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The Write Way 20 January 2006 Why Is It So? Greetings, Summer here in Queensland means afternoon storms. It's all the hot, humid days we have that stir things up, and once the cycle starts, we get these storms threatening most afternoons. I've always loved storms ... the thunder, the lightning, the rain bucketing down ... just fabulous! Remember those lightning strikes I showed you last year? Not that I'd fancy living in one of these residential lightning rods, but you have to admit it's spectacular. When I was young, we lived in Sydney, and we used to get a Southerly Buster every afternoon to cool things down. Occasionally there'd be thunder and lightning to liven up the walk home from school, although nothing like the tropical storms up here. And sometimes, the sky would turn a strange greeny-yellow colour (more chartreuse actually) and then you'd know you were really in for a storm. This phenomenon always intrigued me, and I can remember one afternoon when I was in high school, sitting in a science class, glancing out the window and noticing how still everything was and that the air had that odd, yellowish tinge. Since it was a science class and I loved the subject, I fearlessly put up my hand and asked Mr Thomas (one of my favourite teachers) what made the air change colour. Mr Thomas had a reputation for being eminently distractible, and you could always count on him to recount lots of fascinating stories once you got him started ... always with a scientific theme, of course. So with a jolly, "Thanks for asking that question, Jenny" he was off, and I sat there, happy in the knowledge that one of Life's Little Mysteries was about to be solved. "At last," I thought to myself, "now I'm going to find out why the sky and the trees and the air and everything go that funny colour. I've been wondering about this for so long and haven't been able to work out why it happens. I know why there are rainbows ... because of the moisture in the air and light being refracted and reflected and it must have something to do with that, I know, but just why the air and the trees and the grass and everything turn this yellow has got me puzzled." Tuning back in to hear the explanation, I was in time to hear Mr Thomas say, "And that's why the air turns yellow before a storm. Now open your textbooks to page ..." Aargh! Since I'd asked the original question, I couldn't very well ask him to repeat his answer; that's always a dead giveaway that you haven't been listening. So this week, many moons after that steamy summer afternoon, I've decided to harness the power of the Internet and find out why this happens! Here's the answer I received from weather expert, Steve Symonds, on the ABC North Coast NSW website: "Some thunderstorm clouds
have a green tinge to them. It has been said that this is due to hail in the
cloud but it is more than that. Green clouds can produce very heavy rain or
heavy snow (in the right place) as well as hail. And further explanation about why the sky is sometimes blue and sometimes red: "The sun produces white light, which is made up of all colours; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Light is a wave and each of these colours has a different frequency and therefore a different wavelength of light. "When light collides with gases in the earth's atmosphere the light is scattered. Blue light has a short wavelength and scatters more than red light. The light reaching our eyes from the sky is blue. At sunrise and sunset, sunlight passes through far more air before reaching us. As the blue light has been lost through scattering, what we see is white light minus the blue; that is, red light." (Australian Bureau of Meteorology) And if you've ever wondered about the accuracy of those old weather sayings ... wonder no more! “Rainbow in the morning,
Shepherds take warning. "A rainbow in the morning is formed when light from the rising sun in the east strikes and refracts through the water droplets in a rain cloud in the western sky. Rainbows always occur in the part of the sky opposite the sun. Since most storms (though not all) come out of the west, a rainbow in the western sky is a sign of rain. A rainbow in the eastern sky, as would occur in the evening, is a sign the rain has passed." So now there are no excuses for getting your descriptions of the weather wrong when you're writing your blockbuster novel!
