Dan’s Wild Wild Weather Journal

I have received two really neat pictures illustrating atmospheric phenomena this week. One is local from Ralph Koepsel of Ider. The other was taken from an aircraft carrier in the Pacific.

The first shot was taken Tuesday afternoon and is a great image of Snow Virga falling from high based clouds over Dekalb County. The snow evaporated long before it reached the ground, but it was clearly visible from below.

The other shot one an award as the science shot of the year. A jet, breaking the sound barrier just above the Pacific ocean. The shock waves produced as the plane flew at supersonic speeds caused the air around it to expand and contract. When it expands, the air suddenly cools, and moisture condenses to form a cloud! The picture was taken by John Gay from the top of an aircraft carrier.

Enjoy!

Virga

Our 6pm producer came back to the weather office this afternoon to ask me about a story on the wire about major cuts in the polar orbiting weather satellite program. I was unfortunately very familiar with the problems.

The National Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) provides a ton of data for researchers and weather forecasters like myself.

You have seen these images on my weathercasts many times. While most of the satellite pictures you see on TV weathercasts are from the much higher GOES satellites, the much lower NPOESS images provide very high resolution views in full colour of weather systems.

What you do not often see is images and data from other sensors on these satellites. This data is critical to our understanding of the Earth’s heat budget. Thousands of students and researchers around the world use this data to improve the long term climate models that are so important to our understanding of climate change.

I attended a couple of sessions on the NPOESS problems back in January at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society. These meetings were packed with stunned scientists who were getting the bad news that many instruments that they depended on for their research would not be put onboard the next generation of satellites because of budget cuts.

There are strong rumors that the program has been mismanaged. One researcher told me it was “Badly mismanaged”. Frankly, I am not close enough to these programs to know whose fault (If any) that is.

There is definitely an overall feeling in the science community that the United States is no longer the leader in Earth Observation research. The European Union has plans for several satellites that will have these sensors so hope is not lost.

However, As a local scientist told me today, the students and their tuition will go to the universities in the counties that pay for this data…and that will be Europe.

Before you make up your mind on whether this research is worth the taxpayer money it will cost…spend some time to understand it.

Here is a link to more information on the NPOESS program:

Last week’s tornadoes remind me that we have a growing problem of tornadoes. Not there are anymore tornadoes now than there were say 50-100 years ago. There may actually be an increase in the future as the planet continues to warm but so far there is no real evidence of an increase in hurricanes or tornadoes as a result of the temperature rises in the last 100 years.

The problem is urban sprawl.If you were to have an identical repeat of the April 3 1974 tornadoes across North Alabama today, the damage and injuries would be astronomically higher. In 1974, Madison was a small village compared to today’s city. Up until the late 1990’s there were almost no reports on record of a deadly tornado going through a major city. This is not surprising.

The amount of area covered by a large downtown area is actually very small compared to the area of an entire state.Look at Oklahoma City and Birmingham. Both hit by deadly tornadoes. Orlando too. Cities are much bigger than they were 30 years ago. Therefore, the risk of an EF4 or EF5 tornado coming through one is higher.

There will be more large city tornadoes in the future as well.There is some good news. Most tornadoes are weak ones. EF0 to EF2. The deadly EF4 and EF5 tornadoes are very rare. We can see them forming on radar very well. They had almost an hour warning of the Enterprise tornado and 15 mins. of warning (If not more) of the twister that hit Americus, Georgia.

This is why we push NOAA radios. If you have a plan and you have a way of getting the warning. You can survive these deadly storms. Your house may not…but you probably will.

Later,
Dan

Two category 5 hurricanes in matter of weeks. Hard to believe. Yet the satellite shots and the dropsonde numbers do not lie.

Rita is not just a cat 5 storm tonight..it is a STRONG Cat 5 storm. Fortunately hurricanes do not tend to stay at this level for long and I suspect it will be a 4 at landfall…maybe even down to a 3 (Let’s hope so)

If it comes ashore as a strong 4 like Katrina, we are talking damage in the Billions. Even more worrying is the late model runs tonight which are hinting strongly at a path closer to Galveston. If it hits Port Lavaca to the SW then we are looking at a 10 Billion dollar storm. Put Galveston and Houston as the landfall and the price goes up to 50 Billion. (and the cost of Gasoline goes to $5/gallon)

It is certainly a Texas storm but the only other thing for sure tonight is that after it hits I will get a ton of emails with the same pictures of an Iowa tornado telling me that they were from a friend and the pictures are of Rita at landfall. I get so many of them everyday now (Supposedly katrina Pics) I just have taken to replying with the word “HOAX” and my initials. (Last year they were supposedly from Ivan)

Not sure why those pictures bother me so much. Maybe it is because I want people to look at what they are sent with a cautious eye and not believe everything they are told… Maybe that is the science training that was engrained in me at OU.

Still, I have yet to get the letters and emails that always follow a great disaster from people who:

A. Think this is a communist, or Alqueda plot.

B. Have a way of controlling these storms that the government is preventing from development and they would just develop themselves with a loan of 2- 3 million.

C. Are true seers of the future and predicted it a year ago.

D. A sign from God that the end is near!

But they are coming.. I can feel it… as a matter fact, I predicted them a year ago.

If you have relatives on the Texas coast.. tell’em to get the he** out of Dodge.

Later,
Dan