As a weather weenie, I love staring at radar images of storms. Used to do it as a kid, and I still do it to this day. The same can be said for satellite images, however most of the time those images are updated every 30 minutes. Luckily there are times where we can see rapid scans of storms, ESPECIALLY during hurricane season. And so this was released today of Hurricane Danielle, and my productivity dropped for about 23 minutes…enjoy
After being in Asheville, North Carolina for a little over three weeks, it is starting to feel like home. For those of you that don’t know, I am currently working at the National Climatic Data Center. While NCDC is part of NOAA, I am currently contracted through the Cooperate Institute for Climate and Sciences. (Don’t believe me? see this). The job has been great so far, and I hope to learn a lot over the next few months.
Speaking of NCDC, they released this the other day:
According to this, July 2010 was the second warmest July on record. The warmest month occurred in 1998, which was also an El Nino year
Greetings from Frederick, Maryland! The halfway point of our leg from New England to Asheville, NC.
I am sitting in our hotel room dreading to go outside. The forecast high today is expected to be above 100 (with heat indexes almost at 110!!!). As I overlook the information over the National Weather Service webpage, I notice this image:
Then I notice the link that is associated with it:
http://forecast.weather.gov/images/wtf/hot.jpg
Maybe it’s the heat talking, but I found that to be funny
With temperatures in New England in the 90′s over the past few days (and 100′s in some places) , we are officially in a heat wave…..
….and it sucks
A lot of people complain about weather, but for me I only complain about one thing: The Heat. I cannot stand it. I currently have no Air Conditioner, so I dread going home to this stagnant heat.
My theory is this: when it’s cold, you can put on as many layers as you need (just like this guy):
BUT in heat such as this, you can only take so much off before you can get arrested.
The funny thing is, I complain about the heat, yet I end up in the south for work. First it was Oklahoma, then Florida, and now it’s North Carolina. Maybe this is a calling to create an Air Conditioned dome for the city of Asheville:
While tropical meteorology is a topic that doesn’t interest me greatly, it’s impact on coastal towns is too huge to avoid. The first hurricane of the season, Alex, is expected to make landfall overnight tonight. The latest 8am advisory places the hurricane in category 1 credentials, with a wind of 79 mph, gusts up to 98 mph, and a central pressure of 959 hPa.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami predicts that this system will reach category 2 strength before making landfall on the Mexican coast between 1 and 3am tomorrow morning. I agree with their thinking, since wind shear is low (between 5 and 10 knots) and high sea surface temps (around 30 degrees C)
While it is scheduled to make landfall in Mexico, parts of Texas will still feel the effects of this storm. More importantly though, the Texas coastline lies within the right front quadrant of the cyclone, so tornadoes are possible for the area. In fact, the Storm Prediction Center has placed the area under a slight risk for today.
