Homestead mailing list

[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

SISU! wrote:

> It's called the Gulf of Mexico, Bill.  It streams moisture northward and 
> when that atmospheric moisture hits those fronts that come out of the 
> northwest, the whole east coast gets rain.  You don't have a warm gulf 
> streaming moisture, so you don't get that summer rain or all the storms 
> that go with it.
>
> Bev
> Also Bill, I live almost as far from Atlanta as you do from Eugene, and 
> as you know, a few hours makes a world of difference.
>
>  

Indeed.  It's a little drier with every westward step you take.  Were it 
not so, the pioneer settlers of the west would have run straight to 
Wyoming and then settled in reverse.

Even with no land masses to form a "Gulf of Mexico" there would be a 
continuous stream of moisture out of the east along the equator, which 
would shift northward during our summer.  This feature is called the 
"Tropical Jet Stream".

There tends to be a high pressure cell located over the Gulf of Mexico, 
and that moves weather upward and around in a clockwise direction, just 
as our off-shore high deflects storminess over to Idaho.

When the tropical jet heads west, it dumps a lot of moisture in the 
mountains of New Mexico.  The national lab for lightning research is 
located there for that reason.

Bill
S. Oregon

P. S. - I can no longer read Lynda's posts.  The one point she made 
about better and worse grasses wasn't really germane to the discussion, 
and it was so buried in personal insults that it wasn't worth it.  Let 
me know if she submits anything of a factual nature.