PJ Hole Radar & Forest Hypothesis
Wednesday, July 6th, 2022 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudioOkay, so last night the storm did finally move throught after 1AM, and I did record out the window for about 90 minutes, but all I got was distant rumbles and rain.
It's useful audio, because it's clean... meaning, no cars, crickets, or other sounds. So it can be used as a bed to mix-in any future thunder claps I manage to capture out the same window.
However, I did take five screen shots of the radar as the system was moving through, and I've added them below to show how the, Percy Jones Hole, phenomenon played out last night!
Times are approximated, based on phone time, minus the capture time reported by the radar app (NOAA).
But these are all sequential, between 1:10AM and 2:00AM. And the system is moving from west to east, or from the left of the photo to the right.
The blue dot in the center of the photo is Aurora, so that's the focal point of the screen caps and the descriptions.
The final two captures are zoomed in a bit.
------------{=0=}------------
1) 01:10AM INDENTATION
.png)
As the system first encounters the western edge of Aurora, you can see a very prominent indent in the yellow band... exactly the size of the blue dot that marks the town. It's as if that heavier band of rain is encountering pushback from an unseen bubble or force field around the city.
--<>--
2) 01:20AM STORM PLOWS IN
.png)
Ten minutes later, things seem logical. The yellow band has pushed through whatever that seeming bubble was, and heavy rain is pouring down on Aurora. At this point out my window, there is lightning in the sky, and the S8 is recording distant rumbles, but there's no huge thunder claps yet! Will they come soon?
--<>--
3) 01:45AM HOLE TEARS OPEN
.png)
Over the next 15 minutes, a hole of zero precipitation tears open in the storm system around Aurora, stretching well to the south of town. The yellow band has also been pushed back off to the west. This is pretty amazing, considering there is no mountain or other geological feature to create a pronounced rainshadow like this.
--<>--
4) 01:50AM HOLE EXPANDS
(ZOOMED IN)
.png)
Over the next five to ten minutes, the green band has pushed back over town, but the yellow band is kept at bay to the west. Meanwhile, that hole of zero precipitation has drifted southeast and grown larger, to the point where it's ripped open the southern edge of the system.
--<>--
5) 02:00AM STORM ENCLOSES HOLE
(ZOOMED IN)
.png)
Ten minutes later, the storm system has fought back. It's closed up the southern edge that was torn open by the expanding hole... but the hole remains as a huge bubble of zero precipitation surrounded on all sides by green. That green band is still over Aurora, but the yellow band, which was repulsed a while back, remains off to the west, unable to get back over town.
------------{=0=}------------
I had to create a photobucket account, and start paying six bucks a month just to include the above screen caps so... I will be doing this from now on, every time a storm comes through, that I'm trying to record.
So there will be more data to come...
But you've got to admit, those screen caps above are NOT ambiguous! There was a literal indent on radar, that turned into a literal hole, that grew to huge proportions, but was surrounded by the storm system, like a giant bubble.
Further, it seems to have started as a reaction to the yellow band (heavier rain with lightning strikes) trying to push over. The yellow band at first pushed through, but was then repulsed, and kept at bay to the west until the system had completely passed over.
The green band, however, was allowed to move over town.
------------{=0=}------------
The current forest hypothesis, in a nutshell, says that the trees of Aurora, collectively, put up some kind of atmospheric defense to dissuede the yellow band from entering their territory.
When the storm system ignored that, and the yellow band moved in... the trees went to defcon 2, and inflated some kind of massive counter blast which created a hole of zero precipitation around town... that later drifted off and expanded to the southeast of town.
From there, the trees allowed in only the green band, to get some needed rain, but fended off the heavier yellow band, with it's harmful lightning strikes and high winds.
--<>--
That was it, in a nutshell...
We both have many questions...
And I don't have all the answers, because this is just a hypothesis.
But let's work backward and see where we can get...
--<>--
Trees stand nothing to gain from severe thunderstorms. Huge limbs, with full leaves are vulnerable to strong gusts, because they can be bent to the point of fracture, and, given their weight, can fall clean off.
