EDH Weatherblog

Went up to Loon Lake last week. The relief from the heat and smoke was a refreshing if not short lived one. The water was cool, the air clean, and temperatures nice. It was the first time  I’ve ever been kayaking and I really enjoyed it. The night sky was just as El Dorado Hills used to be 20 or so years ago: clear and crisp with the Milky Way spanning the expanse of the sky. It made me realize how much light pollution we now have in El Dorado Hills.

As you may know, the number of sunspots varies day to day, month to month, and year to year. There is a seven year cycle of high and low sunspot activity that has been tracked for centuries. We are now in Cycle 24 as of 2007. Sunspots have been quite absent for over a couple of years now. However, Cycles 24 and 25 are predicted to be full of high sunspot activity.

As you may not know, many climatological events track with the same periodicity as the sunspot cycle. Drought, El Nino and La Nina, and <gasp> global average temperature. Astrophysicists and climatologists are well aware of the high correlation of sunspot activity to climate changes.

“You probably haven’t heard much of Solar Cycle 24,” quotes geophysicist Philip Chapman, “the current cycle that our sun has entered, and I hope you don’t. If Solar Cycle 24 becomes a household term, your lifestyle could be taking a dramatic turn for the worse. ”

“It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age.”

How will we increase our carbon emissions when gas prices are so high? Thank goodness China and India are in growing economies.

Today on July 1, the new rain season begins so the annual accumulated rain total resets to zero inches. Last year we had a little over 19″ of rain.

I’m performing some site maintenance today, Sunday 6/29.  Please excuse some erroneous weather information. Things should be back online and available. If you get redirected to my blog site, it is because the weather station site is down temporarily. - John

With over 1000 active fires in Northern California and stagnant air, air quality has become very poor with an air quality index (AQI) prediction of 190. Currently at 8:00 AM the PM(2.5) AQI is 184 for this area, and may go over 200. There are two separate measures of air quality, the Ozone measurement, and the PM(2.5) that is a measure of particulate matter. The sun is directly observable due to the attenuation of light, and all day long, the sky appears as a heavy overcast, with no shadows visible on the ground. This condition is expected to diminish as an offshore low that is forming this weekend should disrupt the calm wind conditions enough to clear the smoke. Additional satellite images are available on the EDH Weather images page.

The Southwest Weather Network has grown and expanded into the North American Weather Network with over 13 affiliated networks and 210 stations. You can check out all the stations at: http://www.northamericanweather.net

You can check local weather across the continent and in Hawaii with this network. Thanks to all the individuals who have contributed time and resources to pull this together.

The spring flowers, while not as abundant as in the past, are out again. Lupin, Vetch and other species dominate El Dorado Hills.

This weekend we’re expecting to get into the 80’s. Time to plant the tomatoes.

Clearchannel communications just bought the rights to EDHWeather for inclusion into their new national weather net. EDHWeather is going to be the local flagship of independent  community weather stations along with the Southwestern Weather Net for stations in the West. More details as they happen.

The site will be back up with the rebrand information soon. Check back often.

The vernal equinox, or official start to spring occurs this March 20th exactly at 5:48 UTC time, or 10:48 PM March 19th local time.  This is the time when the sun angle relative to the earth passes directly over the equator at 90 degrees. Equinox means “equal night” — when day and night are 12 hours long each. In reality, day is really longer at the equinox because of twilight and the sun peeking above the horizon. “Equilux” — when the days are approximately equivalent to night occurred several days ago.

Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.