ALERT NEWSLETTER – January 2015

Hi Everyone, I hope you all had a good Christmas and have a Happy New Year. 2014 was an active year for ALERT with new members, new equipment and new opportunities. I feel 2015 will be a good year for ALERT and I look forward seeing what the New Year will bring. A brief rundown of the regular ALERT schedule for the first six months is: January 13 Regular Meeting February 10 Regular Meeting March 7 & 8 Birmingham Hamfest / ALERT & NWS table & Skywarn Forum March 10 Regular Meeting / Nominating Committee Formed April 14 Regular Meeting / Nominating Committee Report May 12 Regular Meeting / ALERT Elections June 9 Regular Meeting July 14 Regular Meeting / New Officers Take Office / Dues Due $$$ ALERT appreciates your efforts and participation in responding to callouts, serving in the various ALERT offices, and for supporting our organization, both on the air and off. YOUR ALERT thanks you! ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Winter Weather Preparations As we dig deeper into winter, the time will come when the dreaded “S” word will be mentioned & the usual Southern Snow problems will occur. Keeping this in mind, you should think about creating or updating an emergency kit for your car. A Winter Survival Car Kit should include: • Jumper cables to restart engine • Cat litter or sand for tire traction • Shovel to scrape snow away from tires • Ice scraper to clear windshield • Warm clothes including gloves, a hat, sturdy boots, warm jacket and even a change of clothes • Blankets to keep warm inside the vehicle • Flashlights and extra batteries for increased visibility • First aid kit including necessary medications in case you are stuck on the road • Food pack items containing protein such as nuts and energy bars, or Snickers Bars also canned fruit or meat and a portable can opener are good additions • Water for each person in your car and any pets you might carry • AM/FM radio to listen to traffic reports and emergency messages, should the car battery go dead • Bring a fully charged cell phone with a list of emergency numbers (don’t forget your mobile phone charger) and if you have your old cellphone, charge it and keep it handy. You can still make 911 calls on it. • Road flares or reflective triangles • Make sure your gas tank is full • Baby formula and diapers if you have a small child • A charged up 2 Meter HT & a cussed CB radio for when you can’t find a soul on the forest of repeaters that your HT or mobile rig are “kerchunking”. Should you find yourself stranded, be safe and stay in your car, put on your flashers, tie a bright cloth to the antenna, call for help and wait until it arrives. You don’t want to wander aimlessly seeking shelter, when your car already is a shelter. Even if it got buried in snow, which isn’t going to happen in Alabama anyway, all you would end up with is an igloo with bucket seats. Unless you actually SEE your destination and how to SAFELY get there, without crossing downed power lines, STAY PUT! A car is a lot easier to find than a freeze dried body, or in the case of downed power lines, a well roasted one. Be aware of potential hazardous weather well before it happens. Reference the NWS Hazardous Weather Outlook or HWO http://www.srh.noaa.gov/bmx/?n=hwo and reliable media sources. Be very wary of Internet and especially Facebook weather sources and rumormongering. Flashy graphics doesn’t necessarily guarantee flashy results, accuracy or truthfulness. Blatant hoaxes and honest mistakes abounded last year and certainly will this year also. As this event nears stay tuned to your weather sources & make reasonable preparations. Eighteen loaves of bread & 42 gallons of milk don’t fit that description. The items in the above list, canned food, drinks and so forth do. And, remember that EVEN IF IT DOES SNOW, that this is Alabama. In two days there will be a heat wave. So try to relax and enjoy the snowy adventure. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Mark’s Almanac January is named for the Roman god Janus, the god of gates and doors, and so openings and beginnings. January receives more sunlight than December, but the equilibrium between incoming solar heat and the heat radiated into space by the northern snowfields does not peak until late January and early February, six weeks after winter solstice. So the weather continues to cool, with January 8 – 20 being the coldest part of the year. Typically in January there is a 53% chance of up to one inch of snow & a 25% chance of over one inch of snow. With the exception of the southern tip of Nova Scotia, all of Canada and roughly one half of the Continental US, or “CONUS”, are now covered with snow. Canada’s Hudson’s Bay is frozen, as is the ocean water between Baffin Island and Greenland. http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_usa.gif Barometric pressure is highest in January. Looking skyward, Mercury is emerging from the deep glow of the sunset, shining just to the lower right of much brighter Venus. Brilliant Venus shines low through the glow of sunset, appearing 30 to 40 minutes after sundown above the southwest horizon. Mars in Capricorn glows in the Southwest during and after twilight and sets around 8PM. As Mars sets in the Southwest, Giant Jupiter is rising in the east-northeast in western Leo around 8PM. Saturn is low in the southeastern sky between Libra and Scorpius before and during dawn. Uranus in Pisces is high in the south right after dark. Neptune in Aquarius is getting low in the southwest after dark. The Quadrantid Meteor Shower will occur January 3 & 4. This is an above average shower producing between 40 to 100 meteors per hour radiating from the constellation Bootes, in the area near the end of the handle of the Big Dipper and the head of Draco the Dragon. This shower is a quirky shower in that its particle stream is very narrow. Therefore, the peak time is only a couple of hours, and that peak varies each year. According the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s “Observer’s Handbook 2015” the peak will occur at 8PM CDT on January 3, which will put the stream close to the, if not below the northeast horizon. But, as will all things astronomical, the timing may slip, so one should keep looking through the night, and even if the radiant point is below the horizon, they will still be zipping overhead and will appear longer. This year’s shower will be competing with a Full Moon, but, it will still be worth the effort. This shower is believed to be produced by dust grains from burnt out comet 2003 EH1, which may also be the remainder of comet c/1490 Y1, which was lost to history after a prominent meteor shower was observed in 1490, possibly due to the breakup of the comet. The Quadrantid meteors take their name from an obsolete constellation, Quadrans Muralis, found in early 19th-century star atlases between Draco, Hercules, and Bootes. In the 1800’s astronomers were naming and renaming constellations, often “stealing stars” from existing constellations, and naming them for whatever, or whoever suited them. Quadrans Muralis was removed, along with a few other constellations, from crowded sky maps in 1922 when the International Astronomical Union adopted the modern list of 88 officially-recognized constellations. The Quadrantids Shower, were “re-zoned” to Bootes after Quadrans Muralis disappeared, but kept their name possibly because another shower was already widely-known to meteor watchers as the “Bootids”, which peaks in June. Interesting to note is that the stars that make up our constellations rotate around the galactic center of the Milky Way at different speeds. Over time the constellations will appear to deform and then cease to exist. In 20,000 years, none of the currently observed constellations will be found in the night skies. Guess I had better plan on getting some new star charts by then. January’s Full Moon is “Wolf Moon” in Native American folklore. Coincidentally, January was called “Wulf-Monath” or “Wolf Month” by the Saxons. So called because this full Moon appeared when wolves howled in hunger outside the villages. It has also been called “Old Moon” and “Moon After Yule”. Full Moon will occur Sunday January 4, 10:53 PM CST, and New Moon will occur Tuesday January 20, 7:14 AM CST 1781 planets have been confirmed beyond our star system as of December 22, 2014, per NASA’s Exoplanet Archive http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/ ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… This month’s meeting will be on January 13 at 7PM at the National Weather Service Forecast office at the Shelby County Airport. 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. Did you know that the Birmingham Hamfest is only nine weeks away, March 7 & 8? Hope to see you there! Mark / WD4NYL Editor ALERT Newsletter