Barometric Pressure Important Part of Weather

This is an answer to a question from reader, Kent, about barometric pressure:

Barometric pressure is a fantastically important number that affects everything in the atmosphere. Remember when your grandparents would tell you that their knee is acting up therefore a storm is coming, that is because of barometric pressure. All storm systems are centered on either a high or low pressure pocket of air. For storm systems on land we wouldn’t see more than 5-15 millibars, which is the metric conversion of inches of mercury, but those few small changes would create a massive storm system with torrential rain and winds. Over the ocean though it can drop much, much further. The sea level pressure is 1013.25 millibars, which is counted as the standard across the world even over land, unless you are at a high elevation relative to sea level.

Over the ocean, especially in large storms such as hurricanes, the pressure can drop dramatically 30 to 50 millibars or even 80 millibars or higher, which creates massive hurricanes like Hannah or Katrina. When you watch the news and they show you a giant map of the country with big H’s or L’s those are the markers for the high and low pressure systems. High pressures are associated with cold, dry air and low pressures are associated with hot, humid air. Last week, with that cold front, the edge of a low pressure system come over us and cooled us off for a day or two, which shattered records in the panhandle for low temps with some areas in the mid 30’s. In conclusion, barometric pressure is an extremely important part of weather as it is the backbone for the storm systems or fronts to grow and rotate around.

On another note I am now back at college and need your suggestions or questions more than ever to keep making these articles. You can contact the paper and I will get those messages forwarded to me or you can contact me directly with this email address tomy3290@gmail.com.

Now onto your local weather. As we are heading into mid September the weather is finally starting to cool off as you can expect temps to hang around 90 degrees for the rest of the week with a slight chance of rain ranging around 30% for the rest of the week. As for astronomical events, on Thursday we will be able to see the new moon