Weather Of The Outer Banks

Here are a few photos I took of some of the clouds and sunsets, when I was in the Outer Banks, NC (I was in Rodanthe.) The weather was amazing. There were a few thunderstorms while I was there and it was absolutely gorgeous to watch them over the ocean or on the deck of the beach house.

The stars were spectacular and I saw the Milky Way for the first time one night. I've never seen as many stars as I did that night. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the stars and the lightning. My camera unfortunately died and I forgot my charger. I took some of the pics with my cell phone, hehe. Enjoy!

Thunderstorms over the ocean.

Weatherman Rapping While BASE Jumping

Not sure if you've seen this. KMVT Morning Meteorologist Nick Kosir is rapping the weather forecast while BASE jumping. He's rapping to Chris Brown's song, "Look At Me Now."

Interesting way to share the weather report :-)

Chocolate Chip Cookie Experiment/100th Post

This is my 100th post! Time to celebrate with some chocolate chip cookies! :-)

I saw this video from Accuweather.com, about baking chocolate chip cookies in a car in the excessive heat. I thought it would be the perfect post and seems like the cookies turned out pretty good. In the video the temperature outside was 99 but the temperature inside the car reached to 180.

At 2PM in DC, it was 102 today, with a heat index of 119 and a dew point at 77. DC may tie or even surpass the record of 103 by the end of the day. Newark, NJ reached an all-time high since records began, of 108 today.

Try to stay cool!

Heat Wave Continues To Sweep Across U.S.

It's only going to get hotter, with temperatures nearing 102, to round out the work week. DC reached it's 11th day above 95+ for 2011 today, which is past the average for a typical year. There were 27 days over 95+ last year. Much of the U.S. is feeling the heat as well as a heat wave is sweeps across from the Plains to the Northeast. NOAA has a good visual representation of the heatwave which started July 13. The animation uses high temperatures predicted from NOAA's high resolution North American Model (NAM). Here is a screenshot of the heatwave from today:


Here is the link to the animation.

If you can try to reduce your time being outside. If you are going outside, remember to drink plenty of water and do not leave children or pets inside your car.

Space Weather Revisited

I'm a meteorologist and currently I'm researching some of the chemical aspects behind air quality. I know that sounds very vague but more well be developing over the summer and much into my next school year. I'm really fascinated by weather that occurs within the Troposphere and in the Stratosphere. Tornadoes, hurricanes, thunderstorms, they amongst many other weather occurrences are spectacular phenomenons. They however, can be very deadly and finding out ways to better educate the public on them is something I like to do too.

I also am really fascinated by the weather that occurs in Thermosphere, Ionosphere and beyond. A good example of this, is the Aurora Borealis. This phenomena is actually one of my favorite weather phenomenons, though you may be thinking that's not a tornado or weather we are more likely to see everyday. You may even be thinking the Aurora Borealis, is not even weather. Although it is not within the planetary atmosphere of the Earth, the Troposphere and Stratosphere, the Aurora is due to a change in the atmosphere. This is much like the weather we see closer to Earth. Our weather changes due to changes in the atmosphere and other atmospheric processes.

The term for weather like the Aurora Borealis is called Space Weather and currently Space Weather is a very growing field. I have been to a few conferences including the 33rd Annual National Weather Association conference in Louisville, KY, the 90th Annual American Meteorological Society conference in Atlanta, Georgia, and the 91st Annual American Meteorological Society conference in Seattle, Washington, and at all of those conferences, there have been presentations on Space Weather.

I saw a picture on a CNN News Blog and was motivated to write this entry. Here's the picture below:

source

The picture is of the Southern Lights taken by a member of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. Atlantis recently launched on July 8, and marked the final mission of NASA's 30 year Space Shuttle Program. Isn't it spectacular?

The Aurora Borealis is a very well known space weather phenomenon, in what may sound reminiscent of my July 20, 2009, a few others include solar flares, meteor showers and solar flares and I'll add a new one coronal holes.

As mentioned in the post, only one ground phenomenon that can propagate into outer space and that is a lightning. What is created is called a blue jet. Here is a picture from Wikipedia showing this phenomenon in more detail:


According to Wikipedia, blue jets can reach to "the lowest levels of the ionosphere 25 miles (40 km) to 50 miles (80 km) above the Earth."

