30 November, 2010

Today's Top Weather Stories
On Weather & Climate Through the Eyes of Mark Vogan

WEATHER WARNING!
HEAVY SNOW TO PROGRESS IN OFF THE NORTH SEA THROUGH TONIGHT AND SPREADING FROM DUNDEE, PERTH DOWN INTO EDINBURGH AND ACROSS THROUGH THE M8 CORRIDOR AND INTO THE GLASGOW AREA, A FURTHER 1-3 INCHES IS POSSIBLE AND ICING WITH BECOME MORE OF AN ISSUE AS TEMPS BECOME COLDER TONIGHT.

Here was the scene as I travelled eastbounded along the M8 in Glasgow around 6.30am just as yet another long, tiring, hazerdous and stressful rush hour was commencing. BBC Radio Scotland was playing in the background, just listen to the trouble this morning's snow created across the nations transport network. Also Judith Ralston spoke about the day's weather ahead!

GREAT BRITAIN LIKELY ENDURING ONE OF WORST NOVEMBER ARCTIC OUTBREAKS IN LIVING MEMORY
Where it's not snowing and causing the repeated shutdown of the A9 and M90, it's bloody cold... for November!
-16C may turn out mild compared with what may in fact challenge a UK record for cold in coming nights when all the skies clear out and Scotland turns into one giant freezer!

Abandoned: A car almost blends into the background at Glenagles in Perthshire

Image Courtesy of The Daily Mail

IMPRESSIVE FACT
Inverness set a record for the month of November this morning when the low plummeted to -14C (7 degrees)

Another morning, another heavy band of snow pushes across the country and another treacherous, long and frustrating rush hour! This video I captured on the M74 in North Lanarkshire near Bothwell services at 6.40am this morning.

Cancelled: Commuters arriving at East Croydon Station had to be monitored by police officers to prevent dangerous overcrowding (Image from Daily Mail)

Gridlock: Severe delays were experienced by motorists near Junction 10 of the M25 in Surrey (Image from Daily Mail)

Sorry, no trains tonight: Commuters left with travel nightmare as lines shut down in the snow . . . and the worst is still to come

The Daily Mail

Snow in London as U.K. Cold Wave Bites
AccuWeather News

Travel disruption as snow spreads across UK
BBC

Colder than Reykjavik: UK set for more snow as temperatures drop to -1C
The Guardian

Today's Weather across America
From AccuWeather

Snow, Rain, Wind from Latest Northwest Storm
AccuWeather

A Snowier Scenario for Chicago, Much of Midwest
AccuWeather

Flooding Threat, Slower Travel in East through Wednesday
AccuWeather

Weather Talk
By Mark Vogan

Poor driving conditions on the M8 in Glasgow this morning!

Deep snow lying in my back garden this afternoon!

THIS SECTION EXPLAINS WHY IT'S SO COLD ACROSS SCOTLAND!

As Arctic High moves in, temperatures will drop everywhere!
-10C for towns and cities of the Central Belt as well as Dumfries and Inverness, -25C is possible over the Highlands Wednesday and/or Thursday night!


With Altnaharra in the northwest Highlands already down to -11.5C (11 degrees), Aviemore at -7.8C (18 degrees) and even here at my house -3C (26 degrees) as of 4pm this evening, skies are clear and these chilly numbers continue to fall thanks to clear skies. Impressively, however, these numbers are tumbling away despite a wind blowing briskly out of the northeast. Unfortunately due to the fact these winds are blowing across the North Sea, their collecting moisture and indeed this is why we're seeing regular snow showers moving through the Central Belt and with some of those showers heavy and persistent, we're seeing further accummulations.

HIGH PRESSURE TRANSPORTS IN, EVEN COLDER AIR, RAISES OUR CHANCES OF -20s FOR THE HIGHLANDS -10s FOR THE LOWLANDS

Those winds however are expected to lighten up as the upper-levels of the atmosphere, those steering winds which are driving those northeasterlies and firing the snowshowers in persistently will begin to alter as higher pressure starts to move in from Scandinavia.

What that means is basically, rather than frigid winds blowing literally from the frozen wastes of interior Scandinavia and chilling us here in the UK, the actual air mass itself will move towards us, therefore even colder days and nights will be in the offing for everyone..

