meteorology

How Navy supercomputers help sailors beat an ancient nemesis

MONTEREY, Calif.--One after another, the framed pictures on both walls of the narrow hallway tell the story: submarines and naval ships churning white wakes as they slash through open ocean, each photo accompanied by unbidden gratitude.

"Thank you for your team's efforts & hard work! You ensure my safety and enhance my tactical advantage," one reads.

Welcome to the U.S. Navy's Fleet Numerical Meteorology & Oceanography Center. That long-and-hard-to-say name notwithstanding, this is one of the United States military's sharpest weapons in the never-ending battle for survival in rough seas all around the … Read more

Twitter inundated with tornado-photo hoaxes

I'm not exaggerating here--for a brief while on Thursday evening in New York, the weather felt so apocalypse-by-way-of-Hollywood that I wouldn't have been a bit surprised if I had spotted Godzilla stomping down Sixth Avenue from the vantage point of the midtown Starbucks where I'd taken refuge from the intense wind and pummeling cloudbursts. There were, in fact, two tornadoes making mischief in the neighboring boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens that evening.

So when an impressive photo showing a tornado in ominous proximity to the Statue of Liberty began making the rounds on Twitter, it was perfectly … Read more

Hurricane watch: blow by blow

Climate change predictions have included warnings that hurricanes and other tropical storms could become more extreme. So this may be coming at just the right time to save at least some of you who live along the Gulf and Atlantic coastlines.

Scientists now have a system that uses data from twenty Doppler radar stations along the eastern and southern seaboard of the U.S. When a hurricane's within 120 miles of landfall, the radar data is aggregated. Using a computerized system meteorologists now can get three-dimensional views of the hurricane that are updated every six minutes. This is far … Read more

Wind-generated ocean swells not so swell

You may have missed this on your favorite blog site, and you definitely missed this if you looked at American TV news. Reunion Island got smashed on Saturday. Big waves. Lots of damage. It was not a tsunami this time. Certainly earthquakes can pack an enormous wallop, but the supporters of wind power surely have something going as well.

The European Space Agency (ESA) satellites were tracking the course of the big swells. Ocean swells, not rich guys with big heads. Big, really big waves. Some that slammed into Reunion without warning were over 35 feet high.

First, the satellite … Read more