Trees are also the number one object struck by lightning in a thunderstorm, because they are literally grounded to the Earth, and stand high above everything else. But lightning strikes can blow the bark right off a tree... if they don't knock them right down.
Any such major damage to a tree... whether having a limb ripped off, or bark blown off, can be a mortal wound that will severely shorten a tree's lifespan. They may survive it, and try to recover... but they'll expend a ton of resources attempting recovery and be vulnerable to all kinds of parasitic attacks that will send them to an early grave.
--<>--
Thus, if trees could comprehend the concept of a thunderstorm... and had some way of sensing when one was approaching... they would not be happy about it!
And, if such trees had any power to deflect a thunderstorm... they would use it!
--<>--
Before we look at the power question, we need to look at the comprehension question.
I'm currently reading The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate - Discoveries from a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben.
To be clear, this book does NOT look at anything resembling the PJH phenomenon, and I'm not claiming it holds any PROOF for my own hypothesis.
But, Wolleben does assert that trees, which have a demonstrable ability to learn, must be able to store memories and access those memories in some kind of brain. And He hypothesizes that the root system of a tree is that brain.
For a stand alone tree, that brain may not amount to much, or be capable of much processing.
But in a large conglomerate of trees, such as in a forest, those root systems become intertwined, and interwoven with complex networks of symbiotic fungi.
The fungi network gets sugars from the tree roots, but also gives the trees some immunity to bacterial, fungal, and insect attacks... as well as an ability to communicate with other trees, and even share resources with other trees.
And the icing on the cake, of this complex root & fungal network, is the presence of electrical signals! In other words, these systems do behave like synapses in an animal brain, exchanging even electrical pulses.
Meanwhile, trees can not only sense light & dark, heat & cold, and chemical signals in the atmosphere, but... can also hear.
Not just vibrations in the Earth, but also acoustical signals in the air!
Thus, a large conglomeration of trees, such as in a forest, or in Aurora's case, a quasi-forest, can collectively hear a storm coming... and have a collective brain with which to process that information, and formulate a defensive response.
------------{=0=}------------
The only question left then, is... what the hell could a quasi-forest of trees, like in Aurora, possibly DO to beat back a storm in real time, like the above radar screen caps seems to show?
That bit, I confess, I still can't answer.
It looks like some kind of air-bender god just expanded a huge bubble of, NO, at the storm system.
And the trees got their way. All we got was the green band of beneficial rain, without any of the yellow band risks... high winds and lightning strikes.
There are things I could point to... like forests creating micro-climates around them. And the fact that each individual tree, in a diverse group, will respond differently to wind loading... so that they're each bending and springing back differently, in different time frames, and could possibly break up and cancel out a strong wind that way?..
But none of that seems to be on the scale of the sudden, and enormous, force shield we see in the radar captures.
All I can say from observation of this one event was the the temperature did drop about 15F in the two hours before the system got to our doorstep.
I was keen to the temperature, because it had been 96F all day, and I had lost one of my window air conditioners upstairs, where I live. So it really heated up in my flat, and I was blocking the back windows with cardboard to keep the blazing afternoon sun from heating it up even worse.
After sunset, I was irritable, as it took so long for the flat to cool down, and I was still hot when I wrote the last entry, waiting for the storm system to get here.
But it did suddenly drop 15F, in the 90 or so minutes before the system was on my doorstep... which was counter-intuitive. Shouldn't the storm have to pass through first, before the temperature goes down?
--<>--
So... did the trees just... suck the heat out of the air?
And when that wasn't enough to deflect the yellow band from moving in... did they... inflate some huge air pressure bubble on the fly?... without creating any disturbance on the ground?
How the fuck would that be possible?
--<>--
Maybe I'm just crazy.
I am aware of both selection bias and the Dunning Kruger Effect, and I know I'm vulnerable to both right now, with not a lot of observation data, and just starting to read a bunch of new audio books.
I'm in danger of thinking I know everything, but really I know nothing, but I'm aware of that, and I'm doing my best to stay on the path and find the right answers, eventually.