Though winds will be lighter and therefore there will be less of a truely brutal windchill like we're seeing now everywhere and much worse over the Highland communities due to the fact that highs are not warming above -4 to -6C, the air will become colder despite those winds relaxing. When colder air aloft crosses over an area of widespread snowcover and allows skies to clear the snow acts like a giant reflector of heat. Any heat brought in from the sun is instantly reflected back to space by the snowcover, therefore days are much colder, especially where communities sit in shektered Highland Glens where the sun almost never reaches anyway.

Little, if any wind and air settles more and therefore it doesn't mix, this process of calm air, clear skies allows heat to escape for effectively and thus we see very cold nights. The colder the day is, often when you've got the 3 key ingredients for "maximum radiational cooling", the easier it is for the temperature to drop down to very low levels at night. 

Another important aspect to recieving extreme cold is that the actual air mass in place within our atmosphere must be very cold, certainly of Arctic origin. The one we have currently over us is Arctic air that's in fact being driven down from Scandinavia. We're essentually on it's tail end at present, however come Thursday, this air mass that is as of now over Norway, should be over us and therefore highs even in the Central Belt from Glasgow to Edinburgh may actually see "highs" only reach -3 to -6C with nighttime lows really plunging to extreme levels of -10 to -15C. The Highland communities that are both locked deep within interior Scotland and are high in elevation will see "highs" perhaps struggle to reach -8 to -10C and with that extremely cold temperature to begin with, nights may fall with ease to -20C and therefore I am predicting a low colder than what the BBC and Met Office are predicting with a -25C somewhere.

Tomorrow I shall be discussing what lies ahead for us and my ideas which lead to believe a harsh period winter winter was to hit by late November and how it was going to be as severe as it has turned out to be... stay tuned! 

What's Reaching Today's Blogs?

Epic Start to Ski Season-The Incredible Facts
Ken Clark, AccuWeather

Yazoo City Hit Again by Another Tornado
Jesse Ferrell, AccuWeather

The Extremes of the Day

Today's US Extremes
Courtesy of AccuWeather

High: 86 degrees at Naples, FL
Low: -5 degrees at Burns, OR

Today's UK Extremes
Courtesy of the Met Office

High: 44 degrees (6.5C) at Isles of Scilly
Cold High: 25 degrees (-3.9C) at Aviemore (Highland)
Low: 3 degrees (-16.1C) at Altnaharra (Sutherland)

Today's Extremes here at my house

High: 30 degrees
Low: 26 degrees

TODAY'S CONDITIONS
Snowcover: 5 inches
A SNOWY MORNING WHICH TURNED MORE SHOWERY THROUGHOUT THE DAY, COLD FEELING!

Thanks for reading.
-Mark

A WAVE OF SCIENCE—BUT WHERE'S ADA?

The seventh and latest installment in John Boswell's Symphony of Science. Great, as usual. Though surely he will manage to come up few more women thinkers next time? Twenty-first century, and all that.

(Ada Lovelace, first ever computer programmer.)

The entrenched refusal to acknowledge the many women, past and present, at the forefront of science led in 2009 to the declaration of March 24th as Ada Lovelace Day—an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. Lovelace is today recognized as the world's first computer programmer. From Finding Ada:

Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.

From Rebecca Thomson at New Scientist's Culture Lab:

Today it's fairly well accepted that women are under-represented in both science and technology fields: for example just one in five of the UK's technology workforce are female.

But the negative nature of the debate, and the complaints raised within it, mean the considerable achievements of women who do work in the industry can slip under the radar. A recent piece by gadget magazine T3 neatly highlighted important contributions to the field made by women largely forgotten.

It included Mary Lou Jepsen, whose work on holographic video systems at the MIT Media Lab and in optics resulted in important developments in the fields.

One of her biggest achievements was her part in the One Laptop Per Child project, which delivered laptops to 1.5 million of the world's poorest children. She helped get the project off the ground by inventing display technology that is readable in sunlight, and working on the power system that made the laptops energy efficient.

Then there's this sadly enlightening piece in last week's The Observer: The Royal Society's Lost Women Scientists.

So how about a Wave of Ada segment to your next movement of the symphony, John Boswell?

