Exercises/Labs

This is a map that labels where the fronts are. We have labeled the stationary fronts (S), warm fronts (W), and cold fronts (c). There is also a fourth type of front, occluded, but we didn't find any on this map. A front separates two different mass areas, so it's the edge.

We have also labeled where the highest winds might be based on the isobars. We placed high winds in areas that had a lot of isobars. As for high and low pressure areas, we placed these based on some of the fronts. High pressure is typically in cooler areas, whereas low pressure is in warmer, more most areas.

Above we have a map of North America labeled with Air Masses. A Continental Polar air mass is cold, dry, and stable. A Maritime Polar brings cool, moist, unstable air. Maritime Tropical air masses are warm, moist, and often unstable. Continental tropical brings clear skies and warm to hot afternoons, but mild night temperatures.

Surface Data Plot Maps

This is a map of Nevada and Utah using station models. It seems that there is not much wind in these areas, and very little precipitation. However, there is light snow in the lower left corner of Utah. In Utah, the wind seems to be coming mostly from the north or north west area. In Nevada, the wind direction is more from the west or south west. There is mostly overcast cloud coverage. Temperatures are around the 20's to 40's.

This is a similar map to the one above, but of the Great Lakes Region. It's obvious that it is mostly overcast in this area and the wind direction is from the south west. There is quite a  bit of haze and fog.

2/27

Today we did a fire kite demonstration on the foot bridge. We made the kites by folding in the four corners of a newspaper and taping it in the middle. They all failed because we couldn’t light all four corners at the same time, so the heat was escaping and it couldn’t establish enough buoyancy to stay afloat. The wind was also a small factor.

Then we lit Chinese lanterns and two out of three were successful. The first one didn’t get enough air into it and a big enough flame before they let go of it. It was great weather out on the foot bridge with little wind, so that helped as well!