Geobulletin alpha

Some Thoughts About The Coming Winter: Part One 

This time of year it’s the number one question that every meteorologist hears: “What’s the winter going to like??” The correct answer is, “We can’t predict the weather 3 months in advance with any real accuracy.”. That said, we can make some decent guesses about the climate patterns that we may see, in some areas more than others. First, let me show you why we really cannot use numerical weather

The Weather 238 years ago today in Philadelphia- Courtesy of T. Jefferson 

It was cloudy in Philadelphia. Weatherwise Magazine has an excellent article with more about Jefferson and his weather records. Truly he was America’s first

Global Winds in Real Time 

Maybe it’s because I’m a meteorologist, but I could spend hours looking at this real time wind map. Click on EARTH and you can change the level of the winds to see low level flow, or high altitude jet stream

Imaggeo on Mondays: Eddy covariance 

This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays is brought to you by Jean-Daniel Paris, a meteorologist from the Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory (LSCE), France. He describes how new techniques like eddy covariance tell us about the flux of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere…  This picture was taken during a visit to the Hyytiälä research station in

Why Depending On Facebook for Severe Weather Warnings is A Bad Idea 

James Spann  (meteorologist for the ABC affiliate in Birmingham, AL.)  spoke at the AMS Conference on Broadcast Meteorology last week, and made an interesting point about using social media for weather warnings. Be very careful! Young people especially tend to get most of their news and information from mobile devices, using social media apps etc. During the record tornado outbreak in April 2011, many viewers had no power, or were

Could You Have Done This While In High School?? 

I’m at the 41st Conference on Broadcast Meteorology here in Nashville,TN this week. It started Tuesday with a fantastic short course on climate change (which I will write much more about later), and today was also superb. The highlight for me today was a talk by Matthew Cappucci entitled Gust Front Related Waterspouts. Matt is not a meteorologist who has been working on front of a camera for many years

Boston Weather Legend Harvey Leonard on the Great Blizzard and Climate Change 

I see Harvey Leonard once a year at the AMS Broadcast Conference and I can tell you that he has the respect of every meteorologist who works in TV. He is a household name in Boston, and over the years when I’ve been asked for a forecast for Boston, I always note at the end to “Turn on Harvey Leonard on the local news while your there, you will get

The 800 Kilometer Long Shadow 

This true colour image from the NASA Terra satellite today shows an 800 km long shadow stretching from NE Ohio into the Atlantic. The shadow was the result of the low early January sun angle, and a deck of cirrus clouds at around  10km above the surface. Plenty of other things to notice as well. What a meteorologist sees in this image: 1. Strong winds over the mountains of New

Severe tornado outbreak predicted for the weekend; record outbreaks 

Storms on Friday, 4/13/2012From weather.comIn a very unusual move, NOAA issued a severe weather/tornado alert two days in advance for this upcoming weekend. I first read of this from Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal on the American Geophysical Union Blogosphere. Dan (Satterfield) is a meteorologist on air who writes a blog for AGU aimed at junior high-school audiences and up. Unfortunately, Joplin, Missouri, so hard-hit just a year ago, is getting pummeled again with severe weather today and [...]

There Really Is A Tornado Alley- Three Actually 

Any meteorologist gets the same question over and over: Where exactly is tornado alley?? The answer (until now) has been that there is no scientifically defined alley, but that the Great Plains from Kansas to Texas is the best answer. Enter Michael Frates at the University of Akron. He decided it was high time to delineate the tornado alley’s of America and he did it based on historical data beginning

Faculty Profile: Yochanan Kushnir 

by Kaci Fowler Yochanan Kushnir began his career as a meteorologist in the Israeli Navy, where he started as an operational marine forecaster, and with time became the Navy’s Chief Meteorology Officer. As part of his duties, Kushnir ventured out to sea to collect meteorological and oceanographic data for research. Motivated by these experiences, Kushnir

Marysville, Indiana destroyed by twister. Midwest death toll at 18 and climbing. 

The video below is a collection of several different tornadoes from AL to Indiana. As I type this, a tornado is indicated near Marietta GA. Now, compare the number of tornado warnings at any one tie with the situation on April 27, 2011- during the mega outbreak. Daryl Herzmann (a meteorologist in Iowa) who put this together.   My daughter has a friend in Harvest, AL whose home was destroyed on

Hurricanes and Quakes are Inspirational Science Moments 

Every meteorologist I know can point to a big storm as the inspiration that led them into the field of atmospheric science (A blizzard in 1968 and the tornadoes of June 8,1974 for me), and this is true for other sciences as well. Neil de Grasse Tyson still has his certificate of accomplishment from the Hayden Planetarium that he now directs. The certificates are still given out and he signs

Tsunami Wave Height Map from NOAA 

My fellow AGU bloggers have some really good info on the science behind the quake here. In particular, Callan Bentley’s Mountain Beltway and Dave Petley’s Landslide Blog. My Seismograph Story While at university in the late 1970′s, I worked for a summer at a seismic observatory in Oklahoma. It was a very fascinating experience and has turned out to be very helpful in my job as a meteorologist working in

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

Neil deGrasse Tyson: “50/50 Odds the LHC Will Discover the Higgs Boson” 

Here is the last part of my interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson from earlier this month. I almost didn’t ask this question, but it elicited a fabulous answer about the nature of scientific discovery. What is the Higgs boson you ask? Here is my explanation, and keep in mind, I’m a meteorologist not a particle physicist! I don’t even know enough about it to be dangerous. Few people other than

How Mother Nature Fools Climate Scientists 

This post is a review of the book: The Great Global Warming Blunder, How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists, by Dr. Roy Spencer. Meteorologist Dr. Roy Spencer is a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, formerly a senior scientist for climate studies at NASA, and now leads the U.S.

What is Causing the Cold Weather? 

In this CNN video, meteorologist Jacqui Jeras, explains how the Arctic oscillation and a weak polar jet are contributing to the cold weather being experienced across the entire Northern

Hydrologist: A Top Career for 2010 

U.S. News and World Report has a short list of “best careers” on their website. Among the top ten are: hydrologist, environmental science technician, environmental engineering technician, civil engineer and

What is a Microburst? 

Meteorologists now believe that the Dallas Cowboys practice facility was knocked down by a Microburst. This video has images of a microburst explained by a meteorologist. Embedded video from CNN