But I still do have this blog I need to update regularly, and the point of it is to share with you this journey I'm on to explore the world... of my neighborhood... for clues about the universe.
So... bear with me, but I'll try to keep it entertaining.
°¦}
https://soundcloud.com/snoozefestaudio
It's useful audio, because it's clean... meaning, no cars, crickets, or other sounds. So it can be used as a bed to mix-in any future thunder claps I manage to capture out the same window.
However, I did take five screen shots of the radar as the system was moving through, and I've added them below to show how the, Percy Jones Hole, phenomenon played out last night!
Times are approximated, based on phone time, minus the capture time reported by the radar app (NOAA).
But these are all sequential, between 1:10AM and 2:00AM. And the system is moving from west to east, or from the left of the photo to the right.
The blue dot in the center of the photo is Aurora, so that's the focal point of the screen caps and the descriptions.
The final two captures are zoomed in a bit.
1) 01:10AM INDENTATION
As the system first encounters the western edge of Aurora, you can see a very prominent indent in the yellow band... exactly the size of the blue dot that marks the town. It's as if that heavier band of rain is encountering pushback from an unseen bubble or force field around the city.
2) 01:20AM STORM PLOWS IN
Ten minutes later, things seem logical. The yellow band has pushed through whatever that seeming bubble was, and heavy rain is pouring down on Aurora. At this point out my window, there is lightning in the sky, and the S8 is recording distant rumbles, but there's no huge thunder claps yet! Will they come soon?
3) 01:45AM HOLE TEARS OPEN
Over the next 15 minutes, a hole of zero precipitation tears open in the storm system around Aurora, stretching well to the south of town. The yellow band has also been pushed back off to the west. This is pretty amazing, considering there is no mountain or other geological feature to create a pronounced rainshadow like this.
4) 01:50AM HOLE EXPANDS
(ZOOMED IN)
Over the next five to ten minutes, the green band has pushed back over town, but the yellow band is kept at bay to the west. Meanwhile, that hole of zero precipitation has drifted southeast and grown larger, to the point where it's ripped open the southern edge of the system.
5) 02:00AM STORM ENCLOSES HOLE
(ZOOMED IN)
Ten minutes later, the storm system has fought back. It's closed up the southern edge that was torn open by the expanding hole... but the hole remains as a huge bubble of zero precipitation surrounded on all sides by green. That green band is still over Aurora, but the yellow band, which was repulsed a while back, remains off to the west, unable to get back over town.
I had to create a photobucket account, and start paying six bucks a month just to include the above screen caps so... I will be doing this from now on, every time a storm comes through, that I'm trying to record.
So there will be more data to come...
But you've got to admit, those screen caps above are NOT ambiguous! There was a literal indent on radar, that turned into a literal hole, that grew to huge proportions, but was surrounded by the storm system, like a giant bubble.
Further, it seems to have started as a reaction to the yellow band (heavier rain with lightning strikes) trying to push over. The yellow band at first pushed through, but was then repulsed, and kept at bay to the west until the system had completely passed over.
The green band, however, was allowed to move over town.
The current forest hypothesis, in a nutshell, says that the trees of Aurora, collectively, put up some kind of atmospheric defense to dissuede the yellow band from entering their territory.
When the storm system ignored that, and the yellow band moved in... the trees went to defcon 2, and inflated some kind of massive counter blast which created a hole of zero precipitation around town... that later drifted off and expanded to the southeast of town.
From there, the trees allowed in only the green band, to get some needed rain, but fended off the heavier yellow band, with it's harmful lightning strikes and high winds.
That was it, in a nutshell...
We both have many questions...
And I don't have all the answers, because this is just a hypothesis.
But let's work backward and see where we can get...
Trees stand nothing to gain from severe thunderstorms. Huge limbs, with full leaves are vulnerable to strong gusts, because they can be bent to the point of fracture, and, given their weight, can fall clean off.
Trees are also the number one object struck by lightning in a thunderstorm, because they are literally grounded to the Earth, and stand high above everything else. But lightning strikes can blow the bark right off a tree... if they don't knock them right down.
