A large storm system made its way across the central East Coast today. I heard reports of almost 70 mph gusts in Pennsylvania. A severe thunderstorm watch was issued for central Virginia, but the storm hasn’t (yet?) materialized. The upside was the awesome sunset from the variable cloud cover. I snapped a few shots throughout while writing my lecture:
Now that things seem to have safely warmed up, I can post a plot I made of snow depth vs time for the three big snowstorms we had here in Charlottesville. Two of the measurement sets (Dec and Jan) were taken by me while the third (Feb) was taken by Anya Bilous. The data are shown as points (with estimates of the errors) and simple linear fits were made for each storm.
From looking at the graph, it is apparent that the storms varied in both length and snowfall intensity. Not really too surprising, but interesting to see. For those of you interested in the numbers, the average snowfall rates are given below. The links for each date go to a pdf with an individual plot for that particular storm (with “absolute” time) and a short comparison to the previous storm(s).
18-19 December 2009: 0.8 in. per hour
30 January 2010: 0.6 in. per hour
06-07 February 2010: 0.4 in per hour
Certainly not news to people here, but the weather has improved drastically over the past few days. With temperatures pushing 20C (that’s almost 70F for those of you still living in fear of base-10 measurement systems), staying inside is torture. So, in need of a break from writing a paper, I ventured outside to see how chalky white my legs have actually gotten and also to shoot some photographs.
Don’t worry, there aren’t actually any pictures of my legs.. 
I just got back inside from watching the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) overhead as it orbited the Earth. It passed over Charlottesville and was visible from the reflection of the Sun’s light off the satellite. I was able to watch HST as it moved across the Southern sky.
As a nice coincidence for the evening it was followed a few minutes later by an Iridium Flare. Sadly, incoming clouds made it difficult to see, although I think I caught it as it was fading…
I found out about of these events via tweets from the @overcville account. The service is provided by orbiting-frog.com which has twitter accounts for a variety of locations. If you’re on twitter, should should check it out. And if there isn’t one for your location, you can request one. It is handy for notifying you of upcoming
For a more complete list, heavens-above.com will show you passes of more objects (satellites, comets, spacecraft, etc.) based on your location with charts showing their location in the sky. The only downside is that you have to remember to check it 
This morning has been a beautiful clear day so far. It started out cold, but has warmed up considerably of the past few hours. After a quick breakfast I put on my snowshoes and walked around the neighborhood to check on road conditions. Last night someone came through and scraped all the snow off the road, leaving a 1/2″ layer of slush. As to be expected, that froze last night, leaving a sheet of ice covering the only open lane out of the subdivision.
Further on, the main road is actually in decent shape.. one lane of packed snow which should be usable if the appropriate amount of caution is taken.
The sunshine and snow made for some nice photographic opportunities. I’ll link a few of my favorites here, but you can follow the link at the bottom to see all my storm related pictures.
For the rest of the pictures see: Storm in Charlottesville on flickr.
Powered by WordPress