February 12, 2018

Wind Chill

Current Conditions

Temperature: 5 degrees
Dew Point: -7 degrees
Winds: none
Pressure: 1043.3
Visibility: 10 miles

This morning started out partly sunny with light, almost opaque fluffy clouds accounting for around 60% cloud cover. The temperature was -3 degrees and winds were out of the west at 2 mph. The rest of the day was pretty much the same. Temperatures peaked at 11 degrees around 3:00 PM and winds were W 6 mph which made it feel like 2 degrees. Figure 1 below shows a map of the wind chills in the United States today. the temperature outside felt much colder than the temperature readings recorded!

Figure 1. Wind chills in the United States.

Some interesting weather is going on off the coast of Australia. A category 4 tropical cyclone named Gita just hit the island nation of Tonga today. It is apparently rare for cyclones to hit Tonga and only one other category four cyclone has even gotten close to this island nation. Figure 2 is an image of the cyclone from NASA's Terra satellite using MODIS courtesy of NASA.

Figure 2. NASA Terra satellite image of tropical cyclone Gita near the island nation Tonga.

My prediction from yesterday was in the ballpark but not very accurate. Temperatures dipped compared to yesterday and skies were not completely sunny.

For tomorrow, I predict temperatures to be higher than today and cloudier due to a low pressure front moving in from the southwest.