You are browsing the archive for February 2013 - Page 2 of 2 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
11 February 2013
Tornado Strikes Hattiesburg MS. Tornadic Storms Rumbling into South Alabama As well.
There is only weak instability but the wind shear is very conducive to tornados ahead of a cold front. Meteorologists look at a particular type of low-level wind shear called the storm relative helicity. Values above 200 are a warning sign and above 300 are a BIG warning to look for tornadoes. I am seeing values over 600 across South AL now so the threat remains.
10 February 2013
Buried in Snow The View from Space
This blizzard was one of the strongest on record in many areas of New England. The top snowfall total was 40 inches in Hamden Connecticut! …SELECTED STORM TOTAL SNOWFALL IN INCHES WHERE THE EVENT HAS ENDED… …CONNECTICUT… HAMDEN 40.0 MILFORD 38.0 CLINTONVILLE 37.0 OXFORD 36.2 EAST HADDAM 35.5 FAIRFIELD 35.0 TOLLAND 35.0 NEW HAVEN 34.3 GLASTONBURY 33.5 NEW HARTFORD 33.0 STRATFORD 33.0 COVENTRY 32.5 HARTFORD 27.0 …ILLINOIS… BEACH PARK 7.0 …
8 February 2013
Severe Blizzard Bears Down on Boston and Much Of New England
The intensity of the low pressure (a classic nor’easter) will bring gusts to hurricane force along the New England coast. The image below (courtesy of Penn State Meteorology) shows surface winds (in knots) at midnight Friday night. Below is the surface pressures for Late Friday. Meteorologists call a rapidly deepening low pressure system like this a “bomb” because it looks like a bomb hit the weather map! The color bands are a measure of …
7 February 2013
Minnesota Public Radio Begins Climate Cast
This is a repost (courtesy Bud Ward) at the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media. February 6, 2013 Meteorologist Paul Huttner sits down weekly with MPR ‘Daily Circuit’ host to explore new climate science findings and warming impacts statewide and beyond. A Minnesota Public Radio meteorologist is venturing where many of his peers in commercial broadcasting have feared to tred: MPR’s Paul Huttner, with top management sharing his concerns …
6 February 2013
February Is A Good Month To Check Out The Night Sky
Although the asteroid near miss this month will not be easily visible, there are some great things to see in the night sky. NASA JPL has started producing some videos on what to see, and I will start sharing them here as well!
5 February 2013
BIG Space Rock to Pass Inside The Orbit of GOES Weather Satellites
A space rock will pass perilously close to Earth on 15 February, but it will NOT hit us. This is a REAL near miss, and the rock will actually pass INSIDE the orbits of the geostationary communication satellites and the GOES weather satellites. These satellites orbit the Earth at an altitude of 36,000 KM. NASA has a good video that will answer your questions here: It’s a dangerous solar system …
4 February 2013
The National Severe Storms Lab PING Project Needs your Help
From the NSSL PING Website: The National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) needs YOUR help with a research project! If you live in the area shown on the map, the the Precipitation Identification Near the Ground project (PING) wants YOU to watch and report on precipitation. PING is looking for young, old, and in-between volunteers to make observations—teachers, classes and families too! We have collected over 45,000 observations since 2006, already …
Happy Belated Ground Hog Day
Spotted online at cartoonink.com. He is right about one thing, anyone who tells Canadians in early February that spring is just around the corner needs to have his head examined. and this one.. and The worst thing about Ground Hog Day is the number of questions meteorologists like myself get asking of there is any truth behind it…
1 February 2013
Greenland Ice Core May Rewrite Some Climate Books
I spent two weeks in the Summer of 2010 at the top of the World. To be specific I was in the middle of the Greenland Ice sheet at NEEM, about 650 miles from the North Pole, and while there I witnessed the recovery of the oldest core of ice ever recovered from Greenland. NEEM stand for North Greenland Eemian ice core. That ice core has now been analysed, and it had …
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.