Ticker for March 13, 2003

                
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March 13, 2003     March 13, 2003     March 13, 2003     March 13, 2003


Talk About Green Energy ...

Yesterday's squall line dumped up to an inch of rain on several
locations, along with some hail and strong winds:



It was a vigorous squall line, but certainly not an exceptional
one by Oklahoma's springtime standards.

According to sophisticated Ticker calculations (we used both sides
of the envelope), approximately 756,002,552 cubic meters of water
- about 200 billion gallons - were dumped on the southeastern third
of Oklahoma.

Now, those 756 million cubic meters of water represent a mass of
756 trillion grams.  For those of you who don't like working
with big numbers, just think of it as 756 billion kilograms.

All of those 756 trillion grams of liquid water came from something:
specifically, 756 trillion grams (more or less) of water vapor.
Do you know how much energy is released when 756 trillion grams
of water vapor condenses into liquid?  Somewhere in the neighborhood
of 1,890,006,380,000,000,000 Joules.  In North America, that value is
called 1.89 quintillion Joules, or the tidier number of 1.89 trillion
Mega-Joules.

Converted into some more familiar units, thats 525 billion
kilowatt-hours, enough to power every residence in the United States
for six months.

That's right.  Yesterday's vigorous but non-exceptional squall
line was powered by an engine that could fuel domestic America for
half a year.  And that calculation considers only the water that
fell out of the storm (just a fraction of the total process).
In fact, it considers only the water that fell out of the storm
within Oklahoma's borders.  In fact, it considers only the *liquid*
water that fell out of the storm within Oklahoma's borders.