Imagine Being Able to See Lane Lines in the Worst of Storms

 Imagine Being Able to See Lane Lines in the Worst of Storms  Cars, Safety, Storms, Transportation, Trucks, Weather  No Responses »
Jan 082013
 

Sometimes the weather becomes so stormy that you can’t see much more than the glow of tail lights and street lights, and unfortunately, the street lights are not always enough to illuminate lane divider lines in torrential rain and snow blizzards, so how would this problem be solved?

Glowing lane lines!

Glowing lane dividers. Image obtained with thanks from http://jalopnik.com.

Researchers at Studio Roosegaard developed glowing lane line technology that helps you to see lanes through rain and snow, and this is reminiscent of the basic concept of notice lamps such as brake lamps and headlamps which enable people to notice you through the blur that heavy rain and snow blizzards can cause, so everything blends in with each other and appears to be, at worst, one big, uniform, grey area, causing accidents.

A roll cloud, and dark weather caused by a brewing storm makes the lane lines less conspicuous in this image. Image obtained with thanks from aaronHwarren on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedalfreak/

These enable people to notice you in the grey abyss because the glow of tail lamps and headlamps penetrates the snow enough for them to notice you, although it may not necessarily enable you to see where you are going.

The lines may not glow as brightly as vehicle lights, but, it should be helpful.

These lane dividers are also solar-powered.

Source: Jalopnik

 Posted by Nicholas on January 8, 2013  Tagged with: , , , ,

Volcanoes Can Cause Lightning

 Volcanoes Can Cause Lightning  Atmosphere, General Geography, Volcanology, Weather  No Responses »
Jun 172012
 

Some of you may already know that volcanic ash can affect local weather by blocking out sunlight, but did you know that it also causes lightning?

Lightning at the Chaiten volcano in Chile. Image obtained with thanks from fmg2001 on Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/fmg2001/

It is thought that volcanic ash particles sometimes brush past each other, causing the generation of a (probably) high voltage (which is a potential difference in electric charge between pieces of ash in this case).

According to the IEEE and National Geographic (source links), lightning in a volcanic ash cloud actually warns of an imminent volcanic eruption.

High voltages facilitate electric arcs (also known by many people as sparks or gashes). An electric arc is just the display of electric current passing through a gas, such as air, for example.

 Posted by Nicholas on June 17, 2012  Tagged with: ,

Arcadia and Pasadena, California Impacted by Rare Hurricane Force Wind Gusts

 Arcadia and Pasadena, California Impacted by Rare Hurricane Force Wind Gusts  Weather  No Responses »
Dec 022011
 

On December 1, 2011. The cities of Arcadia and Pasadena in California, United States as well as other cities near Sierra Crest mountain ridge were subjected to hurricane force wind gusts attaining 140 mph/122 knots (225 kph).

Despite the high speed of the wind gusts. they did not tear buildings apart as sustained winds of 140 mph would. I will explain why:

Sustained winds are defined by the NOAA as winds that maintain a given speed for at least one minute. In other words, it has to stay at the given speed without dropping below it for at least one minute.

A wind gust is more like a short burst of wind. So it does not do nearly as much damage because they don’t last long, Gusts last only seconds at a time. 140 mph sustained winds (this is a hurricane) can last and batter buildings constantly for hours. The video below is a recording of the aftermath of this in Arcadia, California. I recommend setting the video quality to 720p if you have a decent internet connection.

 

Video recorded by Doug Des Autels.

LA county fire inspector said that the fire brigade received “thousands” of calls within a 24 hour period, and during that period, firefighters responded to reports of 460 collapsed power lines. Hundreds of thousands of people were left without electricity and there were other incidents such as the overturn of furniture, collapse of trees, and flights were delayed. The winds are expected to subside soon.

Source

 Posted by Nicholas on December 2, 2011

Brief Insight into Drought, Wildfire, and their Causes

 Brief Insight into Drought, Wildfire, and their Causes  Atmosphere, Disasters, General Geography, Weather  1 Response »
Oct 312011
 

Wood fire. Image obtained with thanks from bugeaters on Flickr.

First, you need to understand what starts fires and what environments are ideal for them.

Fires thrive in low humidity environments and are most likely to survive on (burn) dry substances such as dead foliage (after it dries out and turns brown), dead grass, wood and paper.

The cause of fires is equally important. Fires can be caused by ignition or autoignition. Autoignition is when a substance spontaneously “catches fire” (ignites) without a flame or electric spark due to intense heat. In order to understand autoignition, you need to understand what really causes all the fires mentioned above, including the flame and spark ignited ones.

Fires are caused by intense heat. Sparks (electric arcs) start fires because they are at a temperature high enough to cause many substances to ignite. Some substances require higher temperatures than others to ignite.

Each substance has an autoignition temperature and that is the temperature at which it ignites. Don’t confuse autoignition with sparked ignition. Even though the underlying cause of fire is the same, they are used in different contexts. Autoignition is specifically used to refer to ignition without a spark or flame.