29 November, 2010

Today's Top Weather Stories
On Weather & Climate Through the Eyes of Mark Vogan

Great Britain CRIPPLED by record-breaking Arctic blast
Worst of the cold to hit late this week as Arctic high pressure settles in, I expect Glasgow and Edinburgh to push -10C whilst Aviemore, Braemar or Altnaharra may push -25C!!

By Mark Vogan

Further heavy bands of snow which was dramatically accompanied by gusty, stringing winds and even thunder and lightening brought several additional inches of snow to a swath of the country stretching from north of Aberdeen all the way down through the urban core "the Scottish Central Belt" which shit sections of the M8 at Harthill as well as at Livingston. All schools in Dundee, Edinburgh, Mid and West Lothian were shut, major road networks including the A9, A1, M90, A90 were severely effected with closures in major sections of these "major" routes which all but keep the country connected.

Edinburgh airport was closed for much of today whilst much of the rail network was badely effected. A trucker whom attempted to drive from Liverpool to Aberdeen said on the radio, his journey took 20 hours and he sat in his cab on a shut down A9, a section which stranded hundreds of drivers between Dunblane and Perth. The A90 on the southbound approach into Dundee was also closed and the A1 was said to have horrendous driving conditions.

This is all just another day in what has been a dramatic return to real winter. It just seems that we're enduring a near repeat of what we saw over a longer spell in the winter of 09-10.

The problem now is that major cold is ready to hit with potential riser for lows to really fall as the deep and widespread snowcover will act that a GIANT REFLECTANT to the sun by day and a freezer by night as light winds, clear skies and a stable "artic high" which settles overhead should send the whole of Scotland and almost all of central and northern England shivering!

Unfortunately, the heavy snow returned by evening and tonight, an additional 3 inches was added to the adready 5 to 6 inches already lying here in my garden.. It's a real wintry scene out there!

Here was the scene I captured along the M8 this morning in Glasgow before the manic rushhour began!

Scotland’s a whiteout ... and it could cost millions
The Herald

And now the capital feels the bite: Overnight snowfall to engulf London as chaos continues for rest of UK

The Daily Mail

Snow closes roads and schools from Cornwall to Scotland
The Daily Telegraph

Heavy snow brings widespread disruption to Scotland
The Scotsman

Graphic Courtesy of the Daily Mail

Today's Weather across America
From AccuWeather

Multi-State Flash Flood Threat in the East
By Kristina Pydynowski, Senior Meteorologist

Snow to Follow Rain in Part of Northeast
By Alex Sosnowski, Expert Senior Meteorologist


Coming Mid-December Cold Wave
By Alex Sosnowski, Expert Senior Meteorologist


East Coast December Snowstorm Situation
By Alex Sosnowski, Expert Senior Meteorologist

Weather Talk
By Mark Vogan

Our area continues to get dumped on! Last night saw a fresh 2" after the night before's 2" and now tonight it's a further 3-4" and the snow is falling right now.... The snow's as deep as I've ever seen it!

Sure, I've seen the snow deeper than what's out there right now, however this appears to beat the deepest depths of the epic winter of last year. I moved here to this house in Lennoxtown in May 2009 so it's basically new to me and therefore explains why it's the most snow I've seen "here". We're currently in a very snowy cycle as the very cold air flows over the North Sea and collects all the moisture in order to dump on Scotland and northern England.

I feel as though all I've done since Sunday is shovel and yes, there's a channel out the back in which the walls are growing! It's even snowing now after an evening which saw yet another band of heavy snow and a rapid accummulation of about 3" in just over an hour...

I believe we may see snow lie over much of the country until at least the 2nd if not third week of Christmas and may even become as long as what we saw back last year where it was about 3 weeks over the Central Lowlands, surrounding hills of course saw snow from Dec 18 through at least mid-March and even May has remnants of the brutal winter around here.

Yes, a solid base of at least 5" and a solid freeze coming up once all this snowy flow passes and Arctic high pressure settles in, the snow will firmly establish itself and so too will the pattern....

What's Reaching Today's Blogs?

