Glen C Devitt, Member 24,874 recently came across an article about how steam from data centres may be disrupting aviation along Columbia River. The article on MSN tells us that residents in The Dalles area are wondering if the Google data centre is also changing their weather as steam venting from cooling towers collects along the Columbia River on chilly mornings. This steam is visible from the Interstate but is possibly more of a problem for pilots flying in and out of Columbia Gorge Regional Airport with some blaming “Google Cloud” for dense concentrations of fog that sometimes effects aircraft traffic.
Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society says “while the clouds along the Columbia River are nothing new, the rising cloud towers over the data centres certainly are. These would be classified as Cumulus homogenitus and are clearly driven by the rising convection currents resulting from the heat of the data centres“
Read the full article here
Image Credit: Steam emerging from a Google data centre in The Dalles last December. © Vickie Connor Oregonlive.com
