Hope you like weather maps! I sure do! A lot!The top map is grabbed from NOAA on March 10th of this year. Remember that day? There was no weather then, except maybe in Deaf Smith county or whatever that place is in the Texas panhandle. I think that's the High Wind Advisory color (although sometime's it's used for Freezing Spray Advisory or Severe Weather Statement [not to be confused with a watch or warning!])
This map is from February 23rd. Note the large splotches of eye-pleasing weather events. We have a flood advisory in eastern Arkansas, a red flag advisory (wind) in central and southern Texas and western Florida, a Winter Storm Watch around the Great Lakes but extending to DC, a blizzard warning for the western Great Plains, a Winter Storm Warning for the upper Midwest, and Heavy Snow and Winter Storm warnings for Utah's Wasatch Front. That's in addition to the Tornado Watch (yellow) in a narrow band along western Oklahoma and a High Wind Warning to the west of that. There are a couple of other things going on, but they're boring (the lighter the color, the more boring the advisory, generally).Now, can anyone tell be how to make a screen shot or save an image from a Java animation? I've come across some super awesome storms whose image I haven't been able to save. For example, remember the tornado that hit Alabama a month or so ago? I was watching that on my computer at work, and thinking about what a beautiful, classic hook-echo that cell had. But there was no way to save the image! I'm sure you can all sympathize.
This is a hook echo:
The image on the top here is of the tornado that hit OKC on May 3, 1999. Highest wind speed on earth: 318mph. So naturally that's going to have a pretty strong hook-echo pattern. I don't know where the one on the bottom from, but it's an interesting explanation.
Anyway: what you can do at NOAA, though, is zoom-in as close as you want to on an animated image, so that if you are looking at the current Base Reflectivity all you have to do is click on the animation while holding down CTRL. Unfornately, they are not very high-resolution animations.
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Wow, I'm such a great member of this blogging community!
8 comentaris:
Man, the whole country should have gone outside and flown kites or something on March 10th.
I really enjoyed this post. It contains the kind of interesting, digestible nuggets I look for in a blog.
I guess that's sort of like complimenting a person's looks by saying "you have symmetrical features and a well-proportioned frame", but it's still sincere, dammit!
This is the best post so far! I am very interested in weather. And also catnip. Can you make a post combining the two in the future.
PS I'm serious.
I forgot my question mark! But heck, it's pretty impressive that I can type at all, right?
i also liked your post. did you post that because you were currently on the website worried about the coming storms last night?
who is hank the cat?
Why, thank you, Benji. Hopefully I will be able to provide more like it.
I've decided to try to be more disciplined in my library selections.
Today I planned out my months as follows:
During May, I will read a book or two about meteorology.
During June, my topic will be Geology.
During July, my topic will be Botany.
In August I think I'm actually going to start studying for the GRE.
Isn't that a lovely plan? Too bad it's me; it will never actually happen (except maybe reading some more about meteorology).
I don't really worry about storms, Alex. I think they're totally awesome and I love them, so I obsess about them a lot.
I have probably checked NOAA 10 times today.
I leave my computer on "sleep" or whatever it's called so that I can periodically check up on what's going on- every 45 minutes or so. For example, I turned it on when I got home from work, checked the weather, checked the email, and have for the last hour and a half been speculating on the squall line developing to the west (at this point it's running from roughly Hot Springs to Branson, and the strongest cell is around the border between Perry and Yell counties). Strangely enough, there have been no storm warnings yet with this system, though we are under a tornado watch.
I predict a strong but not particularly dramatic thunderstorm arriving about 8.
Hank is a cat that lives in Hillcrest and hates his own fur.
Nate! I don't hate my fur anymore! It's pretty much a miracle.
Also, I'm assuming my request for a catnip related post will come under July's topic of botany.
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