If you want to see the house we showed Tuesday (12/15/09), you can drive to the street: Silverbell Oasis Way, You will find the house pretty quickly. To "listen" to the house, just tune your radio to 105.7
December 15, 2009
December 10, 2009
December 09, 2009
December 07, 2009
December 02, 2009
December 01, 2009
Snow piled up in the mountains
By First Alert Meteorologist Erin Jordan - email
Photo Source: Richard Kowalski
TUCSON, AZ (KOLD) - Snow piled up on the mountain tops but the basins where most cities and towns are located only saw rain.
Most rainfall totals were limited but welcome.
According to the USDA's Drought Monitor much of Arizona is locked in a severe drought.
Snow totals in some areas will alleviate that threat but because the moisture was not widespread, don't expect the drought status to change significantly until we see repeated shots of winter rain and snow. Check out the snow totals in southern and eastern Arizona.
Mt. Graham (UA & Vatican telescope) 20"
Chiricahua National Monument 8"-10"
Paradise 7.3"
Hannagan Meadow 6"
Mt. Lemmon 3-6"
Mule Pass Tunnel (near Bisbee) 2"-3"
Tombstone 0.2"
Bisbee trace
©2009 KOLD. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
November 30, 2009
Snow on Mt. Lemmon!
If you were in town this weekend you remember the storm that passed through, bringing us Sunday rain. The influx of moisture allowed for plenty of snow to fall at elevations of 6000 feet and above, bringing us the first snow event of the season. In the Catalinas, Mt. Lemmon saw its fair share of November snow with Sky Valley reporting 3 inches.
If you want to make the trip up to visit the snow, good news for those of you who don’t have heavy duty vehicles. Chains and 4-wheel drive are no longer required. It is not expected to snow tonight but it will still be cold so bundle up. The low tonight is expected to be 18°F with the high tomorrow, on Tuesday, at 47°F. Wednesday morning will get down to 19°F then increase back up to 51°F.
First Alert Intern Jackie Mendenhall
Tornado spotted in southern Arizona
By First Alert Meteorologist Erin Jordan - email
TUCSON, AZ (KOLD) - A tornado was spotted south of McNeal and north of Douglas in Cochise County on Sunday morning.
Viewer John Ey took a photo and sent to KOLD.com See It, Snap It, Sent It.
We forwarded it onto the National Weather Service (NWS) Office in Tucson.
A spotter reported the funnel cloud at 10:57 AM Sunday morning but the NWS only declared it a tornado after seeing John's photo.
The dust kicked up from the ground indicates that the funnel did make contact with the surface, therefore it is classified as a tornado.
This is a cold air funnel, which are found in the chilly,windy air behind cold fronts.
Various wind speeds and directions at different levels of the atmosphere create a rotation, which in this case sparked a tornado.
Cold air funnels are usually weak and cause minimal damage.
No damage was reported with this tornado.
Rain totals with this storm system have been spotty but some of you in the Tucson metropolitan area did win out with a quarter to a half of inch or more.
Check out 24 hour rain totals (updated hourly) at the Pima County Regional Flood District ALERT System.
©2009 KOLD. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Rain and snow tapers off today
By Erin Jordan - email
TUCSON, AZ (KOLD) - Snow has piled up on mountain tops all across southern Arizona.
Phil Mack, owner of the Mt. Lemmon General Store, reported 6" to 8" of snow Monday morning. A few more inches is possible today with storm snow totals approaching a foot.
A Winter Weather Advisory is in effect for areas in Cochise County above 6000' until 6 PM. An additional 3" to 6" of snowfall is possible in the mountains. Most towns and cities in Cochise County are below 6000'.
John Whitman sent in the photo at right of Ski Valley Sunday morning. See more photos at See It, Snap It, Send It.
Below is a list of elevations for towns and cities in southern Arizona.
