The Mile High City found itself in a bit of a haze yesterday that continues into today as smoke from wildfires to Colorado’s northwest moves into the state. Dozens of fires are burning across the region and while none have been as devastating as those seen in recent months, their effects are being felt far and wide. Read the rest of this story and view satellite imagery of the smoke plume on Examiner.com.
The old saying says not to mess with Mother Nature and she apparently wanted to drive that point home in Boston yesterday. During a live weather forecast on WBZ-TV yesterday a lightning strike knocked the lights out in the studio.
Thunderstorms rolled through much of the northeastern United States yesterday. The storms brought heavy rain, strong wind and plenty of lightning.
Ironically Chief Meteorologist Todd Gutner was discussing those exact weather conditions when the bolt hit.
Following the boom of thunder and a burst of static the lights went out and some of the displays flickered. Amazingly enough the station was able to continue broadcasting and Gutner finished his forecast, albeit a bit in the dark.
Check out the video below.
The next time severe weather strikes, don’t be surprised to receive a message on your cellular phone from Uncle Sam warning you of the danger. A new service launched by NOAA’s National Weather Service and the nation’s wireless service providers has begun sending out weather warnings to mobile phones. Get more details on this new potentially life-saving system on Examiner.com. Remember too that ThorntonWeather.com offers severe weather alerts via email.
In big news for the commercial weather industry, The Weather Channel recently announced it was buying competing weather website Weather Underground. Reaction to the merger of the nation’s most commercial weather company and the nation’s first commercial weather website was swift and not very supportive.
Here at ThorntonWeather.com we are big fans of the Weather Undergound (despite their co-founder’s global warming alarmism). As for The Weather Channel, we pretty much ignore them.
Find out more about this business deal and why many are unhappy about it.
Wildfires are dangerous in and of themselves and fighting them is even more hazardous, a deadly reminder of which occurred Sunday night. A North Carolina Air National Guard C130 Hercules fighting a fire in South Dakota crashed while making a retardant drop killing at least three crew members. Read the rest of this story on Examiner.com.
Just as firefighters finally seemed to be gaining ground on massive fires along the Colorado Front Range, a new fire has erupted on the state’s Western Slope. The Pine Ridge Fire in De Beque Canyon has forced some area residents to evacuate and temporarily closed Interstate 70. Read the rest of this story on Examiner.com and be sure to check out the amazing photos.
When NASA launched the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project, or NPP, in October, it ushered in a new generation of climate and weather satellites. The school bus size spacecraft is now securely in polar orbit making 14 passes over the Earth each day.
The five main instruments are critical to enhancing not only short term weather forecasting but also in aiding long term climate modeling. NASA has performing an initial checkout of the craft and its instruments, a process which will take several more weeks before it begins its regular science mission.
This week NASA released an astounding ‘blue marble’ image captured by its Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). The image is a composite from multiple orbits of the spacecraft on January 4, 2012 showing much of North and Central America.
The Atlantic’s first major hurricane struck the United States over the weekend becoming the first hurricane to make landfall in the country since 2008. It adds to the nation’s tally of billion dollar disasters this year and leaves at least two dozen people dead in its wake.
As reported by the Natural Disasters Examiner, initial damage estimates put losses from the storm at $7 billion. Total losses including the economic impact may approach $20 billion.
More than the economic impact though is the human toll. At latest count, at least 26 people were killed in the massive storm. Eight states stretching from Florida to Connecticut saw citizens lose their lives.
For complete coverage of Hurricane Irene, check out the links from the Natural Disasters Examiner below:
Certainly anyone who has studied the Founding Fathers is well aware of Benjamin Franklin’s electrifying kite-flying experience. What many Americans may not know is that he was one of the first storm chasers and his fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was a weatherman in his own right.
Benjamin Franklin’s interest in the weather spanned virtually his entire lifetime. He was intrigued by the weather and deduced the movement of storms going on to accurately theorize about low and high pressure as the basis for weather patterns.
His Poor Richard’s Almanac featured some of the nation’s first weather forecasts, penned by Franklin under the pseudonym of Richard Saunders. Later in life he would record weather observations during his numerous Atlantic crossings and six years before his passing he published a number of “Meteorological Imaginations and Conjectures.”
Franklin also was one of the nation’s first storm chasers. In a letter to Peter Collinson dated August 25, 1755 Franklin relayed his experience chasing what he called a whirlwind in Maryland the prior April.
He wrote, “We saw, in the vale below us, a small whirlwind beginning in the road and showing itself by the dust it raised and contained. It appeared in the form of a sugar-loaf, spinning on its point, moving up the hill towards us, and enlarging as it came forward. When it passed by us, its smaller part near the ground appeared no bigger than a common barrel; but widening upwards, it seemed, at forty or fifty feet high to be twenty or thirty feet in diameter. The rest of the company stood looking after it; but my curiosity being stronger, I followed it, riding close by its side, and observed its licking up in its progress all the dust that was under its smaller part.”
America’s first statesman goes on to detail how he followed the meteorological phenomena saying, “I accompanied it about three-quarters of a mile, till some limbs of dead trees, broken off by the whirl, flying about and falling near me made me more apprehensive of danger; and then I stopped, looking at the top of it as it went on, which was visible, by means of the leaves contained in it, for a very great height above the trees.”
Certainly it would appear Franklin encountered a strong dust devil or possibly even a weak tornado.
On July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson was doing more than just signing the Declaration of Independence – he also was buying a thermometer for £3-15 in Philadelphia from merchant John Sparhawk. The author of the document that started the United States of America bought nearly 20 of the instruments over his life.
Just three days prior, on July 1, Jefferson began his first “meteorological diary.” From then on his daily routine included checking a thermometer at dawn and in the late-afternoon and recording the readings. Occasionally he would also use a barometer and hygrometer to supplement his measurements.
Jefferson believed that to understand the climate measurements would need to be taken across the young nation and he tried to spur others to do the same. He wrote that documentation would require “steady attention to the thermometer, to the plants growing there, the times of their leafing and flowering, its animal inhabitants, beast, birds, reptiles and insects; its prevalent winds, quantities of rain and snow, temperature of mountains, and other indexes of climate.”
It has been a veritable ‘summer of fire’ for Arizona and New Mexico as hundreds of thousands of acres have gone up in flames. A new blaze, started Sunday, now threatens the nation’s premier nuclear laboratory near Los Alamos.
The Las Conchas fire has grown to 60,741 acres in less than 48 hours and has seen no containment. The blaze has forced the evacuation of the entire population of the city of Los Alamos and threatens the Los Alamos National Laboratory on two sides.
The Natural Disasters Examiner reports that one spot fire did get started on the laboratory grounds but has been quickly extinguished. Of greatest concern are drums of nuclear waste that are stored at the facility that could cause a release of radioactive material – something which has not happened.