One More 'Cutter,' Then Winter Really Sets In
Joe Lundburg, AccuWeather

Hurricane Season 2010 Comes to a Close
Jesse Ferrell, AccuWeather

The Extremes of the Day

Today's US Extremes
Courtesy of AccuWeather

High: 93 degrees at McAllen, TX
Low: -17 degrees at Bridgeport, CA

Today's UK Extremes
Courtesy of the Met Office

High: 44 degrees (6.5C) at Isles of Scilly
Cold High: 25 degrees (-4.9C) at Aviemore (Highland)
Low: 3 degrees (-16.1C) at Altnaharra (Sutherland)

Today's Extremes here at my house

High: 32 degrees
Low: 29 degrees

TODAY'S CONDITIONS
Snowcover: 5.5 inches
A cold day which followed a heavy overnight snowfall which created problems over much of Scotland and northern England. This evening brought yet another heavy band of snow in from the east bringing a further 3 inches.

Thanks for reading.
-Mark

SUNDAY POETRY: "THE LOBSTER"

(Photo by Leslie Ricker, at the Lobster Institute.)

THE LOBSTER

by Carl Rakosi

Eastern Sea, 100 fathoms,   

green sand, pebbles,   

broken shells.

Off Suno Saki, 60 fathoms,   

gray sand, pebbles,   

bubbles rising.

Plasma-bearer   

and slow-

motion benthos!

The fishery vessel Ion

drops anchor here

                           collecting   

plankton smears and fauna.

Plasma-bearer, visible

sea purge,

                sponge and kelpleaf.   

Halicystus the Sea Bottle

resembles emeralds   

and is the largest   

cell in the world.

Young sea horse   

Hippocampus twenty   

minutes old,

nobody has ever   

seen this marine   

freak blink.

It radiates on   

terminal vertebra   

a comb of twenty

upright spines   

and curls   

its rocky tail.

Saltflush lobster   

bull encrusted swims

backwards from the rock.

(Slipper Lobster larva. Photo by Peter Parks. From the Australian Museum.)

28 November, 2010

Today's Top Weather Stories
On Weather & Climate Through the Eyes of Mark Vogan

BREAKING WEATHER NEWS
GREAT BRITAIN UNDER WINTER'S SIEGE AS SNOW AND COLD ALL BUT CRIPPLES MOST AREAS, TEMPS DROP TO -18C AND 1-2 FEET OF SNOW FALLS!!!

live news feed...

"I've cleared my garden path three times already and the snow continues falling" (Mark Vogan)

BREAKING NEWS: HEAVY SNOW ONCE AGAIN LIKELY OVER CENTRAL SCOTLAND EARLY TOMORROW MORNING!

Snow: A shepherd looking for his flock wades through deep snow on Commondale Moor in North Yorkshire as freezing temperatures grip Britain (Image courtesy of The Daily Mail)

Several UK locations have reported their coldest November temps on record.

WALES: Llysdinam, Powys reported -18C (0F)
SCOTLAND: Loch Glascarnoch, Highlands reported -15.3C (4F)
ENGLAND: Shrewsbury, Shropshire reported -12.5C (10F)
NORTHERN IRELAND: Lough Fea, Co Tyrone reported -9.5 (15F)

Info courtesy of the BBC

latest news articles

NEW: Snow shuts Edinburgh airport as big freeze grips Britain

The Daily Telegraph
Coldest November night on record in parts of UK
BBC Weather

Sunday's SPL matches postponed due to weather
STV Weather

Heavy snow causes major road closures across Scotland as winter arrives
The Daily Record

Doing the 3rd shovel of today!

This was the view late at 12.15pm today looking out my bedroom window!

 Today's Weather across America
From AccuWeather

Snow, Brutal Cold for Salt Lake City, Flagstaff, Denver
By Meghan Evans, Meteorologist

High Winds in Plains to Disrupt Travel, Elevate Fire Threat

By Meghan Evans, Meteorologist


Early Week Windblown Snow to Hit from Omaha to Duluth
By Meghan Evans, Meteorologist


Snow Measured in Feet For Some to the Lee of the Great Lakes
By Meghan Evans, Meteorologist

Weather Talk
By Mark Vogan

BREAKING NEWS: HEAVY SNOW ONCE AGAIN LIKELY OVER CENTRAL SCOTLAND EARLY TOMORROW MORNING!

