Creating fearsome weather, indoors.
ON AUGUST DAYS IN THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE, THE TROPICAL heat steam-cooks everything. UPS drivers slap wet bandannas to their foreheads. Pirate-themed mini golf parks, shimmering like mirages, lay deserted. But a few miles from the Gulf motels and sandy beach malls, engineers like Kirk Parrish face the worst snowstorms of their lives. Sheathed in parkas, they cold-start their pickups and drive straight into stinging, minus-40-degree whiteout blizzards. Indoors.
“It’s absolutely crazy seeing an indoor snowstorm,” says Parrish, a diesel engineer at Ford Motor Company whose job is to make sure your F-150 can start and run in Prudhoe Bay extremes. To prove it can, and tweak things if it can’t, he treks each summer to the McKinley Climatic Laboratory at Elgin Air Force Base. Sprawled over several buildings, the lab is the largest indoor-weather testing facility in the world and can conjure nearly any meteorological hazard: ice storms, corrosive fog, driving rains (up to 27 inches per hour), 165-degree heat, jungle humidity, and 40-mile-per-hour sandstorms.
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
They Might Be Giants
A photographer-and-ecologist team are on a mission to document the forests’ mightiest members.
Droplet Stoppers
Covid-19 made face masks a crucial part of every outfit, and we’re likely to don them in the future when we feel ill. Fortunately, there’s a style for every need.
Landing a Lifeline
For those whose livelihood depends on the ocean, a covid-spurred interruption in the seafood market might speed progress toward a more sustainable future—for them and for fish.
Headtrip – Your brain on video chat
Dating, Catching up with family, and going to happy hour are best in person.
Behind The Cover
Butterflies may seem delicate, but they are surprisingly tough.
Tales From the Field – A cold one on mars
Kellie Gerardi, bioastronautics researcher at the International Institute for Austronautical Science
The Needs Of The Few
Designing with the marginalized in mind can improve all of out lives.
Life On The Line
On the Western edge of Borneo, a novel conservation-minded health-care model could provide the world with a blueprint to stop next pandemic before it starts.
waste watchers
YOU CAN TURN FOOD SCRAPS INTO FERTILIZER IN ALMOST ANY CONTAINER. THESE BINS USE THEIR OWN METHODS TO ENCOURAGE THE PROCESS, BUT BOTH KEEP BUGS AND STINK AT BAY.
why can't i forget how to ride a bike?
LEARNING TO PEDAL IS NO EASY FEAT.