A very common example of ignition without a spark is in the diesel engine. It is a compression ignition engine. This means that it compresses air inside it’s cylinders until it exceeds the ignition temperature of diesel fuel, so that when the diesel fuel is injected into the cylinder of hot air, it automatically ignites.

Droughts

Drought helps to cause fires because it is a lack of rain for a prolonged period of time which causes plants to dry out, and as I said above, dry plants are the most likely to ignite. They can be ignited by lightning strikes, arsons, cigarette lighter accidents, and more.

Wildfires

Wildfires are often contributed to by droughts because droughts are geographically large enough to cause foliage over a very widespread area to become dry, so a fire may be started on even one leaf, spread to the rest of the plant, then spread to the other plants until it becomes a large disaster.

 Posted by Nicholas on October 31, 2011

NASA: Excess UV Light Causes Plankton to Create Clouds Indirectly

 NASA: Excess UV Light Causes Plankton to Create Clouds Indirectly  Ocean, Uncategorized, Weather  No Responses »
Jul 232011
 

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Storm clouds. Obtained with thanks from Kswx29: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kswx29/.

During the summer, when there is more UV light shining into the ocean, plankton can become stressed and in such a case will produce a chemical called dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) to protect themselves from it. Bacteria breaks this chemical down into dimethylsulfide (DMS) which then exits the water and into the atmosphere where it reacts with oxygen to create sulfur compounds which stick together to form dust-like particles which happen to be just right for cloud formation.

How clouds are formed:

Heat from various sources including the sun causes water to evaporate. Evaporation is the conversion of liquid water into a gas known as water vapour. Water vapour then condenses onto dust particles back into liquid water when it reaches a cold area thousands of feet up in the atmosphere. If you haven’t already connected the dots. More dust-like particles that are suitable for cloud formation can result in the formation of more clouds.

Clouds block some sunlight from reaching the surface of the earth (which is the ground if you didn’t know) and clouds also happen to do the opposite and contribute to warming because the earth’s surface reflects some of the light that reaches it back out of the atmosphere, but clouds block it and actually reflect it back down to earth again, and during that process, some of that light turns into heat which accumulates and helps to warm the planet.

More details: The dust-like particles become very cold thousands of feet up in the atmosphere and when water vapour comes into contact with cold particles, they cool the water vapour, causing the molecules in the water vapour to move closer together, causing it to become more dense until it is finally liquid water.

DMS levels are higher in the summer, and that helps to support this theory. Plankton levels also happen to be at a minimum during the summer. During the summer, the study showed that 77% of DMS level changes were due to UV light exposure.

The NASA article (at the source link at the bottom) says that the next step for researchers is to determine how much the plankton cloud production phenomenon mentioned above affects the climate. It says that it has the potential to help cool the climate, but there is still uncertainty about the net effect of it.

All of the measurements required for this study were taken from the Sargasso Sea.

Source: NASA

 Posted by Nicholas on July 23, 2011

Joplin City, Missouri Battered By Unusually Strong Tornado (U.S)

 Joplin City, Missouri Battered By Unusually Strong Tornado (U.S)  Disasters, Weather  No Responses »
May 242011
 

Joplin City, Missouri, which is north of Arkansas, has been severely infrastructurally damaged and an estimated 122 people have been killed as of 6 pm today due to an EF5 tornado with a path three quarters of a mile wide. EF means Enhanced Fujita. It is a tornado wind speed scale. A tornado which is rated EF5 has wind speeds in excess of 200 mph or 322 km/h. Source.

Joplin’s devastation was due to two unusual factors, a tornado of an unusually high strength, and also a high population density. Joplin has a very high population density of 1,592 people per square mile or 615 people per square km. This translates to a very high death toll in the case of tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, or any disaster which affects a geographic region of a given size.

For example, if a disaster is a square mile and killed everyone in that square mile, and the population density was 1, 592 per square mile, then twice as many people would be killed if it had twice that population density, but this is not realistic. I used that example because it is easy to understand.

Weather officials said that it was the single deadliest tornado to hit since 1947 and the ninth deadliest of all time.

The building damage was so severe that their remains were almost flat on the ground. They were basically piles of boards. The residents were warned about the tornado a helpful 20 minutes before it hit. 20 minutes may sound short, but it matters because it is long enough for people to grab a few of their most important belongings and run into an underground shelter.

20,000 buildings were left without electricity and there were interruptions of cellphone service, and Verizon Wireless said that they would provide 3 cellular communication towers for emergency service.

There will be more news reports to pertaining to this in the near future about the death toll and number of rescued people.

Missouri Population Density: 81.2 people per square mile.

Joplin City:

Total Population 50,150. Source.

Population Density of Joplin: 1,592 people per square mile, or 615 people per square km.

Source.

 Posted by Nicholas on May 24, 2011  Tagged with: , , ,

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