TODAY'S SNOWSTORM TOTALS 4-5 INCHES HERE WHILST OTHER AREAS SEE UPWARDS OF A FOOT! NOT ONLY IS IT VERY SNOWY BUT IT'S BEEN RECORD COLD ALSO...
LAST YEAR'S -22C LOW FOR BRITAIN'S COLDEST MAY BE BEATENB THIS WEEK AS DEEPER COLD MOVES IN ON THE BACKSIDE OF THE SNOWSTORM.

After temperatures dropping off to 20 degrees last night under clear skies and helped by the previous night's 3 inch snows, today has seen snow falling pretty much all day and accummulated to around 5 inches here at my house in Lennoxtown. However that is a far cry to other areas of Scotland and many portions of northern England where very heavy, windblown snow has created havoc.

This is turning out to be quite the cold wave now and after lows fell to impressive record levels late last night and early this morning, colder air still appears to be on the way. The push of air crossing the North Sea which has been the "snow maker" for pretty much the whole of Scotland and much of northern and central England and Wales, that flow is going to transport even colder air over all of Britain this week.

IF IT WAS THAT COLD LAST NIGHT, HOW DARN COILD IS IT GOING TO GET THIS WEEK?

What amazes me is that those numbers last night which brought a temperature of -18C/0.4F to Llysdinam, Powys (new all-time cold low for Wales), a -9C/15F at Lough Fea, Co Tyrone (may be a new national cold record for Northern Ireland) and a -15C/4F at Loch Glascarnoch in the Scottish Highlands (record November for for that site), this may show that with even colder air and further coverage of snow across the country that even colder temperatures may be on the cards through this week. As I've kept saying, the coldest air still remains over Scandinavia but is starting to push out over the North Sea towards us as this snowstorm is now departs and the air rides in on the backside of the snowstorm. An even stronger push of arctic air may bring highs of -2C/28F or lower to much of the UK away from the coast and lows to -10C/14F over a very broad area with some spots seeing -15C or lower. It's very plausible to now look at the potential that the -22C/-8F reading that was last winter's coldest in all of the UK may even be beaten this week as the air now about to push over us will be less moderated and only will be moderated in a minimal fashion as all cold air masses from the Arctic do be due to a more southerly latitude, by higher sunlight and the mild waters surrounding Britain. Now that we've seen the crucial "widespread snowcover" that was needed in order to put the final and key ingredient in for "maximum radiational cooling" we are likely to see firstly "icy east winds" then more relaxing of the air and cold that will challenege the magnitude of the numbers seen during last year's harsh and long winter here.

FOR DETAILS ON HOW MUCH SNOW FELL AND WHERE CLICK ON THE MEDIA LINKS I'VE PUT UP ABOVE!

What's Reaching Today's Blogs?


The Extremes of the Day

Today's US Extremes
Courtesy of AccuWeather

High: 86 degrees at Naples, FL
Low: -5 degrees at Burns, OR

Today's UK Extremes
Courtesy of the Met Office

High: 40 degrees (4.6C) at Boulmer (Northumberland)
Cold High: 24 degrees (-4.5C) at Sennybridge (Powys)
Low: 4 degrees (-15.6C) at Sennybridge (Powys)

Today's Extremes here at my house

High: 34 degrees
Low: 20 degrees

TODAY'S CONDITIONS
SNOWCOVER: 5"
AFTER THE COLDEST START TO THE SEASON, A PERSISTENT BAND OF SNOW MOVED IN FROM THE EAST DURING THE OVERNIGHT AND PERSISTENT WITH PERIODS OF HEAVY SNOWFALL.. THAT SNOW HAS ACCUMMULATED TO AROUND 5", TONIGHT WILL BE COLD THE LOWS IN THE 20S.

