Taking A Dive Into Eco-Emi (Demember Box)

I recently heard about a membership program where for $15 a month, you get five to ten Eco-friendly, organic, vegetarian or vegan samples sent straight to your door step. The name is this program is Eco-Emi. The mission is introducing people to a greener lifestyle. Reading why Eco-Emi was founded is all inspiring and looking at the previous months' products, I was excited to try.  I signed up towards the end of November and received my first box, the second week in December.

Here are some pictures of the December Box:

 The packaging. The box was so cute.

 The package comes with a card, with information about the products inside.

 Coupons.

 Opening the box.

 The goodies!

 These socks are by Maggies Functional Organics.

 The laundry detergent is by Greenology Products, while the vitamin super chews are by Genesis Today.

 The lip balm is by Zambeezi, the Whispering Pine candle is by Wyk Candles and the botanical lip gloss is by Lauren Brooke cosmetiques.

 The Raw Cacao bliss is by Artisana, the organic candy cane by The Natural Candy Store and the Jojoba and ginseng exfoliating face cleanser and blood orange and vanilla body wash, by John Masters Organics. The face cleanser and body wash were featured by Hip Apotheca.

 

 When I first opened the priority mail package, the smell of pine filled my nose. The super chews and the cacao bliss were really good. The tangerine lip balm smells great as well as the botanical lip gloss is really smooth.  I'm looking forward to trying the other products. I was very pleased with the products in this box and I'm happy about my subscription to this service.  I'm really interested in buying more of the products featured. Thank you so much Eco-Emi and the products featured. I'm looking forward to the upcoming months :-) 

Rare Kelvin-Helmholtz Clouds Over Alabama

Yesterday, Alabama Meteorologist James Spann (@spann) tweeted this beautiful picture of Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds at the Alabama Air National Guard facility at the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport. The clouds also known as "wave clouds" are defined by the Cloud Appreciation Society as, "the result of shearing winds up at cloud level. A particular type of turbulence can develop in a layer of Cirrus cloud, which happens to form below an inversion* between air currents of differing speeds and/or directions. Sea waves break as their bases are slowed down upon reaching shallow water and their crests surge ahead. Cloud waves break in the same way: when their crests are pushed ahead of their troughs by the difference in air currents." The occurrence of this kind of cloud formation is rare.  They are more frequently seen in San Francisco.

Here is a link to more pictures of this rare occurrence.

Here's a link to his post on Twitter.

The Forecast Calls For Apples?

Mmm delicious. Saw this interesting story on Yahoo today.

From Eric Pfeiffer, The Slideshow (A Yahoo News Blog).

Unexplained shower of apples falls from sky over town


More than 100 apples mysteriously rained down upon a small British town on Monday night. The still-unexplained apple shower left 20 yards of city streets and car windshields covered in the cascading fruit just after the daily rush hour.

The news immediately brought up comparisons to biblical tales of raining frogs and whether such reported freaks of nature actually occurred. In this instance, no one has officially confirmed when, how or if the apple storm truly took place as described.
However, Jim Dale, senior meteorologist from the British Weather Services, told the London Telegraph: "The weather we have at the moment is very volatile and we probably have more to come. Essentially these events are caused when a vortex of air, kind of like a mini tornado, lifts things off the ground rising up into the atmosphere until the air around it causes them to fall to earth again."

Dr Lisa Jardine-Wright, a physicist at the Cavendish Laboratory, based at Cambridge University, told the BBC, "Cars and houses have been swept up by tornadoes, so apples are well within the realms of possibility. A tornado which has swept through an orchard will be strong enough to 'suck up' small objects like a vacuum [cleaner]. These small objects would then be deposited back to earth as 'rain' when the whirlwind loses its energy."

Nevertheless, witnesses report that the weather in Coundon in Coventry was reported to be stable and calm at the time of the alleged apple shower. Coventry residents have offered several competing explanations for the event, including a passing plane, roving teenage pranksters--and, yes, witches.
But regardless of the ultimate explanation, the apple storm is no stranger other confirmed, highly unusual forms of precipitation. The BBC offers a roster of pertinent examples:

Frog falls were recorded in Llanddewi, Powys, in 1996 and two years later in Croydon, south London. In 2000, hundreds of dead silver sprats fell out of the sky during a rainstorm in the seaside resort of Great Yarmouth.
There have also been maggot downpours--in Acapulco in 1967 and during a yachting event at the 1976 Olympic Games.

On the sliding scale of inconveniences, an apple storm seems more palatable than maggots. Though, depending on the state of the apples, it's possible that some areas could have experienced both brands of offbeat precipitation at once.

source

Here's a link to other things that have strangely fallen out of the sky.

source

GOES-15 1st Full Disk Images of Earth

From NOAA:

" GOES-15 took its first operational full disk images at 1800z on December 6, 2011. These three images show some of the imagery acquired, including the native gray-scale infrared, colorized infrared, colorized infrared water vapor, and visible imagery. The orange areas of the colorized water vapor image show areas with low moisture. The dry air associated with the Santa Ana winds in California are clearly visible. GOES-15's water vapor channel has major improvements over its predecessor on GOES-11 (the previous GOES-West)."


The images:

Absolutely stunning!

GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites) -15 took the place of GOES-11 which was launched in  May 2000. GOES-11 was only planned for 5 years but tracked weather and severe storms along the the Pacific region and the U.S. West Coast, for 12 years. GOES-11 is in the process of being deactivated and now GOES-15, a more advanced satellite, is fixed in this region. GOES-13 tracks the East Coast. GOES-12 tracks South America and GOES-14 is a ready backup or replacement. GOES satellites can also track oceanographic changes, space weather, forest fires and other hazards.

GOES-R is the next generation of satellites to be launched starting in 2015, by NOAA. More frequent images and clearer atmospheric observations is expected by this next generation of satellites.

For more information on GOES, check out this link.