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1 January 2016
December 2015 Re-writes The Record Books. So Does the Entire Year.
December 2015 is in the record books and it was not just the warmest December on record for much of the Eastern Seaboard, it broke the old records by an amount that’s best described as incredible. This is what happens when you combine the strongest El Nino event on record, with the hottest year on record globally, along with the hottest oceans on record as well. Dr. Michael Mann at …
28 December 2015
Bizarre December Weather Continues
The Garland, Texas tornado (on Boxing Day) has been rated EF 4 with winds around 200 mph. The Doppler radar network now using dual polarization made it possible to know that the tornado was on the ground and lofting debris into the air. This is perfect example of how fundamental science research can lead to life saving technology. Below is an update on the Dallas area tornado outbreak from …
24 December 2015
Long Track Tornado In Mississippi in Late December!
The image above shows intense rotation caused by a violent tornado near Holly Springs in Miss. this afternoon. Check out the YouTube video of this long track tornado below. December tornadoes happen but a long track violent tornado in late December is very rare. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Tj58drT2zYg Highs will climb into the 70’s, and break the record highs in most areas of the Mid-Atlantic and New England Thursday. Thunderstorms are possible …
29 November 2015
What A Cold Front!
A rather incredible surface temperature chart greeted meteorologists this afternoon. An extremely sharp frontal boundary separated very warm weather from unusually cold. Behind the front, temperatures were 10-20 degrees below average, and ahead of it 10-15 degrees above average, and in some spots the departure from normal was even greater. Look at the temperatures at 1 PM EST and you can see that towns in western MS were reporting temps. …
17 November 2015
I’ve Never Seen Hail Like This Before
Rain drops and hail stones need something to form around, and we refer to this as condensation nuclei. The image below shows something else though. A tornado in the Texas panhandle last night picked up stalks of corn, and lifted them high into the atmosphere, where water froze on it, turning it into a hail stone. The picture was taken by Johnny Goodson of Pampa,Texas. That was one powerful updraft, …
6 November 2015
Did Climate Change Make “This” Storm Worse? Perhaps.
The AMS has published its annual look at how climate change may have impacted certain major weather events, and it makes for some fascinating reading. This kind of research is called an attribution study, and they can be very informative. One of the most famous, was done by Dr. Ben Santer (Nat. Academies) that showed how different greenhouse warming looks vs. warming due to an increase in energy from the …
6 October 2015
Two Incredible Images
These two images speak for themselves. One is from the Suomi satellite, which can take images of the Earth lit by moonlight alone. and the second image needs little or no explanation…
1 October 2015
Historic Storm Threatens the Mid-Atlantic
Hurricane Joaquin is now a Cat 3 storm with 115 mph winds tonight, but even if it does not turn toward the Mid-Atlantic coastline, we will see a significant coastal Nor’easter across the Mid-Atlantic from New Jersey to North Carolina including the Delaware and Maryland Beaches. This is because of a strong pressure gradient between a large Canadian high pressure over New England and a low pressure system in the Carolinas. …
29 June 2015
The Great Derecho Was Three Years Ago Today
Three years ago tonight I was introducing the viewers of my evening weather broadcast to a new weather term: The Derecho. Here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, I first mentioned it on air around 5 PM. Through the early evening, I watched it get closer and closer, and by mid evening it was likely that we would be affected. When it arrived at our studios in Salisbury, the …
20 June 2015
The Ghost of Bill Heads for The East Coast
It’s a summer weekend here in the Mid-Atlantic, and that means thousands are on the beaches from Fire Island To Ocean City in Maryland, while at the same time, the Firefly music festival just north of Dover in Delaware has drawn a crowd of 95,000 people to see such acts as Paul McCartney (I typed that name standing up of course) and Snoop Dog. Now, add in the remains of …
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.