You are browsing the archive for Forecasting Archives - Page 4 of 6 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
22 February 2010
East Coast Blizzard??- Models Are Still Flaky
The long range numerical weather prediction models continue to show wild run to run swings regarding the possible next winter storm to pound the Eastern USA. There is little doubt that something is coming, but the track and the amount of cold air is still very questionable. Here is an example of the differences. The picture below is from the DGEX. It’s a long range model run this afternoon and …
7 February 2010
Some Context to The Historic East Coast Blizzard
If you live in the Northeastern USA or Western Europe you are living through a very historic winter. Same for those living ,where I write this tonight, in Tulsa Oklahoma. Snow, snow and a lot more snow. Baltimore is buried under at least two feet tonight. What’s causing it? The Arctic Oscillation. (AO) It also goes by other names. Older forecasters like myself prefer the NAO for North Atlantic Oscillation. …
13 December 2009
Cocktail party facts about weather and climate models.
NASA has released this model of Earth’s weather from 9 days in last August. The model was run at a resolution of 7 km. This is a very high resolution for a global model. You can see a bigger picture of the model run HERE. It’s a stunning example of how well we can reproduce our atmosphere inside a computer! The highest resolution weather model I look at on a …
15 October 2009
California Mud- It's just getting Started
This past week has brought some serious flooding to California. This could not come at a worse time with so many hills and mountains denuded of ground cover by the Summer fires. No ground cover means nothing to hold the soaked soil in place, and it will take even less rain than normal to start the famous mud slide season. Here in my part of the world, it’s almost as …
5 October 2009
Is Climate Change Affecting Your Weather Now?? Yes
I have mentioned before the strange weather patterns recently and that a friend of mine at the Weather Channel has been looking into it in depth. It was Stu Ostro who first got me to looking at it from a climate perspective, and once he told me what to look for, I saw it showing up all over the place. You have to be careful about ascribing any weather event …
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 …
28 April 2009
The Future of Severe Weather Warnings
It amazes me that in the 21st century that people are still clamoring for more tornado sirens in their communities. These sirens are outrageously expensive, and perhaps the least effective way to warn people of severe weather. Yet, after every severe weather event, I will get several emails from folks complaining that they have no siren in their neighborhood. Just to be clear, the reasons these sirens are and should …
14 April 2009
Weather "Doctor Who" Would Love- Gravity Waves? (updates at bottom)
It sounds like something right of an episode of Doctor Who. High winds arrive suddenly, and disappear 4 hours later in a flash. That’s just what happened over North Alabama Sunday night. Sonic screw drivers, and a Tardis might help explain it, but I have a pretty good idea, just the same. I can promise that the Daleks had nothing to do with it. (Although I would not put it past the Cybermen). So what did happen to …
9 April 2009
Weather & Climate Models- Trust me this is interesting!
His name was Richardson. Lewis Fry Richardson. He was a British mathematician, and as a Quaker, also a pacifist. When World War one began, he enlisted as an ambulance driver to serve his country while adhering to his ideals. Richardson had the bright idea that the mathematical equations that govern the air, could be used to predict the weather. He decided to make a forecast, and divided the forecast area …
15 March 2009
Understanding Uncertainty
I had an email from a viewer last week, who was upset that he canceled his golf game three days in a row because I forecasted rain. He pointed out that it was Thursday, and the rain had finally started. My first thought was that he had gotten my forecast mixed up with someone else’s. (It happens frequently. I’ve been blamed for missing a snow forecast, when I was spot on!) …
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.