92nd Annual American Meteorological Society Conference

Recently I attended the 92nd Annual American Meteorological Society Conference in New Orleans, LA this year with some of my classmates and faculty from Howard University. I did not present, however I am working on research on the economic value of air quality forecasting, which I may be presenting at a conference in Florida, later this year.

The conference was nice and the talks were very intriguing. I helped out at the Weatherfest last Saturday, giving demonstrations on crushing cans. My group at Howard University (the Graduate Student Association for Atmospheric Sciences) GSAAS also hosted a reception called "The Colour of Weather: Breaking Barriers, Destroying Stereotypes," that Sunday. I went attended mostly the talks on public health, policy and air quality. Vulnerability and Resistance were key words in many of the talks and were further discussed at the Women's and Minority luncheon. I could not forget about Hurricane Katrina which struck the city of New Orleans in 2005. While I was there, severe weather spawned tornadoes in parts of Texas and brought rain to parts to Louisiana.

I'd never to New Orleans previous to this conference and felt the city's spirit.  I walked a little through the French Quarter and I admired the atmosphere there. The atmosphere of Bourbon Street reminded me when I went to Las Vegas. Very alive. I would definitely like to go back to New Orleans and visit the city with my boyfriend, for a more leisure experience. I really enjoyed the weather. It was pretty much in the low to mid 70s for most of the time I was there.

Here are a some pictures from my trip to New Orleans:

 Outside the Convection Center

 Me by a house made from scrap. 

 Picture of a sunset I caught from my hotel room.

 At the WeatherFest.

 Being silly.

The panel at the Women and Minorities Luncheon.

 Never forget. 

 View in the French Quarter.

View of the Mississippi.

 With some of the students and faculty of the Howard University Program of Atmospheric Sciences (HUPAS).

 

With AMS President Elect, Dr. James Marshall Shepard. 

The mask that I got in New Orleans.

DC Snow Event January 9th

Yesterday a low pressure system brought an overachieved snowfall event here in the DC metro region.

Here are the totals from the National Weather Service of the storm and here is a link to the snowfall totals in the exact locations.

 

The storm brought over 1" in some areas. In Adelphi, MD the snow was about 0.5". This was nothing compared to the over 10' of snow that parts of Alaska received recently. I took this screen shot of the radar of the storm yesterday, as well as the weather map:

You can see the low pressure system and the stationary front associated with the storm. High pressure was to the North. The article by the Capital Weather Gang, gives a great explanation of why the forecast was not up to par. Many of the computer models did not agree and some where showing that there was not enough cold air or moisture to produce such an event. When the snow did start falling, the end result was more than an inch in some areas. You can also see the area around Texas which brought flash flooding to Houston.

I found the snow event a delightful treat, it was my birthday yesterday.  The event is also the first snowfall of the 2012 season for DC. It was just enough for a coating and looked really nice coming down and covering the grass. There were a few slick spots on the roads however. Hopefully this won't be the last snowfall event for the season or anything like Snowmageddon, back in February last year. Oh yeah or like that DC snow hole which is clearly shown after a snowfall event back on December 26, 2010:

 Yeah that's real. 

Me enjoying the bit of snow :-)

I also recorded a video posted on TwitVid. Search @weathersavvy1.

Amazing Photo by Photographer Angela Pan

Yesterday, I saw an amazing picture posted on Capital Weather Gang's (@capitalweather) Facebook wall about the sunrise that morning. There were many gorgeous photos, but one really caught my eye by it's magnificence. That photo was by photography Angela Pan (@abpanphoto).  It is the most beautiful picture of a sunrise I have ever seen in my life.

The picture was taken at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC. Here is a link to her posting on the photo.  It is available for purchase on her website, A B. Pan Photography. Many of her other photos are great as well. Good job Angela, you captured so much in this photo, words don't do it justice!

Happy New Year/Quadrantids

Hey everyone!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Hope that you've had a great start to the new year and that this year brings you good news and joy.  Can you believe it's already 2012? The time is going by fast.

