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posted by mrpg on Thursday November 22 2018, @09:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the thank-humans-for-that dept.

For some Northeast cities, high temperatures on Thanksgiving could be close to the coldest on record no matter what day of the month the holiday was celebrated (e.g. Nov. 22, Nov. 24, Nov. 26, etc.).

New York City has only had three Thanksgivings dating to 1870 when the high temperature failed to rise out of the 20s, according to National Weather Service statistics. The coldest was a high of 26 degrees on Nov. 28, 1901.

While this year may not touch that record in the Big Apple, it could still be just the fourth time when the high on Thanksgiving is only in the 20s.

In southern New England, Boston could come within a couple of degrees of its coldest Thanksgiving high of 24 degrees, also set Nov. 28, 1901.

https://weather.com/forecast/regional/news/2018-11-18-thanksgiving-day-record-cold-northeast

Possibly related:

Solar Minimum is Coming

Noone has seen a sunspot since October 21: http://www.sidc.be/silso/datafiles#total


Original Submission

Solar Minimum is Coming

Every 11 years or so, sunspots fade away, bringing a period of relative calm.

“This is called solar minimum,” says Dean Pesnell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. “And it’s a regular part of the sunspot cycle.”

The sun is heading toward solar minimum now. Sunspot counts were relatively high in 2014, and now they are sliding toward a low point expected in 2019-2020.

While intense activity such as sunspots and solar flares subside during solar minimum, that doesn’t mean the sun becomes dull. Solar activity simply changes form.

[...]

Normally Earth’s upper atmosphere is heated and puffed up by ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Satellites in low Earth orbit experience friction as they skim through the outskirts of our atmosphere. This friction creates drag, causing satellites to lose speed over time and eventually fall back to Earth. Drag is a good thing, for space junk; natural and man-made particles floating in orbit around Earth. Drag helps keep low Earth orbit clear of debris.

But during solar minimum, this natural heating mechanism subsides. Earth’s upper atmosphere cools and, to some degree, can collapse. Without a normal amount of drag, space junk tends to hang around.

There are unique space weather effects that get stronger during solar minimum. For example, the number of galactic cosmic rays that reach Earth’s upper atmosphere increases during solar minimum. Galactic cosmic rays are high energy particles accelerated toward the solar system by distant supernova explosions and other violent events in the galaxy.

 
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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by khallow on Friday November 23 2018, @03:35AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 23 2018, @03:35AM (#765421) Journal
    If you're going to use a 43 year old paper to make a claim about the present, then it's not a post of reason. Concluding that the speculation of the paper still holds is just as valid as concluding that it's scientific terminology reflects the practices of today.
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