TOMORROW'S FORECAST:  HIGH: 32 LOW 28

Thanks for reading.
-Mark

27 November, 2010

Today's Top Weather Stories
On Weather & Climate Through the Eyes of Mark Vogan


Mark Vogan reports from the Campsie Fells

Britain to feel the big chill for weeks
The Daily Telegraph

Let it snow: Scotland is ready for the worst, claims minister

The Herald

Lightning Kills Seven and Injures 67 at a South Africa Nursery School
AccuWeather News

Today's Weather across America
From AccuWeather

Snow, Cold, Wind Creates Dangers for Holiday Travelers in the West
By Meghan Evans, Meteorologist


High Winds in Plains to Disrupt Travel, Elevate Fire Threat
By Meghan Evans, Meteorologist


Early Week Windblown Snow to Hit from Omaha to Duluth
By Meghan Evans, Meteorologist

Weather Talk
By Mark Vogan

Coming Soon!
What's Reaching Today's Blogs?

309,959,570 Lightning Strikes in Six Months
Jesse Ferrell, AccuWeather

Today's Extremes here at my house

High: 30 degrees
Low: 23 degrees

Thanks for reading.
-Mark

ENDLESS SUMMER FOR SEABIRDS

(Streaked shearwater. Photo by marj k Marj Kibby, at Flickr.) 

Shearwaters are long-winged, strong-flying seabirds of the open ocean who come ashore only to breed. The rest of their lives—including the time between fledging and sexual maturity, up to 12 years in some species, maybe more—are spent entirely at sea. They're long-lived birds, with reports of one 55-year-old Manx shearwater still breeding in Ireland as of 2003.

Their time aloft and afloat is not without pattern. The more we learn, the more we see how these oceanic travellers follow vast systems of winds and waves across hemispheres and even oceans.

First up, there's an interesting paper out in the current issue of The Auk about a presumed foraging association between streaked shearwaters (Calonectris leucomelas) and skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis).

Foraging associations—as the term implies—are the result of a follower species (here, the shearwater) commonly following a nuclear species (here, the tuna) to capture prey flushed in the course of the nuclear's feeding or travels. The deep blue home is full of foraging associations... including the way savvy human fishers follow seabirds to find fish.

(Skipjack tuna. Photo JFontes—ImagDOP, from here.)

(Streaked shearwater at breeding colony on Mikura Island, Japan. Photo by Kanachoro, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

A little background: Streaked shearwaters breed on the islands and coastlines of Japan, China, and Korea, and make impressive winter migrations (≤5,400 kilometers /3,300miles) to the waters off Vietnam, New Guinea, the Philippines, and Australia.

(Movement of a streaked shearwater from Japan to the Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia, between 16 October 2004 and 13 January 2005. Figure from Ornithological Science.)

In the figure above you can see the flight of one shearwater between its breeding grounds in the Northern Hemisphere during the boreal summer and its "wintering" grounds in the Southern Hemisphere during the austral summer. Those results are reported in a 2008 paper in Ornithological Science by some of the same members of the shearwater-skipjack team during an earlier phase of study.

(From Ornithological Science.)

In their latest investigations, the researchers attached small global location sensors to 48 breeding birds in 2006, 38 of whom returned the following year with their geolocators intact. Their findings, from the abstract:

Most Streaked Shearwaters wintered off northern New Guinea, an area of low primary productivity but high Skipjack Tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis) abundance. Streaked Shearwaters flew for longer periods and landed on the water more frequently around dawn and dusk during the wintering period. This pattern of activity is similar to that of subsurface predators such as tuna, and to that of tropical seabirds that are known to feed with subsurface predators. We suggest that Streaked Shearwaters probably forage in association with subsurface predators in the tropical oceans during the wintering period. Foraging in association with subsurface predators and morphological adaptations for gliding may allow Streaked Shearwaters to forage efficiently in both temperate and tropical environments.

(You might have to divert here to watch the video.)

This Blue Planet video shows the dynamics of shearwaters (not sure which species) working schools of mackerel herded up to the surface, initially by dolphins, then by skipjacks... I love the way they've mixed shearwater calls into the underwater video—dramatic, but inaccurate, at least to the extent heard here.

(Sooty shearwaters. Photo by marlin harms, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

In an incredible piece of scientific detective work a few years back, a different team of researchers found that another species, sooty shearwaters (Puffinus griseus), embarked on remarkable 64,000-kilometer/40,000-mile annual migrations through the entire basin of the Pacific Ocean from Antarctica to the Bering Sea—the longest migration of any animal tracked to that point.

(From PNAS.)

