Lunar Dust Predicts Flooding?

After major cities like Atlanta, Nashville, and Dallas just to name a few, have experienced major flooding events in the last few years, forecasters are looking for anything that may provide better flood notice. Thanks to NASA, meteorologists may get just that.

John Lane, a Kennedy Space Center physicist, has spent much of his career trying to preserve the historic lunar landing sites, but stumbled on something very interesting. Apparently measuring lunar dust is no different than measuring rain.



courtesy: NASA

Lane used a laser to measure exactly how much lunar dust a rocket ship would displace as it landed on the surface. (This is key for NASA because the Apollo landing sites are considered sacred, so future moon landings would have to be precise as to prevent any damage to the historical sites.)

That same laser also has the ability to detect tiny particles, smaller than most raindrops. That is key, because if forecasters can see how large or small the raindrops are within a cloud, they can better predict rainfall rates. If the rates are high, then the chances of flooding are also high.

Lane does not have a degree in meteorology, nor does he even have any meteorology experience, but that didn’t stop him from realizing the connection to flood forecasting.



courtesy: NASA

Robert Molleda, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Miami, Florida is very excited about the possibilities of using the lasers to make more accurate computer model forecasting.

"If you can accurately determine the size of a raindrop, you can find the relationship between the amount of rain and rainfall rates [considering current weather radar has a hard time estimating the size of raindrops]," Molleda said.



courtesy: National Geographic

The best part..... putting these lasers into widespread usage is not expensive because the lasers cost less than $100.

Sources: Sun Sentinel, NWS, NASA, National Geographic

New Weather Satellite Coming!

The University of California at Berkeley has been given a $200 million grant by NASA to build a satellite. This new satellite will be made to determine how Earth’s weather affects extreme “space weather” (the weather at the edge of our atmosphere and the edge of space). Why would that be important? Just about everything we use in our daily lives anymore involves a cell phone, GPS, satellite communication, or radio communications. Well, some space weather can actually disrupt those satellites (GPS, cell phones, etc.) and radio communications.

The new satellite will be called the Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON), and UC Berkeley will be responsible for the design, construction, and operations of the project. Since this can’t be done overnight, the launch is not expected to occur until some time in 2017. Once launched, it will be sent to orbit around 345 miles above the Earth’s surface in the ionosphere. Why the ionosphere specifically? There are many layers of the atmosphere, and one of the highest levels is the ionosphere, ranging from around 50 miles to 370 miles in altitude. It can encompass parts of the mesosphere, thermosphere, and even the exosphere, but it is not the same exact thing as those. What makes the ionosphere unique is that it is ionized by the sun radiation to create constantly moving streams of charged particles. The ionosphere is basically a container of electrons and electrically charged molecules surrounding the Earth. Those charged molecules are what can disrupt GPS, cell phone service, radio communications, etc.

But ICON won’t just be studying weather in space, but it will also be trying to see how that weather affects our weather here on Earth too, and vice versa.

“Ten years ago, we had no idea that the ionosphere was affected and structured by storms in the lower atmosphere,” said the project’s principal investigator, Thomas Immel, a senior fellow at the Space Sciences Laboratory. “We proposed ICON in response to this new realization.”

The below image shows a bright red wall of plasma, not to be confused with the aurora lights, which are lower in altitude, where Earth and the ionosphere meet. Despite the fact that it looks computer rendered, this is actually a real picture taken by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station.

UC Berkeley will use ICON to try to make a connection between storms that occur near Earth’s surface and space-weather storms, which may allow for better prediction of space weather events. Not only does this help with our communications satellites, but it also could help with the safety of commercial airliners, which today cannot rely solely on GPS satellites to fly and land because sometimes the satellites can send distorted signals thanks to charged-particle storms in the ionosphere.

“We know that the solar wind plays a big role in the ionosphere, but most of the time the sun is relatively quiet, and our space environment still varies quite a bit,” he said. “We think that variability is coming from weather on our own planet, which can be very powerful.”

Sources: NASA, UC-Berkeley, Stanford

Sandy Retired From Storm Names

We all remember the images that came out of "Superstorm Sandy" last year. They were incredible, even unbelieveable at times.

Sandy caused at least 150 fatalities, with over 70 of them being in the Northeast alone. That is the highest number of fatalities from a tropical storm to happen outside of the southeastern states since Hurricane Agnes over 40 years ago. Sandy was the costliest storm system, only behind Hurricane Katrina, with an estimated $50 billion in damages.

Because of these statistics, the name Sandy will be retired from the list of Atlantic Ocean list. The National Hurricane Center has been using that list since 1954. The names are on cycles, and get re-used every six years, which means a new name, Sara, will replace the Sandy's slot in 2018.

