The sun rose in North Pole at 8:50 this morning, and will set 7 hours 27 ½ minutes later at 4:18, never rising more than 9.6° above the horizon. There is only a trace of snow on the ground, but this time of year even a little change in the reflectivity of the ground keeps the temperature down. Cloudy skies and occasional snow or freezing drizzle seem to be all that is forecast until I return home. I hope the snow isn’t too deep by the time I get back, though temperatures are still forecast to be above 0° F.
In Ithaca, New York, where I am right now, the sun rose at 6:43 this morning and will set 10 hours 13 minutes later at 4:55 after a maximum height above the horizon of about 32°. It was in the 50’s last week, but Sunday was snow (non-sticking) with temperatures in the 30’s. Today it’s supposed to be sunny, with temperatures in the 40’s. Sadly the leaves are well past their peak, but there is still enough color to enjoy.
It’s still quite a change from Sierra Vista. Sunrise there was 6:44 am, sunset will be 5:31, and the day length will be 10 hours 47 minutes. The sun has a higher arc, too, reaching 42.2 minutes, and the temperatures should be in the 70’s today. North Pole is really going to seem cold when I go home.
And my hair is still coming back from chemo.
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Thanks for the weather check in Sue Ann. Wonderful to see your hair growing back. 🙂
Think I may put in a thumbnail of weekly progress of my hair on my weather reports for a while. Hope it will encourage others on chemo.
The Roanoke and New River valleys have entered that afternoon lull I mentioned on Saturday, as we are between some of the early bands moving north (looks like at least one more heavy one coming in about 30 minutes to an hour) and what will likely be the meat of the snowfall, the “deformation zone” or “comma head” with the upper-level low tracking eastward. That period of snow will likely begin before an hour or two before sundown and take us into the evening. The Storm Prediction Center issued a mesoscale discussion earlier this afternoon circling our region and noting the possibility of both 1-inch-per-hour snowfall rates and even some “thundersnow,” which simply means having atmospheric dynamics that might support some random bolts of lightning (usually cloud to cloud, not cloud to ground) and the accompanying rumbles of thunder. If you ever hear thunder when it’s snowing, you know it’s putting it down or about to. Snow amounts so far have mostly been in the 1-2-inch range. Most areas north to about Hot Springs, Lexington and northern Amherst County, south to the Virginia-North Carolina state line and a little beyond, will probably get at least 3 inches out of the deformation zone snow, and I could see some areas getting 6 or even 8 if a heavy snow band happens to set up overhead for a while. So that’s where we stand moving toward late afternoon. The main piece of what we’ve been talking about for days isn’t quite here, yet.