Their map shows the geolocation tracks of 19 of their tagged sooty shearwaters at New Zealand breeding colonies (light blue); their migration pathways north (yellow); and their wintering grounds and southward transits (orange). Figures b–d represent the figure-eight movement patterns of individual shearwaters travelling to one of three "winter" destinations in the North Pacific.

The authors suggest the figure-eight  pattern is facilitated by prevailing wind patterns and by the Coriolis effect—which influence the long-range trajectories of the birds as they rocket between hemispheres at rates of up to 910 kilometers/565 miles a day, and as they chase the waves of summer from one hemisphere to the other.

(Credit: NASA/Seasat.)

You can correlate something of the travels of the sooty shearwaters to this map of prevailing winds over the Pacific.

The 2006 sooty shearwater paper appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. From the abstract:

Electronic tracking tags have revolutionized our understanding of broad-scale movements and habitat use of highly mobile marine animals, but a large gap in our knowledge still remains for a wide range of small species. Here, we report the extraordinary transequatorial postbreeding migrations of a small seabird, the sooty shearwater, obtained with miniature archival tags that log data for estimating position, dive depth, and ambient temperature. Tracks (262 ± 23 days) reveal that shearwaters fly across the entire Pacific Ocean in a figure-eight pattern while traveling 64,037 ± 9,779 km roundtrip, the longest animal migration ever recorded electronically. Each shearwater made a prolonged stopover in one of three discrete regions off Japan, Alaska, or California before returning to New Zealand through a relatively narrow corridor in the central Pacific Ocean. Transit rates as high as 910 ± 186 km·day⁻¹ were recorded, and shearwaters accessed prey resources in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere’s most productive waters from the surface to 68.2 m depth.

But now the flying record of the sooty shearwaters been topped by a diminutive seabird, the Arctic tern, who not only crosses hemispheres but ocean basins as well.

(From PNAS.)

These are the geolocation tracks of 11 Arctic terns tracked from breeding colonies in Greenland and Iceland. The green lines are their autumn postbreeding migration (August–November). The red their "winter" range (December–March). The yellow their spring return migration (April–May). Two southbound migration routes are adopted in the South Atlantic, either (A) West African coast or (B) Brazilian coast. Dotted lines link locations during the equinoxes.

The research is reported in a February 2010 paper in PNAS, revealing migrations for Arctic terns of more than 80,000 kilometers/48,000 miles a year.

(Arctic tern. Photo by Malene Thyssen, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

Such globe-trotting transits keep these butterflies-of-the-sea hopped up on the endless summers of the high-latitudes. They barely know night.


The papers:

• Takashi Yamamoto, et al. At-Sea Distribution and Behavior of Streaked Shearwaters (Calonectris leucomelas) During the Nonbreeding Period. The Auk. 2010. 127 (4) 871–881. DOI: 10.1525/auk.2010.1002. 
• ♥ Akinori Takahashi. Post-breeding movement and activities of two Streaked Shearwaters in the north-western Pacific. Ornithological Science. 2008. 7 (1) 29-35. DOI: 10.2326/osj.7.29. ♥
• ♥ Scott A. Shaffer, et al. Migratory shearwaters integrate oceanic resources across the Pacific Ocean in an endless summer. PNAS. 2006. 103 ( 34) 12799-1280. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0603715103. ♥
• ♥ Carsten Egevang, et al. Tracking of Arctic terns Sterna paradisaea reveals longest animal migration. PNAS. 2010. 107 (5) 2078-2081. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0909493107. ♥

I ♥ open-access papers.

26 November, 2010

Today's Top Weather Stories
On Weather & Climate Through the Eyes of Mark Vogan

LIVE NEWS FEED:
-As of 9pm: Woodford (Greater Manchester) is down to -5.9C and Trawsgoed, Wales is now at a cold -7.2C....
-As of 8pm Heathrow is down at 0C, Woodford (Greater Manchester) -4.7C and Trawsgoed, Wales -4.6C

 SNOW TO PROGRESS ACROSS SCOTTISH CENTRAL BELT TONIGHT, THEN COMES THE COLD!!
A warning to travellers... Edinburgh to Glasgow corridor likely to see snow tonight, some of which may be heavy and likely to accummulate to a few inches..

