out west where there is less haze in the atmosphere you can see

clouds a couple hundred miles away if they're tall enough because the line of sight you could see pretty well over a hundred miles. Even here I could tell you a carrier if several weeks ago on a Saturday night I was seeing clouds lit up with lightning from Champaign Urbana and those storms were southeast of Terre Haute Indiana looking at the radar to determine that so oftentimes you can see clouds over 100 miles the problem around here is you get into haze and especially in the summer time. You can't sometimes see more than about 10 15 miles in and to see a cloud 100 miles away is impossible and it's very hazy. So that's our biggest limiting factor but with a clean atmosphere you can see tall clouds depends on the height of the cloud to obviously the taller the cloud cumulonimbus cloud extending 10 miles into the atmosphere you can see I think sometimes up to a couple hundred miles away.

It's clear. And we have someone here in Dewitt County line one. Hello. Yes I have a quick question. I have found. Something from no other howto in my field was I was after it harvested and not I. It's pretty well banged up but there's a plastic envelope in there. Do they really want it back on or whether it's got a kind of sitting. Yeah I'm guessing one. What happen when you're in Dewitt County. Yeah I'm guessing that that is from. You never know which office but that's from a weather balloon launch and what you probably have there is an instrument packed from weather balloon launches to collect weather data twice a day from around the country and the balloons are the nearest site is the Lincoln Illinois about 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. as the official balloon launch time they actually launch from about an hour before those time so they're the data is being collected from that jet stream level for a certain time.

And what they do is they recycle the instrument packs there's probably part of what you have there that has to get thrown out but there might be some useful equipment inside there that they can reuse. And only about 10 percent of all of them are ever recovered. But every little bit helps because of the data they collect is very important and it does cost money to collect that data. So they do all of my own back. Well likely actually though. Thank you I know you are John Frayne from WRAL FM found one on his farm near Monticello several years ago too so they do land in central Illinois sometimes and and they do have parachutes so the Sing should not come clunking down on your head at a high speed it should it should be a nice gentle drop. But what happens is the balloon that they ride up on gets bigger and bigger and bigger as it goes up because the air pressure on the balloon decreases and eventually the balloon burst.

Then the instrument pack comes back to ground again. Well we're just about done. Any last thing you'd like to leave with folks before we finish up. Well we're going into the winter season I can tell you that will will keep you up to date on the weather here and they'll be I'll AM 580 and with our in-depth weather reports in the morning in midday and now on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED your weather on WRAL TV at night on weeknights and just use common sense if you're going to travel at a time get the car ready winterize make sure the antifreeze is good the tires are good your light bulbs are all working batteries good all of that and. Just make sure that you take what you need to stay safe especially if you get stranded warm clothes maybe some candy bars as one time when I say it's good to eat candy or if you have some candy bars many things like that. And if you're going to be traveling and you'd like to forecast your destination tomorrow on MORNING EDITION

afternoon magazine and then the day before Thanksgiving two days before and after and we're going to we're going to do the special Talk two segments on the afternoon magazine next Tuesday November 23rd at 12:40 p.m. and then next Wednesday November 24th at 7:50 a.m. Central Time. So it's an hour later in the eastern time zone of course and will be glad to take your questions then and hopefully the weather will cooperate I think it will for anybody traveling this weekend will be well above freezing and that's what I consider cooperating at this time of year. Next week there's every map we look at a little different but it does show colder air coming in so. All right there's that concern. It will happen that way. All right thank you very much. AM 580 WRAL LTV chief meteorologist at Keysar. Appreciate you coming in and spending some time with us.