Ticker for January 11, 2006

                
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January 11, 2006   January 11, 2006   January 11, 2006   January 11, 2006



Surface Layer Gets a Case of Cold Feet

For years, and we won't name names here, the Entire Ticker Staff has
been tormented by a pair of icy cold feet in the middle of the night.
Well, we get to write about them today.

Lately, with wildfire on our minds, we've been obsessed with the
relative humidity map. We were happy to see a little bit of green
on the RH map this afternoon:



The two big green splotches may look like pools of moisture, but the
actual water content of them isn't much more than their surrounding
areas, as shown on the accompanying dew point temperature map:



Relative humidity is all, well, relative. This means that if the RH
is high but the dew point is roughly the same, the air temperature
must be low.  And that's exactly the case today:



Notice the low numbers at Enid and at Chanute, in southeastern Kansas.
Those low temperatures are caused by dual footprints of snow cover,
as seen by satellite this morning:



A footprint is centered in north-central Oklahoma, with a larger one
centered on, you guessed it, southeastern Kansas.

Snowcover keeps temperatures down in several ways. First of all, and
this may come as a surprise ... snow is cold! Secondly, its nearly
white coloration reflects a large percentage of incoming solar energy.
Thirdly, the melting and sublimation processes that remove snow
require energy.

These footprints are rapidly shrinking and should be but a memory
by tomorrow night. We cannot say the same for the icy feet that
terrorize the Entire Ticker Staff in the wee hours of the morning.