predicting the weather
My lab conducts a lot of research that revolves around rain events in northern California. I study a soil process that only happens when there is no oxygen in the soil. This usually occurs after it rains because the soil fills up with water, pushing out the oxygen from the tiny air pockets in the soil. One of my labmates wants to know how changes in rainfall due to climate change will affect how carbon gets stored in soil. For us, it would be great to be able to predict the weather far in advance so that we can schedule when we do our field work.
Last winter, I remembered that the Old Farmer's Almanac gives long-range weather forecasts for large swaths of the United States. Our lab is hyper aware of every time it rains, so I had a good sense of the historical rain patterns for the past six years (how long I have been a member of the lab). In northern California, we typically only get rain between October and April. That's why the landscape looks brown if you visit during the summer--everything dies without receiving water for months. Since January, the almanac's predictions never missed a rain event and were always correct within a week. The real test came in late May when the almanac predicted a small rain shower. It almost never rains in May, but it did this year. The most important rain event to predict for my lab's research is the first one after the summer dry season. The bacteria that lay asleep in the soil waiting for water can react immediately to the rain and start pumping out carbon dioxide. We are usually scrambling to prepare for our field work when we see a significant chance of rain pop up on the ten-day forecast of typical weather stations. This year, I had my eye on September 11-13, when the almanac predicted--based on their secret formula that includes solar activity--that it would rain. It is now September 14, and the ground is still wet from the rain showers that started two days ago. If you are planning any outdoor activities around September 28-30, you might want to have an alternative indoor plan because that's when it's supposed to rain again.
