The SCW Q&A: MMP clouds, weather career, sideways storms, DST forever, an app mystery

Yeah, we know, we know. There was no Q&A in November. We really have no excuse, other than inertia and maybe a food coma late in the month.

Yeah, that’s it: Blame the turkeys!

Anyway, that was then and this is now. Here’s our December Q&A all wrapped up with a pretty bow for the holidays. If you’ve got a question about the weather you’d like answered, drop it in the comments, or hit the Contact link at the top right of the page.

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Q. On Sept. 20th, my family went to an Astros game, where 3-4 home runs were hit by Houston. Of course, the train gets moving and there’s the cannon/fireworks. Eventually, a “cloud” forms inside Minute Maid Park. My daughter, Winter, was fascinated. So how do clouds form? And how did a “cloud” form in Minute Maid?

A. The reader above told a good story about this whole experience and how it fascinated their daughter, which we trimmed down for length. It’s a good pair of questions! First, let’s talk about soon-to-be Daikin Park (so weird). We’ve all seen it at a game where the Astros do anything. The pyrotechnics go off and the “cloud” usually hangs around at some fairly consistent height.

So what’s the deal? Well, Minute Maid Park is mostly an indoor ballpark, so the cloud stays inside and just gradually disperses. But sometimes that process takes a little while. The reason is likely because MMP is acting like its own little atmosphere. As you go up in altitude, the air typically gets colder, right? Well since MMP is indoors, and the A/C is always running, that cold air actually sinks. Hot air rises, denser cold air sinks. So within MMP, you have setup what we call a temperature inversion where it’s actually warmer as you go up in altitude.

Sit in the nosebleed section of the ballpark for one game and then in the front row downstairs in another and you’ll notice a bit of a comfort difference. Unless you had the ability to sample the interior “atmosphere” of the ballpark, I’m not sure at what height that inversion would occur, but it probably varies from game to game depending on the ambient temperature outside and how the A/C is running inside. So smoke from pyrotechnics probably gets “trapped” under that inversion and just sort of stratifies and lingers. This is a microcosm of what occurs in places like California’s Central Valley (tule fog) or in the Salt Lake City area in Utah. Cold air gets trapped in a valley, and a steep inversion forms and pollution and clouds and fog are all trapped under that inversion.

So, how does a cloud form? Well, the ballpark “cloud” aside, an actual cloud needs two basic ingredients: Rising air and moisture. Moisture evaporates from the ground, lakes, oceans, etc. As it does so, it turns from liquid to gas, or water vapor. That vapor rises, and at a certain point, when the air cools enough, it can no longer hold that moisture, so it has to convert back to a liquid or solid. For a cloud, the air cools, condenses, and you are seeing the formation of liquid or ice crystals on what we call condensation nuclei. This can be anything from dust to salt from the ocean to volcanic ash. Earth is big, and there is lots of stuff floating around suspended in the atmosphere. When this process occurs, we “see” the cloud.

I’ll point you to this NASA site for more information. No need to rewrite an already good explanation! There’s also a link at the bottom to an experiment you can run to form your own cloud in a bottle!

– Matt

Q. I have appreciated Matt and Eric’s weather forecasting and coverage for several years. I have a 7th-grade son who over the last year has become very interested in weather and has expressed an interest in becoming a meteorologist in the future. He followed the Atlantic and Pacific hurricane/typhoon information this season and even looked at websites that show various weather forecasting models. I say that just to confirm his strong interest in this science. I just wanted to ask if it would be possible to get any kind of feedback on things to know at this point as we begin to explore this career and even possibly what universities we could look at that have strong meteorology programs.

A. There are so many paths into meteorology and at your son’s age, I would just encourage his curiosity at this point. He should continue to look at weather forecasting models and get a sense of when they’re accurate, and when they’re not. During hurricane season I encourage him to follow the National Hurricane Center and read their forecast discussions. There’s a lot of good and understandable information there. The Tropical Tidbits YouTube channel is also very informative and, again, something he should be able to digest. For a little bit more of an academic perspective, the standard introductory textbook is Meteorology Today, and it is available online if you don’t want to find a used copy.

Given the rapid advances in AI weather modeling it is a little bit difficult to predict what the field will look like five or 10 years from now. But as long as your son has a good grasp on the fundamentals, and can communicate with his audience (whether it’s in videos, reports, or whatever) than he should be well suited for success in forecasting. I have found that it is as important to be able to communicate your findings as it is to be able to make a credible forecast. So encourage him to write as well!

