Saw this last Tuesday (2/24) while moored off Culebrita in the Spanish Virgin Islands. Photo is taken looking generally north, around 7:15PM local time. It was very bright, easily the brightest thing in the sky in that direction.
Our best guess: sunlight striking high altitude clouds from the SpaceX launch from Florida that evening.
Other (reasonable) theories welcome...
#meterology #clouds #space #weather
The view from central North Carolina.
Seriously, every single forecast for this alleged disaster has been wrong, at least where I live. We went from 2 foot snow totals in the forecast to maybe a quarter inch of ice, and it will likely all melt before Monday morning.
Has #Enshitification reached weather forecasting as well?
Proper cold at the end of the month into February. Wrap up for Biddy's Day...
❄️😍❄️😍❄️
#weather #climate #meterology #metnerd
WGCU: State Archives adding ‘Weather, Disaster and Recovery’ collection, and seeking photos. “The State Archives of Florida is seeking photographs for its newest photographic collection, ‘Weather, Disaster and Recovery.’”
Google Blog: Weather Lab is an interactive website for sharing Google’s AI weather models.. “Today Google DeepMind and Google Research are launching a public preview of Weather Lab, an interactive website for sharing our AIweather models, and debuting our newest experimental AI-based cyclone predictions. While still experimental, our goal is to continue to work on this technology to help […]
For those underestimating #hailstorm|s:
A 30mm caliber hail will smash a windshield and 80mm will crush in shingled roofs and seriously smash car roofs in.
The University of Vermont (UVM) Water Resources Institute (WRI) is hiring a Senior Meteorlogical Technician to help establish a network of meteorological monitoring stations. This initiative aims to address critical gaps in weather observation identified by the National Weather Service and state partners.
The Senior Meteorological Technician will play a central role in this project, starting with the engagement of partners and the installation of a high-end prototype station. This position is ideal for a skilled technician eager to contribute to an impactful statewide weather monitoring initiative that will make the State of Vermont more resilient against flooding and other extreme weather events.
Ok... another napkin. 2/2
Federated #weather #meterology system.
Per Station Data Points:
- Temperature, humidity, pressure: 3 points
- Wind speed/direction: 2 points
- Precipitation: 1 point
- Cloud camera (low-res sky photos): ~1MB per image
- Sampling rate: Every 5 minutes
- Daily data per station: ~300MB (mostly images)
- Total daily data: ~30PB (sic!)
NWP Distributed Computing required;
- Grid resolution: 4km spacing (practical for regional)
- Vertical layers: 50
- Total grid points: ~6 million grid cells
- Computations per grid point: ~1000 operations
- Update frequency: Every 15 minutes
Distributed Computing Model:
- Comparable to Folding@Home which peaks at ~2.4 exaFLOPS
- For 24hr forecast:
* Each client needs ~4GB RAM
* ~1 hour computation time per client per grid section
* Minimum active clients needed: ~50,000
* Network bandwidth per client: ~1GB/day
* Central coordination server: ~100TB storage, 40Gbps network
(That's beefy...but not "let's drain the rivers beefy") I just priced the NAS the other day. And the storage would cost maybe $8000. Which is a pittance.
Ok... I'm using the other side of the Napkin. 1/2
Federated #weather #meterology system.
Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP)
is the least resource intensive model.
- Divides atmosphere into 3D grid cells
- Solves fluid dynamics equations for each cell
Resolution/Scale trade-off:
- Global models: ~9-13km grid spacing
- Regional models: ~1-4km grid spacing
- Each halving of grid spacing requires ~8x more computing power 😑
For continental USA you need about 1 station for 100km/sq or 53.51 hectopascals per imperial Troy tonne in freedom units.
For meaningful resolution.
You need to abandon satellite data (unless it's free). There may be possibility to gather maritime weather data if this takes off.
Kadin
RockyC
Paul Browne
ResearchBuzz: Firehose
Kevin Karhan 
Jeremy_N1ZZZ
The Big Data Cluster
Wulfy—Speaker to the machines