Any such major damage to a tree... whether having a limb ripped off, or bark blown off, can be a mortal wound that will severely shorten a tree's lifespan. They may survive it, and try to recover... but they'll expend a ton of resources attempting recovery and be vulnerable to all kinds of parasitic attacks that will send them to an early grave.
Thus, if trees could comprehend the concept of a thunderstorm... and had some way of sensing when one was approaching... they would not be happy about it!
And, if such trees had any power to deflect a thunderstorm... they would use it!
Before we look at the power question, we need to look at the comprehension question.
I'm currently reading The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate - Discoveries from a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben.
To be clear, this book does NOT look at anything resembling the PJH phenomenon, and I'm not claiming it holds any PROOF for my own hypothesis.
But, Wolleben does assert that trees, which have a demonstrable ability to learn, must be able to store memories and access those memories in some kind of brain. And He hypothesizes that the root system of a tree is that brain.
For a stand alone tree, that brain may not amount to much, or be capable of much processing.
But in a large conglomerate of trees, such as in a forest, those root systems become intertwined, and interwoven with complex networks of symbiotic fungi.
The fungi network gets sugars from the tree roots, but also gives the trees some immunity to bacterial, fungal, and insect attacks... as well as an ability to communicate with other trees, and even share resources with other trees.
And the icing on the cake, of this complex root & fungal network, is the presence of electrical signals! In other words, these systems do behave like synapses in an animal brain, exchanging even electrical pulses.
Meanwhile, trees can not only sense light & dark, heat & cold, and chemical signals in the atmosphere, but... can also hear.
Not just vibrations in the Earth, but also acoustical signals in the air!
Thus, a large conglomeration of trees, such as in a forest, or in Aurora's case, a quasi-forest, can collectively hear a storm coming... and have a collective brain with which to process that information, and formulate a defensive response.
The only question left then, is... what the hell could a quasi-forest of trees, like in Aurora, possibly DO to beat back a storm in real time, like the above radar screen caps seems to show?
That bit, I confess, I still can't answer.
It looks like some kind of air-bender god just expanded a huge bubble of, NO, at the storm system.
And the trees got their way. All we got was the green band of beneficial rain, without any of the yellow band risks... high winds and lightning strikes.
There are things I could point to... like forests creating micro-climates around them. And the fact that each individual tree, in a diverse group, will respond differently to wind loading... so that they're each bending and springing back differently, in different time frames, and could possibly break up and cancel out a strong wind that way?..
But none of that seems to be on the scale of the sudden, and enormous, force shield we see in the radar captures.
All I can say from observation of this one event was the the temperature did drop about 15F in the two hours before the system got to our doorstep.
I was keen to the temperature, because it had been 96F all day, and I had lost one of my window air conditioners upstairs, where I live. So it really heated up in my flat, and I was blocking the back windows with cardboard to keep the blazing afternoon sun from heating it up even worse.
After sunset, I was irritable, as it took so long for the flat to cool down, and I was still hot when I wrote the last entry, waiting for the storm system to get here.
But it did suddenly drop 15F, in the 90 or so minutes before the system was on my doorstep... which was counter-intuitive. Shouldn't the storm have to pass through first, before the temperature goes down?
So... did the trees just... suck the heat out of the air?
And when that wasn't enough to deflect the yellow band from moving in... did they... inflate some huge air pressure bubble on the fly?... without creating any disturbance on the ground?
How the fuck would that be possible?
Maybe I'm just crazy.
I am aware of both selection bias and the Dunning Kruger Effect, and I know I'm vulnerable to both right now, with not a lot of observation data, and just starting to read a bunch of new audio books.
I'm in danger of thinking I know everything, but really I know nothing, but I'm aware of that, and I'm doing my best to stay on the path and find the right answers, eventually.
But I still do have this blog I need to update regularly, and the point of it is to share with you this journey I'm on to explore the world... of my neighborhood... for clues about the universe.
So... bear with me, but I'll try to keep it entertaining.
°¦}