MAJOR COLD LOOMING AS EARLY AS TOMORROW NIGHT AS WELL AS NEXT WEEK, SEE WEATHER TALK BELOW FOR MORE!

latest news

Heavy snow set to hit Edinburgh and east

STV Scotland

Snow hits roads and schools in parts of the UK
BBC Weather

Weekend whiteout: Now the snow heads south - with travel chaos expected across Britain and heavy falls that could reach the capital

The Daily Mail

Mark Vogan reports on the latest conditions from near Crawfordjohn, South Lanarkshire, deep within the heart of the Scottish Southern Uplands (APPOLOGIES FOR WIND INTERFEARENCE)

Today's Weather across America
From AccuWeather

Early Week Windblown Snow to Hit from Omaha to Duluth
AccuWeather

Talk of a Northeast Snowstorm Next Weekend
AccuWeather

The Nature of Lake-Effect Snow and Flurries
AccuWeather

More Rounds of Travel-Snarling Snow, Ice, Cold for West
AccuWeather

Weather Talk
By Mark Vogan

A cold start dawned Friday but tonight snow will be the big story and by tomorrow, even colder air will settle in as Glasgow is now forecasted to hit only -2C tomorrow and may plummet to -9C tomorrow night!

For some temps dipped to around -2C (28 degrees), for others -3 to -5C (27 to 22 degrees) and a selection of locales which saw lightest winds, clearest skies and a locale favourable for "pooling of cool air into valley bottoms", well, the thermometer fell below -7C. Carterhouse in the Scottish borders saw the lowest reading this morning according to the BBC with -7.8C. I myself whom delivered to Douglas (S. Lanarkshire), Moffat (Dumfries & Galloway), Langholm (Dumfries & Galloway) my truck temp fell to -6C at Langholm, a mere 6 or so miles north of the English border and only 12 miles from a well known frigid spot in the Scottish Southern Uplands, Eskdalemuir which recorded lows to -14C last winter. Even Benson, a well known cold spot ijn the heart of interior southern England dropped to -7.6C and even a normally milder recording station that is Kew Gardens in central London fell to a cold -3.8C.

Whilst I travelled from Stonehouse near Lesmahagow down past Happendon services to Douglas and on southwards, the few clouds which didn't hold in much insulation from the surface cooling as my truck temp read -5C at Douglas, produced off and on little flurries. This a far cry from the mess a region stretching from Inverness down to Aviemore, across to Braemar and Aberdeen and down to Angus as well as the eastern Borders of Scotland were enduring with blizzard-like conditions and nasty icing problems. Yorkshire, Durham and other Engligh counties also found themselves battling cold winds and heavy snow.

Unfortunately folks who think they've been lucky and have escaped are right in two ways, yes, you have been lucky and have escaped, the problem however is, it looks likely that your luck is set to run out. Areas over central, western and southwestern Scotland and many places west of the Pennines of England including the Midlands are set to set to see snow move in tonight as well as another period of snow tomorrow night into early Sunday morning, this should bring much of the UK under a blanket of snow by Monday.

Another issue is that with snow by then covering a large swath of the UK and Arctic air in place overhead, this will result in low temperatures by day as well as night and some locales may see some remarkable cold for late November.

Amazingly, Glasgow is expected to drop to a frigid low of -9C tomorrow night, according to the BBC and by mid next week high's are expected to be as bitter as -9C and lows to -13C up at Aviemore.. are the models showing merit as the BBC and Met Office are starting to drop numbers in a huge way next week. Anticipation of snow on the ground and that branch of Arctic air "still" over Scandinavia and the North Sea moving more over us by early week may be showing signs of truth! Stay warm and stay safe, folks!

The Extremes of the Day

Today's US Extremes
Courtesy of AccuWeather

High: 85 degrees at Marianna, FL
Low: -12 degrees at Grand Forks, ND

Today's UK Extremes
Courtesy of the Met Office

High: 46 degrees (7.8C) at Isles of Scilly
Cold High: 31 degrees (-0.6C) at Carterhouse (Scottish Borders)
Low: 16 degrees (-9.1C) at Redesdale Camp (Northumberland)

Today's Extremes here at my house

High: 38 degrees
Low: 27 degrees

Thanks for reading.
-Mark