Most of you know me as a weather enthusiast. But throughout my life, I’ve also had a keen fascination with astronomy. My grandpa first introduced me to the topic when I was about 4 or 5 years old. I learned the names of the (then nine) planets, and the basic features of each world. By the time I was in fourth grade, my interest was budding into a real hobby: there were many family trips to Goldendale Observatory, back in…
I think most of us weather geeks can agree that the winter of 2019-2020 has been extremely boring thus far. We haven’t had a single Pacific windstorm in the region, except for the “bomb cyclone” in Southern Oregon back in late November. Also no flooding in the immediate vicinity of PDX. And as for cold & snow…what initially looked like a promising mid-January snowstorm ended up just giving our area a couple slushy dustings, with temps at the airport barely…
I had other plans for this coming week. I was hoping to get some serious research done on the history of supernovas, and discuss the current situation with the red giant star Betelgeuse in Orion. (For those who don’t know, Betelgeuse has dimmed dramatically over the past few months, and is now a full magnitude fainter than it “normally” appears.) The dimming has provoked awe-inspired speculations that the star might be about to explode – and if it did, it…
Happy New Year (and new decade) folks! It’s been a hectic month for me, with holiday work in retail and whatnot. Also there were some problems with the Weather Together site over Christmas time, so I was limited to posting on my Facebook page. I encourage all of you to check it out; generally I post “minor” weather updates on that page and save this blog for the deeper discussions. Fortunately (or unfortunately) it’s been a very boring first half…