Properties that lacked the protection of robust sand dunes. Courtesy: NASA

The surprise??? Isaac will not be retired. Despite the fact that the storm ravaged Louisiana on the anniversary of Katrina with over $2 billion in damages, 34 fatalities, and caused millions of power outages, the World Metoeorological Organization (the committee who makes these decisions), decided it wasn't enough to retire the name.

Hurricane Katrina from space

So why retire the names in the first place? If I said to you that my parents survived Hurricane Katrina, do you think about the storm that annihilated the Gulf Coast in 2005, or the storm that hit Cuba and the Bahamas back in 1981? Exactly. Nobody remembers the Katrina from 1981, but everyone remembers the one from 2005. When a storm name becomes tied to a very large, memorable event, a decision is made to retire it, so there is no confusion recalling events. other big names to be retired are Hugo, Andrew, Opal, Ivan, Wilma, and Irene to name a few. Note: Allison is the only name on the retired list that never made it to hurricane status. During its entire life, Allison was only a tropical storm with maximum winds of 60mph. Most of the damage from Allison did not come from the wind, but rather the rain. Allison's track made a complete 360, causing Houston to take a double dose of heavy downpours.

 

Sources: NOAA, NCSU, The Times, Scientific American, NHC

4/7/13 Record Cold March

For those living along the western coast of the U.S. March was an overall warm month. Several cities in Washington, Nevada, and California broke record high temperatures; some, several days in a row. However, for the people who live in the southeastern states, they were bundling up, and wondering when Spring was going to arrive.

So why the extreme cold for the Southeast? Much of the blame can be attributed to a strongly negative Arctic Oscillation. The Arctic Oscillation basically determines how the warm and cold weather patterns get distributed. When you have atmospheric pressure changes at both the polar and middle latitudes, that pattern usually allows for colder air to come farther southward than it normally would in springtime.

So just how cold was it? Atlanta had it’s 17^th coldest March on record with an average temperature of 49.1°F. That means March was colder than both December (51.1ºF) and January (49.9ºF)!  Another strange anomally; Birmingham, Alabama had its 10^th coldest March on record at 49.7°F, but just last year, they had their WARMEST March on record at 65.5°F. What a difference a year makes! Here are some other cities that felt the chill:

Huntsville, Alabama had its 10^th coldest at 47.4°F

Knoxville, Tennessee had its 6^th coldest at 44.0°F

Macon, Georgia had its 7^th coldest March at 50.7°F

Tuscaloosa, Alabama had its 4^th coldest March at 51.5°F

Charlotte, North Carolina had its 8^th coldest March at 46.1°F

 

Sometimes it is hard to imagine that 50°F is cold, so lets put it into perspective. First, this is March, not January we’re talking about. With that in mind, at times Raleigh, North Carolina felt more like Philadelphia for much of March;  Asheville, North Caorlina felt more like New York City; and Atlanta felt more like Washington D.C. Would you like to see how your city fared? This link here will let you see what your city's temperatures were comparable to.

Sources: NWS, NOAA, SERCC

4/4/13 Record Low Count for March Tornadoes

It was a very cold March for many areas across the country. Charlotte, NC had their coldest March on record, and cities like Atlanta, Nashville, and Birmingham were not far behind. However, although many complained of the cold, there is one benefit to having it: it kept tornadoes away. That’s right. The last March we had fewer tornadoes was almost 50 years ago when we had 8 tornadoes, back in 1969.

So far, based off of preliminary data, there were only 17 tornadoes throughout the entire U.S. in the month of March. Based off of that data, this makes it the 5^th lowest March on record.

The strange thing is that last March, in 2012, we had quite the opposite. With 154 tornadoes that month, it was almost double the average.  So why such a drastic change from last year to this year? That is a two part answer. First is the jet stream. Second is the cold temperatures across much of the eastern half of the country in March.

Normally, this time of year, the jet stream creates a trough, or dip, that comes from out of the western section of the country and into the central and southeastern states (think Texas to Oklahoma to Tennessee to Florida). However, the opposite has occurred for much of March this year. That allowed for a lot of those bitter cold temperatures that many folks in the southeast felt. That cold air dominated, and blocked any of the warm air from entering (you need both to create that unstable air needed for severe weather). Cold air also has a hard time supporting moist air, so the humidity was also not a factor last month.

The one thing to note is while March may have been relatively quiet, that doesn’t mean April and May will be the same!

Tornado path and strength from Glascock county, Georgia

Damage at Magnolia Baptist Church in Glascock county, Georgia

Sources: SPC, NOAA, Weather.com