– Eric

Q: My sister lives in St. Petersburg, Fla., and this year bought a home there facing the Gulf. (Bad timing!) When Hurricane Milton came through, it went in just south of them and they had less damage than Hurricane Helene just before, which passed by them to the west. I know the “dirty” side of a hurricane is on its right side, but what happens when a storm like Milton comes ashore, moving directly west-to-east, rather than south-to-north like most Gulf storms. Is the dirty side then to the south?

A: This is actually a question we get often. During hurricane season we usually tell people not to necessarily focus on the exact track of the storm because the impacts of the storm usually extend far from the center. Well, for certain impacts, like storm surge, the exact track of the storm can matter a LOT!

In Florida’s case, specifically Tampa, we’ve now seen multiple instances of why storm track is so critical. Storms like Idalia last year caused some moderate flooding around Tampa, but Helene was much bigger and stronger this year, thus it caused much more significant flooding because Tampa was south of the storm receiving winds out of the west, which pushed the Gulf water into Tampa Bay.

When Milton hit, although Tampa saw some rough wind and flooding from rain, they did not see much surge. Why? Because Milton went south. Winds in Tampa were out of the east and northeast, which actually pushes the Gulf away from Tampa. Back during Irma and Ian, Tampa Bay saw such wind out of the northeast that Tampa Bay actually drained out and people were (unwisely) walking “in” the bay! Both those storms missed Tampa, again to the south. So for Tampa specifically, it’s all about geography and exact storm track.

But because of how the earth and atmosphere work, the “dirty” side with the strongest winds and worst hurricane conditions will always be the northeast quadrant of the storm. The implication for us in Houston? A storm coming into our south, like Beryl caused impressive storm surge in Galveston and Surfside Beach. A storm coming in near Galveston, like Ike, caused impressive storm surge in Galveston and on Bolivar but not nearly as much down in Brazoria County. The situation here is a little more straightforward than in Tampa that has its worst storms coming from the west. The rules are a bit different there.

– Matt

Q. What’s SCW’s view on the time changing stuff? I HAVE to take insulin at the SAME time every day. It takes me 3 days to adjust my dosage time EVERY time the clocks reset. I really don’t see any point in resetting clocks 2x a year. Why would it be beneficial? …. from a meteorologist point of view?

A. I don’t think a meteorologist’s viewpoint is any more special than that of anyone else. But speaking for myself, I don’t like the time change. It definitely confuses my larger dog, Mars, who is accustomed to eating dinner at 4 pm, sharp. And for humans there are a whole litany of reasons, including your insulin needs, why changing the time for even an hour is problematic. So my view is we should choose a time, and stick to it.

The origin of daylight saving time makes sense, in theory. It is an effort to align the daylight hours to the time when most people are awake. So in the United States we have “daylight time” during the summer months (hence we use CDT for Central Time) and “standard time” during the winter months (CST). I am writing this on Dec. 21, the winter solstice. Sunrise today (standard time) where I live in Houston was 7:11 am, and sunset was 5:26 pm. Six months from now (daylight time), with much longer days during the summer, sunrise will be at 6:20 am, and sunset at 8:23 pm.

So what would happen if we picked either standard time or daylight time, and stuck to it? Here’s how those times would look in each scenario.

Standard Time	Daylight Time
December sunrise: 7:11 am	December sunrise: 8:11 am
December sunset: 5:26 pm	December sunset: 6:26 pm
June sunrise: 5:20 am	June sunrise: 6:20 am
June sunset: 7:23 pm	June sunset: 8:23 pm

So the question is, which would you prefer? For me the answer is clear. I would prefer Daylight time for the entire year. But opinions will vary.

– Eric

Q. I love your Space City Weather app on my iPhone and check it frequently. I also look forward to the notifications each morning when you have a new post. They recently quit coming, and now I don’t get them anymore. I’ve turn notifications off and on again in the settings, and even deleted and reinstalled the app. Nothing works. Can you help?

A. Unfortunately, we can’t help, at least not yet. The tl;dr to your question is: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We’re aware of the problem and have looked at several possible causes. Our developer, Hussain Abbasi, has played with potential fixes but so far: No joy.

It’s a mystery. And while everyone loves a mystery, this is an exception.

We do know this: It seems to mostly (and maybe only) afflict Apple devices.

Hang in there! Once we figure it out, we’ll let everyone know. And thank you so much for reading us and using our app, even if notifications have gone silent on your iPhone!

-Dwight