Hurricane Isaac and the hurricane of satellite photos in Facebook, Twitter

I’m noticing a boom in crazy-good satellite photos of Hurricane Isaac. They are full color, super-detailed, route and rain predictions, and (my favorite) cloud formations. I’m not sure why this is happening. Perhaps, it is the upgrade to our GOES weather satellites, or that the government has taken to social media like kids to water. …

Southern California ends rainy season in a drought – El Niño possibly coming

The 2011-12 rainy season — which ran from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012 — has come to an end with less than impressive numbers, according to figures compiled by the National Weather Service. None of the six key sights where the weather service records long term precipitation reported above average rainfall. San Diego …

Ring of Fire Derecho – travelled 600 miles from Iowa to D.C.

On Friday, a historic, record-setting heat wave covered a sprawling region from the Midwest to the Southeast. All-time high temperatures records of 109 were established in Nashville and Columbia, South, Carolina and tied in Raleigh and Charlotte which hit 105 and 104. Here in Washington, D.C., the mercury climbed to an astonishing 104 degrees (breaking …

Yellowstone – new government petascale supercomputer – to attack chaos theory in climate change

This month, on a barren Wyoming landscape dotted with gopher holes and hay bales, the federal government is assembling a supercomputer 10 years in the making, one of the fastest computers ever built and the largest ever devoted to the study of atmospheric science. The National Center for Atmospheric Research’s supercomputer has been dubbed Yellowstone, …

The highest resolution single-shot of Earth ever taken

Mesmerizing timelapse of the Earth is the highest resolution single-shot imagery ever taken of our planet from space. The video and images were snapped by the Russian weather satellite Elektro-L during its orbit 36,000 kilometers above the equator. The images are in 121 megapixels; That’s 1 km per pixel. In the video shown above here, …

La Niña leaves on Thursday – El Niño could be coming

Changes are brewing in the equatorial Pacific, and they could profoundly affect weather across the U.S. and much of the globe next winter and spring. La Nina, which has held sway since last fall, will be officially declared a goner Thursday, an official at the Climate Prediction Center in Maryland told InsideClimate News. And while …

Hello, Silicon Beach – the burgeoning tech scene in Los Angeles

What could be better than beautiful weather, beaches, and your favorite scrappy start-up? Two cities in Los Angeles are slowly becoming hubs of technology, Santa Monica and Venice. In the spread out landscape of Los Angeles these two cities are adjacent close-knit urban areas, with ample office space, coffee shops, restaurants, and apartments. But, not …

We create our own stars – the satellites tracking U.S. weather

The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) brought online its latest weather satellite GOES-15, and pushed aside its predecessor GOES-11. It will be tracking the weather for California, the west coast, Hawaii, and the Pacific Ocean. The image above is the first infrared image it sent to NOAA, which it will continue to do every …

Our consumer-driven growth model is broken: Now what?

Last week at dinner, our friend (@doyendon) challenged 1X57 to find, or at least contemplate, a solution to consumer-based economies, aka contemporary capitalism, which is causing a global crisis of unconscionable proportions – with food and energy prices soaring, world populations surging, and weather-related disasters like tornadoes, tsunamis, droughts, fires and floods increasing in frequency and scale. In a …