Robyn Takes On the Weather

Ok, so I'm not really taking on the weather (although how cool would that be?!) but I am in a weather class this semester. It has been incredibly interesting, even if I wasn't and still am not thrilled at the amount of liberal arts general education classes I am required to take at my university. Still, there have been some interesting things I've learned this semester and with only a little over a week left in school I will be slightly sad to be done with the class (even if gen. ed.'s usually bring my GPA down-thanks a lot). A good portion of the class is just common knowledge because of what we are used to in our weather patterns but I did learn something new here and there that I thought was awesome. One in particular was lake effects (and yes, this may be common knowledge to those of you that live around the Great Lakes but it isn't to me). When the cooler air moves over water (which is warmer) it picks up moisture. In the Great Lakes this colder front comes from the Northwest and, after picking up the moisture, it dumps loads of snow on the South and Southwest shores of the lake. The neatest part is that you can actually see the cloud rolling towards you as it covers the city you are in with a blanket of snow as you can see in the video I attached Lake Effect in Buffalo, NY.
We also went over thunderstorms and tornadoes recently. And, through this, we discussed those crazy people out there known as storm chasers. They're very similar to the characters played by Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton from Twister who, instead of like normal people who try to avoid bad storms, actually run towards them Storm Chasers. I had always thought this would be a fun thing to do but maybe that's just my love of adventure rearing its head. Then again, I've been one of those people who had a slight panic attack when I was in an airport in the Midwest. I was in middle school on a family trip and went to the restrooms where there were signs everywhere warning of tornadoes and reminding people to use the restrooms as shelters if need be. Oh yeah, that really cooked my goose. Perhaps storm chasing is not in my future but I can always live vicariously through others.