Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Meteorology

We left for town on a nice day. It was cool outside, we didn't have work today, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky... except for the pesky little clouds that someone once taught me indicate that the weather is going to change really fast. And after observing this in Utah almost every day last summer, I have reason to believe that.

Well, Ellen and I ran our errands for the day and got back in the car, and suddenly the sky wasn't so clear anymore. In fact, it was gray. And we had heard yesterday that the weather conditions would be right today for storms and maybe even a tornado watch (basically meaning the conditions are right for a tornado but something may or may not really happen. I checked for weather alerts on the phone, and sure enough we were under a tornado watch, scheduled to end at 7. That isn't a big deal, and neither was the wind or the rain that hit us. And it was no big deal that it was getting darker and darker from the clouds. We were talking about what it would be like to actually see a tornado. According to Ellen, her mom saw one, and it had made the sky turn green. 

We kept driving for a few minutes. And then we saw it. "...like that?" "...yep." The clouds were turning green. Hail started falling.


Thankfully, we got out of the storm system before it really picked up. When we stopped at a gas station near Ashfall though, we learned from some of the locals that we were driving right into the main system.

Well shoot.

By the time we got back to the cabins, however, the worst was past. There was evidence everywhere of high winds, and my car was plastered in leaves (we took Ellen's car this week.) At least my car was still here. No tornadoes touched down in our area, and the only ones were southwest of us, where the storm was heading. So they weren't coming our way.
So here we are, watching the storm pass and thankful it wasn't too bad here. I read up on the green skies thing and learned that it can mean hail or tornadoes (in our case, it was probably hail) because in an afternoon storm, the clouds can turn the sky red, but in a really, really big one the water droplets have a blue tint, which makes the sky turn green (apparently not blue and yellow but blue and RED make green... meteorology is a strange, strange science to me), and so in a storm the size needed for hail or tornadoes, its big enough to cause the sky to turn a really cool color. And it was pretty awesome to see. Scary, but awesome. 

Now, if you don't trust meteorologists, you can go with the old wive's tale about green skies: the green color comes from all of the frogs sucked up by the tornadoes. Apparently, they also like to hail at passing cars.




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My Story (Very briefly...)

Lots of people claim that they wanted to be paleontologists at the age of 3. So did I. The problem is, I never really grew out of it. My third birthday party had dinosaurs. Everywhere. I grew up digging in fossil dirt from Aurora, NC, looking for coral and shark teeth. I practically lived at my local science museums (and still do, only now I get to do research, fossil preparation, and work in collections!) When local paleontologists discovered a dinosaur with a "fossilized heart" (no longer considered such) when I was little, I got to meet the man who led the work. And then, years later a dinosaur bone with soft tissue turned up. I was officially hooked.
No longer was I dreaming about dinosaurs. I was actively pursuing the science behind prehistoric creatures. I didn't want to read about it, I wanted in on the action. So I started working at the museum, and finally going on my own adventures. And thus, I needed a place to share them and maybe inspire others the way I was inspired. I have gone from watching fossils be prepared from one side of the glass at the museum to working on them on the inside of the glass. I am a student working toward my goal. I can finally start to call myself a paleontologist.