Tag Archives: weather

How Jet Contrails Influence Weather

This one’s for all the weather nerds in the crowd. On MPR’s News Cut blog, Bob Collins has posted a timely and informative post on how jet contrails influence weather.

He’s got a few quotes from meteorologists on why jet contrails effect weather and even has a bit about how the temperature fluctuated from averages after the 9-11 World Trade Center attacks when planes were grounded:

He found that, for those three days, the average range between highs and lows at more than 4,000 weather stations across the US was 1 degree C wider than normal. In other words, contrails seemed to raise nighttime temperatures and lower daytimes ones.

Check out the post for links to the sources and pictures of the contrails over Minnesota today.

What are you a nerd about? Epic Weather & Time Travel

It was 103 degrees in Minneapolis on Tuesday. Right now, as I type this, it’s 57 degrees. Up four degrees from the morning’s 53. That’s fifty-degree temperature swing in two days. Minnesota weather is, indeed, epic. But don’t take my word for it, here one of our nerds explains what makes him a nerd and what he likes about Minneapolis. If you dig outrageous weather, time travel, or any other kind of nerdery you can imaging, you should come join us here.

Friday Links: Zero waste creativity and the tech exec who worked with Iggy Pop

• Silicon Valley’s secret rockstar: For more than two decades James Williamson worked at high-level jobs at places like Sony. Then his old boss Iggy Pop called again.
• Zero waste creativity, crazy enough to work?
• 25 best movie geeks, it’s a list with quite a few surprises (and includes one of my favorites, William Miller from “Almost Famous”).
• Online Advertising: Losing the race to the bottom, Jim Coudal and John Gruber from last year’s SXSW.
• Meet the LEGO architect.
• If historical events had Facebook statuses.
• A helpful infographic on Memes.
• Dungeons & Dragon’s themed sports logo t-shirts.
• How to forecast weather without gadgets.

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iMapWeather addictive, timely social network about weather

Yesterday the Balcom Agency launched iMapWeather,. The Nerdery had the fine, fine pleasure of helping them build this social network that lets people connect about all things weather related.

It seems like an odd bit of magical synchronicity that iMapWeather launches while North Dakota faces the worst floods they’ve seen since 1997, in fact the Red River is expected to crest this weekend more than a foot above 1997′s record-setting level. The Nerdery is keeping a close eye on the situation in ND. In fact, Tom O’Neill has rustled up a gang of nerds to head up to Fargo this weekend and help with the sandbagging efforts.

Now, thanks to iMapWeather, I can’t seem to stop watching a live shot of the river in Grand Forks that a user posted.

And this is just what the creators of iMapWeather were going for.

“We looked around and said, ‘All right there’s nothing out there that offers people a real way to connect through the weather,’” Chip Hanna, Interactive Account Director at Balcom Agency, said. “There’s nowhere else that you can upload photos, share video and other information all related to the weather.”

iMapWeather is a joint venture between Balcolm Agency and Weather Decision Technologies, The Nerdery helped them bring their vision to life.

Next week we’ll tell you about how that vision came about and what we did to help it along.