"There's a big blue sky waiting

right behind the clouds."

- Behind The Clouds by Brad Paisley, from the movie soundtrack Cars

read more about this image from NASA's Astronomy Pic of the Day

9:45 AM WED 1/7/09 With many weeks of winter in front of us, many of you are no doubt wondering what lies ahead for the Mid-Atlantic region. The overall trend of our La Nina-influenced pattern since 2006 has yielded less and less snow, more and more pesky to disruptive ice events. The questions are: Do climate indicators suggest a different regime for the remainder of this winter, or are we just going to end up with more slop like last year? Can it all be blamed solely on the El Nino-La Nina pattern (known as the ENSO cycle), or perhaps we also be examining changes in the 11-year sunspot cycle for clues on where our winter trends are heading?

Before we launch into that convoluted discussion, I have a piece of data that is sure to brighten the day of anyone reading this site. Between January 9 and 11, depending on your location, BOTH sunrise and sunset start moving toward the spring-summer pattern. While the date of the EARLIEST sunset was actually December 7 (in Baltimore), it is not until until early January for SUNRISE to start moving earlier. Investigate for yourself on the US Navy's daylight tables. I know, it is a bizarre thing and not easily explained, but one of the web lessons I am developing for a grad course attempts to uncover the reason behind this. It has to do with the unique daily travel pattern of the sun in our sky, called the Analemma. If you're looking to really bog down your GT students with a interesting quandary (or kids, try having your science teacher explain this one to you!) then try your hand at figuring out why the earliest sunset occurs BEFORE the winter solstice and the latest sunrise occurs AFTER it! It'll make you squirm in ways Sudoku could never do.

MORNING CALL FOR MARYLAND SCHOOLS

UPDATE: 10:45 PM TUE 1/6/09 To close out the evening, I offer my admittedly low confidence projections for delays Wednesday morning. This is based in large part on the evidence that considerably warmer air aloft is advecting into the region, along with another round of heavy rain. However, the low level cold air seems to be holding on with many spots within a degree or two of freezing on either side. Surface streamlines indicate northeast winds continue to funnel cooler air across the area despite the warm influx. NWS is accounting for this in what they term "microscale CAD" (cold air advection). If temperatures hold where they are overnight, it could produce enough scattered icing to force the following calls:

CURRENT CANCELLATION SCORE FOR WED AM 1-7-09: -4 points. Scored by deviation from actual, so a perfect score is actually 0 points, which means all calls were verified exactly.

Anne Arundel: On time. correct.

Balt City: On time. correct.

Balto County: 1 hour. -1 point

Carroll: 2 hours. -2 points.

Cecil: On time. correct.

Frederick: 2 hours. correct.

Harford: On time. correct.

Howard: (devious grin) On time, with ice shavings sprinkled in parking lot for dramatic effect, and bags of salt sitting just inside the front door, unopened. update: salt bags could not be located, investigation revealed funds were earmarked for standardized testing. 


Loudon, VA: 1 hour. -1 point

Montco, MD: On time. correct.

WV panhandle: On time. correct.