India's panel price crash could spark solar revolution - environment - 02 February 2012 - New Scient
www.newscientist.com
Solar power has long had a reputation for being expensive, but the falling costs of making panels could change that
28 January 2012
What 2011 Would Be Like, A 1911 Prediction
This gets quite a number of 2011 things right, and it was written in 1911. Enjoy!
http://www.buzzfeed.com/burnred/predictions-of-what-2011-would-be-like-in-a-1911-n-281t
http://www.buzzfeed.com/burnred/predictions-of-what-2011-would-be-like-in-a-1911-n-281t
14 January 2012
2012-01-14, Appreciating the Texas Panhandle
I sent the following very long comment (do I write any other kind?) to a fb friend in Finland in response to this pic: http://on.fb.me/zt2NZT
and some pix I posted for comparison: http://bit.ly/wyynQ3
and http://bit.ly/AbaPz7
. I thought you might like to see it, too.
___________________________
You've discovered the key to appreciating the Texas Panhandle and western Oklahoma: look at the sky, not at the ground. The ground is a sea of grass or wheat or maybe sorghum, but the sky is vast and beautiful. (So is the sea of grass, too, but it takes being there a while to appreciate it.) In the dry Panhandle air, you can often see big thunderstorms coming from many tens of miles (~100 km) away, too. They're huge, powerful, and quite impressive. There's often enough dust in the air to make spectacular "sky's on fire" sunrises and sunsets, as well.
Here in central Oklahoma (Norman, Oklahoma City) we get a bit more rainfall, and the air is much more humid. This makes the storms more vicious and tornado-prone. The humidity also often wraps the thunderstorms in other clouds, so often all you see here is a dark, cloudy sky turning greenish (ice crystals in the thunderheads, I think) and a tornado or at least big hail follows. In the Panhandle, the dryer air makes the storms less prone to generating tornadoes, but hail is still pretty frequent (bad news for wheat crops). Here's a tornado frequency map for reference: http://bit.ly/xYK1Bb
. Central Oklahoma is decidedly the bulls eye.
Those thunderstorms often have tops as high as 45, 000 feet or about 14 000 m, and really strong ones can top out at 60,000 feet (~18 000 m), so it's really good, from both a safety and artistic viewpoints, to be able to see them. Even high-flying airliners have to go around 'em, not over.
I was wondering about the difference in rainfall between Finland and the Texas Panhandle, thinking it might be the reason for all the trees there and practically none in the Panhandle. It turns out that they're not that different. See http://bit.ly/zHNKAp
for a map of U.S. average rainfall. The 23 inch per year average at my farm near the northeast corner of the Panhandle works out to about 580 mm per year. Surprisingly enough, that's not too different from the rainfall in southern Finland in the areas not right on the coast, as this map shows: http://bit.ly/xmgyv1
.
The difference must be the long, hot summers that are common in the bottom row of low-latitude U.S. states. (See the U.S. summer temperatures map at http://bit.ly/An5b5T
. For reference, 100 F = 38 C.) The summers really dry out the land, evaporating much of the moisture from the spring rains. The joke in Oklahoma is that we have four seasons: almost-summer, summer, still-summer, and bilzzard. :^) For comparison, see the table "Seasonal Temperature Averages" for Helsinki athttp://bit.ly/zpFf5f
.
Growing up in the Texas Panhandle (Amarillo is my hometown) certainly gives a person an appreciation of places like Finland that have an abundance of trees. I've filled my front and back yards here in Norman with about as many trees as will fit, because I really like 'em. They're a real pain in the neck in a bad ice storm, though. See http://bit.ly/yN6zGr
, http://bit.ly/wSYltm
, and http://bit.ly/wp3ITU
. Trees will grow well in Amarillo, too, if you keep them well-watered for their first few years so that they can develop a good root system, but they'll hardly grow at all without some early-life watering.
Oh BTW, when you come to the U.S. (put that on your bucket list http://bit.ly/wnExrp
), don't miss the very often-overlooked, almost-unknown Palo Duro Canyon just south of Amarillo. It's the second-largest canyon in the U.S. in land area, it's accessible by road in the part that's a state park, and it's really gorgeous. There's an excellent museum in the nearby city of Canyon, Texas, too, that's easily worth a half-day or even full-day visit, The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum on the West Texas A&M University campus. (See the excellent Palo Duro Canyon panoramic virtual tours at http://bit.ly/wyH3y2
and my museum album from several years ago at http://bit.ly/wP5Eph
.)
That's all the news that fits--and then some! :^)
___________________________
You've discovered the key to appreciating the Texas Panhandle and western Oklahoma: look at the sky, not at the ground. The ground is a sea of grass or wheat or maybe sorghum, but the sky is vast and beautiful. (So is the sea of grass, too, but it takes being there a while to appreciate it.) In the dry Panhandle air, you can often see big thunderstorms coming from many tens of miles (~100 km) away, too. They're huge, powerful, and quite impressive. There's often enough dust in the air to make spectacular "sky's on fire" sunrises and sunsets, as well.
Here in central Oklahoma (Norman, Oklahoma City) we get a bit more rainfall, and the air is much more humid. This makes the storms more vicious and tornado-prone. The humidity also often wraps the thunderstorms in other clouds, so often all you see here is a dark, cloudy sky turning greenish (ice crystals in the thunderheads, I think) and a tornado or at least big hail follows. In the Panhandle, the dryer air makes the storms less prone to generating tornadoes, but hail is still pretty frequent (bad news for wheat crops). Here's a tornado frequency map for reference: http://bit.ly/xYK1Bb
Those thunderstorms often have tops as high as 45, 000 feet or about 14 000 m, and really strong ones can top out at 60,000 feet (~18 000 m), so it's really good, from both a safety and artistic viewpoints, to be able to see them. Even high-flying airliners have to go around 'em, not over.
I was wondering about the difference in rainfall between Finland and the Texas Panhandle, thinking it might be the reason for all the trees there and practically none in the Panhandle. It turns out that they're not that different. See http://bit.ly/zHNKAp
The difference must be the long, hot summers that are common in the bottom row of low-latitude U.S. states. (See the U.S. summer temperatures map at http://bit.ly/An5b5T
Growing up in the Texas Panhandle (Amarillo is my hometown) certainly gives a person an appreciation of places like Finland that have an abundance of trees. I've filled my front and back yards here in Norman with about as many trees as will fit, because I really like 'em. They're a real pain in the neck in a bad ice storm, though. See http://bit.ly/yN6zGr
Oh BTW, when you come to the U.S. (put that on your bucket list http://bit.ly/wnExrp
That's all the news that fits--and then some! :^)
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