There are three forces of nature to discuss today. The first is the weather forecast. As it heads out to sea, a low pressure system is going to slide south of the city. We can expect light rain to begin this afternoon and last until noon tomorrow. Today's high will approach 60. Saturday will be a little cooler. Skies should clear by Sunday but you'll want a fleece-lined Easter bonnet as the high may not reach 50 and it will be breezy.
A more powerful force of nature, Neko Case, will be playing in town Monday night. Monday should be inappropriately pleasant for a singer enamored of tornadoes. In an interview (skip to 2:15) weather geek Case explains that the title of her new album, Middle Cyclone, comes from the meteorological term mesocyclone, which is the whirling column of air inside a thunderstorm that gives rise to tornadoes.
Finally, on this day in 1815 Mount Tambora, the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history, exploded in Indonesia. Tambora blasted the equivalent of all of Manhattan to a depth of a mile into the air. The eruption put so much sulfur-containing junk into the atmosphere that the climate cooled for several years after. 1816 is known as the "Year Without a Summer". Snow fell in southern New England in June. Upstate New York and New England had frost in every summer month. The resulting crop failures were a major reason for the westward expansion of the country. On the plus side, the gloomy weather of 1816 is believed to have inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein.
