Subject(s): rain, pollution
Title: Weekend Hurricane Intensity
Hi, I’m Dave Thurlow and this is The Weather Notebook. Yesterday on the show, we talked about research being done by Dr. Randall Cerveny, a climatologist at Arizona State University. After looking at weather data along the Eastern seaboard, he noticed 2 things that followed a 7-day weekly cycle, a cycle that was born not in the stars or the tides, but in the human mind.
The first cycle is rainfall, which appears to fall more often on the weekend than during the week along the Atlantic Seaboard. And the second has to do with hurricanes.
Dr. Cerveny: "Very oddly enough tropical cyclones follow a seven-day cycle, the tropical cyclones that are observed on Saturdays tend to be a lot weaker than those that are observed in the middle of the week."
Dr. Cerveny believes that pollution is a likely culprit as its production follows the workweek cycle, especially along the highly-populated Atlantic Coast. But he emphasizes that this is purely a statistical study and he doesn't have a firm cause and effect relationship between pollution and hurricane intensity or weekend rainfall for that matter.
Dr. Cerveny: "The long-term results are: yes, it is more rainy on the weekends, but any one particular weekend or any one particular hurricane, for that matter, may not follow this. I’m quick to point out one of the biggest hurricanes of all completely proved the exception to our rule, I guess. Hurricane Andrew came in on a Monday morning and it had intensified all weekend. So these results are meant as averages, long-term averages and any one particular weekend may or may not follow this."
However, these results do suggest a lack of separation between human activities and the weather.
Our show is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory. Underwriting is provided by Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive, with major support from the National Science Foundation.