So if you see on my blog, postings about hurricanes, or solar flares, I'm just posting about weather near and far :-)

To learn more about Space Weather visit this link.

Bonus!

Now this is much more astronomy, but here's a picture I posted to my Flickr, of the full moon taken by my friend Drew, on July 16. It was with my Casio Exilm EX-277. I was really surprised at how well, he got this shot of the moon. It is a tad blurry, though. Haha.

Storms On Saturn

source

I'm sure you're heard about the Red Eye on Jupiter, a gathering of magnificent storms, now Saturn has it's own unique gathering.

A recent article by Carolyn Porco talks about this phenomena:

Tempest-from-hell seen on Saturn
"Imagine being caught in a thunderstorm as wide as the Earth with discharges of lightning 10,000 times more powerful than normal, flashing 10 times per second at its peak.

Now imagine that this storm is still unfolding, eight months later.

One of the most violent weather events in the Solar System began to erupt on Saturn last December and is still enthralling astronomers, the British journal Nature reported on Wednesday.

Two studies draw on observations by professional and amateur astronomers using a broad range of gear, from relatively small ground-based telescopes to NASA's magnificent scoutcraft, Cassini.

Saturn, like Jupiter, is no stranger to convective storms.

It too is a "gas giant," or planet comprising layers of thick, roiling gases rather than a rock, like Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury.

The difference, though, is that jovian mega-storms tend to erupt unexpectedly, but the lord of the rings gives birth to a monster almost periodically.

It occurs on average once every Saturnian year -- nearly 29.5 Earth years -- and appears to be linked to the summer solstice, when the planet's orbit brings it a bit closer to the Sun and its atmosphere warms a little.

The event is known as the "Great White Spot" (a counterpart to the swirling "Great Red Spot" on Jupiter) because of the mass of brilliant white storm clouds that erupt in the upper atmosphere.

The show is so big that it can be visible by telescopes from distant Earth. Five have been observed in the last 130 years. The last occurred in 1990.

But the current Great White Spot is proving to be a dazzling spectacle, revealed by an unprecedented array of observational power at hand.

Events began at 2105 GMT on December 5, when ground-based telescopes detected a "barely visible white point" on a normally unblemished and hazy part of Saturn's northern hemisphere, at around latitude 35 degrees north.

At the same time, Cassini turned its "ears" towards the target, listening in to radio emissions from the storm via an onboard plasma-wave instrument.

These signals are the telltales of lightning. Lightning cannot be seen visually on Saturn at night because of interference from sunlight scattered from the planet's ring system, which comprises billions of shiny particles.

Within a few weeks, the point had ballooned into a storm system that was some 10,000 kilometers (6,000 miles) across, roughly comparable with the diameter of the Earth, and after two months the clouds had almost encircled the entire planet.

Analysis of the data suggests that the "spot" is in fact a cluster of super-storms, produced by upwelling of heat, moisture and ammonia from water clouds from lower down in the Saturnian atmosphere, where the pressure is high.

As this mix rises into a cooler atmospheric layer called the tropopause, bright, white clouds of ammonia start to spread horizontally into a tail, sculpted by eastward jets of wind.

Astronomers are especially intrigued by the current Great White Spot.

The observational history of this phenomenon is sketchy. But evidence suggests the present spot is exceptionally intense and rather premature, for it was still spring on Saturn when the storm brewed."

Warm Week Ahead

Hope you are staying cool because it will be warm this upcoming week. For tonight we can expect showers and thunderstorms that are ahead of a cold front moving through the region. That cold front will stall in Virginia. Independence Day looks to be a great day for a BBQ as it will be in the lower 90s with partly sunny skies. If you are planning on viewing fireworks Monday night, the forecast looks to be in your favor, as we can expect partly cloudy skies and a low of 71. High pressure will build in the region by Tuesday as we expect partly sunny skies and a high in the upper 80s into Wednesday. Mid-week the stalled front will move towards the north, as a warm front, and we can expect temperatures in the lower 90s as we enter into the weekend. We may see isolated storms and thunderstorms on Friday, associated with the front.

