Here’s a 20-minute video, compressed to 48 seconds, of that rainbow I photographed yesterday, slowly moving to the right (as the clouds move to the left) and then eventually disappearing. In the early part of the clip, there’s also a hint of a second rainbow, off to the right of the main rainbow. Anyway…
I blogged over at Sullivan’s Travelers about newly designated Tropical Depression Three, which has just formed over the Bahamas. It’s likely to become Tropical Storm Bonnie, and to move through the Florida Straits and into the Gulf of Mexico. That expected track virtually guarantees that this storm will get a whole lot of media attention, far more than your average… Read more »
Unexpected benefit of working late: I just captured this photo (actually a frame from an iPhone-shot movie) of a lightning strike north of downtown:
Hurricane Alex, the Atlantic Basin’s strongest June hurricane in 44 years, has been downgraded to a tropical storm as it moves over mountainous terrain, after “ripping off roofs, causing severe flooding and forcing thousands of people to flee coastal fishing villages” in northern Mexico. Meanwhile, Dr. Jeff Masters is looking back at some eyewall replacement weirdness that happened yesterday as… Read more »
Landfall is expected early tomorrow morning. Winds are “conservatively” estimated at 80 mph, and expected to increase. From the 5am EDT discussion: VERTICAL SHEAR IS FORECAST TO REMAIN LIGHT UP UNTIL LANDFALL OCCURS IN ABOUT 24 HOURS. GIVEN THAT ALEX IS ALSO MOVING SLOWLY OVER SOME OF THE WARMEST UPPER-OCEAN HEAT CONTENT IN THAT REGION OF THE GULF OF MEXICO…STEADY… Read more »
Once upon a time — the summer of 1991, when I was nine years old, to be exact — I was in Chicago, leaving the Field Museum of Natural History in the midst of a massive thunderstorm, when lightning struck the Sears Tower… but my view was completely blocked because I happened to be standing directly behind one of the… Read more »
As noted earlier, today is Atlantic hurricane season’s opening day. But the Pacific hurricane season starts a half-month earlier, on May 15, and it has already produced a landfalling system — Tropical Storm Agatha — which has killed more than 150 people in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, and produced this enormous, building-swallowing sinkhole in Guatemala City: Photo courtesy of… Read more »
Happy Monday Tuesday! In need of something new to worry about? Start off the new week, and month, right — with a new source of PANIC!!!!!!!!!: [A new plant-blighting virus, called] brown streak, is now ravaging cassava crops in a great swath around Lake Victoria, threatening millions of East Africans who grow the tuber as their staple food. Although it… Read more »
Today is the “official” start date, climatologically speaking, of the Atlantic hurricane season. As I’ve pointed out before, it’s really an arbitrary date, with no special significance except that the National Hurricane Center begins publishing its Tropical Weather Outlook four times a day. Speaking of which: TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL 800 AM EDT TUE JUN… Read more »