Sunday, January 31, 2010

Was the Lunar Halo Legend Correct?

 
Click on Image for a large view
Two days after the Lunar Halo in the previous post, we had about one inch of snow.  According to the legend, count the stars inside the halo and a storm comes that many days after.  I counted 3 stars.  Well, I'll give it one day, but what about the people who saw the halo and didn't get any snow at all.  Anyone living north of I-70 in the Kansas City area didn't get any snow and I know for a fact lots of people up there saw the halo.  What happens when you see a halo like the one you see above.  It was taken February 23, 2007.  I count roughly 27 or so stars inside the halo.  I checked the weather for 27 days after that date and found these days with precipitation:
Feb 24 .57"
Feb 25 .03"
Feb 28 1.73"
Feb 29 .09"
Mar 09 .16"
Mar 11 .01"
Mar 12 .01"
Mar 20 .31"
Mar 21 .01"

There was moisture on nine days and the most precipitation occurred one, two, three and twenty six days after the halo.

I don't think the number of stars method works, but I also don't think a storm is a sure thing soon after a halo either.

1 comment:

  1. From David Neuenschwander:

    Even with fairly heavy cloud cover the halo was the brightest I've ever seen in Deepwater, MO around 10:30. Moon was hazy in center and certainly no stars were visible anywhere in the sky. We got about 6 inches of snow with the next storm, much more this time than KC.

    A friend from Frontenac got great shots from there. I'm trying to get some to share. Only partly cloudy and most stars show in his exposures. I like the red tinge on the inside of the ring you can sometimes see. Much more prevalent in the smaller halo during partial phases of lunar eclipses.

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