Happy Fourth of July!!!!


source

Sundog!

I was in at the Mall in DC this past weekend, and saw a sundog! I was watching the sky (like all meteorologists right? LOL) and spotted the beautiful ice rainbow.

Sundogs are also known as parhelion or parhelia (plural) in scientific terms. They are very common and are formed by the refraction of sunlight by hexagonal ice crystals and form part of a halo, around the sun. This is what a full sundog looks like:

Notice the location of the sun. Sundogs appear when the sun is low and near the horizon. The sunlight which passes through the ice crystals, is bent at a 22 degree angle before our eyes see it. The result is of this bending of light is a sundog. The orientation of the ice crystal results in the formation of a sundog as well and they can be observed when the flat faces of the ice crystal are horizontal. This orientation is what sets a sundog apart from a halo. In the occurrence of a halo, the orientation of the ice crystals is random.

Here is a picture of the sundog I saw:

Pretty isn't it?

For more information on sundogs, visit here. They show a good representation of the 22 degree at which the light is bent.


For giggles :-)

Sunny Start To The Week Ahead

DC Area Forecast
(May 9-15)

Hey everyone! Happy Mother's Day! Hope you are enjoying this partly sunny Sunday.

The forecast looks wonderful start of the week ahead. For Monday we can expect sunny skies and a high near 75 as a high pressure system in Eastern Canada expands Southward over the Mid-Atlantic region. This will persist into the mid-week. For Monday night we can expect mostly clear skies with a low around 51 and winds from the north at 7 to 9 mph. Tuesday and Wednesday we can expect to see more of the same during the day, with sunny skies and a high in the mid 70s. For Tuesday night we can expect a low near 50 and mostly clear skies. Wednesday night looks to be in the mid 50s with mostly cloudy skies. A low pressure system will move into the region by Thursday as we can expect mostly cloudy skies and a high near 76. Thursday night there is a slight chance of thunderstorms, with mostly cloudy skies and a low near 56. That low pressure system will bring moisture to the region Friday into Sunday as we can expect a chance of showers for the weekend and highs into reaching into the mid 60s by Sunday. We'll be back into the lower 70s by the start of next the following week though.

source

Seasonable Temps and Showers

Area Forecast
Washington, DC
(April 18- April 24)

April's transition is getting a bit smoother this week as a high pressure system remains to our south. For Monday we can expect partly sunny skies and a high near 70. Winds will be from the south at 8 to 10 mph. Monday night we can expect expect increasing clouds and a low near 53 as the high moves off the coast. Winds will be from the south at 11 to 14 mph. A low pressure system develops near the region for Tuesday as we can expect a slight chance of showers in the afternoon and a high near 73. Tuesday night there is a slight chance for showers and thunderstorms with a low near 57. That low pressure system moves in for Wednesday as we can expect showers mainly after 2 pm and a high near 80. There's a slight chance for showers Wednesday night as we can expect mostly clouds skies and a high near 55. Thursday we can expect partly sunny skies as that low pressure system moves north and high pressure moves towards the region. Expect a high near 63. Thursday night we can expect a low near 46 and partly cloudy skies. For Friday we can expect partly cloudy skies and a high near 64 as that high moves into the region. Friday night looks to be partly cloud with a low near 47. Saturday a low pressure system from our west moves in. Expect a chance of showers with mostly cloudy skies and a high near 69 and expect partly cloudy skies and a chance of showers for Saturday night. Low near 57. That low will remain in the region for Sunday as we can expect mostly cloudy skies and a chance of showers with a high near 70. Sunday night looks to bring a chance of showers with mostly cloudy skies and a low near 55.

source: NOAA

Tohoku Earthquake/The Storms Came A Rumbling

Well hello everyone, what a long time it's been since I've last posted. It's almost been a year! So much has happened during that time. I graduated from Kean University and now I'm attending Howard University pursing a Ph.D.

