[FRIAM] The Jet Stream

[Gary Schiltz]

Hey Nick, I knew you were interested in weather, but didn’t know you had a
book about it. Reference please?

On Tue, Nov 19, 2024 at 2:00 PM Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com>
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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