IMPORTANT NOTE: A problem has been detected with CLIMVIS National Weather Service Summary of the day data in months where there are any missing daily data reports. If CLIMVIS reports no data on the last day of the month, then all data in the month should be considered suspect. The Global Summary of the Day system can be queried for an alternate source for some of this data (the times in this database may vary slightly from National Weather Service Summary of the Day due to the times of observation). To obtain correct National Weather Service Summary of the Day data for mission critical projects at a charge, please contact the National Climatic Data Center's customer service representatives at (828) 271-4800 option 2 or send an e-mail message to orders@ncdc.noaa.gov. Reference should be made to TD-3210 data. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working hard to resolve this problem as soon as possible IMPORTANT NOTE: A problem has been detected with CLIMVIS National Weather Service Summary of the Day data in months where there are missing daily reports. If CLIMVIS reports no data on the last day of the month, the entire month should be considered suspect. The Global Summary of Day system located at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/res40.pl?page=climvisgsod.html can be queried as an alternate source for some of this data. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to resolve this problem as soon as possible 14837, WI MADISON DANE CNTY AP, 194801-199807, ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP From: Maude Mason Subject: Sun Dogs Ed: I like your report, but I am totally ignorant on meteorological phenomena. I know what a rainbow is, or what it looks like, but what is a sun dog? Maude AMS Education At 12:22 PM 5/24/99 -0500, you wrote: >Maude - >Thanks. A sun dog is a bright region in the sky, sometimes >with the same color as the rainbow, that appears either to the >left or right of the sun when the sun is relatively low in the >afternoon or morning sky. (In the case that we saw on Friday >night, we saw two sundogs, on either side of the sun.) >The reason for this phenomenon is a thin veil of ice crystals >that are found at about 20,000 feet or higher altitude that would >act as little prisms to bend the sunbeams slightly. As a result, >if you held out your outstretched hand, you could, if conditions >were right, see a sundog at about the distance from the sun that >would be equivalent to the angular distance between your little finger >and thumb on your outstretched hand, and at the same elevation as the sun >above the horizon. (I also recommend to my students that they use their >thumb also to shield their eyes from the sun.) These sun dogs, also >known as parhelia from the Greek -- accompanying the sun -- are also >part of the same optical phenomena that also produce halos around >the sun or moon when ice crystals are present in the atmosphere. >Weather lore talks about sun dogs and haloes because they both >have beeb used to "forecast" future weather events, in a fashion >similar to that done for rainbows. Generally the first clouds >that reach you before an impending storm are the high altitude >ice clouds. So oldtimers who spent most of their time outdoors >would predict precipitation within 24-48 hours after they would >see a sun dog or halo -- and usually for good reason. >Hope that this explains and not overwhelms! >Ed > To: hopkins (E. J. Hopkins) From: Maude Mason Subject: Re: In-Reply-To: <199905241722.MAA68640@sunset.meteor.wisc.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ed: Thanks for the explanation on sun dogs. Very interesting. Now I know something about the atmosphere. Maude Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 11:34:36 +0100 To: hopkins (E. J. Hopkins) From: Maude Mason Subject: Re: In-Reply-To: <199905251514.KAA82127@sunset.meteor.wisc.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ed: She sure did and didn't have any problem finding our office building. She has been here since 9 am this morning, talking to Ira, Bob and Jim. Maude