So much weather has occurred as well. More recently back on March 11, 2011, the Tohoku earthquake which was a devastating 9.0 earthquake. It struck off the coast of Japan and triggered a major tsunami which caused a tremendous loss of life. There were over 1021 recorded aftershocks, in with more than 63 of them were over 6.0. On the one month anniversary of the disaster, a 7.0 earthquake struck off the coast of Japan and tsunami warnings were issued, but later cancelled as the threat diminished. The Fukushima I Nuclear power plant has recently been rated level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. Level 7 is the highest level on the scale and the only other disaster to reach this level was the Chernobyl disaster back in April of 1986. A nine-month plan has been set to move the plant into a more stable state. More information about the plan can be read here.

Yesterday we received some intense storms here in Maryland. These storms were part of severe weather pattern which caused an outbreak of tornadoes in the Southern states, over the last two days. So far 55 tornadoes were confirmed and there were over 243 tornadoes initially reported. The maximum recorded tornado was an EF3 and 40 people have lost their life. No other outbreak in the United States, before this occurrence resulted in this number of fatalities since the Super Tuesday tornado outbreak. This event occurred February 5–6, 2008 and killed 57 people.

Of the reported tornadoes, the National Weather Service is estimating it would take a few days to confirm these cases. Why you might ask? Well much of the damage may have been caused by straight-line winds and not from a tornado. With many thunderstorms there will be wind gusts, and distinguishing what type of weather phenomena occurred can be tricky. Especially for insurance claims.

Straight line winds can reach up to speeds of 130 mph which is around the same as an EF2 tornado and are caused by downbursts or outflows from the thunderstorm. The debris pattern from straight line winds, spreads out in one direction. Tornadoes are categorized as rotating columns of air caused by unstable air, lifting and moisture in the low to mid levels of the atmosphere (in summary). The debris pattern from tornadoes spreads out in different directions and is often rotational. The debris field for straight line winds can cover miles as the debris field for tornadoes tends to be more narrow, though some fields have gone out for miles.

Below is a radar image of the system I obtained from RAP Weather. The time is 2023 UTC or 4:23 PM EST (to get eastern standard time, 5 hours is subtracted from the UTC time).

The line of storms are very well defined. Here is the base reflectivity image taken from the WSR-88D Radar that I obtained from NOAA. It is of the storms for the Baltimore MD/Washington DC area. The time is 7:19 PM EST or 2313 UTC.

Notice the strong band of storms west of Washington, DC? These storms later moved further North towards Westminster.

I felt really compelled to start this blog up again. The wait is over. I'll be updating more with weather events and happenings. If you have Twitter follow me @Weathersavvy1. Stay tuned!

Are Forecast (July 11- July 17)

This forecast is valid for Moorestown, NJ

Fire up those BBQs because today looks like it's going to be a very pleasant day. Expect a high around 83 with mostly sunny skies. Make sure to pack everything up tonight as a cold front will be sweeping through the region, and there is a possible of some storms mainly before 3 am Sunday morning. For Sunday expect mosly sunny skies and a high near 82 as high pressure will build over our area into Monday. For Monday we can expect a high near 85 and mostly sunny skies. There is a slight chance of thunderstorms Monday night as a weak cold front moves through the region. Expect sunny skies and a high near 84 on Tuesday, and another chance for showers on Wednesday as low pressure from our west moves into the area. Expect a high for Wednesday expect around 86. Thursday that low will move in and showers are expected throughout the day. Expect a high close to 90. The low will move out by Friday, as it looks to be dry with partly sunny skies with a high near 83. Enjoy the week!

It's a bit chilly

It started with March and now April is becoming a bit bipolar. Below is the forecast discussion for Union, NJ:

There’s a possibility for rain/snow showers this evening due to a deep trough created by a low pressure system currently over Eastern Canada. We can expect a low of around 33 degrees tonight. For Thursday, temperatures will rebound as we can expect a slight warm-up with temperatures in the lower 60s and mostly sunny skies. Temperatures will remain near the low 50s for the remainder of the week as we can expect a low pressure from the central plains to move in bring the possibly of some showers. For the weekend we can expect cooler temperatures as another unseasonably cool air mass settles in from Canada.

OK I know I’m a meteorology student but come on snow for tonight? Early today there were already a few reports of flurries and as I recall only a couple of days ago we had sunny skies and temperatures in the mid-50s. April is a month of extremes though. One day the temperature can be near 90 and the next there could be snow. Talk about indecisive!