Weather

The book I read to research this post was Weather For Dummies by John D Cox which is an excellent book which I bought from kobo. This book tells you all the basics of weather forecasting as well as looking at weather systems in general around the world. A lot of it is focused on the weather in the USA and there isn’t all that much on the weather in Europe which could be because they have a fairly mild climate. Apparently in the North West Pacific is an area called Typhoon Alley which gets loads of hurricanes and the US protectorate of Guam is in this area. In the USA in an area by the Gulf of Mexico which includes Texas & Kansas is an area called Tornado Alley. Tornadoes are rare outside this area. A lot of hurricanes come into the USA from the Atlantic & Pacific. Thomas Jefferson was the 1st person to realise that hurricanes actually travel from 1 area to the next. He couldn’t understand why the hurricane didn’t travel in the direction it was blowing. We know now that there are strong winds in the upper atmosphere that direct the hurricane around. These winds or thermals often blow at 100 MPH & in times of storms can reach 210 MPH. They are caused by the change in temperature between the different parts of the atmosphere. It’s interesting that some of the biggest supercomputers in the world are used to predict the weather. They often have huge amounts to process involving things like temperature measurements around the world and some of these supercomputers can simulate the complete weather system around the world.