Warm Start, Cold End to Week

Spuyten Duyvil Sunset by jschumacher on Flickr

You know the old saying about how sausage is delicious but you don't want to see how it is made? The same could be said about this week's weather. Behind the scenes there's all sorts of goings on about back door cold fronts, high pressure systems, ridges and troughs and the like. The end result should be unseasonably warm conditions through Wednesday. Today's high in the city will be in the upper 70s. Tomorrow's high could be anywhere in the 70s, depending on how far east the back door cold front moves. Skies should gradually clear through Wednesday, when the high will again reach the mid 70s.

A real cold front is expected to arrive Wednesday night or Thursday. That may bring a few showers but the bigger effect will be to cool things down. Thursday high will only be around 70. Friday is likely to only reach the low 60s, with Saturday being cooler still.

Last night's orange sunset was so striking we had to take a photo on our MetroNorth trip. The beautiful sunset reminded us of the crayon sketches used to illustrate the colorful sunsets that happened after the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. The eruption greatly affected shipping lanes through Indonesia so the British government commissioned a study on the effects of the eruption. The Symons Report, as the study was known, was the first thorough scientific look at the effects of an explosive volcanic eruption.

An eruption like Krakatoa can blast fine particles and sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere, where they can remain for years, and where they enhance the scattering of red light. Krakatoa sunsets may have influenced Edvard Munch when he painted The Scream. Fun insidery report trivia: In the final galley proofs the name of the volcano was methodically anglicized from the Indonesian Krakatau to Krakatoa. More fun: Krakatau is west of Java but the makers of the fantabulous 1969 movie Krakatoa: East of Java moved the volcano because east sounded more dramatic.