Did you know that every newsletter is archived? So if you've missed anything since 1998 or want to revisit some favourites, you can do so any time! Don't forget to bookmark the page when you get there ... or even make it your Home Page. (For Internet Explorer, just click on Tools ... Internet Options ... General and fill in www.write101.com/archives/index.htm and click OK. For Netscape, select Edit ... Preferences. Then select Navigator from the left menu, click Home Page and enter the URL above next to Location and click OK.) This week's quiz: Try these weather terms: advection, perigee, anabatic, graupel, apogee, katabatic, equinox, derecho, crepuscular, parhelion 1. the point in its orbit where a satellite is nearest to the Earth 2. like twilight; dim 3. of an air current or wind; rising especially up a slope 4. bright spot sometimes appearing on either side of the sun, often on a luminous ring or halo 5. the horizontal transfer of heat or other atmospheric properties 6. form of frozen precipitation such as snowflakes, ice pellets 7. either of two times of the year when the sun crosses the plane of the earth's equator and day and night are of equal length 8. the point in its orbit where a satellite is at the greatest distance from the Earth; a final climactic stage 9. a straight wind without apparent cyclonic tendency, usually accompanied with rain and often destructive 10. of an air current or wind; moving downward or down a slope because of cooling especially at night And no reference to the weather would be complete without this old favourite: It was autumn, and the Indians on the remote reservation asked their new Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was a new Indian Chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets, and when he looked at the sky, he couldn't tell what the weather was going to be. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared. But also being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, "Is the coming winter going to be cold?" "It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed," the meteorologist at the weather service responded. So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared. A week later he called the National Weather Service again. "Is it going to be a very cold winter?" "Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied, "it's going to be a very cold winter." The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find. Two weeks later he called the National Weather Service again. "Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?" "Absolutely," the man replied. "It's going to be one of the coldest winters ever." "How can you be so sure?" the Chief asked. The weatherman replied, "The Indians are collecting wood like crazy!" Last week's quiz: diphthong, phoneme, polysemy, litote, dyad, prosody, morpheme, ligature, idiom, grapheme 1. an accepted phrase or expression that doesn't follow the usual patterns of language, or has a meaning other than the literal - IDIOM (e.g. that's a storm in a teacup; he's as flash as a rat with a gold tooth; she's got a bee in her bonnet) 2. the patterns of stress and intonation in a language - PROSODY 3. two or more connected letters to indicate a single sound - LIGATURE (e.g. the ae in mediaeval, encyclopaedia 4. the smallest phonetic unit in a language that is capable of conveying a distinction in meaning - PHONEME (e.g. M in mat; B in bat) 5. having or characterised by many meanings; the ambiguity of an individual word or phrase that can be used (in different contexts) to express two or more different meanings - POLYSEMY 6. all of the letters and letter combinations that represent a sound in the alphabet - GRAPHEME (e.g. the F sound can be written as f, ph, gh in different words) 7. two items of the same kind - DYAD 8. a vowel sound that starts near the articulatory position for one vowel and moves toward the position for another - DIPHTHONG (the ligature is the written form of this sound) Examples of diphthongs are the oi sound in 'oil' 9. the smallest unit of meaning - MORPHEME (Some words are made up of multiple morphemes e.g. priceless [price + suffix 'less'] while others can't be divided e.g. serial, mahogany) 10.a kind of understatement, where the speaker or writer uses a negative of a word ironically, to mean the opposite - LITOTE (e.g. He's not the brightest kid on the block.) Everybody is talking about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. (Mark Twain) An Ape that wants to play Hamlet after being type-cast as King Kong, a talking anvil and that rottweiller ... Dr Morgenes is still caught in the nightmare that is the casting couch. Help him find a plot! Just click on the Comments button at the end of the entry to add your contribution. If you have friends who fancy themselves as writers, invite them to contribute (just forward this newsletter in its entirety to them). I often trawl this for comments to post on my site ... so if you say something about the newsletter or site, be warned, you may end up being read by one of the 2,000+ unique visitors who visit Write101 every day! Make your Mark on the World. Then stop by our Map of the World and read the messages. (Just click List) and add your mark. A Little Something Extra Read why we're so bad at forecasting the weather these days. Find out how people distinguished between a gentle breeze, a gale, a severe gale and a hurricane (on land and at sea) before there were computer models. And if you want to swap weather horror stories at your next dinner party, you're going to love this site! The Guinness Book of Records weather extremes: Word of the
week: Nephelococcygia
(n) refers to looking for shapes in the clouds and comes from
Oxymoron of the week: stable weather And a Latin phrase for those of us in Southern climes: Satine caloris tibi est? [sah-TEE-nay kah-LOHR-ees TEE-bee EST?] (Hot enough for you?) Kind regards, Jennifer P.S. Want to donate to the upkeep of this newsletter? Here's how: 1. Pay by PayPal: OR 2. Click here to subscribe for a full year OR 3. Use your credit card on my secure order form. (You can also access the PayPal subscription link from this page if the link above didn't work for you. With PayPal, you can use your credit card, PayPal account or pay online using your own cheque account.) OR 4. Send a cheque (made payable to Jennifer Stewart) Copyright 2006 Jennifer Stewart Individual articles copyrighted by their authors. |
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