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Show 2 Signpost-Friday, April 27, 1984 Mark Eubank Entertained And Educated Audience by Shirley Parker Staff Reporter Mark Eubank, meteorologist for KUTV, addressed an attentive audience of about 150 persons Tuesday evening, April 24, in the Lind Lecture Hall. The audience included WSC students, faculty, and administrators, as well as members of the community. Titled "Utah Weather: Fact or Fiction?" Eubank's lecture was part of the Harold W. Ritchey Lecture Series sponsored by the School of Natural Sciences and funded by Ritchey. The presentation was accompanied by slides of the planets in our solar system and of the results of tornadoes, lightning and oddities such as snowrollers. "Temperature, moisture, pressure and wind are the basic ingredients which make up weather, " Eubank said. He posed the question "Why is the weather so much different than the weather the year before?" Then, continuing, he said, "Even more specifically, we will see a storm coming on our charts and it looks just like the one that came a year and 12 days earlier. Everything looks the same but it doesn't behave the same, and so we really are groping in talking about weather prediction." Eubank said that for a one-day forecast, meteorologists have about 87 percent accuracy; and for a two-day forecast, the accuracy is only 83 percent; and for a five-day forecast, the accuracy drops to about 50 percent. Eubank said that flipping a coin will be just as accurate as all the computers at that interval of time. Yet the computer equipment utilized is the most advanced available. Eubank referred to the fact that in the days of Christopher Columbus, doubters "laughed and snickered and hooted" when it was suggested that there would some day be tide tables figured out five years in advance. Now tide tables are routine. Today, however, people scoff when told "it won't be long before we can tell you five years in advance what the weather's going to be on a certain day," he said. Eubank's biggest goal is to crack the secret of long-range weather forecasting. While discussing natural disasters caused by weather activity such as tornadoes, Eubank surprised most of the audience by reporting that "lightning kills mroe people in the U.S. than all the hurricanes or tornadoes put together, but we don't hear much about it." Another example of lightning's power: one lightning strike killed 400 sheep during a thunderstorm in the Wasatch National Forest a number of years ago. Utah has experienced other very freaky weather, as described in Eubank's book Utah Weather. Reasons for the events might not always be understood. The bizarreness of Utah's recent winter, however, was caused by the 1982 eruption of El Chichon, a volcano near Mexico City. Unlike Mt. St. Helens, which blew laterally, El Chichon blew straight up, pouring extremely sulfurous particles out of the troposphere and into the stratosphere. This cut down on the amount of sunlight reaching the earth. It appears that a resulting sulfuric acid mist will also affect the world's weather for the next three to five years, on a decreas-, ing basis. The media has covered the annual maritime condition of El Nino, but this season there were no precursors to normal activity, as would have been expected. Eubank said he had no answers as to why this year's El Nino W X X- X 1L V V" Weber State College SICjlMpOST Editor-in-Chief Colleen Mewing Editorial Advisor Joan Wilcox Managing Editor Rae Dawn Olbert Sports Editor Dan Dickson Asst. Sports Editor Steve Spa f ford Entertainment Editor Dona Skaff Gov't Affairs Kathy Kendell was the world's worst, but it seems "really tantalizing" to him that it "occurred directly after El Chichon's eruption."It is Eubank's belief that in the latter half of this decade, Utah will return to another dry spell and Utahns may be wishing that there had been a way of trapping some of the moisture we now have. Eubank said he "shrugs off" being blamed for bad weather, since he cannot do anything about it anyway. . - ' " V'-f I I , ..- ' .m"""' - - i-'i' I i Cv-C iii - -r w h . r7 ---." I J K J I ' I ' .. jfa. - - HI Signpost photoBob George Mark Eubank was on campus last Tues- crowd of over 150 assembled in the Lind day night speaking on Utah weather. A Lecturre Hall, Datalife. The name is the promise. The warranty is the proof. rrr-r j BiiB'awwn'ia'iWWi a l lAjJ Preserving your data is vitally important. Lose it and you've lost both time and money. That's why it's vitally important to keep it on flexible disks that guarantee a longer life of trouble-free recording, storage and retrieval: Datalife" flexible disks with the 5 -year warranty. That's 5 times longer than the industry standard. No wonder Verbatim is the standard of excellence in flexible disks, minidisks, cassettes and minicassettes. Stop in for your Datalife products today. You'll agree they're everything we say they are. Datalife by Verbatim. ferbatim Weber State Bookstore Ad Sales Manager Kevin Carrillo Promotion Manager Don Williams Ad Salesperson Michael Christenson Reporters Steve Fifield David C. Wright Chris Larsen Stephanie DeGraw Shirley Parker Blain Child Advisor Larry Stahle Production Manager Ken Hill Production Jeff Allen Stephanie Christenson Kristie Jenson Peggy Maggio Pauline McReavy Linda Smith Signature Editor Stephanie Chamberlain Chief Photographer Grove Pashley Photographers Bob George Dennis Miller Jeff Nickerson Secretaries Becky Clark Elizabeth Eichler Circulation Layne Higgs The Weber State Signpost is published twice weekly throughout the academic year by the WSC Department of Communications. Editorial comment appearing in this publication is that of the Signpost staff or an individual writer and not necessarily that of Weber State College. Offices are located in the Union Building, rooms 267 and 281. Mail correspondence to WSC Signpost, Weber State College, Ogden, Utah 84408. The Signpost is distributed to students on Tuesday and Friday free of charge and is available by subscription at a price of $9 per quarter or $25 annually. |