Tag Archives: weather

Snow Blankets Eastern US from Georgia to Maine

Posted on by
1

A quick moving but intense snow storm swept across the Eastern half of the United States over the last 36 to 48 hours, blanketing areas from as far south as Georgia all the way up through Maine with double-digit snow accumulations.  The area of low pressure that fueled the storm is now offshore of Cape Cod but the effects linger on with much of the Northeast experiencing high winds blowing the snow and reducing visibility.

Northeast Snow Storm Philadelphia Metro

I live in a Philadelphia suburb and we experienced about seven to eight inches of snow accumulation.  It was the high winds of 20 to 30 mph that made the air biting cold and filled with snow; the wind chill factor dropped to the single digits.  Many other parts of the Mid Atlantic and New England regions were hit harder than the Philadelphia metro area but it was still a bitter day.

There was a noticeable lack of road clearing in the Philadelphia area.  Many roads remained unplowed and intersections were hazardous well into the evening.  Expect the commute this morning to be slower than usual given the low temperature of 11 degrees tonight will freeze and further harden any snow or ice on the roadways.  Today’s high is expected to be in the mid 20′s  so we will be relying solely upon direct sun-fueled sublimation to help eliminate the snow on the roads and sidewalks.  Airport delays reached over 100 minutes at Philadelphia International and up to 150 minutes at the three major New York area airports JFK, Laguardia and Newark International.

[ad#babeled-ad-medium-square]

It is amazing that a snow storm of this magnitude leads to a major headline.  This storm affected somewhere near 50 million people, but many of the areas have a history of experiencing fairly significant snowfall.  States like Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina are not used to double digit snow accumulations but areas like Boston, New York, and even Pennsylvania and New Jersey have been the site for many foot plus snow storms in their past.  It seems that we are becoming more weather sensitive as the frequency of  these types of weather events dwindle.

The Wind Screen

Posted on by
10

It’s time to throw a monkey wrench into the works of proponents of windmill energy utilizing the principles of thermodynamics, specifically the First Law of Thermodynamics. In short, the First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy (in a closed system) can neither be created nor destroyed. It can change states, meaning kinetic energy can change to friction, or light energy to heat, etc. The total amount of energy in the system does not change.

Consider the operation of windmill-driven turbines. Simplistically put, the kinetic energy of particles in the atmosphere spins the turbine, which in turn creates electricity. In effect, the windmill is stealing energy from the atmosphere to be turned into electricity. The problem with this is more profound than one might assume at first glance; kinetic energy in the atmosphere (wind) is a result of different atmospheric pressures exchanging particles in an attempt to bring equilibrium to the system. Example: particles in a high pressure area migrate toward an area of lower pressure, the resultant movement of atmospheric molecules is felt by the observer as wind.

This movement of air particles is what is being tapped to generate electricity from a windmill turbine. As the number of windmills increases, there is more energy required to operate them, thus ever-increasing amounts of energy stolen from the atmosphere. Currently, the minutia of the windmills as compared to the atmosphere’s aggregate kinetic energy produces an immaterial effect. However, it would be unwise to assume that there is no limit to the amount of energy that can be taken from the atmosphere and employed to produce electricity.

Bangui Bay Windmills

I am not a meteorologist, nor a scientist of any kind, but it would seem to me that there are some serious negative possibilities that come with over-utilizing windmill turbines for energy production. As described above, the process of the atmosphere regulating its pressure will be disrupted. If there are windmills taking energy from wind, then more energy will be required for the atmosphere to push past the wind farm and deliver the air particles to their low-pressure destination. Non-scientific extrapolation: this would probably mean increased wind speeds. I cannot even begin to draw the corollaries or tangential impacts that this may have on global weather patterns. It could mean high-altitude air currents (such as the commonly known “jet stream”) are re-directed, thus changing the weather patterns of an entire continent or even the world. There is only so much energy available in the atmospheric system, and borrowing too much can only lead to negative consequences.

[ad#babeled-ad-medium-square]

Therefore, we could be unknowingly creating more weather-related problems by trying to reduce the alleged global warming effect by replacing energy produced by fossil fuels with windmill turbines. This seems counter-productive. Given the volume of the earth’s atmosphere and the relative area covered by windmill turbines, there is likely no need to worry that this would happen anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen sometime in the future; and, that’s what this whole renewable energy thing is supposed to be about – isn’t it?

Bangui Bay Windmills image used in this post courtesy of Flickr user Storm Crypt