Finally Some Good Satellite News!

This year was a bad year for weather satellites. First, the Glory mission literally went up in flames on the launchpad due to federal contractor incompetence. Not only did the scew-ups at Orbital Sciences Corp. destroy a $400 million satellite, they did it in the exact same way that they destroyed the Orbiting Carbon Observatory in 2009. Why these yokels got even one more contract and were allowed to flush even one more weather satellite down the toilet eludes me. There are no plans to replace Glory, leaving a gaping hole in observations of aerosols and solar radiation that are sorely needed for monitoring and studying climate and climate change, and all the scientists who had planned research and applied for grants around Glory were left the lurchiest of lurches. I personally know scientists who were brought to tears at the news of the explosion following launch.

Then the news came this week that hackers had briefly gained access of Landsat and Terra several years ago. Much of the commentary has focused on the damage that could be done if hackers were able to access more "sensitive" satellites, like those guiding military operations or handling communications, but messing with weather satellites is just as sinister to me. Imagine someone taking out our geostationary satellites during an active hurricane season - we wouldn't be able to track storms or warn people in threatened communities until it was too late. Here on the West coast, satellite imagery is an extremely important tool in identifying winter storms because unlike the midwest, we don't have any radar coverage west of us, where the storms come from. Just ocean. Furthermore, what if someone made slight changes to our polar orbiters without anyone noticing? Data sets that are crucial to the study of climate change, air pollution, tropical rainfall, etc, would be contaminated and useless for years. Or they could just swing out of orbit and fall to Earth years before the end of their useful life, without plans in place to quickly replace them. (OK so my coworker Tyler, who is much more involved in satellites than I am corrected me here: The hackers did not actually gain control of the satellites, but did divert the incoming data. Polar orbiters are only controlled from one spot on Earth, but because their line of sight is constantly changing, they send data back to many points on Earth which what got hacked into. Basically, small chunks of data are missing. That's still not good.)

That's all pretty depressing, but like the title promises, there was a glimmer of hope today. The new NPP polar orbiter was launched today, and it got up into space in one piece (it was not launched with the aforementioned yokel's Taurus XL rocket, but rather a Delta II rocket made by United Launch Alliance/Boeing)! Not only is it taking measurements to back up and replace the MODIS satellites (Aqua and Terra) it is testing out new instruments, too, and is a proof-of-concept project for the upcoming Joint Polar Satellite System. JPSS is a cooperation between NOAA and NASA and is a revised project after the scrapping of a planned joint satellite project between NOAA and the Defense Department called NPOESS. The DoD gets to go it alone now with their Defense Weather Satellite System.

I'm looking forward to more successful launches of shiny, new satellites in the next decade and in the meantime - someone put some better security on those things!

Where to go for weather forecasts?

Friends and family often ask me for forecasts. Sometimes it's a joke and sometimes they really do want to know what the weather is going to be. I imagine doctors get "hey can you take a look at this rash real quick?" from their family, and maybe folks who studied accounting get asked to review friends' taxes every once in while... And you don't always feel like it. So I tell them where I get my weather forecasts instead. What? You thought I spend the time to make a good and accurate forecast every day? There are people who do that professionally and I'm not one of them (as of yet, anyway, although I am theoretically qualified). And the key word here is PEOPLE.

Lots and lots and lots of people use weather.com and accuweather.com. These are AUTOMATED sites. Their forecasts are not vetted by real people. I believe it was perhaps two or three years ago during a cold snap that weather.com forecast a low of minus five degrees for Seattle. Yes, five degrees below zero FAHRENHEIT. Any human knows that that was a completely unreasonable forecast (it has never been below zero in Seattle). These sites do OK during normal weather - which often gives many people the impression that they are reliable and accurate - but they break big time when there is unseasonable or extreme weather. And those are the times when you really need a good forecast!

My local WFO (Weather Forecast Office) webpage. Space to input your location circled in red, link to forecast discussion in yellow.

