Spring is....

In the air! Today was AMAZING!!! It got to around 72 today here in Ames, and my roommate complained about being hot. I wanted to respond with something along the lines of "Then I think you could take off 3 or 4 of your layers" but I decided not too. This is the time of year that we finally start getting warmer and have nice warm days and cold nights. In fact as I write this it's 8pm and the temperature is already 49 degrees. If you want to know why this is take a basic meteorology class, or ask me sometime when we both have time and you know you will be interested, once I start it's hard to stop.

I was waiting for my stat lab to start today and was looking through some weather stuff on my phone and pulled up the visible sat elite image. These visible images basically just take a snap shot and anything that reflects the suns radiation shows up. Due to this you can see snow and even sand. With the warm temperatures today you could see the rapid snow melt in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Sometime this weekend check out this website http://tinyurl.com/ (You have to do it during the day however). This is one of my favorite things to watch when storms are developing because you can really see them build. There are numerous weather websites that I check regularly and get my information from as well. Another one of my favorites is the iembot monitor. Basically you pick which NWS office you want to monitor and it shows all of the watches, warnings, and advisories as they issue them. It also shows the storm reports they receive as they enter them into the system. Check it out at http://tinyurl.com/5gef93

Other than that I mostly just look at models and stuff. One last descent website is weather underground at wunderground.com It's loaded with ad's which makes it annoying though. Speaking of weather my Meteorology class has been going pretty well until this week. Our old professor decided he was getting behind on his research and now we have a grad student that speaks in a monotone voice teaching the class. This doesn't make learning about thermodynamics any easier by the way, which I will spend some time studying over spring break...yay.

I want to congratulate the Linn-Mar girl's and boy's basketball teams on their great seasons and advancement to the State tournament. The girls won an UGLY game against Xavier on Wednesday to advance to the semi-final round on Friday to play second ranked Ames. It is beyond me why the girls athletic association matches the two top teams in a semi final game, oh well. Hopefully my Lions win tomorrow and advance to the championship game on Saturday night so I can go! The girls are 24-0 and deserve to win it all, good luck girls!!! I got to see the boys play last Friday night against Xavier, it was well an interesting game. Xavier is a great team that came out and took it to the Lions when they didn't come out of the gate and play, however the second half was completely different. With about two minutes left the Saints put in Kyle Jacobe (spelling?) Kyle has leukemia, Linn-Mar played defense and the Saints kept giving him the ball until he scored. When Kyle scored Linn-Mar called a timeout and Kyle came out of the game crying while every person in the gym gave him a standing ovation for several minutes. Some people would not want to be recognized like that but that is what sportsmanship is all about. The boys play Cedar Falls Wednesday night at 6:30, this will be a very good game since the Tigers beat the Lions in the regular season finale and then beat third ranked Kennedy to get to the state tournament, both wins however were in Cedar Falls. I think the Lions will win that game in a close one, lets hope. That's all I have for now. GO LIONS!!! GO STATE!!! GOD BLESS!!!