[FRIAM] The Jet Stream

[steve smith]

Nick -

a sub-anecdote from my last missive which I failed (deliberately) to 
include was the time my father brought home a weather balloon one of the 
ranchers had found on his grazing permit (USFS).   He had already sent 
the guts of the recording device to the appropriate authorities (US 
weather service) but I fiddled with the (latex) balloon itself and the 
shroud cables and the weatherproof box housing the electronics (or was 
it entirely mechanical  like the Fu-Go you reference?).

I was on a 8 week "walkabout" in 2014 and just leaving the small town of 
Thermopolis Wyoming where the first such (Japanese incendiary) device 
was discovered when the NPR station I was listening to gave a history of 
those events including referencing the small town (hot springs location) 
I was just leaving.  My final destination was Portland/Seattle/Tacoma so 
I included visits to the general location of the other landings in that 
area which included Gearhart Mtn OR where 6 people died... the only 
injuries from all those (order 10k?) launches.   Sobering.

Last time I was at the ABQ balloon museum they had an exhibit on these 
bomb-balloons including the mulberry-paper envelope...  all the 
envelopes and mechanical "logic" were hand-built apparently, drawing on 
the rich Japanese craft traditions .

I hope your "weather book" is not OBE  with the AMOC 
weakening/collapse?   Has your personal observation over decades in New 
England included an experience of the presumed 10-20% weakening over 
that time?   I have lived in roughly 3 areas of the southwest in my 
adult life (so AZ, no AZ, no NM) which undermines my long-term direct 
apprehension of weather patterns.  Your reports on the "dry line" made 
me aware that we here in no NM are on the edge of an interesting 
variable phenomena and I'd guess that New England is yet more subject to 
weather fluctuations?

- Steve


On 11/19/24 11:58 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> As a part of my plan to revise my weather book, I have been working on 
> a chapter on the jet stream.  I am thinking of using the passage below 
> as a kind of epigraph.  I am sending it along because it brings 
> together two of the salient concerns of Our Glorious Leader.  
> Comments, fact checks, grumpy comments always welcome.
>
> /During the winter of 1944-5, in the last desperate days of World War 
> II, the Japanese military launched hundreds of incendiary balloons 
> into the jet stream, hoping to ignite fires in American forests.This 
> ingenious scheme worked.Many balloons made the 5,000 mile trip and 
> some even started small fires. However, the plan ultimately failed. 
> For a large fire to be kindled by one of these devices, the ground had 
> to be had to be dry, the temperature high, the humidity low, the water 
> table depleted, all conditions that often occur during summer 
> droughts.Winter, however, is the wet season in the American west. The 
> same jet stream that brought in the balloons, also brought in waves of 
> pacific moisture that soaked the ground and covered the high mountains 
> in deep banks of snow./
>
> /This bit of military history illustrates the relationship between the 
> jet stream and the weather we all experience, day by day.The jet 
> stream can initiate severe weather, can spark it, one might say, but 
> only where conditions below have been primed.Its seeds can only 
> flourish where the ground has been prepared./
>
>
> -- 
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
> Clark University
> nthompson at clarku.edu
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
>
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