The Air Force Thunderbirds at the Smyrna Air Show. Picture by Zac McCarter of Hendersonville

The Air Show was a great success this weekend, with weather cooperating to the max!

A funny side note: I went fishing on Percy Priest Lake Friday with my friend Dr. Randy Fullerton, and the Thunderbirds were practicing. Boy, what a show! They flew so close to us, we could see their afterburners. The funny thing is, the noise seemed to excite the fish. We caught four bass in about a 12 minute period, when the noise was the loudest. Maybe they thought it was thunder. I have noticed that the fish bite well when there is thunder nearby (of course, I don’t want to encourage anyone to fish in a thunderstorm). Anyway, Randy and I enjoyed the show. By the way, over the day we caught over a dozen bass, with Randy’s 4.5 pounder being the biggest (He was too modest to e mail the picture of his fish). What a great day!

One of the fish caught while the Thunderbirds were practicing

“If you don’t like the weather, wait a few minutes…” A phrase commonly heard no matter where you go. And while our weather has changed quite a bit to start 2005, it may not have been as abrupt as you might think…take a look at this:

Dec. 28, 2004-Jan. 15, 2005: 19 consecutive days with temperatures above the average

April 3-22: 20 consecutive days with temperatures above the average

April 14-21: 8 consecutive days with a trace or less of precipitation

April 23rd-yesterday: 12 consecutive days with temperatures below the average (today should make it 13!)

If we stay dry today at Nashville International, we will probably have another streak of 8 straight dry days (until our next rain chance of Monday.)

Other Middle Tennessee trends so far in 2005…the obvious lack of snow this winter and a lack of true severe weather events even though the computer maps were forecasting it (not that I’m complaining about that!)

Lisa has mentioned below the chance of seeing the International Space Station over the next few evenings…how about meteors too?

Here’s the link:
http://www.spaceweather.com/meteors/etaaquarids/etaaquarids.html

This is strange…if only I had this type of power!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200505/s1359513.htm

The heat the earth receives during the daytime is re-emitted into space at night, especially on a clear, cloud free night. But the key to frost forming on the ground when the temperature is above freezing, say 34-38, is the fact that the ground is a solid object, and solid objects can actually get colder than the air surrounding them.
A perfect example of this is your car. I’m sure you’ve touched the roof of your car at night and noticed that it was cooler than the air. That’s because, like the ground, the car is a solid object and can get colder than the air surrounding it. As a matter of fact, it’s a lot more solid than the ground. And that’s why one of the first places that frost forms is on the roof and windshield of your car.

We had calls in the newsroom from western Middle Tennessee from people who felt this.

Here’s the AP copy story on the event:

AP-TN-W–Earthquake-Arkansas

Mild quake felt across wide area of nation’s middle

MANILA, Ark. (AP) - A mild earthquake occurred this morning in
northeast Arkansas and was felt across a wide area of the nation’s
center including Tennessee. No major damage was reported.
The U-S Geological Survey reported that the magnitude
four-point-one quake occurred at seven-36 a-m. The tremor was
centered about 14 miles west of Blytheville.
People reported feeling it in Missouri, southern Illinois,
Kentucky, Tennessee and northern Mississippi besides Arkansas.
Gary Patterson is a geologist with the U-S-G-S Center for
Earthquake Research and Information at the University of Memphis.
He said the earthquake occurred in the New Madrid (MAD’rud) Seismic
Zone, where the strongest quakes ever to hit North America were
felt in 1811 and 1812, centered at New Madrid, Missouri.
Patterson said that because the quake was shallow — centered
about six miles below the earth’s surface — it was felt across a
wide area. Shallower earthquakes are generally felt by more people.
Smaller aftershocks were felt during the morning, including one
of magnitude two-point-oh shortly before ten a-m.

For more see the USGS page: http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/neic_xna5_l.html

For all earthquakes within the last 7 days see:
http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/bulletin.html