Click image to view Tuesday’s webcast:
Archive for September, 2010
Is Our Hurricane Season Over?
September 28, 2010
Funny Moment of the Day: I Get Blamed for the Rain
September 21, 2010
Click image to watch clip:
Hurricane Dropsondes
September 14, 2010
What was in the sky Saturday?
September 14, 2010
Photo by: Wanda Laborde, Galveston
Our station was flooded with phone calls Saturday with reports of a plane circling southeast Texas and spraying something into the sky. It was a NASA’s high altitude air craft WB-57 conducting atmospheric research. NASA officials said, “This is a normal operation, but due to atmospheric conditions its contrails are extremely visible.” Contrails, short for condensation trails, are emitted from the exhaust of a plane. A contrail is formed when condensation in jet engine exhaust freezes into ice crystals which then trace the aircraft’s flight. This plane was 45 -50,000 feet in the sky and Saturday was perfectly clear so the contrails were easy to see.
To see our complete Local2 story click here:
NASA Plane Circles Neighborhoods
For more information on contrails and how they are formed click here:
Look Up In The Sky
First Hurricane on Radar
September 8, 2010
Category 4 Audrey hit Cameron, Louisiana on June 27th and still holds the record as the strongest June hurricane. At least 550 people died from the storm and some sued the U.S. Weather Bureau because they felt they weren’t warned properly. The federal court ruled that the Weather Bureau did the best job they could based on the current science of what was known about hurricanes. We’ve come a long way since in 60 years.
To view other weather quiz answers click here:
The Fujiwhara Effect
September 2, 2010
I’ve been getting this question a lot the last two weeks with all of the storms in the Atlantic Ocean. The questions basically goes like this, “If two storms get too close together, will they form a super hurricane?” The answer is no.
They will rotate around each other if both storms are of equal strength. If one storm is stronger than the other, the weaker storm will continue to get weaker with the stronger storm having no effect. It’s called the Fujiwhara Effect. In 1921, Japanese meteorologist Sakuhi Fujiwhara was studying vortices in water and discovered that if two hurricanes get within 900 miles of each other, they will begin to rotate around each other.
The most famous example is typhoons Ivan and Joan in the Pacific Ocean in 1997. Ivan was steered to the west while Joan moved north. Click image to see the video webcast we did on our morning show.
Anthony Yanez's Weather Blog 