Nick -
a sub-anecdote from my last missive which I failed (deliberately) to
include was the time my father brought home a weather balloon one of the
ranchers had found on his grazing permit (USFS). He had already sent
the guts of the recording device to the appropriate authorities (US
weather service) but I fiddled with the (latex) balloon itself and the
shroud cables and the weatherproof box housing the electronics (or was
it entirely mechanical like the Fu-Go you reference?).
I was on a 8 week "walkabout" in 2014 and just leaving the small town of
Thermopolis Wyoming where the first such (Japanese incendiary) device
was discovered when the NPR station I was listening to gave a history of
those events including referencing the small town (hot springs location)
I was just leaving. My final destination was Portland/Seattle/Tacoma so
I included visits to the general location of the other landings in that
area which included Gearhart Mtn OR where 6 people died... the only
injuries from all those (order 10k?) launches. Sobering.
Last time I was at the ABQ balloon museum they had an exhibit on these
bomb-balloons including the mulberry-paper envelope... all the
envelopes and mechanical "logic" were hand-built apparently, drawing on
the rich Japanese craft traditions .
I hope your "weather book" is not OBE with the AMOC
weakening/collapse? Has your personal observation over decades in New
England included an experience of the presumed 10-20% weakening over
that time? I have lived in roughly 3 areas of the southwest in my
adult life (so AZ, no AZ, no NM) which undermines my long-term direct
apprehension of weather patterns. Your reports on the "dry line" made
me aware that we here in no NM are on the edge of an interesting
variable phenomena and I'd guess that New England is yet more subject to
weather fluctuations?
- Steve
On 11/19/24 11:58 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
As a part of my plan to revise my weather book, I have been working on
a chapter on the jet stream. I am thinking of using the passage below
as a kind of epigraph. I am sending it along because it brings
together two of the salient concerns of Our Glorious Leader.
Comments, fact checks, grumpy comments always welcome.
/During the winter of 1944-5, in the last desperate days of World War
II, the Japanese military launched hundreds of incendiary balloons
into the jet stream, hoping to ignite fires in American forests.This
ingenious scheme worked.Many balloons made the 5,000 mile trip and
some even started small fires. However, the plan ultimately failed.
For a large fire to be kindled by one of these devices, the ground had
to be had to be dry, the temperature high, the humidity low, the water
table depleted, all conditions that often occur during summer
droughts.Winter, however, is the wet season in the American west. The
same jet stream that brought in the balloons, also brought in waves of
pacific moisture that soaked the ground and covered the high mountains
in deep banks of snow./
/This bit of military history illustrates the relationship between the
jet stream and the weather we all experience, day by day.The jet
stream can initiate severe weather, can spark it, one might say, but
only where conditions below have been primed.Its seeds can only
flourish where the ground has been prepared./
--
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
[email protected]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
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