More Rain for the Town of Norden
Michele, Juergen
Because I am a hobby meteorologist – no wonder – I “make my own weather”. Before I get on my bicycle to go to the tennis court, I check the local rain radar to learn whether I need to take also my indoor shoes with me or not.
About four weeks ago I realised that on that map there were two points close to the town of Norden (Ostfriesland, Germany) where there was rain whereas no rain was in the 100km surrounding. Because this was not just one time I started regular observations. I realised that this situation appeared relatively often and it was not just by chance that it would happen just here. …
On Thursday, June 16, 2011, I found this situation:
Norderney is the name of the little island where the red dot is given. The town of Norden on that map is directly where the ‘o’ of Norderney is written. Also the ‘e’ is a spot for special rain.
On Sunday, July 17, 2011, this situation would persist for more than 4 hours – only rain in Norden:
… So I started to look at the special situation in Norden. Here we are in the area of highest wind farm density in Germany. There are a number of real big ones (5MW).
Of course the case “only rain in “Norden” needs special weather conditions. There is a sounding station on the little air port of “Emden”. The sounding may be retrieved on internet page (station number 10200): http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.html
A situation like this one below – it is very labile – the local effect of a wind generator may create enough air to be shifted upwards to start a rain event.
All this does not happen by chance!
On July 16, 2011 the situation close to Norden was such, that there was rain from 3:00MESZ till 8:30MESZ (5 1?2 hours) locally. There was almost no rain in the surrounding.
The local night temperatures were not sufficient to create the necessary updrafts to initiate rainfall.
Mountains and special heat sources are not found close to Norden.
Nearby wind farms may create the necessary updraft to create rain in case the moisture laden air at higher altitudes is coming over Ley Bay south-west of Norden. If it is labile for initiation rain will fall.
I will keep watching …
Download original document: “More Rain for the Town of Norden [1]”
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/documents/more-rain-for-the-town-of-norden/
URLs in this post:
[1] More Rain for the Town of Norden: https://docs.wind-watch.org/More-Rain-for-the-Town-of-Norden.pdf