ALERT NEWSLETTER – August 2014

Hi Everyone, I hope this finds you doing well, and that you are enjoying the unseasonably pleasant summer weather. As the Net Manager of the ALERT Sunday Night Net, I wish to thank Jackson Chance, KK4NGD for volunteering as a regular Net Control Station on our ALERT Sunday Night Net. Our net meets every Sunday at 7PM on 146.880 MHz. If you have not joined us I invite you to check in. Also, you might consider becoming a Net Control Station. This would be an excellent opportunity to learn net operations, the ebb and flow of nets and how to meet the inevitable challenges that a NCS encounters. By doing so in a non-emergency net, you will gain experience, and be better prepared to step in as an NCS during an emergency situation. Plus it’s fun! If you would like to step up and give it a try, just let the Net Manager (that’s me) know, I will send you the preamble and we will go from there! ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Statistics At the moment I am typing this sentence: The current estimated world population is 7,250,706,055. Of these, 322,796, 822 people are currently in the United States. Of these there are 769835 individual, non-club, Amateur Radio Licenses. 12,872 Amateur Radio operators reside in Alabama …………………………………………………………………………………………………. Mark’s Almanac August was originally named “Sextilis”, the sixth Roman month. It was renamed August in honor of Caesar Augustus & was lengthened to 31 days, to equal Julius Caesar’s month of July. August is hot and humid & summer temperatures remain at or near their summer peak. The rapid vegetation growth of spring is over, and, since conditions are now perfect for the growth of mold, fungi & germs, plants have a “used” look, which is enhanced if rainfall is scarce. In August the choir of cicadas whine in the afternoon & towards the end of the month the big Yellow Sulphur Butterflies will begin heading to the South-Southeast, giving hints of their soon upcoming fall migration & cats will begin to hint of growing their winter coats. Hurricane breeding grounds in August are the Atlantic, with Low Latitude storms forming off of Africa crossing the Ocean and either threatening the Eastern Seaboard or striking the Leeward Islands, entering the Caribbean and then striking the Yucatan, or the Western or Northern Gulf coast. Breeding grounds also include the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. 21% of a year’s Hurricanes occur in August. 85 to 95% of land falling Hurricanes have not occurred by August 15. Turning our eyes towards the sky, Mercury is deep in the glow of sunrise. Venus is low in the east-northeast at dawn. Mars, currently located in Virgo, is in the southwest at dusk. Jupiter is hidden in the glare of sunrise. Saturn in Libra shines in the south-southwest sky during the evening Uranus, in Pisces, is high in the southeast before the first light of dawn. Neptune, in Aquarius, is high in the south before the first light of dawn. August’s first full moon is “Fruit Moon” in Cherokee Folklore, “Women’s Moon” among the Choctaw, “Sturgeon Moon” by the Algonquin and at one time was called “Dog Days Moon by the Colonial Americans. This will occur August 10 at 9:09 PM CDT. This will be the closest and largest full moon of the year, an event heralded by the media as a ”supermoon”. The truth is that it will be only slightly larger and brighter than normal and most people are not really able to tell the difference. The scientific term for a “supermoon” is “perigee moon.” Full Moons vary in size because of the oval shape of the Moon’s orbit. The Moon follows an elliptical path around Earth with one side (“perigee”) about 50,000 km closer than the other (“apogee”). Full Moons that occur on the perigee side of the Moon’s orbit seem extra big and bright. There are actually three “supermoons” this year on July 12th, August 10th, and Sept. 9th. While it might seem that such a sequence must be rare, according to Geoff Chester of the US Naval Observatory, this is not the case. “Generally speaking, full Moons occur near perigee every 13 months and 18 days, so it’s not all that unusual,” he says. “In fact, just last year there were three perigee Moons in a row, but only one was widely reported.” In practice, it’s not always easy to tell the difference between a supermoon and an ordinary full Moon. A 30% difference in brightness can easily be masked by clouds and haze. Also, there are no rulers floating in the sky to measure lunar diameters. Hanging high overhead with no reference points to provide a sense of scale, one full Moon looks about the same size as any other. “I guarantee that some folks will think it’s the biggest Moon they’ve ever seen if they catch it rising over a distant horizon, because the media will have told them to pay attention to this particular one,” says Chester. “There’s a part of me that wishes that this ‘super-Moon’ moniker would just dry up and blow away, like the ‘Blood-Moon’ that accompanied the most recent lunar eclipse, because it tends to promulgate a lot of mis-information.” Expect the usual internet rumormongering of it being an omen of apocalyptic doom, and the news media to overplay the event as if something new and momentous is in the offing. Similar to what we saw last winter. “Alberta Clippers” and “Arctic air outbreaks” seemed to cease to exist, as soon as someone discovered the term “Polar Vortex”. Now the NWS explained that a Polar Vortex is: 1. A persistent, large scale upper level cyclone (low pressure center) near one or both of the Earths poles. 2. That it has ALWAYS existed at the poles, but weakens in the summer and strengthens in the winter. 3. That, as a normal course of events many times in winter, a piece of the vortex breaks off and is sent southward with the jet stream. (Sometimes heading toward North America, plunging us into the deep freeze, while giving Europe and Asia a mild winter, and sometimes visiting Europe, giving North America and Asia a mild winter, and so forth.) 4. It was NOT something new, it has always been there, and has known about for decades. 5. It is an upper air atmosphere feature, not a surface level feature, and that you can’t see it, like you can a tornado or funnel cloud. Aw, but, what do they know? “Think of this as a polar hurricane,” said NBC News Weather Man Al Roker, when he took a momentary break from covering an ice cream festival in Sheboygan, to mention the weather. The only problem is that other than both of them spinning in a counter-clockwise direction; they are in no way similar to each other. But it certainly sounds impressive and it does lure viewers in. Getting back on topic, if you want to see meteors, August is your month, as the Perseid Meteor Shower, produced by debris from comet Swift-Tuttle, peaks on August 12 & 13, with 50 to 60 meteors per hour. This shower ranks as the best of the best and if you can get away from city lights you should have a good show. The waning gibbous moon will block out some of the meteors this year, but the Perseids are so bright and numerous that it should still be a good show. Best viewing will be from a dark location after midnight. Meteors will radiate from the constellation Perseus, but can appear anywhere in the sky. New Moon will occur August 25, when the moon will be directly between the Earth and the Sun and will not be visible from Earth. This phase occurs at 3:13 pm CDT. This is the best time of the month to observe faint objects such as galaxies and star clusters because there is no moonlight to interfere. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Our next ALERT meeting is August 12th. If for some reason you cannot attend the meeting in person, you can still participate via telephone. The teleconference number is 1-877-951-0997 & and the participant code is 741083. Hope to see you there! Mark / WD4NYL ALERT http://weatherlynx.webs.com/