So where should you look? I recommend the National Weather Service - weather.gov. Humans still add value to forecasts and the humans at the NWS are all highly educated and have been trained on the job as well. They are the experts, and nearly all private forecasting services use the information from the NWS. From the front page, click on your region of the country to go to your local forecast office's homepage, or type in your location in the upper left corner of the webpage. If you want to read a more detailed forecast and the reasoning behind it, go your local office's forecast discussion. It can get technical, but if you really want to dig in to all the possibilities of how the weather is going to evolve, what's most likely and why, this is the place.

If you want more of a layman's discussion, go to the website of your favorite local news channel. Yep! Their forecast won't be much different from the NWS because they're getting a lot of their information from them anyway, but it's their job to communicate in straightforward terms to the public and show clean, easy to understand graphics. Take heed though, every once in a while I see local news channel forecasters getting a little sensational - especially when there is snow in the forecast (in Seattle). They are less likely to talk about uncertainty.

Just please, don't let me catch you checking weather.com.

Arlene hey are you comin in to town?

It's the first named storm of the season, say hello to Arlene. If the NHC is on their game, she should be the first of many this season. She's a bit disorganized and weak and with Mexico getting all in her way she won't last for long.

Commence Seattle Snow Hysteria

Yes, that is 1-2 inches of snow in 3 hours that you are seeing over Seattle on Monday morning. But don't get your panties in a bunch yet! That's a 120hr (5 day) forecast - pretty unreliable. Although, reading the discussions from the weather service, the snow outlook has gone from unlikely, to tantalizingly interesting. Earlier, it looked like there just wouldn't be enough moisture to make use of the cold air streaming into Western Washington from Canada this weekend/Monday... but now the forecasters are hinting that there may be moisture on tap after all. Worth watching!

Today's Watches and Warnings

It's a pretty patchwork.

New Seasonal Weather Outlook

The change in the weather this weekend inspired me to take a peek at the Nat'l Weather Service's seasonal weather outlook for the upcoming Autumn. Guess what? They're actually predicting a warmer, drier fall and winter than normal. The warmer part isn't so surprising - the current El Nino is strengthening so that makes sense. Usually, though, El Nino also means a wetter, stormier winter for us. Perhaps there is something else at work - large scale climate dynamics isn't really my specialty. But at least you don't have to completely despair that we're descending into interminable winter a few months early!

Breath Easy...

Seattle is getting back to normal - weather-wise, anyway. For anyone that's been living under rock, we broke a lot of records last week. Most people know that we had the highest daily high temperature ever recorded in Seattle (that would include back in the day when weather readings were taken at the downtown federal building instead of Seatac), a blistering 103 degrees F. But that's not really what made last week so unbearable - I think the misery was more related to another record that we broke. We had the highest low temperature ever recorded in Seattle, too. That is to say, the night of the record breaking heat, it never got below 70 degrees. Seattle wasn't able to cool down... probably for several reasons. We had a lot of air stagnation so the region got very little ventilation. Also, it was fairly humid - not by East coast standards, but there was enough moisture in the air to hold on to a lot of the heat of the day. And of course, we are having our long, intense summer days that don't allow a lot of nighttime cooling (the sunlight is more intense at higher latitudes in the summer - you'll get a sunburn quicker in Seattle than you will in Houston at the Summer Solstice). So we really had the perfect heat wave storm... something that only a meteorologist could get excited about :)

Luckily, the persistent pattern that brought the heat is breaking down and we'll be back to normal (mid 70's) soon... how long that will last is anyone's guess, though.

It's Baaaaaack...

Yes, Folks, it's official - El Nino is back. It doesn't matter a whole lot right now, but come winter we'll see the effects. Sorry, Washington skiers and snowboarders: El Nino means warmer winter temperatures and less snow in the Pacific Northwest. Also, El Nino usually means bad news for California, with increased storminess, but this year I think that might be a good thing since they REALLY need the rain. One immediate consequence that we will see will be the next hurricane outlook that comes out from the Nat'l Hurricane Center in August - El Nino often means a suppression of Atlantic hurricanes. However, they already knew this was coming and this looks to be only a weak to moderate El Nino, so the outlook probably won't change too much.