Thanks to the fine folks in New Hampton!  I got to spend the day with the Talented and Gifted students at New Hampton Elementary and Middle School.  We took a slideshow behind-the-scenes tour of KWWL…saw how we put the newscasts on TV every day…and looked at some of the tools that I get to use to help me forecast the weather.  Ms. Burgart, the TAG teacher, also treated me to school lunch…fish sticks, mashed potatoes, fruit, peanut butter sandwich and chocolate milk.  Mmm, mmm.

New Hampton welcomes you...

Some of the best students go to school here

The Chickasaws play here...

Click here to see some of the New Hamptons students!

Click here to see the rest of the New Hampton students!

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Tropical Cyclone Magda moved across The Western part of Australia with wind gusts around 75 mph.  You might notice by looking at the photo below…in the Southern Hemisphere storms rotate the opposite direction!  Storms here spin counter-clockwise…while down under they spin clockwise!

Tropical Cyclone Magda

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Many thanks to the folks at Aquin Elementary in Cascade!  I had a nice time visiting with the 2nd graders.  We looked at pictures of clouds and talked about storms.  The entire school was having a penny war to help victims of the earthquake in Haiti.  The object of a penny war is to put money in the jars of the other classes.  Looks like a lot of pennies for a good cause.

Aquin Catholic Elementary in Cascade

The Penny War!

Lotta pennies!

More help for Haiti

Beautiful St. Matthias parish in Cascade

Cascade wlcomes you...

Click here to see the Aquin Elementary 2nd graders

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On my way to visit Clarksville I noticed that the sky was rather foggy…so there was quite a bit of moisture in the air that day.  As I got closer to Clarksville I saw the trees were flocked with hoarfrost.  Also called “White Frost”, hoarfrost forms when small drops of water freeze on objects.  In this case the objects were trees and grass and bushes.

Light fog on Highway 218

Frosty oak tree

Natural flocking on the evergreens!

Hoarfrost on the pine needles

More frosty pine boughs

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I had the chance to visit with Ms. Halverson’s class in Clarksville on Tuesday, January 12.  It was COLD and snowy in Clarksville, but the second graders were a great group and I enjoyed my time with them.  We talked about the different seasons, cloud names, tornadoes and hurricanes.  We also read the book “Thundercake” where a little girl learns about storms from her Grandma.  Thanks, folks, for a nice day!

Lots of snow in Clarksville!

It was COLD in Clarksville!

Click here to see the Clarksville 2nd graders

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The Sun is the “engine” that runs our weather.  Radiation from the Sun reaches the Earth…the Earth absorbs the solar radiation and warms the atmosphere from below.  January is typically the coldest month of the year.  So far January 2010 is living up to that frigid reputation.  A couple reasons…#1 is the short January days.  The Sun is still very low in the sky, and supplies very little radiation to warm our part of the planet.  #2 reason is the fresh, deep snow that is on the ground.  The term “albedo” refers to the amount of radiation that is reflected from a given surface.  The higher the albedo, the more radiation is reflected from that surface.  Dark surfaces typically absorb more radiation while light surfaces are good reflectors.   Fresh snow reflects between 80 and 95 percent of all incoming radiation.  This means that most of the feeble January sunshine that we get is reflected off of the snow, and our weather remains COLD!

Albedo...different surfaces absorb or reflect solar radiation

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The recent cold snap is good news/bad news for ice fishermen!  Bad news is that the wind chills have been especially nasty lately…good news is that the cold air is helping thicken the ice.  How thick does it need to be before we can safely venture out onto the ice?  A nice link from the Minnesota DNR…

http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/safety/ice/thickness.html

When it comes to lake ice...the thicker, the better!

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As the Earth orbits the Sun, it follows an elliptical path rather than a circular one.  Also, the Sun isn’t exactly in the middle of the Earth’s orbit…rather, it is off to one side just a bit.  As a result, the distance from the Earth to the Sun changes during the course of the year.  It turns out that in early January our planet is over 3 million miles CLOSER to the Sun than we are in July.  This point on the Earth’s orbit is called Perihelion…and we reach it about January 3-4 each year.  You might not be able to tell with the naked eye, but the Sun’s disk is slightly larger in the sky right now…

A comparison between the Sun

A nice diagram from NWS/North Platte

Another good diagram from U of Oregon Physics Department

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