Tag Archives: NOAA

Major changes high above our heads today. And only a few people are aware because, on the surface (forgive the pun), nothing much will change. This is one of those “behind the scenes” changes that touches every one of us, yet life will go on as before. Although, life should go on just a little better than before. That’s because today marks the retirement of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) 11 which has been on duty for almost 12 years, and the beginning of operational duty for GOES 15 — which brings improved capabilities to the job.

Accosted is the wrong word, but on two occasions this past weekend “friends” of mind said something along these lines: “Hey, Weatherman! Where are all the hurricanes you and your ilk predicted.” I told them to go back to cutting the grass, but their curiosity isn’t unfounded.

Of course, it’s mid-July and everybody expects it to be warm. But not like this! Temperatures more common-place in Texas are spreading as far north as Canada. Though you can read about the “hot forecast” on many sources from The Weather Channel to CNN, ImpactWeather and YourWeatherBlog would like to take this opportunity to remind you to take care of yourself in this oppressive heat.

Lists are great and we all use them. Of course, Santa has the biggest and best list around and he checks it twice. It makes sense, too — don’t want to forget something or somebody. The next best list, at least when I was a kid, was Mom’s shopping list. If anything was going to [...]

One only has to look to the news over the past few weeks to see outbreaks of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes: Tornadoes in Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, and Florida to name a few. Nationwide, the United States can expect an average of more than 1,000 tornadoes annually.

For those of us in the United States, the retiring of Igor and Tomas may seem a bit curious. After all, no storms struck the U.S. mainland last year and to most the season was considered a quiet one. Yet Igor, at one time a Category 4 storm, became the worst storm to ever hit Newfoundland, while Tomas caused more than $600 million in damage across the Caribbean.

It’s cloudy and unusually cold in Houston at this writing. Not exactly the stuff of La Niña, yet eastern Pacific waters are cooler than normal allowing western Pacific waters to be warmer than normal which, in turn, allows abundant precipitation across Equatorial waters of the western Pacific. Translation? Classic La Niña.

Winter is still over a month away but it felt like it arrived early across the Intermountain West yesterday as 2-6 inches of snow fell across the region. In addition to the snowfall, this weekend into early next week temperatures across portions of Montana and the Dakotas will be 20-35 degrees below average as a [...]

It seems almost every day science discovers a new level of communication, teamwork and societal hierarchy where none was thought to previously exist. Communication is defined as a message with a sender and an intended recipient; and there must be a communicative commonality. Whales and dolphins come immediately to mind. Wolves and apes have this [...]

“What can $500 million and a NASA Delta IV rocket do for you?” That’s not quite as catchy as the no-longer-used motto from United Parcel Service (“What Can Brown Do For You?”), but it’s certainly more direct — and without that unpleasant aftertaste that lead to the demise of that silly mantra. $500 million can [...]