Newton Rotary Meeting Tuesday Jan 21 2014
Mary led us in a nice invocation
Susanne McInerney led us singing God Bless America
Stella introduced our guests:
guest speaker today is Mike Iacono, Blue Hill Observatory
Steven Sowa, friend of Susanne's
Ron Faccenda, Sue's husband
Jim Peghiny, Sue's dad
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Jeff Tucker: The Death by Chocolate fundraiser is this weekend! This represents 60-70% of the income we need for the year. Waltham has more committee members but Newton usually outperforms with volunteers day of, our lottery basket, and our auction items. So it is a good even mix of efforts from both clubs. So please help out as much as you can.
Chris Chu: Some missing photos from our newer members on club runner. Please see Chris to get updated. Also, Mary and Tom still don't have pictures for some reason so lets work on getting clubrunner up to date.
Raffle: pot is about $1000. Mary got ticket pulled. King of Hearts. Yea! (I'm mean too bad... ) :)
HAPPY DOLLARS
Indira: Happy for Mary to be back
Susanne: Stephen interning from NNHS
Marc: Daughter gave birth to a grandson named Aiden.
Chris: MTK event was nice event. Dick and Tony.
Maureen: Happy Mary is back.
Paul K. Daughter Jasmine is pregnant.
David: Girls and Boys Club comedian club
Paul Sullivan: was in American Girl with his grandkids.
Sue: for her three guests, her last tuition payment
Tom: anything that is broken, watch, clock, marriage. Missing DBC this Sunday.
Marie: Sue's guests are our guests. Also, son has stomach virus today but its his day to be with his father tonight. Thank God.
BlueHill.org
Founded by Rotch on Feb 1, 1885
in 1989 labeled a national historic site
6K acre park. Observatory is part of the park and was conserved.
Rotch went to MIT. Bought the land on the hill. Later professor of Meteorology. Traveled abroad and brought back many tools to the observatory.
He would hang the right flag for the weather. Just like the John Hancock.
He had many Mercury Barometers were used back then.
Atmospheric Sounding. Two kites fly above the hill and back down.
Up to 13,500 feet by 1904.
Rebuilt the tower in 1908. Mixed 800 tons of concrete and cost $5K back then.
Great New England Hurricane of 1938
121 mph wind speed gusts of 186 mph
Lost one wind instrument.
Weather Radar experiments began in the 1950's. 1954 Worcester tornado, category 5. Damage was observed in 1954. Found damage on the hill.
He took a picture of a Sun Pillar, Feb 7, 2009
They're unique because of the Number of parameters that they measure, length they've been measuring, and continuing to use traditional instruments to ensure long term consistency.
Ombroscope - measures time of rain - dates back to 1940.
They track annual mean temperature. 10 and 30 year running means. He showed us a plot of extreme temps too. recent decades more high temperatures. Thaw time of pond is 2 weeks shorter than a decade ago.
Most difficult things to measure is snowfall because no one lives on the hill.
most was 12 feet in 1990's.
Amount of bright sunshine. use an instrument called Campbell-stokes. looks like a magnifying glass. Original instrument was missing one day. Story came out that high schoolers took it. FBI got involved and they found the kids and they brought it back quickly. Most sunshine was in the 60's.
Wind speed is decreasing. he explained possibly why and a study to explain why.
Mary adjourned at 1:30 pm.
Submitted by Marie Presti.
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