SOURCE: AHPS

Need I say more?

The vernal equinox arrives at 11:44 UTC tomorrow (7:44 am EDT), which indicates that spring will finally arrive. Hopefully this means that all the worries about snow and cold temperatures fade away (and the worries of floods and erosion arrive!).

But what is the vernal equinox? Well it’s the time of the year where the sun is lined up perfectely with the equator of the earth (ie, the amount of daylight is approximately equivalent to the amount of night time). After tomorrow, we should see more sun than night (until the Summer Solace of course)

What does this mean weather wise? Well hopefully the temperatures will begin to warm up. This is also the time which we start seeing a ridge/trough pattern in the 500mb layer, which can already be seen in the models.

Speaking of spring, this week has been Spring Break at Plymouth State. I have been home in Massachusetts for the week and have enjoyed the relaxation and rest. I have done some work though. I rummaged through 2 years of storm reports from the SPC for my radar project (the next step is to actually look at RADAR data! )

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This question was asked last week by a Cleveland reporter (source). He asked if the service provided by the National Weather Service should be free, as privatized companies, such as Accuweather, WSI, and The Weather Channel, provide a paid service.  Granted he supports the NWS, and provides emphasis on that support in this week’s article. However my view on this issue can be best highlight by this comment by WEATHERFAN:

“WEATHERFAN: Hmm, interesting proposition – shut down the National Weather Service and let commercial, fee-based forecasting companies take over. Now, if you shut down the NWS, there’d be no more weather ballons, no more satellites, no more radar systems, no more DOPPLER radar, no more ASOS (oops, now its gonna affect the FAA). No more free data to the world. Will Accuweather put its own satellites into the atmosphere, send up its own weather ballons, and build its own Doppler system? …”

Let’s enhance this argument by looking at just some of Accuweather‘s products:

• Forecast:  Based on either the NAM or GFS model, provided by NCEP, which is part of NOAA
• Radar: Based on a network of WSR-88D radars run by the National Weather Service and Radar Operations Center, which is part of NOAA
• Maps -> Satellite: Based on the GOES Satellite run by NESDIS, which is part of NOAA
• Maps -> Surface: Based on an analysis provided by the HPC, which is part of NOAA
• Extreme Weather-> Severe Weather Center: Based on analysis provided by the Storm Prediction Center, which is a part of NOAA
• Extreme Weather -> Hurricane Center: Based on analysis provided by the National Hurricane Center, which is a part of NOAA

DID I MENTION THAT THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IS PART OF NOAA TOO!?!?!?

So why go to a website that has ads and the ability to get “High Definition” radar (no such thing by the way), where you can go to www.weather.gov and get everything from there for FREE! Plus you don’t have to pay 10 bucks to find out there’s a tornado near your house.

Here’s the kicker. Why would we pay for a service that claims they can do 15 day forecasts? Just because it can be done, doesn’t mean it should be…

6 HOUR GFS FORECAST

384 HOUR GFS FORECAST

I wouldn’t trust it would you? Apparently Accuweather does, and they want us to pay for it.

One of the highlights of the school year arrived this weekend, as many organizations (student and professional) from the Northeastern part of the United States will get together at the Northeast Storm Conference in Springfield, Massachusetts. The event is hosted by Lyndon State College in Lyndonville, VT and is a three day event. Unfortunately Lyndon is sort of like our rivals, and I am glad to say that we beat them in the number of attendees (53-43…..including their prospective students who don’t even go there yet).

But despite that, they do run a very good program. A lot of presentations were given (including 5 from Plymouth State) to talk about the latest research / technologies in the weather field. The big talk was given by Josh Wurman, who works as a Severe Weather Researcher out in Boulder, Colorado, and was on the Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers. This weekend also provides students to network with other schools and companies in the area, because who knows, you may have met your future boss! For myself, I didn’t even know that Vaisala had an office in my home town. Perhaps I’ll give that man a call!

For more information on the event, please go here.

OK guys haven’t had much to talk about here (cause the weather is the same….snow and cold…grumble grmuble). But I thought I would give you a little insight on a mini project I worked on for Transportation Meteorology.

Ocean forecasting isn’t a hot topic these days. However it is still important for mariners who make long trips across the sea. And unfortunately it has been part of the media recently due to a few NFL players getting lost at sea due to high waves from a storm in the gulf (source).

Now obviously an important factor in ocean forecasting is where is it going to rain? But that’s not the biggest issue. Waves can be highly dangerous, and most of the products issued by the Ocean Prediction Center will have some sort of description of the waves in the area.

Most waves are generated by the wind, and there are 3 factors that will help wave growth:

1. Wind Speed
2. Fetch
3. Duration

The first and third one are simple to understand. The higher the wind speed, the larger the wave will grow. And if it happens for a long period of time, then it will continue to grow. A fetch is an area the wind blows over a constand speed and constant direction.

So, if we have strong constant wind speed moving in the same direction over a long period of time, we can see pretty large waves. Some buoy’s and ships over the oceans will report the wind speed and direction, however the data is sparse, and does not provide a great representation of the winds over the entire ocean

Enter QuikSCAT. The Quick Scatterometer is a satellite orbiting around the earth that will look at the ocean surface and generate a wind vector and plot it over the ocean. Here is an example of one:

As you can see, we can get a great sense of the winds at the ocean surface, especically where there are no buoys or ships to record this data. This has become highly popular to National Weather Service forecasters, because not only can we see the winds around a storm, but it can also help marine forecasters determine waves, as we can see wind speeds and fetch areas on these kind of maps.

For more information, you can check out my powerpoint slide here, or look at live data here.