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9 January 2011
Deep South Snow
It looks like another big snow is about to hit the Deep South. It’s never easy to forecast snow here and this event is no exception. That said, it’s quite possible that this system will produce an event seen once every couple of decades. The images below are the snow forecasts from different numerical weather prediction models. Some have the snow northward into TN, and others lighter and further south. …
29 December 2010
New York and London Shiver In The Snow; Put The Blame On the NAO!
Take a look at the image below. It shows the temperatures relative to normal over the Northern Hemisphere the first week of December. It’s from NASA, and based on data from the Aqua satellite. The cold in the Eastern USA and in Europe is offset by incredible warmth in Greenland. Any meteorologist worth his salt will immediately recognize this as a highly negative North Atlantic Oscillation. I wrote about the …
27 December 2010
Boxing Day Blizzard Blasts Northeast Coast
Meteorologists call it a bomb. A couple of reasons for that I suspect. 1. The weather map looks like it has a bomb crater on it. 2. The pressure in these intense storms that go up the East Coast usually drops incredibly quickly. In other words, it drops like a bomb. This storm saw a pressure drop of around 19 millibars in 12 hours. The day after Christmas 2010 will …
25 December 2010
Rare White Christmas In Southeast USA
For people who live in Tennessee, Georgia or Alabama, a white Christmas truly is just a dream. Not this Christmas though! A heavy blanket of wet snow fell before sunrise on Christmas morning across much of North Alabama. Some areas in the higher elevations of NE Alabama had over 6 inches of snow! In 1989 a dusting of snow fell on Christmas day in the region, and back in 1962 …
23 December 2010
Frost Flowers In Alabama
A couple of viewers sent me some pictures of strange ice formations today. They are very beautiful (and rather rare) specimens of what are called “FROST FLOWERS”. They form in areas where the ground is still warm but the air is quite cold. You usually see them after a sudden but intense cold snap. I’ve only seen them one time, but have been on the lookout for them ever since! …
16 December 2010
How Meteorologists Know to Forecast Ice Instead of Snow
We had a significant ice storm in parts of Alabama and Tennessee on Wednesday. It started as sleet and then changed to freezing rain. Driving was a mess in many spots, and it was not an easy forecast. The easy part was the type of precipitation. I knew it would not be snow but mainly freezing rain. Take a look at the image below. It’s the weather balloon (rawinsonde) sounding …
19 November 2010
The Trip To Grandma’s House Is Looking Cold!
Next Wednesday will be the busiest travel day of the year. This means a lot of questions for weather forecasters like myself. So here’s a bit of what we are looking at as we head into the weekend before Thanksgiving. The surface charts show the coldest air of the season has settled into Alberta and Saskatchewan. At Noon today (Central time) it was -19C (-2°F) in Saskatoon! The surface chart …
18 November 2010
NOAA-2010 tied for warmest year on the temperature record.
Last week, NASA released the October data and today the National Climate Data Center (NOAA) has released their independent analysis. This past October was the 8th warmest globally, and 6th warmest looking at land temperatures only. What will actually make the news is the January through October temperatures. They are tied with 1998 as the warmest on record. With La Nina acting to cool the planet right now, this is …
12 November 2010
Floating layers of snow-and an illustration of Occam’s razor
Georg von Tiesenhausen emailed me some amazing pictures today. They appear to show floating layers of snow surrounding trees. Pretty cool, no??So what caused this?
Dr. von Tiesenhausen has an explanation that is very thoughtful.
22 September 2010
Taking Weather Obs At The Bottom of The World
Ann Posegate, my travel partner to the Pole last January, has a fantastic piece in Weatherwise magazine this month. It’s all about the difficulties of taking weather observations and forecasting in Antarctica. Highly Recommended! I never look at an ob from down there without thinking of the people who are there.. Later, Dan
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.