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1 April 2015
Jaw Dropping Images of Super Typhoon Maysak
NASA Astronauts have been sending back jaw dropping images of Super Typhoon Maysak, headed toward the Philippines with winds of nearly 240 km/hr. Astronaut Terry Virts uploaded some incredible photos of the eye of Maysak to his Twitter account as well and they provide one of the best views of an intense tropical cyclone ever made from low Earth orbit. The Super Typhoone is likely going to hit the northern Philippines in …
12 December 2014
What Do Category 5 Hurricanes Have To Do With The Amazon River?
This freshwater plume inhibits the mixing of colder water beneath the surface, and thus can add a lot of heat to an already powerful hurricane. The NASA Aquarius satellite has a sensor that can measure ocean surface salinity, and it’s data produced the the video below. A paper about this plume and how it can affect hurricanes was published in Geophysical research Letters in 2012. It’s free to read here. …
10 July 2014
Mid-Summer Taste of Autumn Next Week? Probably!
What is going on? Is it the revenge of the polar vortex? Actually, it’s probably connected to Japanese Typhoon Neogori that at one time was packing 260 kph winds. It is moving into southern Japan now, but the global weather models all indicate that it will push a lot of warm and humid air into the high latitudes north of Japan. This will push the jet-stream northward, and the downstream …
7 July 2014
Super Typhoon Neogori Heads toward Japan.
The typhoon should weaken before hitting Japan, but Kyushu (southern most island) will get a ton of rain and wind. Flooding rains have already been reported earlier in the week so the soil is already saturated. ISS Astronaut Reid Wisemen sent back this shot of an oddly shaped eye on Neogori. (Perhaps related to the fact it was undergoing an eye-wall replacement cycle.)
4 July 2014
True Colour View of Arthur from NASA (Doppler sees winds at 100 MPH)
Frying Pan Shoals off the North Carolina coast caught a gust to 99 mph on their weather station. They were in the eye-wall of Hurricane Arthur at the time. Here on the Delmarva Peninsula there is a real risk of extreme rip currents behind the storm. With thousands of folks streaming to the Maryland and Delaware beaches for the holiday weekend, this is a serious threat. Something to think about: …
2 July 2014
Arthur’s Ripples
You may need to click on the image above to really see the ripples across the top of Arthur, so do that first, before I tell you why they are there. You are looking at gravity waves, but a better way of understanding it is to compare it to the ripples you see after you throw a rock into a still pond. The rock disturbs the water and makes …
12 November 2013
Was Haiyan Caused By Climate Change? We Might Know In 30 Years.
There are claims going around that Typhoon Haiyan was a result of climate change, and this is nothing short of ridiculous. There is some evidence that climate change will change the numbers (and intensity) of tropical cyclones, and some that the storms that do form will be stronger and wetter. That said, there is still a lot of uncertainty in those predictions. An excellent paper on this subject is from …
10 November 2013
Scope Of The Philippine Disaster Becoming Apparent
Two videos you should see. It now seems the death toll will be in the thousands…perhaps the tens of thousands… and the aftermath…
8 November 2013
Amazing Image of Haiyan From SUOMI
The resolution is 375 meters on this image. Ctsy. Dan Lindsey at CIRA in Colorado. There was apparently a big jump in lightning around the eye at landfall. More on that here. GOES R will have on-board lightning detection when it launches in a couple of years. This instrument alone is likely to lead to some new discoveries and significant improvements in now-casting and forecasting. A nice loop of the …
7 November 2013
The Philippines Holds Its Breath as Severe Typhoon Haiyan Approaches
Winds of over 190 mph and millions in its path. High potential for a major catastrophe. Radar image at sunrise in the Philippines showing an intense eye wall approaching… Bacolod, a city of over a half million, may get the brunt of Haiyan.
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.