Predicting Weather By The Moon - Xavier University Libraries

Weather By The Moon
atmosphere at the sides, really in effect leaving only the
atmosphere in the whole lower hemisphere lower. An analogy
would be a torch shining on a basketball. All the top hemisphere
would be illuminated and the back side would be in darkness. The
transition point would be at the ‘equator’ and would just be an
imaginary line, not any sort of band. There would not be a halfway
situation where it would be half-lit at the sides or even a level of
dark at the sides that could be compared to the underneath. The
bulge on the Moon’s near side is just a greater volume of gases,
that’s all, and therefore the “tide” would be higher. The
atmosphere can move very quickly to be under the Moon;
probably quicker than the Moon itself travels. There is just more
atmosphere in that region of sky. The upper parts of the
atmosphere would get stretched more toward the Moon, that is,
that upper part that is furthest from Earth’s gravitational influence.
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