Nashville flooding and mid-latitude cyclones

Nashville, TN, May 4, 2010. (photo by David Fine/FEMA)
Daily weather map for May 2nd, 2010. Note the cold front heading toward Nashville. Map from the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center.

Over 30 cm of rainfall in just two days resulted in extensive flooding in Nashville, TN, last week. The precipitation was produced by one of those typical mid-latitude cyclones that sweep across the United States, from west to east, every spring and fall. The Boston Globe has some amazing picture of the flooding.

The news media tends to have the most dramatic photographs of disasters, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) also tends to have good images from their aerial surveys (like the image at the top of this post). And images produced by the government are in the public domain so you don’t have to worry about using them.

May 2-6 fronts. Animation generated using images from the HPC.

For discussing warm fronts, cold fronts and mid-latitude cyclones, NOAA‘s Hydrometeorological Prediction Center (HPC) is a great resource. You can find an archive of daily weather maps for the U.S. that you can click through to see the fronts move.

Infra-red satellite image of the continental U.S.. Note the alignment of the clouds and precipitation with the fronts in the first (static) weather map above. (Image from GOES).

Satellite imagery usually complements to the frontal weather maps very well. Most satellites orbit around the Earth pretty quickly, at just the right orbital speed that the centrifugal force just balances the Earth’s gravity so the satellite does not crash into the atmosphere or escape into space. Some satellites are set into orbit a bit further out so that they can rotate with the Earth, effectively staying above the same place all the time. NOAA has a few of these geostationary satellites monitoring the weather around the world, and you can get real-time images from the Geostationary Satellite Server. There used to be archived satellite images but I can’t seem to find them at the moment.

Sleep deprivation leads to obesity

Sleep, obesity and video games (image from the USDA).

A new study links sleep deprivation to obesity in adolescent boys. There have other studies linking lack of sleep and obesity, but this is one of a few looking specifically at adolescents.

The study was presented at the annual Pediatric Academic Societies meeting under the title Is Sleep Related to Obesity in Young Adolescents?. Interestingly enough, there was less of a correlation for girls.

However, in girls, sleep duration was not related to any of the weight-related variables with the exception of less sleep on weekends being related to BMI. – Lytle, Pasch and Farbaksh, 2010.

The USDA has a nice page that touches on the research that’s looking for specific links between sleep deprivation and weight. Their take is that kids don’t get out enough because increased opportunities for indoor entertainment don’t require much activity and disrupt sleep cycles. They suggest that fat cells themselves may respond to changing circadian rhythms.

Abnormal sleep/wake patterns may change circadian clocks that normally allow cells to anticipate variations in the outside environment, such as changing levels of nutrients (glucose, fatty acids and triglycerides) and hormones such as insulin. – Flores, 2007.

I don’t know enough to speculate as to why, but, thinking out loud, I wonder if boys’ predilection for overusing video games has any link to the obesity issue.

Best nature photos

The Guardian newspaper put together an excellent collection nature photographs for auction for an Earth Day charity. I particularly like the pictures from the Franklin River, south-west Tasmania, Australia and Stone Canyon, Arizona/Utah, U.S.A.. Apart from the wonderful composition and spectacular lighting, I like the effort and meaning behind these images.

Slickrock Formation, Paria Canyon (from Thundafunda). As beautiful as it is, this is not the Stone Canyon photo in the list.

According to the Guardian, the Franklin River image was instrumental in preventing the flooding of the river for an hydroelectric dam. The Stone Canyon picture was used to try to have the area declared a national monument. I particularly appreciate the effort of Jack Dykinga, who took the Stone Canyon photo. He hiked up the slot canyon at 3:30 am in order to get the photograph at dawn; with their softer light and reddish tints, sunrise and sunset are the best times for photography.

Clark Montessori almost got Obama

Clark Montessori, a public Junior/Senior High School in Cincinnati, will get a senior administration member, but not President Obama, to give their commencement address. They were one of three finalists for the Presidential visit. I offer them my congratulations on what their students achieved. Their petition was student initiated and organized, the very thing you hope and expect to see in a great school.

Clark’s website has a lot of the links and news articles about the competition, and it’s interesting to trace everything that happened on their Race to the Top Blog.

Cattle drives

pre-European vegetation of the U.S. (from Oak Ridge National Laboratory).

The story of cattle drives and the railroads also has a lot to do with the geography of natural resources in the United States. A few good references:

Oil slick

Oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico on April 25th, 2010. Image from NASA.

The scale of the disaster caused by the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico from the damaged oil rig is increasing day by day. We are preparing to go on the end-of-year adventure trip soon, but I’m wondering if students might be interested in heading down to the Gulf coast to volunteer in the clean-up.

Scale of the slick. Image from NASA (April 25th).

NASA’s Earth Observatory has some amazing imagery on its page on the oil leak. Many of the images also show the mouth of the Mississippi and its delta, which tie directly into our observations in the sandbox. The impact of the oil spill also brings up the topic of density differences in fluids, something we’ve seen in the making bread jars, but applied to a much larger scale.

Poetry in the morning (update 2)

Hope
Know no fear.

Hope dares to blossom
Even inside the abysmal abyss.

Hope secretly feeds
And strengthens
Promise.
– Sri Chinmoy

Poetry in the mornings right at the end of community meetings are going well. We’re into our third round and we’re beginning to get some original poetry. Some students are also asking to do more poetry in Language Arts. We’ve also discovered Short Poems.org but, although I have not set a minimum word limit, we’ve established a good precedent for how short a poem can be and the group is policing itself quite nicely.