ATSC | homework #5 | office hours ● #1 ○ The Southwestern part of the United States because of the stationary high pressure point, because this air sinking, for precipitation to exist, the air needs to rise. The jet stream would take any potential precipitation that could take place in the South West and moving it northwards. ● #2 ○ The jet stream doesn't directly control where the precipitation is coming from, it controls where storm systems go. The flow aloft is steering the storm, but the precipitation is from the ground. Pattern A could result in a serve low that would lead to intense precipitation and with more systems forming behind it with the jet stream with more rain. However, with pattern B the precipitation could be severe and result in flooding due to long-term rainfall because the jet stream is not guiding it. ● #6 ○ The temperature over Lake Erie remains constant because it is frozen. During this period, lake effect snow cannot take place because the water is not un-frozen. Even though Lake Erie is the furthest lake to the South, it is shallow and freezes fast. ● #3 ○ For point B, the only way to get cold air is coming from the North for prime conditions to create lake effect snow. If it was to come from the West it would have to come over mountains and from the South it would be warm. For point D, the air would need to come from the North from the South West to cause lake effect snow. From the West would give you snow from Lake Erie and from the North would cause snow on Lake Ontario. ● #4 ○ It is uncommon because cold air to form lake effect snow has to come from the North. So to reach the northern shores air would have to come from the south which is warmer, making it more difficult for lake effect snow to take place. ● #5 ○ Topography, the mountains obstruct the flow of the air for states like Idaho and Montana. Whereas with North Dakota, it is on a plain with wind that contributes to blizzard conditions. Additionally, the location of which the storms form that produce storms that can make blizzards form to the east of Idaho and Montana. ● #7 ○ Not necessarily, with the temperatures of 4 to -10 that should result in columnlike formations, however, dendrites and forms of the plates are observable on the table. This doesn't fit the description from class. ● #8 ATSC | homework #5 | office hours ○ Snowflakes are not formed on the ground, they are formed up higher in the atmosphere. When we measure with the table in class, the temperature is taken from the ground however, this is not an accurate representation because the snowflakes are not formed at the ground. What we need to find out is where the ice crystal we observe formed in the atmosphere. According to the diagram, the more humid the air the snow crystal forms in, the more elaborate and visually interesting it should be. On the table of our snowflake photos, the two snowflakes with the highest humidity have riming on them. As relative humidity goes down, the snowflakes can still be elaborate, however, riming and contact with clouds will not occur. The diagram is flawed because it doesn't account for snowflakes passing through clouds, and ultimately because it only measures the relative humidity at the ground, not the humidity of the environment the flake actually formed at. With our date set from class, there really isn't a correlation because we are again not measuring the temperature where it formed. ● #9 ○ Snowflakes, not in Wyoming, with a lack of wind fall straight to the ground. If it is windy, the snowflakes are being thrown around in the atmosphere and flying sideways. When they hit something, there is a good change that they are going to break. Looking at the chart from our photos, this agrees and when the wind speed is higher the snowflakes are more likely to be torn up and fragmented. The shape of the snowflake that we measure is measured from the wind speed at the ground, therefore this measurement is accurate and a match of what we would expect.