The Earth Story

A mosaic This image, taken from the International Space Station in December, shows the ground near Alliance, Nebraska. The pattern is created by farmland. The area is divided into squares (40 acres I’m going to guess as that was a standard size when lands were being handed out in the U.S. west) and each one has a circle due to central-pivot irrigation systems. Water comes up a pipe in the center and the irrigation system moves in a circle surrounding it to water crops. If you look closely you can see a linear fabric overlaying the circles, most likely showing the path taken by the equipment during the previous harvest. -JBB Image credit https://twitter.com/PC0101/status/421047533498949632/photo/1

Sun Halo

Sun halos, or 22-degree halos because they can form around the sun and the moon, form when thin, high-level cirrus clouds are present, along with the millions of tiny ice crystals that are within them. The resulting ring is always 22-degrees, hence the name 22-degree halos.

When the sunlight (or moonlight) hits the crystals, the light is refracted. Actually, it’s refracted twice – once when it enters the crystal, and once when it leaves. The result is a 22-degree bend from the original direction, producing the ring of light.

The final necessary ingredient for a halo is an observer who is in the correct position and orientation from the crystals to see the refracted light. Luckily for us, one person in that perfect position took a video. This is from early December in Sweden.

Video Credit: vemdalen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq5F6njlJMA

References: http://bit.ly/19p0yHr http://earthsky.org/space/what-makes-a-halo-around-the-moon https://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/circular.htm https://ind.pn/2EjFcgo

For those of us dreaming of a white Christmas, it might be just that…a dream.

The Owens River runs east of the Sierra Nevada in California, carrying water south out of the mountains. Most of the water is eventually pilfered by Los Angeles, but some portions of it do flow. Here’s that lovely desert river, freezing in December. Also some nice shots of the range towering overhead.

There is, right now, a tornado warning in Santa Claus, Indiana. I just thought that worth sharing.

Floods on the Somerset Levels This coastal plain and partially drained wetland in south west England has seen extensive flooding over the extremely soggy weather of the past 18 months, but the seemingly endless storms that have been lashing the country since early December have left some villages cut off since before Christmas and flooded some 7,500 properties around the country, some for the nth time. The last such floods were during October to March 1872-3, making this a likely once in a century event. These flatlands consisting of two basins surrounded by hills occupy 650km square, at only 6m above sea level, making them vulnerable to storm surges. Their surface geology is a combination of marine clays (that are impermeable, aggravating the flooding) and peat bogs dating from the end of the ice age. The area's was once speckled with lakes, though many have been drained over the centuries, including that surrounding the Level's most famous monument: Glastonbury Tor, associated with legends of King Arthur and the sacred thorn tree allegedly planted by Joseph of Arimathea. Farms and settlements are all built on hills or built up ground, which are mostly inliers (areas of older rock poking up through younger ones) of Triassic rocks (England's geology youngs to the west, ie the older rocks are in Wales, the youngest in the east coast of Anglia). The region was always swampy, and the rivers are controlled in varied ways, though controversy has raged because the government has been reluctant to spend money on dredging them, which would allow rain and storm surge water to return to the sea faster. The current pumping to stay ahead of the waters is currently costing over £100,000 a week. England has seen its wettest December and January in a quarter millennium, as we recently covered here: http://tinyurl.com/jwhmaeq. Loz Image credit: Matt Cardy/Getty Images http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/01/january-uk-wettest-winter-month-250-years http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/03/somerset-levels-floodwater-pumping-environment http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/03/flooding-threat-severn-thames-riverside-properties