DRA POSTPONED
The star party originally scheduled for tonight (Saturday, June 6, 2013) at Damariscotta River Association’s Land Trust is hereby postponed until next week. Today’s weather is just too volatile. We’ll meet at DRA at 9:00pm on Saturday, June 13, 2013, if the Gods of the Clouds allow.
WEATHER FORECASTING
Dwight gave me an excellent lesson in weather forecasting when I asked his thoughts on today’s unstable weather. The Clear Sky Chart’s forecast is generally the best. It shows a cloudless night, but with terrible transparency and worse seeing, along with awful humidity. Click on any of the nighttime hours in the Cloud Cover band to see how the projected clouds hover just to the south, offshore. You may need to enlarge the image to see the potential trouble:
http://cleardarksky.com/c/DmrsRAMEkey.html?1
Now peek at AccuWeather Astronomy, to see not a cloudless night, but thunderstorms and heavy clouds predicted for the same location:
http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/damariscotta-me/04543/astronomy-weather/2183027
How to interpret such a discrepancy? Why not just trust Clear Dark Sky? Ever the engineer at heart, Dwight suggests viewing not projections, but the current motion of the jet stream. This shows that Clear Dark Sky’s clouds floating just offshore are at risk of being pushed north. If that occurred, AccuWeather would prove to be correct:
http://squall.sfsu.edu/gif/jetstream_init_00.gif
So, given that our best hope is for a mediocre night, and the worst is for thunderstorms, it seems best to postpone. The Doodle poll for this party will remain open, so folks can add themselves to the fun:
http://doodle.com/7gzf5e9xtc9yk6rt
Needless to say, the data presented at these links will change over time, but anyone reading this post later could still see the method. Until next week, be well in the heat, and dream of clear skies!