Ajo 1798'
Picacho Peak 2000'
Marana 2055'
Organ Pipe National Monument 2200'
Three Points 2339'
Sells 2360'
Tucson 2400'
Oro Valley 2620'
Green Valley 2900'
Safford 2954'
Golder Ranch 3000'
Catalina 3100'
Tubac 3200'
Vail 3225'
Benson 3585'
Nogales 3869'
Douglas 3990'
Willcox 4300'
Oracle 4500'
Tombstone 4540'
Sierra Vista 4600'
Dragoon 4615'
Sonoita 4870'
Bisbee 5600'
Summer have 9157'
©2009 KOLD. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
November 27, 2009
November 26, 2009
November 25, 2009
November 24, 2009
November 23, 2009
November 20, 2009
Some trees thriving during climate change
Posted by Erin Jordan - email
TUCSON, AZ (REALCLIMATE.ORG) - Some of the highest growing trees in the world are also the oldest—bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva) from the Great Basin in the western United States (eastern California, Nevada and Utah).
The oldest example is more than 4800 years old.
Because of their longevity and growth at high elevations (where the growth of trees is generally known to be limited by temperature) bristlecone pines have been of particular interest to dendroclimatologists (paleoclimatologists who study tree rings to reconstruct past climate).
Numerous ecological studies carried out at treeline sites all over the world show that temperature imposes a critical limitation on the ability of trees to produce new tissue; mean daily temperatures of 8-9°C are required, so recent warming will have particular benefits for those trees that have managed to eke out an existence for so long, living “on the edge”.
An interesting characteristic of the western bristlecone pines is that their recent growth has markedly increased—ring widths have been higher than in previous decades.
Previous studies have debated to what extent this “fact” is real, or just an artifact of the way tree-ring data are analyzed.
Because the growth of trees is radial, as trees get older and the diameter of a tree increases, annual ring widths decline in thickness.
This is the normal “growth function” that is commonly removed from measurements before further analysis is carried out.
The trick is to do this carefully so that as much climate information is retained while the growth function is discarded, and dendroclimatologists know how to do this quite well.
However, sometimes the “standardization” procedure can introduce spurious results.
This led some to regard the apparent growth increase in bristlecone pines to be a meaningless result of the data processing.
In a new article in the Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Matthew Salzer (Laboratory of Tree Ring Research, University of Arizona) and colleagues examine this issue head on.
They studied hundreds of trees from treeline sites in the Great Basin, aligned all the samples according to date, and simply averaged the results (Figure 1).
Given that these trees are all long-lived, the complicating factor of growth function (which is strongest for the early growth of a tree) was not significant for assessing the most recent growth.
Their results show that mean ring width in the last 50 years has been greater than in any previous 50 year period over the last 3700 years.
You have to go all the way back to ~1900-1300 B.C. to find mean ring widths approaching recent values.
Furthermore, the recent increase in ring widths is seen in trees at the upper forest border at sites hundreds of km away (even when the treelines there were at lower elevations)—but not in trees below the upper forest border.
Below the zone closest to treeline, wide rings are formed in cool, wet years, and narrow rings in warm, dry years, and trees from this lower zone do not show the 20th century growth surge.
It is thus clear that the bristlecone pines from the highest regions, close to their growth limit, are showing a very strong response to recent warming, and indicating just how unusual it has been in the context of the last few millennia.
Previous explanations have focused on possible CO2 fertilization effects (increasing water use efficiency) but there is no obvious reason why such factors would have affected only trees within approximately 150m of local treeline in different locations.
Rather, the high elevation trees, close to the limit of growth, have responded positively to the recent increase in temperature just as ecological studies would have predicted.
One final note: bristlecone pines often have an unusual growth form known as “strip bark morphology” in which annual growth layers are restricted to only parts of a tree’s circumference.
Some studies have suggested that such trees be avoided for paleoclimatic purposes, a point repeated in a recent National Academy of Sciences report (Surface temperature reconstructions for the last 2,000 years. NRC, 2006).
However Salzer et al’s study shows that there is no significant difference in their results when the data are divided into two classes—strip bark and non-strip-bark cases –when the raw unstandardized data are compared. So that particular issue has apparently had people barking up the wrong tree…
(Copyright 2009 by the RealClimate.org. All Rights Reserved.)
