We’re all familiar with rivers of water on Earth’s surface, but rivers of a different kind also exist in the sky. Atmospheric rivers are flows of airborne moisture that are thousands of miles long and hundreds of miles wide. Each of these moisture flows can transport more water at any given time than the entire Amazon river, the largest river on Earth.
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According to the heavens–more specifically, the Sun–astronomical winter is about to get underway in the Northern Hemisphere. Also known as the Winter Solstice, the new season will begin at 4:49 Universal Coordinated Time on December 22nd, which is Monday night, December 21st in North America, and Tuesday morning, December 22nd in Europe. That is when the sun will be at its southernmost point in relation to the equator. The first day of astronomical winter is also the shortest day of the year in terms of daylight in the Northern Hemisphere.
People who live in such different locales as New Orleans, Louisiana, Chicago, Illinois, and Banda Aceh, Indonesia have at some point faced massive, deadly swells of water. In a crisis mode they may not have known or cared to know about the technical term or cause of their imminent destruction. However, the three superficially similar phenomena that devastated those communities originated from completely different causes with different implications for predictability.
Transitioning out of Fall and into the Winter months brings an increasing threat for wintry precipitation, exciting for some but a headache for many others. While some imagine winter as picturesque landscapes with lightly falling snow quietly painting the evergreens, others see traffic nightmares and a paralyzing coating of ice that leaves millions without power.