Articles Tagged "Rich Apuzzo"

Out in space the sun remains on a record pace at 51 days without sunspots, and no expectations of any change soon. We’ll be in the top 3 longest quiet periods by Wednesday evening (tied with 54 days from 1879) and by late next week we’ll head into the 2nd position as we surpass 63 days from 1901. The daily solar observations began in 1849, but we know from other observations between 1400 and 1830 that these periods of sunspot minimums were associated with a 400-year stretch known as the Little Ice Age. The only problem with observations from that time is that there were no telescopes and satellites with the observational power we have today. In other words, the long periods without sunspots are even more impressive now because we can pick out the smallest sunspot, ones that would have been missed 100 to 200 years ago. We won’t know if this is true for a long time, but at this point there is no reason to discount the idea that we’re heading into another Little Ice Age, or possible a major ice age. Time will tell…

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Just when you think temperatures are finally getting back up to normal levels we have a weekend like this past one, which featured near-record cold yet again. The high on Saturday was only 71 degrees, and the old record for the coldest high temperature was 68 degrees. On Sunday we only did one better with a high of 72 as clouds remained across the area along with a few sprinkles. The cold continued into this morning with lows in the low to mid 50s, just 3 to 5 degrees from the record low of 50 from 1942. Not surprisingly, we’re now running more than 110 degrees below normal for August and about 450 degrees below normal for the summer!

We’re seeing big changes today with sunshine across the area this morning and highs expected to get close to 80 this afternoon. The normal high and low are 84 and 63 today, so we’ll stay below normal one more day before getting back into the low to mid 80s tomorrow and Wednesday.