Bad weather triggers pumpkin pie shortage
Posted by First Alert Meteorologist Erin Jordan - email Nestle says heavy rain hurt its pumpkin harvest so there may be a shortage of its Libby's pumpkin pie products through the holidays. The company is responsible for nearly all the canned pumpkin sold in the U.S. It announced this week that it will not pack any more pumpkins this year. So shoppers may see some shortages until next year's harvest. (Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) PORTLAND, OR (AP) - The holidays may not be so sweet this year.
November 19, 2009
Life on a Jupiter moon? New model indicates it's possible.
Posted by First Alert Meteorologist Erin Jordan - email
WASHINGTON, DC (NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC NEWS) - Below its icy crust Jupiter's moon Europa is believed to host a global ocean up to a hundred miles (160 kilometers) deep, with no land to speak of at the surface.
And the extraterrestrial ocean is currently being fed more than a hundred times more oxygen than previous models had suggested, according to provocative new research.
That amount of oxygen would be enough to support more than just microscopic life-forms: At least three million tons of fishlike creatures could theoretically live and breathe on Europa, said study author Richard Greenberg of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
"There's nothing saying there is life there now," said Greenberg, who presented his work last month at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences. "But we do know there are the physical conditions to support it."
In fact, based on what we know about the Jovian moon, parts of Europa's seafloor should greatly resemble the environments around Earth's deep-ocean hydrothermal vents, said deep-sea molecular ecologist Timothy Shank.
"I'd be shocked if no life existed on Europa," said Shank, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who was not involved in the new study.
Despite the promising new estimates, it's too early to do more than speculate about how Europan life might have evolved. A closer look—perhaps by a NASA orbiter now in development—will be needed to tell exactly how chemicals are distributed on Europa and how the moon's geologic history might have contributed to life's chances.
(Copyright 2009 by National Geographic News. All Rights Reserved.)
Soon you really will be saying "Leggo my Eggo"...flooding takes out factory
Posted by First Alert Meteorologist Erin Jordan - email
ATLANTA, GA (AP) -- Dear Kellogg: Leggo my Eggo!
Kellogg Co. says there will be a nationwide shortage of its popular Eggo frozen waffles until next summer because of interruptions in production at two of the four plants that make them.
The company's Atlanta plant was shut down for an undisclosed period by a September storm that dumped historic amounts of rain in the area. Meanwhile, several production lines at its largest bakery in Rossville, Tenn., are closed indefinitely for repairs, company spokeswoman Kris Charles said in an e-mail.
It will take until the middle of 2010 before shelves around the country are stocked at pre-shutdown levels, Charles said.
Already customers are noticing near-empty Eggo shelves on the freezer aisle at many grocery stores.
Stay-at-home mom Joey Resciniti says she bought one of the last two boxes of Eggos at a Walmart in Cranberry Township, Pa., on Monday. The frozen waffles are a favorite of her 4-year-old daughter, Julia.
"We have eight of them, and if we ration those -- maybe have half an Eggo in one sitting -- then it'll last longer," said Resciniti, who blogs about being a mother. "I told my husband that maybe I need to put them on eBay."
Charles didn't know how long the Atlanta plant was shut down, but said that it's back at full production now.
The existing stock of Eggos will be distributed nationally based on stores' sales histories of the waffles, Charles said.
"We are working around the clock to restore Eggo store inventories to normal levels as quickly as possible," she wrote in the e-mail.
Eggo first hit the shelves in 1960, and its cult following grew in the following years. Kellogg started using the famed slogan "Leggo my Eggo" in 1972. For years, the waffles have been a staple for busy moms and college students looking for a quick breakfast.
This week, news of the shortage spread quickly on Twitter as shoppers reported not being able to find the breakfast food. Fans of Eggos lamented their scarcity on the waffle's Facebook page, which has more than 400 members.
Eggos are also made at plants in San Jose, Calif., and Blue Anchor, N.J.
(Copyright 2009 by the Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
