You are browsing the archive for August 2020 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
17 August 2020
Did We Break the Planetary Temperature Record Sunday? Probably So!
We may have broken the Earth’s high-temperature record today. Furnace Creek, California in Death Valley reached 130 degrees(F) today at 3:41PM PDT. This is the first time since 1913 that it’s gotten that hot in Death Valley, and it may NEVER have gotten that hot there. The World Meteorological Organisation still lists the 134F degrees in Death Valley in July 1913 as the hottest temperature recorded on Earth, but most …
15 August 2020
NWS Office Issues First Ever Fire Tornado Warning
Pyrocumulonimbus. That’s the term for a cumulonimbus cloud that develops when a large wildfire heats the air up so much that a giant cloud develops. They can develop even if the atmosphere is stable since the forcing is all from the heat of the fire below. If there is wind shear in the atmosphere, they can rotate and sometimes produce a tornado. We’ve seen quite a few of these over …
12 August 2020
Severe Crop Damage From Midwest Derecho Visible from Space
The damage from the severe derecho in the Midwest Tuesday is visible from space. Early estimates are that the damage may exceed a billion dollars. Click on the image above for a larger view. It’s not uncommon for the paths of large tornadoes to be visible from weather satellites but the crop damage over such a wide swatch is not something you see every day. The corn crops across this …
11 August 2020
Disease Experts Are Now Getting The Climate Science Treatment
I have to feel sorry for Dr. Anthony Fauci. He has received several death threats and had to hire security for his family. So have other disease experts and the simple reason is that their science conflicts with the political worldview of some politicians and their supporters. The science does not care about your political party, it cares about what you can test and what you can show. If …
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.