Ticker for February 27, 2001

                
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February 27, 2001  February 27, 2001  February 27, 2001  February 27, 2001


One of our Favorite QA Events

Every single member of the Ticker staff once served as the Mesonet
Quality Assurance Manager, so the Ticker is particularly fond of
weird QA events.  By that, we mean events in which the Mesonet
instrumentation behaves properly, but the atmosphere or the
environment doesn't.

Zoologists have the giant squid or horseshoe crab that appears in
a fisherman's net every decade or so.  Astronomers become giddy
with delight over rare celestial alignments.  Elvis enthusiasts
rejoice in every gas-station sighting of the King.  Well, former
QA Managers are people, too.  And they have our own rare, elusive,
fleeting white whale: the frozen barometer port episode.

The following map depicts the three hour pressure change from early
this afternoon:



The large pressure drop at Goodwell in the panhandle is the result
of a frozen port.  As described in the November 15, 2000 Ticker,

https://content.mesonet.org/ticker/archive/tickselect.cgi?mo=11&da=15&yr=2000

this closes the box from the outside environment, and pressure in
a constant volume is directly proportional to temperature.  In other
words, when the port froze, the barometer became a de facto
thermometer.  This shows up very well in the Goodwell meteogram:



Sometime around 9:00 am, the port was frozen shut due to freezing rain,
and the pressure trace effectively mimicked the temperature trace.
There's nothing wrong with the barometer, it's just that it is no
longer observing the atmosphere in the way it was intended.

The Mesonet's current QA Manager has flagged the pressure observations
as "unrealistic" until the ice melts.  And former QA Managers will
gather far and wide to discuss the legendary winter of two frozen
barometer port episodes.


A Few More Neat Meteograms

Today's meteograms from Clayton and Talihina




how a cool "wet-bulbing"
effect during the wee morning hours.  Upon the arrival of rainfall,
the air temperature and dew point temperature converged rapidly to
similar values.