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27 May 2010
The Daily Mail Continues It's Record Of NEVER Getting a Story On Science Right
The MAIL calls this a shelf cloud. IT’s NOT. It’s a Cumulonimbus capillatus. Note to the MAIL: You have one of the World’s top experts on clouds. Pick up a copy of the CLOUD BOOK by Richard Hamblyn. It’s published by the MET OFFICE. Oh, and here is a shelf cloud: All you had to do was ask somebody who knew something about clouds… The soap box is now free….
20 April 2010
The Ash Is Thinning!
Great news for air travelers this evening. The eruption in Iceland is now putting out much less ash and the cloud is much lower. The low level ash is not headed toward the UK as the image above shows. The snow-cap that covered the volcano has melted away. This has reduced the steam/ash combination that was climbing to over 3,000 meters. Even more good news tonight. The upper level and …
22 January 2010
Huntsville Tornado Rated an EF2
We continue to get pics and video from viewers after yesterday’s tornado here in the Huntspatch (Huntsville AL). Viewer Lauryn Draper shot some great video fo it and put it up on YouTube. The video was shot a few blocks from our studios. The tornado WAS on the ground through most of this video I suspect. Tornadoes are wind and not cloud, so just because you could not see the …
3 January 2010
Stunner of a Sunset in Christchurch Sunday Night
and here it is: Ann and I are off to pick up our Antarctic Clothes this afternoon! US military Plane South early tomorrow.
18 November 2009
Where The Clouds Are…
Nasa has released an interesting image of Earth. It’s a composite of hundreds of images of the Earths clouds. No borders have been added. Just clouds. Where there are clouds most of the time you see gray. In places where the satellite saw clouds some of the time, but not often, you get a blue gray and areas where the satellite saw almost no cloud in any of the satellite …
26 October 2009
Cirrocumulus Under What?
As I came into the station car park on Monday, I noticed a beautiful deck of Cirrocumulus Undulatas clouds high over the Huntspatch. The ripples in the cloud are formed the same way that ripples form in a pond when you throw a rock in. Waves in the atmosphere can be caused by air flowing over mountains, or from strong convection. Actually there are quite a few processes, but anything …
26 July 2009
Clouds & Ice Make Climate News
This last week brought an update on the Arctic sea ice from the NSIDC folks. It also saw the publication of a paper in SCIENCE that made almost all of us who follow climate science, sit up and notice. Neither is particularly good news, and that may be an understatement. First the ice- or lack of same. 2007 saw the lowest amount of Arctic Ocean ice on record. I happened …
8 July 2009
Noctilucent Clouds, The Shuttle, Siberia and Myth Busters
Yes they all have something in common. One of the negatives of working as a Meteorologist in TV, is that you are usually the only one on duty who has a background, and avid interest in science. The rest are (and I love them) News Weasels! ( I actually work with a bunch of supremely talented people, who save me from my grammar frequently) One of our directors is the …
5 July 2009
The Best Used Bookstore in The World? Maybe!
While in Portland, Oregon for a Climate seminar and weather conference last month, I was told that I MUST visit Powell’s books. I’m glad I did. It has to be one of the best bookstores around. My daughter swears that Shakespeare Books in Paris is better, but I have not been in that one. Still, if you are in either city, take this as a hearty recommendation! Powell’s is huge with …
4 July 2009
A Picture Worth a Million Dollars (and it cost about that much too!)
To me the most fascinating part of synoptic forecasting is Satellite Meteorology. I can still remember working in Tulsa at KJRH TV where we had a GOES Unifax machine. Every 15 minutes a high resolution image would spit out. During the day the resolution was 1 km on a visible image. This was good enough to see jet contrails at times. One afternoon a large contrail was visible across Northeast …
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.