An interesting feature southwest of the Cape Verde Islands is slowly getting its act together, and it’s likely to become a tropical depression or tropical storm over the next few days as it moves west toward the Caribbean. Its future is uncertain right now, but it bears watching given its location and the time of year.
If it’s August, it’s another issue of the Old Farmer’s Almanac that sends the internet’s collective mind into a tizzy. The much vaunted annual publication is famous for “accurately” predicting the weather (or so says your Aunt Erma), but it’s basically the print version of a psychic reading on a 1-900 number.
The most famous image of Earth is one taken by the crew of Apollo 17 on their way to the Moon in 1972. Not only is it a beautiful picture, but it was the first time many people had ever seen an actual photo of our full planet. Fast forward a few decades, and we can see that view every day. Here’s your world today—as seen by satellites floating around in orbit—in all of its watery wonder.
Oh, dear God. Don’t turn around. No, seriously, it’s right behind you. This menacing creature can smell fear and has a thirst for blood. I don’t mean to alarm you, but forecasters predict that a Godzilla El Niño will rise up from the ocean and destroy everything you know and love this winter. Goodbye, friends.
A new reality show is throwing folks in front of a green screen and jamming them into wind tunnels to see if they have the guts to be America’s next great weatherperson. It’s common to brush off meteorologists as a group of lying guessers, but it takes an incredible effort to accurately predict the future every day.
Typhoon Soudelor hit Taiwan this weekend with winds equivalent to those seen in a category three hurricane, causing immense damage and killing more than 20 people. Despite its power and destruction as a typhoon, Soudelor will be remembered for giving us one of the most dramatic tornado videos ever released.
The tornado that struck Troy, Alabama, on Thursday night was an EF-1 with estimated winds of around 100 MPH, according to the National Weather Service. The tornado produced “extensive damage” to a Walmart and Hibbett Sports, injuring six people. The NWS did not issue a tornado warning ahead of the storm.
Typhoon Soudelor is poised to make landfall on the east coast of Taiwan with winds of about 115 MPH, which makes it the equivalent of a category three on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. The island can expect destructive winds, torrential rainfall, landslides, and a damaging storm surge in coastal communities. Soudelor will make a second landfall in China on Sunday afternoon (local time) as a significantly weaker storm, but still a heavy rain producer.
A possible tornado struck Troy, Alabama, without warning on Thursday night, damaging several structures and overturning a tractor trailer along its path. Early reports on Twitter indicate that the local Walmart and a sports store sustained heavy damage, with the roofs of both stores caved in, much to the surprise of the dazed shoppers inside.
Typhoon Soudelor poses a grave threat to Taiwan later this week as the powerful tropical cyclone swirls closer to the island off the southeast coast of China. The storm has weakened since it produced 180 MPH winds on Monday, but it’s predicted to restrengthen to a destructive category four before landfall on Friday.
Have you seen maps floating around social media that promise record-breaking snowfall this winter? They’re all fake, so stop sharing them. These ridiculous hoaxes have tricked millions of people into believing fake forecasts as fact, and it harms trust in actual science every time a new hoax goes around.
This swirling mass of terror above is Super Typhoon Soudelor in the western Pacific, which is the strongest tropical cyclone we’ve seen in 2015, packing winds of 180 MPH (and gusts to 220 MPH) as it makes its way toward East Asia later this week. Meanwhile, a much weaker tropical storm is heading toward Hawaii.
If you’re hesitant to make the switch to Windows 10 for fear that your weather-related programs won’t work, fear not! I made the switch on Saturday, and all of my Gibson Ridge products (GR2A, GR3, GREarth), BUFKIT, and even smaller programs like Front Painter and SHARPpy all work just fine on the new operating system. GREarth seems to run much faster for me on Windows 10 than it did on Windows 7.
Hurricane activity in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans really begins to pick up intensity at the beginning of August, building up to the peak of the seasons in the middle of September. Right on cue, we have our seventh named storm in the eastern Pacific—possibly threatening Hawaii—while the Atlantic Ocean is dead quiet.
Yesterday’s high temperature in Seattle was 94°F, breaking the record as the city’s tenth day so far this year with a high temperature at or above 90°F. This brutal July smashed extremes across the Pacific Northwest, shattering record high temperatures and giving many cities their warmest Julys on record.
Just in time for the beginning of August, the jet stream is undergoing a readjustment that will bring a noticeable change in the weather over the United States for the next couple of weeks. The shift should bring cooler weather to much of the eastern U.S., while the West Coast stays as hot and dry as ever.
There’s going to be a blue moon on Friday. The moon will do nothing new or exciting, but your Facebook feed will drown in moon drama anyway. Anything’s better than Minion memes, I suppose.
