I’ve written extensively in the past on why I think preseason tropical activity forecasts are generally fairly useless. And indeed, trying to specifically predict a particular number of storms is pretty silly. Although hurricane seasons are medium-period events, occupying the gray area between long-term weather and short-term climate, individual hurricanes are short-period events, influenced heavily by other short-period events, which… Read more »
A cool time-lapse video of the Icelandic volcano: Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull – May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.
I’ve been mostly neglecting the big weather news in Becky’s and my last pre-Colorado home state, and Loyette’s state of birth, Tennessee. But it’s bad, with just awful flooding (albeit mostly in Middle Tennessee, not East Tennessee where we lived). Here’s the front page of today’s Nashville Tennesseean: More photos here.
There’s a lot of talk about the allegedly slow reaction to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill being “Obama’s Katrina.” I haven’t followed it closely enough to have an opinion on that. But could the moniker prove more literal than anyone now imagines? Blogger Alan Sullivan, who predicted “significant harm to the Gulf” from the BP explosion at a time… Read more »
Of all the volcano-related photos I’ve seen recently — including the beautiful gallery of Eyjafjallajökull pics on the Boston Globe‘s always-awesome photoblog, The Big Picture — this one is my favorite. It was taken by Arnþór Ævarsson of Hveragerði, Iceland, on April 5, and it shows the volcano in the foreground… and the aurora borealis in the background. The volcano… Read more »
From the Norwegian Meteorological Office, via The Map Room, here’s an animation of the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, that’s disrupting air travel and sowing PANIC!!!!! all across Europe. “Yellow indicates ash that has fallen by itself, red ash that has fallen as a result of precipitation, and black where the ash cloud is at that moment in… Read more »
Two of the biggest, if not the two biggest, snowstorms we’ve gotten this winter in Denver, didn’t happen during the winter at all. The first was just before Halloween. The second was last night and this morning, during many local schools’ spring break, several days after the vernal equinox. Go figure. Anyway, here are a couple of photos from this… Read more »
Ever since the Beltway blizzards, I’ve been making #snowpocalypse jokes whenever we get a flurry in Denver. But, in all seriousness, it’s pretty intense out there right now. When I left work, it was just starting to snow, with some thunder to boot, but with no accumulation yet. Just over four hours later, it looked like this: It’s been a… Read more »
Hawaii was lucky. As this awesome NOAA map shows, the main thrust of the energy in yesterday’s tsunami went almost “due” WNW from the epicenter of the Chile earthquake, at an angle of approximately 294 degrees, rather than 302 degrees — i.e., roughly halfway between WNW and NW — which would have taken it straight toward the islands. This helps… Read more »
From the “Brendan is seriously slacking on his weather-nerd duties” file… I knew the recent California/Arizona storm was a big deal, but I had no idea it was this big of a deal: The most powerful low pressure system in 140 years of record keeping swept through the Southwest U.S. [Thursday], bringing deadly flooding, tornadoes, hail, hurricane force winds, and… Read more »