Recently an amazing meteor shower occurred this year. It was the Quadrantid Meteor Shower. Here's a great article from Tariq Malik, SPACE.com Managing Editor, summarizing the event:

Spectacular Photos: 1st Meteor Shower of 2012 Amazes Skywatchers

A dazzling display of "shooting stars" kicked off the 2012 skywatching season early Wednesday (Jan. 4), thrilling amateur astronomers around the world with views of the Quadrantid meteor shower.

Usually one of the most dependable meteor displays of the year, the Quadrantid meteor shower peaked at about 2:30 a.m. EST (0730 GMT) in a brief, but eye-catching, light show. Quadrantid meteors are the leftover crumbs of a shattered comet that broke apart centuries ago, NASA scientists say.

To mark the meteor shower, SPACE.com invited readers to send in their photos of the event, and you answered in spades. From light-polluted cities to remote islands, skywatchers reported spotting some dazzling views of Quadrantid meteors.

Veterinary surgeon Roberto Porto photographed the meteor shower from the island of Tenerife in Spain's Canary Islands. The view, he said, was stupendous.

On Tenerife, the Quadrantids display peaked close to sunrise (local time), "so the peak was [awash in] twilight," Porto told SPACE.com in an email. "Also, the weather predictions were for high clouds this night, [but] we managed to capture a couple of genuine meteors."

Tenerife is a volcanic island and home to Tiede, the highest mountain in Spain. Porto's photos show Quadrantid meteors streaking over Tiede and other peaks, with dark rock formations setting the scene.

According to the skywatching website Spaceweather.com and the International Meteor Organization, this year's Quadrantid display peaked at about 80 meteors an hour.

This reporter spotted three meteors within a 20-minute period of observing from West Orange, N.J., before the frigid winter night forced a retreat back inside. In Florida, skywatcher Richard Hay was more resilient.

"My wife and I ventured out into the frigid 26-degree Florida night this morning to catch the shower with our own eyes and were rewarded with about 20 or so bright Quadrantids over a 90-minute period," Hay wrote in a blog post.
 
In Ozark, Arkansas, skywatcher Brian Emfinger reported seeing several meteors that — while not especially bright — were still impressive. "I caught one nice Quadrantid Earthgrazer that shot across much of the sky, but it wasn't super-bright," Emfinger told SPACE.com in an email. "It did leave a trail that was visible for about 15 minutes." Earthgrazers are meteors that occur low on the horizon, and can sometimes light up in dazzling fireball displays.

Unlike some of the more well-known annual meteor showers, such as the Perseid and Geminid displays late in the year, the Quadrantid meteor shower's peak lasts only a few hours. The Quadrantids and Geminids originate from the asteroid 2003 EH1, which astronomers suspect was once part of a larger comet that broke into pieces several hundred years ago.

The small space rocks that become Quadrantid meteors hit the atmosphere at speeds of about 90,000 mph and burn up about 50 miles above the Earth, creating dazzling fireballs.

The Quadrantid meteor shower is named for the constellation Quadrans Murals (or Mural Quadrant, which was an early astronomy tool for observing stars), a pattern first observed in 1795 by the French astronomer Jerome Lalande. The Quadrans Murals is located between the better-known constellations of Bootes the Hersdman and Draco the Dragon.

Editor's note: If you snapped an amazing photo the Quadrantid meteor shower or any other skywatching sight and would like to share it with SPACE.com, contact managing editor Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com. Here's a link to some pictures taken of the shower, that where posted on SPACE.com

The next chance to view a meteor shower will be in April with the Lyrids shower. According the Skyscapers INC, which gives a full list of the upcoming meteor showers, "The swift and bright Lyrid meteors disintegrate after hitting our atmosphere at a moderate speed of 29.8 miles per second. They often produce luminous trains of dust that can be observed for several seconds."  The frequency of this meteor shower will be moderate.

Happy skywatching!

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.