Habagat is the Southwest Monsoon

The gusty winds from the west and excessive rainfall often turn to dangerous typhoons. While the rain
may ease farmers to irrigate the rice fields, the heavy rainfall may trigger floods, landslides, and
potentially endanger residents living near riverbanks.

Habagat, or the southwest monsoon

season, occurs from late June to October and is characterized by frequent heavy rainfall and humid
weather.

he Zuni Indians thought a red moon brought water. Seventeenth-century English farmers believed in a
"dripping moon," which supplied rain depending on whether its crescent was tilted up or down. Now
scientists have found evidence for another adage: Rain follows the full and new phases of the moon.

Most studies on the weather and moon phases appeared in the 1960s and seemed to lend credence to
lunar folklore. Researchers detected more peaks in rainfall in the days after the full and new moons, for
example. Recently, three researchers decided to revive the issue when they stumbled across a link
between moon phases and stream runoff while working on another project. They will soon publish in
Geophysical Research Letters one of the most comprehensive studies yet, with more than a century of
data from across the continental United States.

The researchers, a team comprised of geographers and climatologists from Arizona State University
(ASU), Tempe, and the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, North Carolina, first analyzed
their original stream runoff finding in more depth, pulling data from almost 11,000 U.S. Geological
Survey stations on inland streams that had runoff measurements from as far back as 1900. After
calculating the moon's phase for each measurement, they discovered a slight increase in stream flow
around the quarter moon, halfway between the full and new moons.

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That by itself didn't mean the moon directly affected rain—a previous study suggested that tides could
be raising the water table, feeding the higher stream levels. To show a link to rainfall, the researchers
turned to the U.S. Historical Climatology Network, a database with daily precipitation information for
more than 1200 stations from as early as 1895. True to farmers' wisdom, precipitation tended to rise a
few days before the quarter moon.

It's not a strong link. "The lunar variations don't, for example, explain the Pakistani floods," says Peter
Thorne, a climate scientist at NCDC, who was not part of the research. But they do seem to account for
1% to 2% of the total changes in rainfall or stream runoff. "It's a real effect, but it's a real small effect,"
Thorne says.

The researchers still aren't sure how the moon exerts this effect. Most guesses also come from the
1960s and '70s. Back then, some scientists suggested that the moon's orbit could distort the
magnetosphere, a region of ionized particles surrounding Earth's protective magnetic field. This might
allow more particles from space into the atmosphere, where they could trigger rain when they collide
with clouds. Others speculated that the moon's orbit could increase the amount of meteoric dust
reaching Earth, which could also trigger rain when it hit clouds, or that the moon could create a pressure
bulge that would affect storm systems—a hypothesis floated by the study's lead author, Randall Cerveny
of ASU Tempe.

When the moon is high in the sky, it creates bulges in the planet's atmosphere that creates
imperceptible changes in the amount of rain that falls below. New University of Washington research to
be published in Geophysical Research Letters shows that the lunar forces affect the amount of rain –
though very slightly.

What happens if it rains during an eclipse?

“Because they are driven by convective currents (from the sun's heat), cumulus clouds tend to dissipate
as totality nears,” Beatty revealed. Unfortunately, if the clouds are too thick, and especially if rain is
present, much of the magic of the eclipse is lost.

ooling from solar eclipses is greater when the Sun is higher in the sky, because the Sun's obscuration has
a larger relative effect on the ...

The eclipse event occurred in the monsoon season, and it is typical to observe a colder day with ~100%
relative humidity in the afternoon ...
The direction of the wind. Amihan is from the East. Habagat is from the Southwest.

9 answers

32 votes:

Amihan is the name for the cool and dry northeast monsoon wind that blo