Wet weather for a few hours.

Midday Thursday.

Actual cold front is lagging from St. Louis area into Indiana and looks like the front will have little additional southward push.  Early morning line of strong thunderstorms over IL/MO have virtually died upon reaching the Ohio River.  Upper support left this system long ago, so it should diminish by mid afternoon.  However, with the front drapped over OH/IN/IL and pockets of moisture all the way back into the southwestern U.S., clusters of showers/thunderstorms will fire as short-wave energy moves along the jet stream.  Chances look good for another outbreak of thunderstorms along the front tonight - models keep the bulk of the rain over central/northern IN with only small chance for us.  Another system is predicted to move along the front tomorrow - looks to be a little stronger so a slightly better chance for thunderstorms late day/evening with that. 

Upper ridge builds over the IN/KY area tomorrow night into the weekend, so rain chances drop and the temperatures build - should reach 75-80 Sat/Sun.

Thought I'd pass along a couple of interesting pictures I stumbled onto today.

This one, from JAXA/NASA/Reuters, shows a closeup of the sun's surface emitting it's magnetic fields from a sunspot.  The sunspot is the darker part of the sun's surface - on the lower right of picture.

This rainbow (from AFP) is from Jerusalem and shows the rainbow over some mountains outside the city.

Comments

[Don]

Tom,

How are scientists able to know that the inner layers of the sun are?

"The sun and its atmosphere are made up of several layers. From the inside out, the solar interior consists of the core, the radiative zone, and the convection zone. The sun's atmosphere is made up of the photosphere, the chromosphere, and the corona."

Thanks.

Don

Hi Don!
Solar researchers "know" the names of the sun's interior because they named them. Once the solar energy generation process was understood (nuclear fusion), they understood the requirement for an incredibly dense inner core (reactor). But, in order for us to be here to take advantage of the sun, some of the energy had to escape (the radiative zone). And observations had already told us the surface was very turbulent (like boiling water) - the convective zone. Even though the sun's energy takes just 7-8 minutes to reach us once it leaves the convective zone, it's been around a lot longer. It's estimated that the solar energy reaching Earth today was generated about 30,000 years ago! It takes 30,000 years (give or take a few thousand) to overcome the incredible gravity of the sun to reach the surface, then just 7-8 minutes to travel the roughly 93 million miles to Earth.
Tom Wills