Reading Time: 3 minutes Let’s do a quick recap of July weather. Alberta was spared the impacts of the large Hudson Bay upper low, with continued above average temperatures experienced in June. Edmonton was the hot spot with a mean monthly temperature of 18.6 C, which was about 2.5 C above average. Calgary came in second with a temperature […] Read more
Thunderstorms and straight-line winds
Under the right circumstances they can be powerful enough to cause significant damage
Heavy rain — where does all that water come from?
When a thunderstorm rolls in on a warm summer day, there’s an awful lot of water over your head
Reading Time: 3 minutes In the last issue we went into some detail on how thunderstorms develop, and how they can go from your average summer day thunderstorm to a severe thunderstorm. Thunderstorms can bring a wide variety of severe weather with them: heavy rains, hail, high winds, lightning, and, on some occasions, tornadoes. After an extended period of […] Read more
Weather school is back in session — here are the basics of thunderstorms
How does solar energy result in thunderstorms? The answer lies with conduction, convection, and latent heat
Reading Time: 3 minutes With temperatures slowly starting to heat up across the Prairies, thoughts turn towards summer and summer weather, and in my case, I begin thinking about thunderstorms. After a very active summer last year, I thought it might be time to look at this topic again. I also thought it would be a good idea to take […] Read more
Severe summer weather. Taking a look at thunderstorms and wind
Everyone knows what a funnel cloud looks like, but understanding how it forms isn’t easy
Reading Time: 3 minutes In continuing our look at severe thunderstorms, we’ll look at specifically, the most deadly part — tornadoes. What are tornadoes and how do they form? A classic definition of a tornado is a violently rotating column of air that extends from a thunderstorm to the ground, which may or may not be visible as a funnel cloud. For […] Read more
Researchers invent their own version of the great white combine
Farming Smarter has created a hail simulator so it can test ‘hail rescue’ treatments
Reading Time: 3 minutes What can you do when your crops get pounded by hail? How do crops recover from hail damage? There are a lot of questions about this subject, and little information available. That’s why the team at Farming Smarter developed its own hail damage simulation machine, which it unveiled at the organization’s recent field school. “We […] Read more
When it comes to hail, not all parts of the Prairies are equal
South-central Alberta and south-central Manitoba get the worst hailstorms — but for different reasons
Reading Time: 4 minutes So far in our look at different types of severe summer weather, we’ve looked at heavy rainfall warnings and heat warnings. I was going to take a break from our examination of severe summer weather for this issue and examine some of the unique weather events that have taken place across the world over the […] Read more
Beginning our look at severe summer weather
Knowing an alert from a watch or a warning will help keep you informed, and safe
Reading Time: 3 minutes Usually around this time of the year I start my annual look at severe summer weather, but before we dive into that topic, the global March temperatures are in and the planet has beat another record. March 2015, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), was the warmest March since records began […] Read more
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
