Weather Apps and Chickadees

I've been interested in weather since the days of Don Kent's broadcasts on WBZ. Just a glance at this picture shows you that Mr. Kent was giving you more meteorological information than most weather people today. Mom and Dad went out and bought a barometer, and I learned all the symbols for warm and cold fronts and many other bits and pieces of weather forecasting.

 

Today every smart phone or IPad has access to weather apps. Many of these are very simple giving you just the temperature and an icon indicating sunny, cloudy, or rainy weather. However, the trend is towards more complexity. Even the simplest weather apps some to have extra features hidden inside them. The most common feature is some form of doppler radar. For the totally obsessed you can get access to the weather projection programs used by the TV weather people as well as up-to-the minute feeds from super hires next generation doppler radars, weather buoys at sea, and specialized views of hurricane alley.

Anyone who watches TV weather has seen the familiar doppler read-out. Green means light rain and red means downpours. It isn't that simple folks! Getting ready to rate the weather apps led me to explore just what the heck doppler radar actually is. It's something I'm going to be blogging about for the next several days.

Here are two tidbits to get you started. During WWII radar was used to spot incoming German planes. Radar operators quickly learned that a lot of the interference on their radar came from weather. After the war researchers began to develop radar for weather forecasting, and a rudimentary radar weather net was phased in starting in 1957. In 1961 a major hurricane was about to strike the Texas coast and a young reporter was sent to stand on the shore and get blown around. He stopped on the way to check with the National Weather Service and discovered that their radar showed the typical doughnut shape hurricane signature. The intrepid reporter got a camera on the radar and inaugurated the use of weather radar on television. The reporter: Dan Rather.

The doppler radar used today is very different from the one Rather showed that day in 1961. The regional radar for southern New England is located just a few miles down Bay Road in the Taunton Industrial Park. Here it is:

The radar looks like a giant golf ball on a tee. It stands about 100 feet high and  is across the boulevard from the regional headquarters of the National Weather Service. Believe it or not, this radar is only on for about 7 seconds per hour. The rest of the time it is listening.


The other thing that has caught my interest recently is mixed flocking in birds. Maggie and I were walking through the Ames Estate the other days and found ourselves surrounded by a flock of small birds that included tufted titmice, chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, some warblers, and a brown creeper. Nothing unusual on the surface; you actually see these mixed flocks quite often during the winter. But how do they form? It's not as if these birds are flying around with cell phones. And what  is the big advantage for the participants? Turns out that there has been a lot of research on this. Flocks look like cooperative enterprises, and cooperation in nature is a big deal for biologists. Remember that Darwin's idea of survival of the fittest postulates animals working against all others to pass on their genes. Examples of cooperation, especially cooperation between different species, seems to oppose that idea. There are many surprises about these common birds which I also intend to take a look at over the next few days. Stay tuned.