You are browsing the archive for October 2017 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
27 October 2017
The Important Weather Satellite You Haven’t Heard Of
The satellite images you see on TV every day are usually from the new GOES-16 which is way up there, at a tenth of the distance to the Moon! But there are other weather satellites you probably don’t know about in polar orbit that are just as important. These satellites have instruments that can measure winds/ temperatures and moisture at many different levels as they fly over the poles, and …
17 October 2017
Weird, Wild Weather In Europe: Saharan Dust in Moscow and Portugal Smoke in Finland
Thanks to other NASA satellites and the NASA GEOS 5 model, you can see where the smoke is and where the Saharan dust is. Note that it originates from the fires in Portugal where the dust is from empty wastes of the Sahara. All of this was pulled northward as it was caught up in the circulation around Ophelia. Ophelia reached category 3 status and now holds the record for …
16 October 2017
UK and Ireland Smacked Hard By Ophelia
My close friends in Wales report the “wheely bins” are all over the place. The obs at Dublin airport show winds have gusted to right at 60 mph during the afternoon and evening, and on Anglesey, in Wales the winds reach 65 mph! Here is a view fo the storm from the Meteosat (ctsy Univ. of Dundee’s downlink station). FYI: Ophelia is no longer a hurricane. As it moved over the much …
12 October 2017
Roger Rabbit’s No Longer Running Accuwx. Now He’s Going to Run NOAA
This: … and my response, (written in 2013) when Accuwx started selling snake oil 45-day weather forecasts. Click here to read the post from 2013. This is not going to go over very well inside NOAA and that may be the greatest understatement of the year.
10 October 2017
California Burning on Such A Snowy Day
The snow in Denver and the firestorm in California today are intimately connected. When a strong high-pressure system moves into Utah and Colorado, the winds blow from the northeast over the Sierra’s and the Coast Range in California. Air has weight and it accelerates as it rolls downhill and it also accelerates as it is funnelled into the canyons. The result is an air mass that was already dry, being …
4 October 2017
Teaching Kids Science Is Getting Easier
In the past, many people worries that many home-school parents did so because of religious objections to evolution, climate change science and geology. This is still a concern in the science community, but there are nearly 2 million kids being homeschooled now, and I suspect that most just want their kids to be well prepared for college, with high critical thinking skills. I think that’s great. Indeed, the most important aspect …
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.