Opening Up the Weather Mailbag
I just want to start this off with saying that I hope y’all had a fantastic Thanksgiving and to give y’all the light at the end of the tunnel with 2020 coming to an end in just 30 days. With the end of the year coming around I thought I would go through the back logs and find a few questions that couldn’t fill out an entire article by themselves.
First one on the block is a question from Ty Brisgill who asked about the interesting interactions between high and low pressure systems and how the high seems to “steer” the low. Well the interaction of high and low systems are closer to cat and mouse rather than one driving the other. The interactions of high and low systems can be explained by a simple example of pulling the plug on a bathtub. So this bathtub is filled with water which is our atmosphere and it is just sitting there in a neutral position. Now if you open up the drain well now you have a pressure difference between the water in the tub(high pressure) and the empty pipe(low pressure). There is now a rush of water into the pipe that is trying to bring the pressure back to equilibrium. So the high and low pressure systems in our atmosphere act the same way where the high will always try and chase the low down to bring the atmosphere to equilibrium.
The next question is from Edwin and Carol who asked how an allergy report is taken. The answer to this is a bit more simple than you would think. An allergy report is taken by having a small device that is usually on or around other current weather sensors such as thermometers and wind veins. In this device is a piece of glass or plastic that is quite sticky, air that blows through this device will carry particles from the air and stick them to the glass. This is then taken and looked at under a microscope where the particles are identified and counted to get your allergy reports. This measurement is taken over a 24 hour period as it takes that long to get an accurate measurement of the local atmosphere.
On another note I am now back at college and need your suggestions or questions more than ever to keep making these articles, especially now that it is finals season. 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. Any topics are greatly appreciated as the semester is in full swing. Now onto your local weather.
We are in the final stretch of 2020 in this first week of December you can expect temperatures to hang around the low to mid 60’s for this week with a 60% chance of showers on Wednesday as a high pressure system is expected to come through this evening. There are no astronomical events to report.